Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809 - 1892
In Memoriam A. H. H.
XXXI-L
XXXI
When Lazarus
left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary's house return'd,
Was this demanded-if he yearn'd
To hear her weeping by his grave?
'Where
wert thou, brother, those four days?'
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every
house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill'd with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown'd
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold
a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII
Her eyes
are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one
deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
All subtle
thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice
blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII
O thou
that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou
thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith
thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou,
that countess reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.
XXXIV
My own
dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round
of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then
were God to such as I?
'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A tattle patience ere I die;
'Twere
best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV
Yet if
some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house,
`The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:'
Might I
not say? `Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive:'
But I should turn mine ears and hear
The moanings
of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love
would answer with a sigh,
`The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.'
O me, what
profits it to put
An idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
Mere fellowship
of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape,
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.
XXXVI
Tho' truths
in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom
dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so
the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he
may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII
Urania
speaks with darken'd brow:
`Thou pratest here where thou art least;
This faith has many a purer priest,
And many an abler voice than thou.
'Go down
beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.'
And my
Melpomene replies,
A touch of shame upon her cheek:
`I am not worthy ev'n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
'For I
am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart,
And render human love his dues;
'But brooding
on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
'I murmur'd,
as I came along,
Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd;
And loiter'd in the master's field,
And darken'd sanctities with song.'
XXXVIII
With weary
steps I loiter on,
Tho' always under alter'd skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy
the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any
care for what is here
Survive in spirits render'd free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
XXXIX
Old warder
of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest
toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow-fixt upon the dead,
And darkening
the dark graves of men,-
What whisper'd from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
XL
Could we
forget the widow'd hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower!
When crown'd
with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful
joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother's face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office
there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless,
unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me,
the difference I discern!
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell
them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss'd her most
Shall count new things as dear as old:
But thou
and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know.
And thine in undiscover'd lands.