5"5'3'2 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 5552.T48 
 
 Suppressed poems, now for the first time 
 
 3 1924 013 558 832 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013558832 
 
NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED 
 
 EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY 
 
 J. C. THOMSON 
 
 EDITOR OF 
 
 "the bibliography of CHARLES DICKENS " 
 
 "the AVON booklet" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 MCMIII 
 
 '-'.,:. 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword ... v 
 
 TiMBUCTOO . . . I 
 
 The "How" and the "Wnt" .... 17 
 
 The Burial of Love ... ... 20 
 
 To 22 
 
 Song . . . ... 23 
 
 Song . .... 25 
 
 Hero to Leandbr . ... . 27 
 
 The Mystic ... 30 
 
 The Grasshopper . 33 
 
 Love, Pride and Forgetpulness ... 36 
 
 Chorus 37 
 
 Lost Hope . 39 
 
 The Tears op Heaven 40 
 
 Love and Sorrow 41 
 
 To a Lady Sleeping 43 
 
 Sonnet 44 
 
 Jii 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sonnet 45 
 
 Sonnet 47 
 
 Sonnet 49 
 
 Love . . 50 
 
 English War Song S3 
 
 National Song 56 
 
 Dualisms 58 
 
 ol peovTe<s 60 
 
 Song 62 
 
 A Fragment . 65 
 
 Anacreontics . 68 
 
 No More .... . . 69 
 
 Sonnet 70 
 
 Sonnet 72 
 
 Sonnet 74 
 
 Sonnet 76 
 
 The Hesperides 78 
 
 Rosalind 85 
 
 Song 87 
 
 Sonnet 88 
 
 O Darling Room 90 
 
 To Christopher North 92 
 
 The Lotos-Eaters 93 
 
 iv 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Dream of Fair Women 96 
 
 The Palace of Art 98 
 
 Cambridge . . 109 
 
 The Germ op "Maud" m 
 
 The Skipping Rope 114 
 
 The New Timon and the Poets . . . 115 
 
 Mablethorpe 118 
 
 Stanzas 119 
 
 Britons, Guard your Own 120 
 
 Hands all Round. ... .... 124 
 
 Suggested by Reading an Article in a 
 
 Newspaper 128 
 
 1865-1866 13s 
 
 Alcaics . 136 
 
 Sapphics ^37 
 
 The Rosebud .... 138 
 
 A Gate and a Field Half Ploughed . . 139 
 
 The Lover's Tale. A Fragment ... 140 
 
Foreword 
 
 Tennyson's long life of eighty-four years 
 almost equalled in its duration the com- 
 bined lives of Keats, Shelley, and Byron. 
 Unlike these impassioned boys, who passed 
 their lives at issue with their generation, 
 Tennyson was bom into a happier time, 
 eagerly expecting its great poet and anxious 
 with welcome. He was protected all his 
 days from criticism and annoyance by a 
 phalanx of friendly admirers, who preached 
 him in every direction and encouraged him 
 with their applause. No ' ' wood notes wild ' ' 
 came from him; the gems in his poetry are 
 pretty or beautiful or now and again per- 
 fect — but all owing such perfection as they 
 possess more to art than to nature. In his 
 earlier days he had determined to be a 
 vii 
 
Foreword 
 
 poet — as one might determine to be a sol- 
 dier or another a priest. That he succeed- 
 ed is but stating a platitude; but his suc- 
 cess involved much groping and stumbling 
 in the poetic journey, of which when fame 
 came to him he was too sensitively conscious. 
 "Why do they treasure the rubbish I 
 shot from my full full-finish'd cantos.?" he 
 once querulously asked his son, irritated by 
 the attempts of the late Mr. Heme Shepherd 
 to reprint some of his suppressed youthful 
 poems. This rather overstrained anxiety 
 for his reputation led to the suppression of 
 no less than fifty-three poems by Tennyson 
 — some originally published in his volumes 
 of 1830 and 1832 and others contributed to 
 various annuals and periodicals from time 
 to time. Of these contributions to what is 
 commonly called ephemeral literature, the 
 first was published when Tennyson was 
 twenty - two and the last when he was 
 seventy-six. In the Life of his father by 
 Hallam Lord Tennyson, many of these are 
 mentioned, some are reprinted in full, usu- 
 vjii 
 
Foreword 
 
 ally greatly altered, and several are entirely 
 ignored. To the student of Tennyson the 
 Collected Works afford quite insufficient ma- 
 terial for the study of his poetic develop- 
 ment, and the poems as given for the first 
 time in the Life are so far untrustworthy in 
 that we have the bes't reasons for assuming 
 they that are not now as originally written. 
 In plain language, they are not what they 
 profess to be, the first uncertain exercises 
 of a poet unacquainted with the greatness 
 of his gift. They have been altered from 
 their first form as originally written, and 
 from being the hesitating efforts of youth 
 become but the experiments of complacent 
 maturity. 
 
 It has, therefore, seemed to me that a 
 volume containing all these suppressed 
 poems of Tennyson, reprinted as originally 
 published, would possess a value much 
 beyond that of a mere collection of literary 
 curiosities. Tennyson's place in the literary 
 hierarchy is as yet indefinite: he has yet 
 to stand his trial at the bar of posterity, 
 ix 
 
Foreword 
 
 and the verdict will be given, not on what 
 he hoped to have done, but on what he did. 
 Here, then, in this volume, I have collected 
 some threescore counts in his indictment — 
 for or against as the reader shall decide. 
 
 Where necessary, I have prefaced the 
 poems with an introductory note, stating 
 the original source of publication and adding 
 any other relative facts likely to interest. 
 I believe I have succeeded in tracing every 
 published poem of Tennyson's not now 
 given in the Collected Works. It is, how- 
 ever, possible — though unlikely — that there 
 may be others buried in the anonymous 
 columns of old newspapers; if so, there they 
 will remain in the limbo of the utterly 
 forgotten. 
 
 J. C. Thomson. 
 
 Avon Glen, Warwick, England. 
 

 Timbuctoo 
 
 A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S 
 MEDAL AT THE CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT, 
 MDCCCXXIX, BY A. TENNYSON, OF TRINITY COLLEGE. 
 
 [Printed in Cambridge Chronicle and Journal of Friday, July 
 lo, 1829, and at the University Press by James Smith, among 
 the Prolusiones Academices Prcemiis annuis diznaUe, et in 
 Curia Cantabrigiensi Recitatee Comitiis Maximis, mdcccxxix. 
 Republished in Cambridge Prize Poems, 1813 to 1858, by 
 Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, without alteration; and in 1893 
 in the appendix to a reprint of Poems by Two Brothers,} 
 
 Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies 
 A mystic city, goal of high Emprize. 
 
 — Chapman.* 
 
 STOOD upon the Moun- 
 tain which o'erlooks 
 The narrow seas, whose 
 
 rapid interval 
 Parts Afric from green 
 Europe, when the Sun 
 Had fall'n below th' Atlantick, and above 
 
 * Mr. Swinburne has failed to find this couplet in any of 
 Chapman's original poems or translations, and is of opinion 
 that it is Tennyson's own. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery- 
 light, 
 Uncertain whether faery light or cloud, 
 Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, 
 
 deep blue 
 Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars 
 Were flooded over with clear glory and pale. 
 I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond, 
 There where the Giant of old Time infixed 
 The limits of his prowess, pillars high 
 Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the 
 
 sea 
 When weary of wild inroad buildeth up 
 Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty 
 
 waves. 
 And much I mus'd on legends quaint and 
 
 old 
 Which whilome won the hearts of all on 
 
 Earth 
 Towards their brightness, ev'n as flame 
 
 draws air; 
 But had their being in the heart of Man 
 As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then 
 A center'd glory-circled Memory, 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves 
 Have buried deep, and thou of later name 
 Imperial Eldorado roof'd with gold: 
 Shadows to which, despite all shocks of 
 
 Change, 
 All onset of capricious Accident, 
 Men clung with yearning Hope which would 
 
 not die 
 As when in some great City where the 
 
 walls 
 Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces 
 
 throng'd 
 Do utter forth a subterranean voice. 
 Among the inner columns far retir'd 
 At midnight, in the lone Acropolis. 
 Before the awful Genius of the place 
 Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the 
 
 while 
 Above her head the weak lamp dips and 
 
 winks 
 Unto the fearful summoning without: 
 Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees, 
 Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth 
 
 on 
 
 3 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Those eyes which wear no light but that 
 
 wherewith 
 Her phantasy informs them. 
 
 Where are ye 
 Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands 
 
 green? 
 Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn 
 
 glooms. 
 The blossoming abysses of your hills? 
 Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded 
 
 bays 
 Blown round with happy airs of odorous 
 
 winds ? 
 Where are the infinite ways which. Seraph- 
 trod, 
 Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes, 
 Whose lowest depths were, as with visible 
 
 love, 
 Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd, 
 Flowing between the clear and polish'd 
 
 stems, 
 And ever circling round their emerald cones 
 In coronals and glories, such as gird 
 4 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The unfading foreheads of the Saints in 
 
 Heaven ? 
 For nothing visible, they say, had birth 
 In that blest ground but it was play'd 
 
 about 
 With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd 
 My voice and cried, "Wide Afric, doth thy 
 
 Sun 
 Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair 
 As those which starr'd the night o' the 
 
 Elder World? 
 Or is the rumor of thy Timbuctoo 
 A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?" 
 
