Let it live then

-ay, till when?

Earth passes, all is lost

In what they prophesy, our wise men,
Sun-flame or sunless frost,

And deed and song alike are swept
Away, and all in vain

As far as man can see, except

The man himself remain;
And tho', in this lean age forlorn,

Too many a voice may cry
That man can have no after-morn,
Not yet of those am I.
The man remains, and whatsoe'er

He wrought of good or brave Will mould him thro' the cycle-year That dawns behind the grave.

III

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

All the charm of all the Muses

often flowering in a lonely word;

IV

Poet of the happy Tityrus

piping underneath his beechen bow

ers;

Poet of the poet-satyr

whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

V

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying

in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

VI

PREFATORY POEM TO MY BROTHER'S SONNETS

MIDNIGHT, JUNE 30, 1879

The collected edition of Charles Tennyson Turner's 'Sonnets,' for which this poem was written, was published in 1880.

I

MIDNIGHT - in no midsummer tune
The breakers lash the shores;
The cuckoo of a joyless June
Is calling out of doors.

And thou hast vanish'd from thine own
To that which looks like rest,
True brother, only to be known
By those who love thee best.

II

Midnight and joyless June gone by,
And from the deluged park
The cuckoo of a worse July
Is calling thro' the dark;

But thou art silent underground,
And o'er thee streams the rain,
True poet, surely to be found
When Truth is found again.

III

And, now to these unsummer'd skies
The summer bird is still,

Far off a phantom cuckoo cries
From out a phantom hill;

And thro' this midnight breaks the sun

Of sixty years away,

The light of days when life begun,
The days that seem to-day,

When all my griefs were shared with

thee,

As all my hopes were thine

As all thou wert was one with me, May all thou art be mine!

'FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE'

First printed in The Nineteenth Century' for March, 1883.

Desenzano is a town at the southern end of Lake Garda, in Italy. The narrow peninsula

of Sermione (the Latin Sirmio), where Catullus had his country house, is about three miles and a half to the east of Desenzano. There are some slight remains of an ancient building on the edge of the lake, said to belong to the poet's villa; and on a hill near by are fragments of Roman baths.

Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!

So they row'd, and there we landed-O venusta Sirmio!'

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,

'Frater Ave atque Vale' as we wander'd to and fro

Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

HELEN'S TOWER

[Written at the request of my friend, Lord Dufferin.]

Inscribed on the walls of a tower erected in 1860 by the Earl of Dufferin on his estate near Belfast, as a tribute to his mother, the late Countess of Gifford, and named after her. The fourth line refers to a poetical inscription on the tower, written by Lady Gifford to her

son.

Later, in 1861, 'Helen's Tower' was privately printed by Lord Dufferin. It was also printed in Good Words' for January, 1884, before it appeared in the 'Tiresias' volume.

HELEN'S TOWER, here I stand,
Dominant over sea and land.
Son's love built me, and I hold
Mother's love in letter'd gold.
Love is in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long!
I should wear my crown entire
To and thro' the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth's recurring Paradise.

Gladstone (who had appointed him to the office in 1880) on the Irish Bill. Tennyson himself said, in 1892: 'I love Mr. Gladstone, but hate his present Irish policy.'

O PATRIOT Statesman, be thou wise to know

The limits of resistance, and the bounds
Determining concession; still be bold
Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;
And be thy heart a fortress to maintain
The day against the moment, and the year
Against the day; thy voice, a music heard
Thro' all the yells and counter-yells of
feud

And faction, and thy will, a power to make
This ever-changing world of circumstance,
In changing, chime with never-changing

Law.

HANDS ALL ROUND

For the first version of this song, which appeared in the London Examiner' for February 7, 1852, see the Notes.

FIRST pledge our Queen this solemn night,
Then drink to England, every guest;
That man 's the best Cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May freedom's oak for ever live

With stronger life from day to day;
That man 's the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder'd branch away.
Hands all round!

God the traitor's hope confound! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

And the great name of England, round and round.