Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (248 page)

Rizpah

17 —

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

WAILING, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea —
And Willy’s voice in the wind, “O mother, come out to me!”
Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?
For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.
  
5
The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down,
When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain,
And grovel and grope for my son till I find myself drenched with the rain.

Anything fallen again? nay — what was there left to fall?
I have taken them home, I have number’d the bones, I have hidden them all.
  
10
What am I saying? and what are
you?
do you come as a spy?
Falls? what falls? who knows? As the tree falls so must it lie.

Who let her in? how long has she been? you — what have you heard?
Why did you sit so quiet? you never have spoken a word.
O — to pray with me — yes — a lady — none of their spies —
15
But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes.

Ah — you, that lived so soft, what should
you
know of the night,
The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the fright?
I have done it, while you were asleep — you were only made for the day.
I have gather’d my baby together — and now you may go your way.
  
20

Nay — for it’s kind of you, madam, to sit by an old dying wife.
But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life.
I kiss’d my boy in the prison, before he went out to die.
“They dared me to do it,” he said, and he never has told me a lie.

I whipped him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child —
25
“The farmer dared me to do it,” he said; he was always so wild —
And idle — and couldn’t be idle — my Willy — he never could rest.
The King should have made him a soldier, he would have been one of his best.

But he lived with a lot of wild mates, and they never would let him be good;
They swore that he dare not rob the mail, and he swore that he would;
  
30
And he took no life, but he took one purse, and when all was done
He flung it among his fellows— “I’ll none of it,” said my son.

I came into court to the judge and the lawyers. I told them my tale,
God’s own truth — but they kill’d him, they kill’d him for robbing the mail.
They hang’d him in chains for a show — we had always borne a good name —
35
To be hang’d for a thief — and then put away — isn’t that enough shame?

Dust to dust — low down — let us hide! but they set him so high
That all the ships of the world could stare at him, passing by.
God’ll pardon the hell-black raven and horrible fowls of the air,
But not the black heart of the lawyer who kill’d him and hang’d him there.
  
40

And the jailer forced me away. I had bid him my last good-bye;
They had fasten’d the door of his cell. “O mother!” I heard him cry.
I couldn’t get back tho’ I tried, he had something further to say,
And now I never shall know it. The jailer forced me away.

Then since I couldn’t but hear that cry of my boy that was dead,
  
45
They seized me and shut me up: they fasten’d me down on my bed.
“Mother, O mother!” — he call’d in the dark to me year after year —
They beat me for that, they beat me — you know that I couldn’t but hear;
And then at the last they found I had grown so stupid and still
They let me abroad again — but the creatures had worked their will.
  
50

Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of my bone was left —
I stole them all from the lawyers — and you, will you call it a theft? —
My baby, the bones that had suck’d me, the bones that had laughed and had cried —
Theirs? O, no! they are mine — not theirs — they had moved in my side.

Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kiss’d ‘em, I buried ’em all —
55
I can’t dig deep, I am old — in the night by the churchyard wall.
My Willy’ll rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment’ll sound,
But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground.

They would scratch him up — they would hang him again on the cursed tree.
Sin? O, yes, we are sinners, I know — let all that be,
  
60
And read me a Bible verse of the Lord’s goodwill toward men —
“Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord” — let me hear it again;
“Full of compassion and mercy — long-suffering.” Yes, O, yes!
For the lawyer is born but to murder — the Saviour lives but to bless.

He’ll
never put on the black cap except for the worst of the worst,
  
65
And the first may be last — I have heard it in church — and the last may be first.
Suffering — O, long-suffering — yes, as the Lord must know,
Year after year in the mist and the wind and the shower and the snow.

Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never repented his sin.
How do they know it? are
they
his mother? are
you
of his kin?
  
70
Heard! have you ever heard, when the storm on the downs began,
The wind that’ll wail like a child and the sea that’ll moan like a man?

Election, Election, and Reprobation — it’s all very well.
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell.
For I cared so much for my boy that the Lord has look’d into my care,
  
75
And He means me I’m sure to be happy with Willy, I know not where.

And if
he
be lost — but to save
my
soul, that is all your desire —
Do you think that I care for
my
soul if my boy be gone to the fire?
I have been with God in the dark — go, go, you may leave me alone —
You never have borne a child — you are just as hard as a stone.
  