 A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing 
 
 light! 
 A rustling of white wings! The bright 
 
 descent 
 Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me 
 There on the ridge, and look'd into my face 
 With his unutterable, shining orbs. 
 So that with hasty motion I did veil 
 My vision with both hands, and saw before 
 
 me 
 
 S 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Such color'd spots as dance athwart the 
 
 eyes 
 Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun. 
 Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath 
 His breast, and compass'd round about his 
 
 brow 
 With triple arch of ever-changing bows, 
 And circled with the glory of living light 
 And alternation of all hues, he stood. 
 
 "0 child of man, why muse you here alone 
 Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old 
 Which fill'd the Earth with passing love- 
 liness. 
 Which flung strange music on the howling 
 
 winds, 
 And odors rapt from remote Paradise? 
 Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality, 
 Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay: 
 Open thine eye and see." 
 
 I look'd, but not 
 Upon his face, for it was wonderful 
 With its exceeding brightness, and the light 
 6 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of the great angel mind which look'd from 
 
 out 
 The starry glowing of his restless eyes. 
 I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit 
 With supernatural excitation bound 
 Within me, and my mental eye grew large 
 With such a vast circumference of thought, 
 That in my vanity I seem'd to stand 
 Upon the outward verge and bound alone 
 Of full beatitude. Each failing sense 
 As with a momentary flash of light 
 Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw 
 The smallest grain that dappled the dark 
 
 Earth, 
 The indistinctest atom in deep air, 
 The Moon's white cities, and the opal width 
 Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights 
 Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud, 
 And the unsounded, undescended depth 
 Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy 
 Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful, 
 Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light 
 Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth 
 And harmony of planet-girded Suns 
 7 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel, 
 Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum 
 
 of men, 
 Or other things talking in unknown tongues, 
 And notes of busy life in distant worlds 
 Beat Uke a far wave on my anxious ear. 
 
 A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling 
 
 thoughts 
 Involving and embracing each with each 
 Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd, 
 Expanding momently with every sight 
 And sound which struck the palpitating 
 
 sense, 
 The issue of strong impulse, hurried through 
 The riv'n rapt brain: as when in some large 
 
 lake 
 From pressure of descendant crags, which 
 
 lapse 
 Disjointed, crumbling from their parent 
 
 slope 
 At slender interval, the level calm 
 Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres 
 Which break upon each other, each th' effect 
 8 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of separate impulse, but more fleet and 
 
 strong 
 Than its precursor, till the eye in vain 
 Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade 
 Dappled with hollow and alternate rise 
 Of interpenetrated arc, would scan 
 Definite round. 
 
 I know not if I shape 
 These things with accurate similitude 
 From visible objects, for but dimly now. 
 Less vivid than a half-forgtten dream, 
 The memory of that mental excellence 
 Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine 
 The indecision of my present mind 
 With its past clearness, yet it seems to me 
 As even then the torrent of quick thought 
 Absorbed me from the nature of itself 
 With its own fleetness. Where is he that, 
 
 borne 
 Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream. 
 Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge. 
 And muse midway with philosophic calm 
 Upon the wondrous laws which regelate 
 9 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The fierceness of the bounding element? 
 My thoughts which long had grovell'd in 
 
 the slime. 
 Of this dull world, like dusky worms which 
 
 house 
 Beneath unshaken waters, but at once 
 Upon some earth-awakening day of spring 
 Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft 
 Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides 
 Double display of starlit wings which 
 
 burn 
 Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom: 
 E'en so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now 
 
 felt 
 Unutterable buoyancy and strength 
 To bear them upward through the trackless 
 
 fields 
 Of undefin'd existence far and free. 
 
 Then first within the South methought I 
 
 saw 
 A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile 
 Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome. 
 Illimitable range of battlement 
 
 lO 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 On battlement, and the Imperial height 
 Of Canopy o'ercanopied. 
 
 Behind, 
 In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling 
 
 Peaks* 
 Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's 
 As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft 
 Upon his narrow'd Eminence bore globes 
 Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances 
 Of either, showering circular abyss 
 Of radiance. But the glory of the place 
 Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold 
 Interminably high, if gold it were 
 Or metal more ethereal, and beneath 
 Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no 
 
 gaze 
 Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan 
 Through length of porch and lake and 
 
 boundless hall. 
 
 * In first edition "Cones," but writing in 1831 to a Cam- 
 bridge printer, who wished to reprint the Prise Poems, Tenny- 
 son said: "For 'Cones of Pyramids,' which is nonsense, I will 
 thank you to substitute 'Peaks of Pyramids'" (Life, vol. i., 
 P- 45). 
 
 II 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom 
 The snowy skirting of a garment hung, 
 And gUmpse of multitudes of multitudes 
 That minister'd around it — if I saw 
 These things distinctly, for my human brain 
 Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick 
 
 night 
 Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell. 
 
 With ministering hand he rais'd me up; 
 Then with a mournful and ineffable smile. 
 Which but to look on for a moment fill'd 
 My eyes with irresistible sweet tears. 
 In accents of majestic melody. 
 Like a swol'n river's gushings in still night 
 Mingled with floating music, thus he spake: 
 
 "There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway 
 The heart of man : and teach him to attain 
 By shadowing forth the Unattainable; 
 And step by step to scale that mighty 
 
 stair 
 Whose landing-place is wrapt about with 
 
 clouds 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of glory of Heaven.* With earliest Light of 
 
 Spring, 
 And in the glow of sallow Summertide, 
 And in red Autumn when the winds are 
 
 wild 
 With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter 
 
 roofs 
 The headland with inviolate white snow, 
 I play about his heart a thousand ways, 
 Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears 
 With harmonies of wind and wave and 
 
 wood 
 — Of winds which tell of waters, and of 
 
 waters 
 Betraying the close kisses of the wind — 
 And win him unto me: and few there be 
 So gross of heart who have not felt and 
 
 known 
 A higher than they see : They with dim eyes 
 Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee 
 To understand my presence, and to feel 
 My fulness ; I have fill'd thy lips with power. 
 
 * "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." 
 13 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 I have rais'd thee nigher to the Spheres of 
 
 Heaven, 
 Man's first, last home: and thou with 
 
 ravish'd sense 
 Listenest the lordly music flowing from 
 Th' illimitable years. I am the Spirit, 
 The permeating life which courseth through 
 All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins 
 Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread 
 With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters 
 
 rare, 
 Reacheth to every comer under Heaven, 
 Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth: 
 So that men's hopes and fears take refuge 
 
 in 
 The fragrance of its complicated glooms 
 And cool impleach^d twilights. Child of 
 
 Man, 
 See'st thou yon river, whose translucent 
 
 wave. 
 Forth issuing from darkness, windeth 
 
 through 
 The argent streets o' the City, imaging 
 The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes: 
 14 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Her gardens frequent with the stately- 
 Palm, 
 Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells: 
 Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite, 
 Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth 
 
 by, 
 
 And gulphs himself in sands, as not en- 
 during 
 
 To carry through the world those waves, 
 which bore 
 
 The reflex of my City in their depths. 
 
 Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was 
 rais'd 
 
 To be a mystery of loveliness 
 
 Unto all eyes, the time is wellnigh come 
 
 When I must render up this glorious home 
 
 To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant tow- 
 ers 
 
 Shall darken with the waving of her wand; 
 
 Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts, 
 
 Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand. 
 
 Low-built, mud-wall'd, Barbarian settle- 
 ment. 
 
 How chang'd from this fair City!" 
 IS 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Thus far the Spirit: 
 Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I 
 Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon 
 Had fallen from the night, and all was 
 dark! 
 
 [A few lines from "Timbuctoo" were incorporated in "Ode 
 to Memory" (1830) and "The Lover's Tale" (1S33)]. 
 
 [The following review of "Timbuctoo" was published in the 
 Athentsum oi July 22, 1829: "We have accustomed ourselves 
 to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry 
 was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after 
 the great generation of poets which is now passing away. 
 The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the 
 most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young 
 man, and that where we should least expect it — namely, in 
 a prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious 
 and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which 
 indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would 
 have done honor to any men that ever wrote. Such, we do 
 not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the 
 examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have 
 assigned the prize to the author, though the measure in which 
 he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for 
 honor. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration 
 (50 lines, 62-112, quoted). How many men have lived for 
 a century who could equal this?" At the time when this 
 highly eulogistic notice of the youthful unknown poet ap- 
 peared, the Atkencsum was edited by John Sterling and 
 Frederick Denison Maurice, its then proprietors.] 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 [The following poems, numbered I-XXIV, appeared in the 
 volume Poems Chieily Lyrical. London: Effingham Wilson, 
 Royal Exchange, 1830. They were never republished by 
 Tennyson: nor were they obtainable in England in any form 
 until the appearance of Mr. Churton Collins' s edition of Ten- 
 nyson's Early Poems. In America, however, they hav« besn 
 current in various more or less incomplete forme.] 
 
