Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (251 page)

But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,
That, if left uncancell’d, had been so sweet:
And none of us thought of a something beyond,
  
730
A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,
As it were a duty done to the tomb,
To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild
  
735
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches — I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer
To be friends, to be reconciled!

But then what a flint is he!
  
740
Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch’d on me
This brother had laugh’d her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken’d into a frown,
  
745
Chid her, and forbid her to speak
To me, her friend of the years before;
And this was what had redden’d her cheek
When I bow’d to her on the moor.

Yet Maud, altho’ not blind
  
750
To the faults of his heart and mind,
I see she cannot but love him,
And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,
And tells me, when she lay
  
755
Sick once, with a fear of worse,
That he left his wine and horses and play,
Sat with her, read to her, night and day,
And tended her like a nurse.

Kind? but the deathbed desire
  
760
Spurn’d by this heir of the liar —
Rough but kind? yet I know
He has plotted against me in this,
That he plots against me still.
Kind to Maud? that were not amiss.
  
765
Well, rough but kind; why, let it be so:
For shall not Maud have her will?

For, Maud, so tender and true,
As long as my life endures
I feel I shall owe you a debt,
  
770
That I never can hope to pay;
And if ever I should forget
That I owe this debt to you
And for your sweet sake to yours;
O then, what then shall I say? —
775
If ever I
should
forget,
May God make me more wretched
Than ever I have been yet!

So now I have sworn to bury
All this dead body of hate,
  
780
I feel so free and so clear
By the loss of that dead weight,
That I should grow light-headed, I fear,
Fantastically merry;
But that her brother comes, like a blight
  
785
On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.

XX

STRANGE, that I felt so gay,
Strange, that
I
tried to-day
To beguile her melancholy;
The Sultan, as we name him, —
790
She did not wish to blame him —
But he vext her and perplext her
With his worldly talk and folly:
Was it gentle to reprove her
For stealing out of view
  
795
From a little lazy lover
Who but claims her as his due?
Or for chilling his caresses
By the coldness of her manners,
Nay, the plainness of her dresses?
  
800
Now I know her but in two,
Nor can pronounce upon it
If one should ask me whether
The habit, hat, and feather,
Or the frock and gipsy bonnet
  
805
Be the neater and completer;
For nothing can be sweeter
Than maiden Maud in either.

But to-morrow, if we live,
Our ponderous squire will give
  
810
A grand political dinner
To half the squirelings near;
And Maud will wear her jewels,
And the bird of prey will hover,
And the titmouse hope to win her
  
815
With his chirrup at her ear.

A grand political dinner
To the men of many acres,
A gathering of the Tory,
A dinner and then a dance
  
820
For the maids and marriage-makers,
And every eye but mine will glance
At Maud in all her glory.

For I am not invited,
But, with the Sultan’s pardon,
  
825
I am all as well delighted,
For I know her own rose-garden,
And mean to linger in it
Till the dancing will be over;
And then, oh then, come out to me
  
830
For a minute, but for a minute,
Come out to your own true lover,
That your true lover may see
Your glory also, and render
All homage to his own darling,
  
835
Queen Maud in all her splendour.

XXI

RIVULET crossing my ground,
And bringing me down from the Hall
This garden-rose that I found,
Forgetful of Maud and me,
  
840
And lost in trouble and moving round
Here at the head of a tinkling fall,
And trying to pass to the sea;
O Rivulet, born at the Hall,
My Maud has sent it by thee
  
845
(If I read her sweet will right)
On a blushing mission to me,
Saying in odour and colour, “Ah, be
Among the roses to-night.”

XXII

COME into the garden, Maud,
  
850
 
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
 
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
 
And the musk of the roses blown.
  
855

For a breeze of morning moves,
 
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
 
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
  
860
 
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
 
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
 
To the dancers dancing in tune;
  
865
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
 
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, “There is but one
 
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
  
870
 
She is weary of dance and play.”
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
 
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
 
The last wheel echoes away.
  
875

I said to the rose, “The brief night goes
 
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
 
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,” so I sware to the rose,
  
880
 
“For ever and ever, mine.”

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
 
As the music clash’d in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
 
For I heard your rivulet fall
  
885
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
 
Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
 
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
  
890
 
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
 
And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake
 
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
  
895
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
 
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
 
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
  
900
 
They sigh’d for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
 
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
 
Queen lily and rose in one;
  
905
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
 
To the flowers, and be their sun.

There has fallen a splendid tear
 
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
  
910
 
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
 
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;”
 
And the lily whispers, “I wait.”
  
915

She is coming, my own, my sweet,
 
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
 
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
  
920
 
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
 
And blossom in purple and red.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Maud. Part II

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

I

“THE FAULT was mine, the fault was mine” —
Why am I sitting here so stunn’d and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill? —
It is this guilty hand! —
And there rises ever a passionate cry
  
5
From underneath in the darkening land —
What is it, that has been done?
O dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky,
The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising sun,
The fires of Hell and of Hate;
  
10
For she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word,
When her brother ran in his rage to the gate;
He came with the babe-faced lord;
Heap’d on her terms of disgrace,
And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,
  
15
He fiercely gave me the lie,
Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,
And he struck me, madman, over the face,
Struck me before the languid fool,
Who was gaping and grinning by:
  
20
Struck for himself an evil stroke;
Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe
For front to front in an hour we stood,
And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribb’d hollow behind the wood,
  
25
And thunder’d up into Heaven the Christless code,
That must have life for a blow.
Ever and ever afresh they seem’d to grow.
Was it he lay there with a fading eye?
“The fault was mine,” he whisper’d, “fly!”
  