80

Madam, I beg your pardon! I think that you mean to be kind,
But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy’s voice in the wind —
The snow and the sky so bright — he used but to call in the dark,
And he calls to me now from the church and not from the gibbet — for hark!
Nay — you can hear it yourself — it is coming — shaking the walls —
85
Willy — the moon’s in a cloud — Good-night. I am going. He calls.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

To Virgil

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

ROMAN VIRGIL, thou that singest Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the “Works and Days,”
All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
  
5
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers;
Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be,
Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;
  
10

Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind;
Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;

Light among the vanish’d ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar’s dome —
15
Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome —

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish’d, and the Rome of freemen holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Islands sunder’d once from all the human race,

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.
  
20

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Maud. Part I

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

I

I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers “Death.”

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,
  
5
His who had given me life — O father! O God! was it well? —
Mangled, and flatten’d, and crush’d, and dinted into the ground:
There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail’d,
And ever he mutter’d and madden’d, and ever wann’d with despair,
  
10
And out he walk’d when the wind like a broken worldling wail’d,
And the flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands drove thro’ the air.

I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr’d
By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail’d, by a whisper’d fright,
And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard
  
15
The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.

Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all.
Not he: his honest fame should at least by me be maintain’d:
But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall,
Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d.
  
20

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
  
25
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman’s ware or his word?
Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
  
30
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,
When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex, like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
  
35
Peace in her vineyard — yes! — but a company forges the wine.

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian’s head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.
  
40

And Sleep must lie down arm’d, for the villainous center-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits
To pestle a poison’d poison behind his crimson lights.

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
  
45
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children’s bones,
Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
  
50
That the smoothfaced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home. —

What! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood?
Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die
Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood
  
55
On a horror of shatter’d limbs and a wretched swindler’s lie?

Would there be sorrow for
me?
there was
love
in the passionate shriek,
Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave —
Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak
And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave.
  
60

I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main.
Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here?
O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain,
Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear?

Workmen up at the Hall! — they are coming back from abroad;
  
65
The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionnaire:
I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud;
I play’d with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair.

Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,
Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,
  
70
Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,
Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all, —

What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse.
No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone.
Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
  
75
I will bury myself in myself, and the Devil may pipe to his own.

II

LONG have I sigh’d for a calm: God grant I may find it at last!
It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,
But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past,
Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
  
80
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been
For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour’s defect of the rose,
Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full,
  
85
Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose,
From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen.

III

COLD and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek,
Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown’d,
Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek,
  
90
Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound;
Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong
Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before
Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
  
95
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more,
But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,
Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung ship-wrecking roar,
Now to the scream of a madden’d beach dragg’d down by the wave,
Walk’d in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found
  
100
The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.

IV

A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit — ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,
  
105
Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?

Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small!
And yet bubbles o’er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite;
And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar;
  
110
And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall;
And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light;
But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star!

When have I bow’d to her father, the wrinkled head of the race?
I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow’d;
  
115
I bow’d to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor;
But the fire of a foolish pride flash’d over her beautiful face.
O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud;
Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.

I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal;
  
120
I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like
A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way:
For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear’d by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
  
125

We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;
Do we move ourselves, or are we moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother’s shame;
 
 
130
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.

A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth,
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature’s crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,
  
135
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man:
He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base?

The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl’d into folly and vice.
  
140
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.

For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.
Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about?
  
145
Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide.
Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?
Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout?
I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide.

Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways,
  
150
Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,
Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;
From the long-neck’d geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,
Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.
  
155

And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.
Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife.
Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above;
Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will;
  
160
You have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life.

V

A VOICE by the cedar tree,
In the meadow under the Hall!
She is singing an air that is known to me,
A passionate ballad gallant and gay,
  
165
A martial song like a trumpet’s call!
Singing alone in the morning of life,
In the happy morning of life and of May,
Singing of men that in battle array,
Ready in heart and ready in hand,
  
170
March with banner and bugle and fife
To the death, for their native land.

Maud with her exquisite face,
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,
And feet like sunny gems on an English green,
  
175
Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,
And myself so languid and base.