 I 
 The "How" and the "Why" 
 
 I AM any man's suitor, 
 
 If any will be my tutor: 
 Some say this life is pleasant, 
 
 Some think it speedeth fast: 
 In time there is no present, 
 
 In eternity no future, 
 
 In eternity no past. 
 We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die, 
 Who will riddle me the how and the why? 
 
 The bulrush nods unto his brotlier 
 The wheatears whisper to each othar: 
 
 17 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 What is it they say ? What do they there ? 
 Why two and two make four? Why round 
 
 is not square? 
 Why the rocks stand still, and the light 
 
 cloud fly? 
 Why the heavy oak groans, and the white 
 
 willows sigh? 
 Why deep is not high, and high is not deep? 
 Whether v/e wake or whether we sleep? 
 Whether we sleep or whether we die?. 
 How you are you? Why I am I? 
 Who will riddle me the how and the why? 
 
 The world is somewhat; it goes on some- 
 how; 
 
 But what is the meaning of then and now? 
 
 I feel there is something; but how and 
 what? 
 
 I know there is somewhat; but what and 
 why? 
 
 I cannot tell if that somewhat be I. 
 
 The little bird pipeth "why? why?" 
 
 In the summerwoods when the sun falls low, 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And the great bird sits on the opposite 
 
 bough, 
 And stares in his face and shouts "how? 
 
 how?" 
 And the black owl scuds down the mellow 
 
 twilight, 
 And chaunts "how? how?" the whole of 
 
 the night. 
 
 Why the life goes when the blood is spilt? 
 What the life is? where the soul may lie? 
 Why a church is with a steeple built; 
 And a house with a chimney-pot? 
 Who will riddle me the how and the what? 
 Who will riddle me the what and the why ? 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 II 
 The Burial of Love 
 
 His eyes in eclipse, 
 
 Pale cold his lips, 
 The light of his hopes unfed, 
 
 Mute his tongue. 
 
 His bow unstrung 
 With the tears he hath shed. 
 Backward drooping his graceful head. 
 
 Love is dead; 
 
 His last arrow sped; 
 He hath not another dart; 
 
 Go — carry him to his dark death -bed; 
 Bury him in the cold, cold heart — 
 
 Love is dead. 
 
 Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn, 
 
 And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles 
 20 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Forgotten, and thine innocent joy? 
 
 Shall hollow-hearted apathy, 
 The cruellest form of perfect scorn. 
 
 With languor of most hateful smiles, 
 Forever write 
 In the weathered light 
 
 Of the tearless eye 
 
 An epitaph that all may spy? 
 
 No! sooner she herself shall die. 
 For her the showers shall not fall. 
 Nor the round sun that shineth to all; 
 
 Her light shall into darkness change; 
 For her the green grass shall not spring, 
 Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing, 
 
 Till Love have his full revenge. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 III 
 To - 
 
 Sainted Juliet! dearest name! 
 
 If to love be life alone, 
 Divinest Juliet, 
 
 I love thee, and live; and yet 
 Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame 
 
 Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice 
 
 Offered to Gods upon an altarthrone; 
 My heart is lighted at thine eyes. 
 Changed into fire, and blown about with 
 sighs. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 IV 
 Song 
 
 I' THE glooming light 
 Of middle night, 
 So cold and white, 
 Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave; 
 Beside her are laid 
 Her mattock and spade. 
 For she hath half delved her own deep 
 grave. 
 Alone she is there: 
 The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls 
 loose ; 
 Her shoulders are bare; 
 Her tears are mixed with the bearded 
 dews. 
 
 23 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 II 
 
 Death standeth by; 
 
 She will not die; 
 
 With glazed eye 
 She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep; 
 
 Ever alone 
 
 She maketh her moan: 
 She cannot speak; she can only weep; 
 
 For she will not hope. 
 The thick snow falls on her flake by flake, 
 
 The dull wave mourns down the slope, 
 The world will not change, and her heart 
 will not break. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 V 
 Song 
 
 Every day hath its night: 
 Every night its mom: 
 Through dark and bright 
 
 Winged hours are borne; 
 Ah! welaway! 
 Seasons flower and fade; 
 Golden calm and storm 
 Mingle day by day. 
 There is no bright form 
 Doth not cast a shade — 
 Ah! welaway! 
 
 II 
 
 When we laugh, and our mirth 
 Apes the happy vein, 
 
 25 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We're so kin to earth 
 
 Pleasaunce fathers pain — 
 Ah! welaway! 
 Madness laugheth loud: 
 
 Laughter bringeth tears: 
 Eyes are worn away 
 Till the end of fears 
 Cometh in the shroud, 
 Ah! welaway! 
 
 Ill 
 
 All is change, woe or weal; 
 Joy is sorrow's brother; 
 Grief and sadness steal 
 
 Symbols of each other; 
 Ah! welaway! 
 Larks in heaven's cope 
 
 Sing: the culvers mourn 
 All the livelong day. 
 Be not all forlorn; 
 Let us weep in hope — 
 Ah! welaway! 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 VI 
 Hero to Leander 
 
 Oh go not yet, my love, 
 
 The night is dark and vast; 
 The white moon is hid in her heaven above, 
 
 And the waves cHmb high and fast. 
 Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again. 
 
 Lest thy kiss should be the last. 
 
 Oh kiss me ere we part; 
 
 Grow -closer to my heart. 
 My heart is warmer surely than the bosom 
 of the main. 
 
 Oh joy! bliss of blisses! 
 
 My heart of hearts art thou. 
 Come bathe me with thy kisses. 
 
 My eyelids and my brow. 
 Hark how the wild rain hisses. 
 
 And the loud sea roars below. 
 37 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs 
 
 So gladly doth it stir; 
 Thine eye in drops of gladness swims. 
 
 I have bathed thee with the pleasant 
 myrrh; 
 Thy locks are dripping balm; 
 
 Thou shalt not wander hence to- 
 night, 
 I'll stay thee with my kisses. 
 
 To-night the roaring brine 
 Will rend thy golden tresses; 
 
 The ocean with the morrow Ught 
 Will be both blue and calm; 
 
 And the billow will embrace thee with 
 a kiss as soft as mine. 
 
 No western odors wander 
 
 On the black and moaning sea, 
 And when thou art dead, Leander, 
 
 My soul must follow thee! 
 Oh go not yet, my love. 
 
 Thy voice is sweet and low; 
 The deep salt wave breaks in above 
 
 Those marble steps below. 
 28 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The turretstairs are wet 
 That lead into the sea. 
 
 Leander! go not yet. 
 
 The pleasant stars have set: 
 
 Oh! go not, go not yet, 
 Or I -will follow thee. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 VII 
 The Mystic 
 
 Angels have talked with him, and showed 
 
 him thrones: 
 Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye, 
 Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn : 
 Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, 
 The still serene abstraction; he hath felt 
 The vanities of after and before; 
 Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart 
 The stern experiences of converse lives. 
 The linked woes of many a fiery change 
 Had purified, and chastened, and made free. 
 Always there stood before him, night and 
 
 day, 
 Of wayward vary colored circumstance, 
 The imperishable presences serene. 
 Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound. 
 Dim shadows but unwaning presences 
 30 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Fourfac^d to four corners of the sky; 
 And yet again, three shadows, fronting one, 
 One forward, one respectant, three but one; 
 And yet again, again and evermore. 
 For the two first were not, but only seemed, 
 One shadow in the midst of a great light. 
 One reflex from eternity on time. 
 One mighty countenance of perfect calm, 
 Awful with most invariable eyes. 
 For him the silent congregated hours, 
 Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath 
 Severe and youthful brows, with shining 
 
 eyes 
 Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light 
 Of earliest youth pierced through and 
 
 through with all 
 Keen knowledges of low-embowfed eld) 
 Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud 
 Which droops low hung on either gate of 
 
 life. 
 Both birth and death; he is the centre fixt, 
 Saw far on each side through the grated 
 
 gates 
 Most pale and clear and lovely distances. 
 
 31 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 He often lying broad awake, and yet 
 Remaining from the body, and apart 
 In intellect and power and will, hath heard 
 Time flowing in the middle of the night. 
 And all things creeping to a day of doom. 
 How could ye know him? Ye were yet 
 
 within 
 The narrower circle ; he had wellnigh reached 
 The last, with which a region of white flame, 
 Pure without heat, into a larger air 
 Upbuming, and an ether of black blue, 
 Investeth and ingirds all other lives. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 VIII 
 The Grasshopper 
 
 Voice of the summerwind, 
 
 Joy of the summerplain, 
 
 Life of the summerhours, 
 Carol clearly, bound along. 
 
 No Tithon thou as poets feign 
 (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) 
 But an insect lithe and strong, 
 
 Bowing the seeded summer flowers. 
 Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, 
 
 Vaulting on thine airy feet. 
 Clap thy shielded sides and carol, 
 
 Carol clearly, chirrup sweet 
 Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and 
 strength complete; 
 
 3 33 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Armed cap-a-pie, 
 Full fair to see; 
 
 Unknowing fear, 
 Undreading loss, 
 
 A gallant cavalier 
 Sans peur et sans reproche, 
 
 In sunlight and in shadow, 
 The Bayard of the meadow. 
 