30
Then glided out of the joyous wood
The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;
And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,
A cry for a brother’s blood:
It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die.
  
35

Is it gone? my pulses beat —
What was it? a lying trick of the brain?
Yet I thought I saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet,
High over the shadowy land.
  
40
It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,
When they should burst and drown with deluging storms
The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,
The little hearts that know not how to forgive:
Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,
  
45
Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms,
That sting each other here in the dust;
We are not worthy to live.

II

SEE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
  
50
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
  
55
A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.
  
60

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
  
65
Did he push, when he was uncurl’d,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro’ his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crush’d with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
  
70
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker’s oaken spine
  
75
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

Breton, not Briton; here
Like a shipwreck’d man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fear —
80
Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
That never came from on high
Nor ever arose from below,
But only moves with the moving eye,
  
85
Flying along the land and the main —
Why should it look like Maud?
Am I to be overawed
By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?
  
90

Back from the Breton coast,
Sick of a nameless fear,
Back to the dark sea-line
Looking, thinking of all I have lost;
An old song vexes my ear;
  
95
But that of Lamech is mine.

For years, a measureless ill,
For years, for ever, to part —
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
  
100
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.
  
105

Strange, that the mind, when fraught
With a passion so intense
One would think that it well
Might drown all life in the eye, —
That it should, by being so over-wrought,
  
110
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!
And now I remember, I,
When he lay dying there,
  
115
I noticed one of his many rings
(For he had many, poor worm) and thought
It is his mother’s hair.

Who knows if he be dead?
Whether I need have fled?
  
120
Am I guilty of blood?
However this may be,
Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea!
Let me and my passionate love go by,
  
125
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happens to me!
Me and my harmful love go by;
But come to her waking, find her asleep,
Powers of the height, Powers of the deep,
  
130
And comfort her tho’ I die.

III

COURAGE, poor heart of stone!
I will not ask thee why
Thou canst not understand
That thou art left for ever alone:
  
135
Courage, poor stupid heart of stone. —
Or if I ask thee why,
Care not thou to reply:
She is but dead, and the time is at hand
When thou shalt more than die.
  
140

IV

O THAT ‘twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

When I was wont to meet her
  
145
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
Than anything on earth.
  
150

A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee;
Ah Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
  
155
What and where they be.

It leads me forth at evening,
It lightly winds and steals
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels
  
160
At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
  
165
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.
  
170

’Tis a morning pure and sweet
And a dewy splendour falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;
’Tis a morning pure and sweet,
  
175
And the light and shadow fleet;
She is walking in the meadow,
And the woodland echo rings;
In a moment we shall meet;
She is singing in the meadow,
  
180
And the rivulet at her feet
Ripples on in light and shadow
To the ballad that she sings.

Do I hear her sing as of old,
My bird with the shining head,
  
185
My own dove with the tender eye?
But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry,
There is some one dying or dead,
And a sullen thunder is roll’d;
For a tumult shakes the city,
  
190
And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.
  
195

Get thee hence, nor come again,
Mix not memory with doubt,
Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about,
’Tis the blot upon the brain
  
200
That
will
show itself without.

Then I rise, the eavedrops fall,
And the yellow vapours choke
The great city sounding wide;
The day comes, a dull red ball
  
205
Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke
On the misty river-tide.

Thro’ the hubbub of the market
I steal, a wasted frame,
It crosses here, it crosses there,
  
210
Thro’ all that crowd confused and loud
The shadow still the same;
And on my heavy eyelids
My anguish hangs like shame.

Alas for her that met me,
  
215
That heard me softly call,
Came glimmering thro’s the laurels
At the quiet evenfall,
In the garden by the turrets
Of the old manorial hall.
  
220

Would the happy spirit descend,
From the realms of light and song,
In the chamber or the street,
As she looks among the blest,
Should I fear to greet my friend
  
225
Or to say “Forgive the wrong,”
Or to ask her, “Take me, sweet,
To the regions of thy rest”?

But the broad light glares and beats,
And the shadow flits and fleets
  
230
And will not let me be;
And I loathe the squares and streets,
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me:
Always I long to creep
  
235
Into some still cavern deep,
There to weep, and weep, and weep
My whole soul out to thee.

V

DEAD, long dead,
Long dead!
  
240
And my heart is a handful of dust,
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street,
  
245
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
The hoofs of the horses beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passing feet,
Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,
  
250
Clamor and rumble, and ringing and clatter,
And here beneath it is all as bad
For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so;
To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad?
But up and down and to and fro,
  
255
Ever about me the dead men go;
And then to hear a dead man chatter
Is enough to drive one mad.

Wretchedest age, since Time began,
They cannot even bury a man;
  
260
And tho’ we paid our tithes in the days that are gone,
Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was read;
It is that which makes us loud in the world of the dead;
There is none that does his work, not one;
A touch of their office might have sufficed,
  
265
But the churchmen fain would kill their church,
As the churches have kill’d their Christ.

See, there is one of us sobbing,
No limit to his distress;
And another, a lord of all things, praying
  
270
To his own great self, as I guess;
And another, a statesman there, betraying
His party-secret, fool, to the press;
And yonder a vile physician, blabbing
The case of his patient — all for what?
  
275
To tickle the maggot born in an empty head,
And wheedle a world that loves him not,
For it is but a world of the dead.

Nothing but idiot gabble!
For the prophecy given of old
  
280
And then not understood,
Has come to pass as foretold;
Not let any man think for the public good,
But babble, merely for babble.
For I never whisper’d a private affair
  
285
Within the hearing of cat or mouse,
No, not to myself in the closet alone,
But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house;
Everything came to be known:
Who told
him
we were there?
  
290