 II 
 
 I would dwell with thee, 
 
 Merry grasshopper, 
 Thou art so glad and free, 
 
 And as light as air; 
 Thou hast no sorrow or tears, 
 Thou hast no compt of years. 
 No withered immortality. 
 But a short youth sunny and free. 
 Carol clearly, bound along. 
 
 Soon thy joy is over, 
 A summer of loud song, 
 
 And slumbers in the clover. 
 34 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 What hast thou to do with evil 
 In thine hour of love and revel, 
 In thy heat of summerpride, 
 Pushing the thick roots aside 
 Of the singing flowered grasses, 
 That brush thee with their silken 
 tresses ? 
 What hast thou to do with evil, 
 Shooting, singing, ever springing 
 
 In and out the emerald glooms. 
 Ever leaping, ever singing. 
 
 Lighting on the golden blooms? 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 IX 
 Love, Pride and Forgetfulness 
 
 Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb, 
 
 Love labored honey busily. 
 
 I was the hive and Love the bee, 
 
 My heart the honey-comb. 
 
 One very dark and chilly night 
 
 Pride came beneath and held a light. 
 
 The cruel vapors went through all. 
 Sweet Love was withered in his cell; 
 Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell 
 Did change them into gall; 
 And Memory tho' fed by Pride 
 Did wax so thin on gall, 
 Awhile she scarcely lived at all, 
 What marvel that she died? 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 X 
 Chorus* 
 
 The varied earth, the moving heaven, 
 
 The rapid waste of roving sea. 
 The fountainpregnant mountains riven 
 
 To shapes of wildest anarchy. 
 By secret fire and midnight storms 
 
 That wander round their windy cones, 
 The subtle life, the countless forms 
 
 Of living things, the wondrous tones 
 Of man and beast are full of strange 
 Astonishment and boundless change. 
 
 The day, the diamonded light. 
 
 The echo, feeble child of sound. 
 
 The heavy thunder's girding might. 
 
 The herald lightning's starry bound, 
 
 * In an unpublished drama written very early. 
 
 37 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The vocal spring of bursting bloom, 
 
 The naked summer's glowing birth, 
 
 The troublous autumn's sallow gloom. 
 The hoarhead winter paving earth 
 
 With sheeny white, are full of strange 
 
 Astonishment and boundless change. 
 
 Each sun which from the centre flings 
 
 Grand music and redundant fire, 
 The burning belts, the mighty rings. 
 
 The murmurous planets' rolling choir, 
 The globefilled arch that, cleaving air, 
 
 Lost in its effulgence sleeps, 
 The lawless comets as they glare. 
 
 And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps 
 In wayward strength, are full of strange 
 Astonishment and boundless change. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XI 
 Lost Hope 
 
 You cast to ground the hope which once 
 was mine, 
 But did the while your harsh decree 
 deplore, 
 Embalming with sweet tears the vacant 
 shrine. 
 My heart, where Hope had been and 
 was no more. 
 
 So on an oaken sprout 
 
 A goodly acorn grew; 
 But winds from heaven shook the acorn 
 out. 
 
 And filled the cup with dew. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XII 
 The Tears of Heaven 
 
 Heaven weeps above the earth all night 
 
 till morn, 
 In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep. 
 Because the earth hath made her state 
 
 forlorn 
 With self wrought evils of unnumbered years. 
 And doth the fruit of her dishonor reap. 
 And all the day heaven gathers back her 
 
 tears 
 Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep, 
 And showering down the glory of lightsome 
 
 day, 
 Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her 
 
 if she may. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XIII 
 Love and Sorrow 
 
 O Maiden, fresher than the first green leaf 
 
 With which the fearful springtide flecks the 
 lea, 
 
 Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee 
 
 That thou hast half my heart, for bitter 
 grief 
 
 Doth hold the other half in sovranty. 
 
 Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystal- 
 line: 
 
 Yet on both sides at once thou canst not 
 shine : 
 
 Thine is the bright side of my heart, and 
 thine 
 
 My heart's day, but the shadow of my 
 heart, 
 
 Issue of its own substance, my heart's night 
 
 Thou canst not lighten even with thy light, 
 41 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 All powerful in beauty as thou art. 
 Almeida, if my heart were substanceless, 
 Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other 
 
 side, 
 So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide. 
 But lose themselves in utter emptiness. 
 Half-light, half -shadow, let my spirit sleep; 
 They never learnt to love who never knew 
 
 to weep. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XIV 
 To a Lady Sleeping 
 
 O THOU whose fringed lids I gaze upon, 
 Through whose dim brain the winged dreams 
 
 are borne, 
 Unroof the shrines of clearest vision, 
 In honor of the silverflecked morn; 
 Long hath the white wave of the virgin 
 
 light 
 Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark. 
 Thou all unwittingly prolongest night, 
 Though long ago listening the poisfed lark. 
 With eyes dropt downward through the blue 
 
 serene. 
 Over heaven's parapets the angels lean. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems' 
 
 XV 
 Sonnet 
 
 Could I outwear my present state of woe 
 With one brief winter, and indue i' the 
 
 spring 
 Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow 
 The wan dark coil of faded suffering — 
 Forth in the pride of beauty issuing 
 A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers, 
 Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers 
 And watered vallies where the young birds 
 
 sing; 
 Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing, 
 I straightly would commend the tears to 
 
 creep 
 From my charged lids ; but inwardly I weep : 
 Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing: 
 This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain 
 From my cold eyes and melted it again. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XVI 
 Sonnet 
 
 Though Night hath climbed her peak of 
 
 highest noon, 
 And bitter blasts the screaming autumn 
 
 whirl, 
 All night through archways of the bridged 
 
 pearl 
 And portals of pure silver walks the moon. 
 Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony: 
 Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to 
 
 joy, 
 And dross to gold with glorious alchemy, 
 Basing thy throne above the world's an- 
 noy. 
 Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and 
 
 ruth 
 That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath 
 
 won thee: 
 
 45 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 So shalt thou pierce the woven glooms of 
 
 truth; 
 So shall the blessing of the meek be on 
 
 thee; 
 So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth, 
 An honorable eld shall come upon thee. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XVII 
 Sonnet 
 
 Shall the hag Evil die with child of 
 
 Good, 
 Or propagate again her loathed kind, 
 Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, 
 Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered 
 
 brood, 
 Though hourly pastured on the salient 
 
 blood? 
 Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or 
 
 heat 
 Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen 
 
 beat 
 Of their broad vans, and in the solitude 
 Of middle space confound them, and blow 
 
 back 
 Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, 
 
 and slake 
 
 47 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 With points of blastbome hail their heated 
 eyne! 
 
 So their wan limbs no more might come be- 
 tween 
 
 The moon and the moon's reflex in the 
 night; 
 
 Nor blot with floating shades the solar light. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XVIII 
 Sonnet 
 
 The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain, 
 Down an ideal stream they ever float, 
 And sailing on Pactolus in a boat, 
 Drown soul and sense, while wistfvilly they 
 
 strain 
 Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that 
 
 robe 
 The iinderstream. The wise could he behold 
 Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbed gold 
 And branching silvers of the central globe, 
 Would marvel from so beautiful a sight 
 How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could 
 
 flow: 
 But Hatred in a gold cave sits below, 
 Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light 
 Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips 
 And skins the color from her trembling lips. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XIX 
 Love 
 
 Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love. 
 Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near, 
 Before the face of God didst breathe and 
 
 move. 
 Though night and pain and ruin and death 
 
 reign here. 
 Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere. 
 The very throne of the eternal God: 
 Passing through thee the edicts of his fear 
 Are mellowed into music, borne abroad 
 By the loud winds, though they uprend the 
 
 sea. 
 Even from his central deeps: thine empery 
 Is over all: thou wilt not brook eclipse; 
 Thou goest and retumest to His Lips 
 SO 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above 
 The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love. 
 
 To know thee is all wisdom, and old age 
 Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee 
 Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee. 
 We beat upon our aching hearts with rage; 
 We cry for thee: we deem the world thy 
 
 tomb. 
 As dwellers in lone planets look upon 
 The mighty disk of their majestic sun, 
 Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom. 
 Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee. 
 Come, thou of many crowns, white-rob^d 
 
 love, 
 Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore 
 
 thee ; 
 Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for 
 
 thee: 
 Breathe on thy winged throne, and it shall 
 
 move 
 In music and in light o'er land and sea. 
 
 51 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And now — methinks I gaze upon thee now, 
 As on a serpent in his agonies 
 Awestricken Indians; what time laid low 
 And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he 
 
 lies, 
 When the new year warm breathed on the 
 
 earth, 
 Waiting to light him with his purple skies, 
 Calls to him by the fountain to uprise. 
 Already with the pangs of a new birth 
 Strain the hot spheres of his convuls&d eyes. 
 And in his writhings awful hues begin 
 To wander down his sable sheeny sides. 
 Like light on troubled waters: from within 
 Anon he rusheth forth with merry din. 
 And in him light and joy and strength 
 
 abides ; 
 And from his brows a crown of living light 
 Looks through the thickstemmed woods by 
 
 day and night. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XX 
 English War Song 
 
 Who fears to die? Who fears to die? 
 Is there any here who fears to die 
 He shall find what he fears, and none shall 
 grieve 
 For the man who fears to die; 
 But the withering scorn of the many shall 
 cleave 
 To the man who fears to die. 
 
 Chorus 
 Shout for England! 
 Ho! for England! 
 George for England! 
 Merry England! 
 England for aye! 
 
 The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn, 
 He shall eat the bread of common scorn; 
 S3 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear, 
 Shall be steeped in his own salt tear: 
 Far better, far better he never were born 
 Than to shame merry England here. 
 
 Chorus 
 Shout for England! etc. 
 
 There standeth our ancient enemy; 
 Hark! he shouteth — ^the ancient enemy! 
 
 On the ridge of the hill his banners rise ; 
 
 They stream like fire in the skies; 
 Hold up the Lion of England on high 
 
 Till it dazzle and blind his eyes. 
 
 Chorus 
 Shout for England! etc. 
 
 Come along! we alone of the earth are 
 
 free; 
 The child in our cradles is bolder than he; 
 For where is the heart and strength of 
 
 slaves ? 
 Oh! where is the strength of slaves? 
 54 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 He is weak! we are strong; he a slave, we 
 are free; 
 Come along! we will dig their graves. 
 
 Chorus 
 Shout for England! etc. 
 
 There standeth our ancient enemy; 
 Will he dare to battle with the free? 
 
 Spur along! spur amain! charge to the 
 fight: 
 
 Charge! charge to the fight! 
 Hold up the Lion of England on high! 
 
 Shout for God and our right! 
 
 Chorus 
 Shout for England! etc. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXI 
 National Song 
 
 There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be; 
 There are no hearts like English hearts, 
 
 Such hearts of oak as they be. 
 There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be; 
 There are no men like Englishmen, 
 
 So tall and bold as they be. 
 
 Chorus 
 For the French the Pope may shrive 'em, 
 For the devil a whit we heed 'em, 
 As for the French, God speed 'em 
 
 Unto their hearts' desire, 
 And the merry devil drive 'em 
 Through the water and the fire, 
 56 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Chorus 
 Our glory is our freedom, 
 
 We lord it o'er the sea; 
 We are the sons of freedom, 
 
 We are free. 
 
 There is no land like England, 
 
 Where'er the light of day be; 
 There are no wives like English wives, 
 
 So fair and chaste as they be. 
 There is no land like England, 
 
 Where'er the light of day be. 
 There are no maids like English maids. 
 
 So beautiful as they be. 
 
 Chorus 
 For the French, etc. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXII 
 Dualisms 
 
 Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rockfed 
 Hum a lovelay to the westwind at noontide. 
 Both alike, they buzz together, 
 Both alike, they hum together 
 Through and through the flowered heather. 
 
 Where in a creeping cove the wave un- 
 shocked 
 Lays itself calm and wide, 
 Over a stream two birds of glancing feather 
 Do woo each other, carolling together. 
 Both alike, they glide together 
 
 Side by side; 
 Both alike, they sing together. 
 Arching blue-glossed necks beneath the pur- 
 ple weather. 
 
 S8 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Two children lovelier than love, adown the 
 
 lea are singing, 
 As they gambol, lilygarlands ever stringing: 
 Both in blosmwhite silk are f rocked : 
 Like, unlike, they roam together 
 Under a summervault of golden weather; 
 Like, unlike, they sing together 
 
 Side by side; 
 Mid May's darling goldenlockfed, 
 Summer's tanling diamondeyed. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXIII 
 ol peovre^ 
 
 All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, 
 
 All visions wild and strange; 
 Man is the measure of all truth 
 
 Unto himself. All truth is change: 
 All men do walk in sleep, and all 
 
 Have faith in that they dream: 
 For all things are as they seem to all. 
 
 And all things flow like a stream. 
 
 II 
 
 There is no rest, no calm, no pause. 
 Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade. 
 
 Nor essence nor eternal laws: 
 For nothing is, but all is made, 
 60 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 But if I dream that all these are, 
 They are to me for that I dream; 
 
 For all things are as they seem to all, 
 And all things flow like a stream. 
 
 Argal — This very opinion is only true relatively to the 
 flowing philosophers. (Tennyson's note.) 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Song 
 
 The lintwhite and the throstlecock 
 Have voices sweet and clear; 
 All in the bloomfed May. 
 They from the blosmy brere 
 Call to the fleeting year, 
 If that he would them hear 
 
 And stay. 
 Alas! that one so beautiful 
 
 Should have so dull an ear! 
 
 II 
 
 Fair year, fair year, thy children call, 
 But thou art deaf as death; 
 All in the bloomed May. 
 62 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 When thy light perisheth 
 That from thee issueth, 
 Our life evanisheth: 
 
 Oh! stay! 
 Alas! that lips so cruel-dumb 
 
 Should have so sweet a breath! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Fair year, with brows of royal love 
 Thou comest, as a king, 
 All in the bloomed May. 
 Thy golden largess fling, 
 And longer hear us sing; 
 Though thou art fleet of wing. 
 
 Yet stay. 
 Alas! that eyes so full of light 
 Should be so wandering! 
 
 IV 
 
 Thy locks are all of sunny sheen 
 In rings of gold yronne,* 
 All in the bloomed May. 
 
 * His crispe hair in ringis was yronne. — Chaucer, Knight's 
 Tale. (Tennyson's note.) 
 
 63 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We pri' thee pass not on; 
 If thou dost leave the sun, 
 Delight is with thee gone. 
 
 Oh! stay! 
 Thou art the fairest of thy feres, 
 We pri' thee pass not on. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 [The following poems, numbers XXV -XXVII, were pub- 
 lished in The Gem : a Literary Annual. London: W. Marshall, 
 Holbom Bars, mdcccxxxi.] 
 
 XXV 
 
 A Fragment 
 
 Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood 
 In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes, 
 A perfect Idol with profulgent brows 
 Far sheening down the purple seas to those 
 Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the 
 
 star 
 Named of the Dragon — and between whose 
 
 limbs 
 Of brassy vastness broad-blown Argosies 
 Drave into haven? Yet endure unscathed 
 Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids 
 Broad-based amid the fleeting sands, and 
 
 sloped 
 Into the slumberous summer noon; but 
 
 where, 
 
 5 65 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks 
 Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned ? 
 Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the 
 
 Nile? 
 Thy shadowing Idols in the solitudes, 
 Awful Memnonian countenances calm 
 Looking athwart the burning flats, far off 
 Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge 
 Journeying southward? Where are thy 
 
 monuments 
 Piled by the strong and sunbom Anakim 
 Over their crowned brethren On and Oph? 
 Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are 
 
 kissed 
 With earliest rays, that from his mother's 
 
 eyes 
 Flow over the Arabian bay, no more 
 Breathes low into the charmed ears of 
 
 morn 
 Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile 
 By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath 
 
 gone down: 
 The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in 
 
 death 
 
 66 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips, 
 Wrapped round with spiced cerements in 
 
 old grots 
 Rock-hewn and sealed for ever. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXVI 
 Anacreontics 
 
 With roses muskybreathed, 
 And drooping daffodilly, 
 And silverleaved lily, 
 And ivy darkly-wreathed, 
 I wove a crown before her. 
 For her I love so dearly, 
 A garland for Lenora. 
 With a silken cord I bound it. 
 Lenora, laughing clearly 
 A light and thrilling laughter. 
 About her forehead wound it, 
 And loved me ever after. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXVII 
 No More 
 
 O SAD No more! sweet No more! 
 O strange No more! 
 By a mossed brookbank on a stone 
 I smelt a wildweed flower alone; 
 There was a ringing in my ears, 
 And both my eyes gushed out with 
 tears. 
 Surely all pleasant things had gone before, 
 Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, 
 No more! 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXVIII 
 Sonnet 
 
 [Published in the Englishman's Magazine, August, 1831. 
 London: Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. Reprinted 
 in Friendship's Offering: a Literary Album for 1833. London: 
 Smith and Elder. Reprinted in Life, vol. i., p. 80.] 
 
 Check every outflash, every ruder sally 
 Of thought and speech; speak low, and 
 
 give up wholly 
 Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy; 
 This is the place. Through yonder poplar 
 
 alley 
 
 Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly; 
 
 But in the middle of the sombre valley 
 
 The crispfed waters whisper musically, 
 
 And all the haunted place is dark and 
 
 holy. 
 The nightingale, with long and low pre- 
 amble, 
 
 70 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn 
 
 larches, 
 And in and out the woodbine's flowery 
 
 arches 
 The summer midges wove their wanton 
 
 gambol, 
 And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept 
 
 above — 
 When in this valley first I told my love. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXIX 
 Sonnet 
 
 [Published in Friendship's Offering: a Literary AWnm for 
 1832. London: Smith and Elder. Reprinted, unaltered, in 
 Life, vol. i., p. 65.] 
 
 Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh : 
 Thy woes are birds of passage, transi- 
 tory: 
 Thy spirit, circled with a living glory, 
 In summer still a summer joy resumeth. 
 Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh, 
 Like a lone cypress, through the twilight 
 hoary, 
 From an old garden where no flower 
 bloometh, 
 One cypress on an inland promontory. 
 But yet my lonely spirit follows thine, 
 As round the rolling earth night follows 
 day: 
 
 72 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 But yet thy lights on my horizon shine 
 
 Into my night when thou art far away; 
 I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright, 
 When we two meet there's never perfect 
 light. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXX 
 Sonnet 
 
 [Published in the Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832. Edited 
 byC. F. Edgar. London; Longman and Co. Reprinted in the 
 AihencBum, May 4, 1867.] 
 
 There are three things that fill my heart 
 
 with sighs 
 And steep my soul in laughter (when I 
 
 view 
 Fair maiden forms moving like melodies), 
 Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue. 
 
 There are three things beneath the blessed 
 
 skies 
 For which I live — black eyes, and brown 
 
 and blue; 
 I hold them all most dear; but oh! black 
 
 eyes, 
 I live and die, and only die for you. 
 74 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of late such eyes looked at me — while I 
 
 mused 
 At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane 
 In old Bayona, nigh the Southern Sea — 
 Erom an half-open lattice looked at me. 
 
 I saw no more only those eyes — confused 
 And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 [The poems numbered XXXI-XL were published in the 1832 
 volume: "Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward 
 Moxon, 64 New Bond Street, mdcccxxxiii." Published De- 
 cember, 1832, and were thereafter suppressed. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 Sonnet 
 
 On, Beauty, passing beauty, sweetest Sweet! 
 How canst thou let me waste my youth 
 in sighs? 
 I only ask to sit beside thy feet. 
 
 Thou knowest I dare not look into thine 
 eyes, 
 Might I but kiss thy hand ! I dare not 
 fold 
 My arms about thee — scarcely dare to 
 speak. 
 And nothing seems to me so wild and bold. 
 As with one kiss to touch thy blessM 
 cheek. 
 
 76 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control 
 Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat 
 The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke, 
 
 The bare word kiss hath made my inner soul 
 To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note 
 Hath melted in the silence that it broke. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXII 
 The Hesperides 
 
 Hesperus and his daughters three. 
 That sing about the golden tree. 
 
 COMUS. 
 
 The Northwind fall'n, in the newstarrfed 
 
 night 
 Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond 
 The hoary promontory of Soloe 
 Past Thymiaterion, in calmed bays, 
 Between the Southern and the Western 
 
 Horn, 
 Heard neither warbling of the nightingale, 
 Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute 
 Blown seaward from the shore; but from a 
 
 slope 
 That ran bloombright into the Atlantic 
 
 blue. 
 Beneath a highland leaning down a weight 
 78 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade, 
 Came voices, like the voices in a dream. 
 Continuous, till he reached the outer sea. 
 
 SONG 
 
 The golden apple, the golden apple, the 
 hallowed fruit, 
 
 Guard it well, guard it warily, 
 
 Singing airily- 
 Standing about the charmed root. 
 
 Round about all is mute, 
 
 As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks, 
 
 As the sandfield at the mountain-foot. 
 
 Crocodiles in briny creeks 
 
 Sleep and stir not: all is mute. 
 
 If ye sing not, if ye make false meas- 
 ure. 
 
 We shall lose eternal pleasure, 
 
 Worth eternal want of rest. 
 
 Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure 
 
 Of the wisdom of the West. 
 79 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and 
 
 three 
 (Let it not be preached abroad) make an 
 
 awful mystery. 
 For the blossom unto three - fold music 
 
 bloweth ; 
 Evermore it is bom anew; 
 And the sap to three-fold music fioweth, 
 From the root 
 Drawn in the dark, 
 Up to the fruit, 
 
 Creeping under the fragrant bark, 
 Liquid gold, honeysweet, thro' and thro'. 
 Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily, 
 Looking warily 
 Every way. 
 
 Guard the apple night and day. 
 Lest one from the East come and take it 
 
 away. 
 
 II 
 
 Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, 
 
 watch, ever and aye. 
 Looking under silver hair with a silver eye. 
 80 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Father, twinkle not thy steadfast sight; 
 Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and 
 
 races die; 
 Honor comes with mystery; 
 Hoarded wisdom brings deHght. 
 Number, tell them over and number 
 How many the mystic fruittree holds, 
 Lest the redcombed dragon slumber 
 Rolled together in purple folds. 
 Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the 
 
 golden apple be stol'n away. 
 For his ancient heart is drunk with over- 
 
 watchings night and day. 
 Round about the hallowed fruittree curled — 
 Sing away, sing aloud evermore in the wind, 
 
 without stop. 
 Lest his scalM eyelid drop. 
 For he is older than the world. 
 If he waken, we waken. 
 Rapidly leveUing eager eyes. 
 If he sleep, we sleep. 
 Dropping the eyelid over the eyes. 
 If the golden apple be taken. 
 The world will be overwise. 
 
 6 8i 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Five links, a golden chain, are we, 
 Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three. 
 Bound about the golden tree. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, 
 
 watch, night and day, 
 Lest the old wound of the world be healfed, 
 The glory unsealfed. 
 The golden apple stol'n away, 
 And the ancient secret revealM. 
 Look from west to east along: 
 Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is 
 
 bold and strong. 
 Wandering waters unto wandering waters 
 
 call; 
 Let them clash together, foam and fall. 
 Out of watchings, out of wiles, 
 Comes the bliss of secret smiles. 
 All things are not told to all. 
 Half-round the mantling night is drawn, 
 Purplefringfed with even and dawn. 
 Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth 
 
 morn. 
 
 82 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 IV 
 
 Every flower and every fruit the redolent 
 
 breath 
 Of this warm seawind ripeneth, 
 Arching the billow in his sleep; 
 But the landwind wandereth, 
 Broken by the highland-steep. 
 Two streams upon the violet deep: 
 For the western sun and the western 
 
 star, 
 And the low west wind, breathing afar. 
 The end of day and beginning of night 
 Make the apple holy and bright; 
 Holy and bright, round and full, bright and 
 
 blest, 
 Mellowed in a land of rest; 
 Watch it warily day and night; 
 All good things are in the west. 
 Till midnoon the cool east light 
 Is shut out by the tall hillbrow; 
 But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly 
 Stays on the flowering arch of the bough, 
 The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly, 
 83 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Goldenkernelled, goldencored, 
 Sunset-ripened above on the tree. 
 The world is wasted with fire and sword, 
 But the apple of gold hangs over the sea. 
 Five links, a golden chain, are we, 
 Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three. 
 
 Daughters three, 
 
 Bound about 
 
 All round about 
 The gnarlfed bole of the charmed tree. 
 The golden apple, the golden apple, the 
 
 hallowed fruit. 
 Guard it well, guard it warily. 
 
 Watch it warily. 
 
 Singing airily. 
 Standing about the charmed root. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXIII 
 Rosalind 
 
 [When the poem "Rosalind" was reprinted in the 1884 
 edition of the Poems — the first single - volume edition — the 
 following lines were suppressed.] 
 
 My Rosalind, my Rosalind, 
 Bold, subtle, careless Rosalind, 
 Is one of those who know no strife 
 Of inward woe or outward fear; 
 To whom the slope and stream of life, 
 The life before, the life behind, 
 In the ear, from far and near, 
 Chimeth musically clear. 
 My falconhearted Rosalind, 
 Fullsailed before a vigorous wind, 
 Is one of those who cannot weep 
 For others' woes, but overleap 
 All the petty shocks and fears 
 That trouble life in early years. 
 With a flash of frolic scorn 
 85 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And keen delight, that never falls 
 Away from freshness, self upborne 
 With such gladness, as, whenever 
 The freshflushing spring-time calls 
 To the flooding waters cool 
 Young fishes, on an April mom. 
 Up and down a rapid river, 
 Leap the little waterfalls 
 That sing into the pebbled pool. 
 My happy falcon, Rosalind; 
 Hath daring fancies of her own. 
 Fresh as the dawn before the day. 
 Fresh as the early seasmell blown 
 Through vineyards from an inland bay. 
 My Rosalind, my Rosalind, 
 Because no shadow on you falls 
 Think you hearts are tennis balls 
 To play with, wanton Rosalind? 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXIV 
 Song 
 
 Who can say 
 
 Why To-day 
 To-morrow will be yesterday? 
 
 Who can tell 
 
 Why to smell 
 The violet, recalls the dewy prime 
 Of youth and buried time? 
 The cause is nowhere found in rhyme. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXV 
 Sonnet 
 
 [Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.] 
 
 Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar 
 The hosts to battle: be not bought and 
 
 sold. 
 Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the 
 bold; 
 Break through your iron shackles — fiing 
 
 them far. 
 O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar 
 Grew to this strength among his deserts 
 
 cold; 
 Which even to Moscow's cupolas were 
 rolled 
 The growing mxirmurs of the Polish war! 
 Now must your noble anger blaze out 
 more 
 
 88 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan 
 The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before — 
 
 Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar 
 Khan, 
 Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore 
 
 Boleslas drove the Pomeranian. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXVI 
 O Darling Room 
 
 O DARLING room, my heart's delight, 
 Dear room, the apple of my sight,* 
 With thy two couches soft and white 
 There is no room so exquisite. 
 No little room so warm and bright, 
 Wherein to read, wherein to write. 
 
 II 
 
 For I the Nonnenwerth have seen 
 And oberwinter's vineyards green, 
 Musical Lurlei; and between 
 
 * As soon as this poem was published, I altered the second 
 line to "All books and pictures ranged aright"; yet "Dear 
 room, the apple of my sight" (which was much abused) is 
 not as bad as " Do go, dear rain, do go away." [Note initialled 
 "A. T. " in Life, vol. i., p. 8g.] 
 
 90 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The hills to Bingen have I been, 
 Bingen in Dramstadt, where the Rhene 
 Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene 
 
 III 
 
 Yet never did there meet my. sight 
 
 In any town, to left or right, 
 
 A little room so exquisite. 
 
 With two such couches soft and white; 
 
 Not any room so warm and bright, 
 
 Wherein to read, wherein to write. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXVII 
 To .Christopher North 
 
 You did late review my lays, 
 
 Crusty Christopher; 
 You did mingle blame and praise, 
 
 Rusty Christopher. 
 When I learnt from whom it came, 
 I forgave you all the blame, 
 
 Musty Christopher; 
 I could not forgive the praise, 
 
 Fusty Christopher. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 The Lotos-Eaters 
 
 [These forty lines formed the conclusion of the original (1833) 
 version of the poem. When reprinted in 1842, these linee 
 were suppressed.] 
 
 We have had enough of motion, 
 
 Weariness and wild alarm, 
 
 Tossing on the tossing ocean, 
 
 Where the tuskfed seahorse walloweth 
 
 In a stripe of grassgreen calm. 
 
 At noontide beneath the lea; 
 
 And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth 
 
 His foamfountains in the sea. 
 
 Long enough the winedark wave our weary 
 bark did carry. 
 
 This is lovelier and sweeter. 
 
 Men of Ithaca, this is meeter. 
 
 In the hollow rosy vale to tarry, 
 
 Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos- 
 eater! 
 
 93 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We will eat the Lotos, sweet 
 
 As the yellow honeycomb, 
 
 In the valley some, and some 
 
 On the ancient heights divine; 
 
 And no more roam. 
 
 On the loud hoar foam, 
 
 To the melancholy home 
 
 At the limit of the brine, 
 
 The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's 
 
 decline. 
 We'll lift no more the shattered oar, 
 No more unfurl the straining sail; 
 With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale 
 We will abide in the golden vale 
 Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail; 
 We will not wander more. 
 Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat 
 On the solitary steeps. 
 And the merry lizard leaps. 
 And the foamwhite waters pour; 
 And the dark pine weeps, 
 And the lithe vine creeps. 
 And the heavy melon sleeps 
 On the level of the shore 
 94 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander 
 
 more, 
 Surely, surely slumber is more sweet than 
 
 toil, the shore 
 Than labor in the ocean, and rowing with 
 
 the oar. 
 Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no 
 
 more. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXIX 
 A Dream of Fair Women 
 
 [In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following 
 four verses, suppressed after 1842. These FitzGerald con- 
 sidered made "a perfect poem by themselves." These 
 stanzas are published in Li'fe, vol. i., p. 121.] 
 
 As when a man, that sails in a balloon, 
 Downlooking sees the solid shining ground 
 
 Stream from beneath him in the broad blue 
 noon 
 Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound: 
 
 And takes his flags and waves them to the 
 mob, 
 
 That shout below, all faces turned to where 
 Glows rubylike the far up crimson globe 
 
 Filled with a finer air: 
 
 So lifted high, the poet at his will 
 
 Lets the great world flit from him, seeing 
 all, 
 
 96 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Higher thro' secret splendors mounting still 
 Self poised, nor fears to face. 
 
 Hearing apart the echoes of his fame. 
 While I spoke thus, the seedsman, 
 Memory, 
 Sowed my deepfurrowed thought with many 
 a name, 
 Whose glory will not die. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XL 
 The Palace of Art 
 
 [First published in the 1833 volume, this poem was con- 
 siderably altered when reprinted in 1842, so much so as almost 
 to make of it a new poem. New stanzas were added and 
 others omitted, and many verbal alterations were introduced 
 into the remaining stanzas. Following are the more important 
 stanzas cancelled after 1833.] 
 
 XXIII 
 
 So that my soul beholding in her pride 
 All these, from room to room did pass; 
 
 And all things that she saw, she multiplied, 
 A manyfac&d glass; 
 
 XXIV 
 
 And, being both the sower and the seed, 
 
 Remaining in herself became 
 All that she saw. Madonna, Ganymede, 
 
 Or the Asiatic dame 
 
 98 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXV 
 
 Still changing, as a lighthouse in the 
 night 
 
 Changeth athwart the gleaming main, 
 From red to yellow, yellow to pale white. 
 
 Then back to red again. /,j f. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 ' ' From change to change four times within 
 the womb 
 The brain is moulded," she began, 
 "So through all phases of all thought I 
 come 
 Into the perfect man. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 "All nature widens upward: evermore 
 
 The simpler essence lower lies. 
 More complex is more perfect, owning 
 more 
 Discourse, more widely wise. 
 99 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 !) XXVIII 
 
 "I take possession of men's minds and 
 deeds. 
 
 I live in all things great and small. 
 I dwell apart, holding no forms of creeds, 
 
 But contemplating all." 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Four ample courts there were, East, West, 
 South, North, 
 
 In each a squared lawn wherefrom 
 A golden-gorged dragon spouted forth 
 
 The foimtain's diamond foam. 
 
 XXX 
 
 All round the cool green courts there ran a 
 row 
 
 Of cloisters, branched like mighty woods. 
 Echoing all night to that sonorous flow 
 
 Of spouted fountain-floods. 
 
 100 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXI 
 
 From those four jets four currents in one 
 swell 
 Over the black rock streamed below 
 In steamy folds, that, floating as they 
 fell, 
 Lit up a torrentbow; 
 
 XXXII 
 
 And round the roofs ran gilded galleries 
 That gave large view to distant lands. 
 
 Tall towns and mounds, and. close beneath 
 the skies 
 Long lines of amber sands. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Huge incense-urns along the balustrade, 
 
 Hollowed of solid amethyst. 
 Each with a different odor fuming, made 
 
 The air a silver mist. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 Far-off 'twas wonderful to look upon 
 Those sumptuous towers between the 
 gleam 
 
 Of that great foambow trembling in the sun, 
 And the argent incense-steam; 
 
 XXXV 
 
 And round the terraces and round the walls, 
 While day sank lower or rose higher, 
 
 To see those rails with all their knobs and 
 balls, 
 Burn like a fringe of fire. 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 Likewise the deepset windows, stained and 
 traced. 
 
 Burned, like slowfiaming crimson fires, 
 From shadowed grots of arches interlaced. 
 
 And topped with frostlike spires. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 And underneath freshcarved in cedarwood, 
 Somewhat aUke in form and face, 
 
 The Genii of every climate stood, 
 All brothers of one race: 
 
 XL 
 
 Angels who sway the seasons by their art. 
 And mould all shapes in earth and sea ; 
 
 And with great effort build the human 
 heart 
 From earliest infancy. 
 
 XLI 
 
 And in the sunpierced Oriel's colored flame 
 
 Immortal Michael Angelo 
 Looked down, bold Luther, largebrowed 
 Verulam, 
 
 The king of those who know.* 
 
 * II maestro di color chi sanno. — Dante, Inf,, iii. 
 103 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLII 
 
 Cervantes, the bright face of Calderon, 
 Robed David touching holy strings, 
 
 The HaUcarnassean, and alone, 
 Alfred the flower of kings. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 Isaiah with fierce Ezekiel, 
 
 Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea, 
 
 Plato. Petrarca, Livy, and Raphael, 
 And eastern Confutzee:* 
 
 *[Note by Tennyson in 1833 volume.} 
 
 When I first conceived the plan of the Palace of Art, I 
 intended to have introduced both sculptures and painting 
 into it; but it is the most difficult of all things to devise a 
 statue in verse. Judge whether I have succeeded in the 
 statues of Elijah and Olympias. 
 
 One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed, 
 
 As when he stood on Carmel steeps 
 With one arm stretched out bare, and mocked and said, 
 
 "Come cry aloud — he sleeps." 
 
 Tall eager lean and strong, his cloak wind-bome 
 
 Behind, his forehead heavenly bright 
 From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn. 
 
 Lit as with inner light. 
 
 104 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 As some rich tropic mountain, that infolds 
 All change, from flats of scattered palms 
 
 Sloping thro' five great zones of climate, 
 holds 
 His head in snows and calms — 
 
 XLIX 
 
 Full of her own delight and nothing else, 
 My vainglorious, gorgeous soul 
 
 Sat throned between the shining oriels. 
 In pomp beyond control; 
 
 One was Olympias: the floating snake 
 
 Rolled round her ancles, round her waist, 
 
 Knotted, and folded once about her neck. 
 Her perfect lips to taste. 
 
 Round by the shoulder moved: she seeming blythe 
 
 Declined her head; on every side 
 The dragon's curves melted and mingled with 
 
 The woman's youthful pride 
 Of rounded limbs. 
 
 Or Venus in a snowy shell alone. 
 
 Deep shadow'd in the glassy brine 
 Moonlike glowed double on the blue, and shone 
 
 A naked shape divine. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 With piles of flavorous fruits in basket-twine 
 Of gold, upheapfed, crushing down 
 
 Muskscented blooms — all taste — grape, 
 gourd or pine — 
 In bunch, or singlegrown: 
 
 LI 
 
 Our growths, and such as brooding Indian 
 heats 
 Make out of crimson blossoms deep, 
 Ambrosial pulps and juices, sweets from 
 sweets 
 Sunchanged, when seawinds sleep. 
 
 LI I 
 
 With graceful chalices of curious wine, 
 
 Wonders of art — and costly jars. 
 And bossed salvers. Ere young night 
 divine 
 Crowned dying day with stars, 
 1 06 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LIII 
 
 Making sweet close of his delicious toils, 
 She lit white streams of dazzling gas, 
 
 And soft and fragrant flames of precious 
 oils 
 In moons of purple glass 
 
 LIV 
 
 Ranged on the fretted woodwork to the 
 ground. 
 
 Thus her intense untold delight, 
 In deep or vivid color, smell and sound, 
 
 Was flattered dav and night.* 
 
 * If the Poem were not already too long, I should have 
 inserted in the text the following stanzas, expressive of the 
 joy wherewith the soul contemplated the results of astro- 
 nomical experiment. In the centre of the four quadrangles 
 rose an immense tower. 
 
 Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies 
 Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb. 
 
 And as with optic glasses her keen eyes 
 Pierced thro' the mystic dome, 
 
 107 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Regions of lucid matter taking forms, 
 
 Brushes of fire, hasy gleams, 
 Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms 
 
 Of suns, and starry streams. 
 
 She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars. 
 
 That marvellous round of milky light 
 Below Orion, and those double stars 
 
 Whereof the one more bright 
 Is circled by the other, etc. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLI 
 Cambridge 
 
 [This poem is written in pencil in the fly-leaf of a copy of 
 Poems, 1833, in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington 
 Museum. Reprinted, with many alterations, in Lije, vol. i., 
 p. 67.] 
 
 Therefore your halls, your ancient col- 
 leges, 
 Your portals statued with old kings and 
 queens, 
 Your bridges and your busted libraries. 
 Wax-lighted chapels and rich carved 
 
 screens. 
 Your doctors and your proctors and your 
 deans 
 Shall not avail you when the day-beam 
 sports 
 New-risen o'er awakened Albion — No, 
 Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that 
 blow 
 
 109 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Melodious thunders through your vacant 
 
 courts 
 At morn and even; for your manner sort.s 
 Not with this age, nor with the thoughts 
 that roll, 
 Because the words of little children preach 
 Against you, — ye that did profess to teach 
 And have taught nothing, feeding on the 
 soul. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLII 
 The Germ of "Maud" 
 
 [There was published in 1837 in The Tribute (a collection of 
 unpublished poems by various authors, edited by Lord 
 Northampton) a contribution by Tennyson entitled " Stanzas," 
 consisting of xvi stanzas of varying lengths (no lines in all). 
 In 1855 the first xii stanzas were published in the fourth 
 section of the second part of "Maud." Some verbal changes 
 and transpositions of lines were made; a new stanza (the pres- 
 ent vi) and several new lines were introduced, and the x 
 stanza of 1837 became the xiii of 1855. But stanzas xiii- 
 xvi of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edition of 
 Tennyson's works, though quoted in whole or part in various 
 critical studies of the poet. Swinburne refers to this poem 
 as "the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos 
 and melody ever written even by Mr. Tennyson." This poem 
 in The Tribute gained Tennyson his first notice in the Edin- 
 burgh. Review, which had till then ignored him.] 
 
 XIII 
 
 But she tarries in her place 
 And I paint the beauteous face 
 Of the maiden, that I lost, 
 In my inner eyes again, 
 III 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Lest my heart be overborne 
 By the thing I hold in scorn, 
 By a dull mechanic ghost 
 
 And a juggle of the brain. 
 
 XIV 
 
 I can shadow forth my bride 
 As I knew her fair and kind 
 
 As I woo'd her for my wife; 
 She is lovely by my side 
 
 In the silence of my life — 
 'Tis a phantom of the mind. 
 
 XV 
 
 'Tis a phantom fair and good 
 I can call it to my side, 
 
 So to guard my life from ill, 
 Tho' its ghastly sister glide 
 
 And be moved around me still 
 With the moving of the blood 
 
 That is moved not of the will. 
 
 112 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XVI 
 
 Let it pass, the dreary brow, 
 
 Let the dismal face go by. 
 Will it lead me to the grave? 
 
 Then I lose it: it will fly: 
 Can it overlast the nerves? 
 
 Can it overlive the eye? 
 But the other, like a star, 
 Thro' the channel windeth far 
 
 Till it fade and fail and die. 
 To its Archetype that waits 
 Clad in light by golden gates. 
 Clad in light the Spirit waits 
 
 To embrace me in the sky. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLIII 
 The Skipping Rope 
 
 [This poem, published in the second volume of " Poems by 
 Alfred Tennyson. In two volumes. London : Edward Moxon, 
 MDCccxLii," was reprinted in every edition xintil 1851, when it 
 was suppressed.] 
 
 Sure never yet was Antelope 
 
 Could skip so lightly by. 
 Stand off, or else my skipping rope 
 
 Will hit you in the eye. 
 How lightly whirls the skipping rope! 
 
 How fairy-like you fly! 
 Go, get you gone, you muse and mope — 
 
 I hate that silly sigh. 
 Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope. 
 
 Or tell me how to die. 
 There, take it, take my skipping rope. 
 
 And hang yourself thereby. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLIV 
 The New Timon and the Poets 
 
 [From Punch, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published 
 in 1845 his satirical poem, "New Timon: a Romance of Lon- 
 don," in which he bitterly attacked Tennyson for the civil-list 
 pension granted the previous year, particularly referring to 
 the poem "O Darling Room " in the 1833 volume. Tennyson 
 replied in the following vigorous verses, which made the 
 literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 
 "I never sent my lines to Punch. John Forster did. They 
 were too bitter. I do not think that I should ever have pub- 
 lished them." — Lije, vol. i., p. 245.] 
 
 We know him, out of Shakespeare's art, 
 And those fine curses which he spoke; 
 
 The old Timon, with his noble heart. 
 That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. 
 
 So died the Old: here comes the New: 
 
 Regard him: a familiar face: 
 I thought we knew him: What, it's you 
 The padded man — that wears the 
 stays — 
 
 "5 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys 
 With dandy pathos when you wrote, 
 
 A Lion, you, that made a noise, 
 And shook a mane en papillotes. 
 
 And once you tried the Muses too: 
 
 You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn, 
 
 You fall on those who are to you 
 As captain is to subaltern. 
 
 But men of long enduring hopes. 
 
 And careless what this hour may bring, 
 
 Can pardon little would-be Popes 
 
 And Brummels, when they try to sting. 
 
 An artist, Sir, should rest in art. 
 And waive a little of his claim; 
 
 To have the deep poetic heart 
 Is more than all poetic fame. 
 
 But you, Sir, you are hard to please; 
 
 You never look but half content: 
 Nor like a gentleman at ease 
 
 With moral breadth of temperament. 
 ii6 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And what with spites and what with fears, 
 
 You cannot let a body be: 
 It's always ringing in your ears, 
 
 "They call this man as good as me." 
 
 What profits now to understand 
 The merits of a spotless shirt — 
 
 A dapper boot — a little hand — 
 If half the little soul is dirt? 
 
 You talk of tinsel! why we see 
 
 The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. 
 You prate of nature! you are he 
 
 That spilt his Hfe about the cliques. 
 
 A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame: 
 It looks too arrogant a jest — 
 
 The fierce old man — to take his name 
 You bandbox. Off, and let him rest. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLV 
 Mablethorpe 
 
 [Published in Manchester Athensum Album, 1850. Reprinted 
 in Cope's Tobacco Plant, 1875. Written, 1837. Republished, 
 altered, in Life, vol. i., p. 161.] 
 
 How often, when a child I lay reclined, 
 I took delight in this locality! 
 
 Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, 
 And here the Grecian ships did seem to be. 
 
 And here again I come and only find 
 
 The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea, — 
 Gray sand banks and pale sunsets — dreary 
 wind, 
 Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy cloud- 
 ed sea. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLVI 
 Stanzas 
 
 [Published in The Keepsake for 1851 : an illustrated annual, 
 edited by Miss Power. London: David Bogue.] 
 
 What time I wasted youthful hours, 
 One of the shining wingid powers, 
 Show'd me vast cliffs with crown of towers, 
 
 As towards the gracious light I bow'd. 
 They seem'd high palaces and proud, 
 Hid now and then with sliding cloud. 
 
 He said, "The labor is not small; 
 Yet winds the pathway free to all: — 
 Take care thou dost not fear to fall!" 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLVII 
 Britons, Guard your Own 
 
 tPublished in The Examiner, January 31, 1S52. Verses i 
 (considerably altered), 7, 8, and lo are reprinted in Life, 
 vol. i., p. 344] 
 
 Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead; 
 The world's last tempest darkens overhead; 
 
 The Pope has bless'd him; 
 
 The Church caress'd him; 
 He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone: 
 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 
 His ruthless host is bought with plunder'd 
 
 gold. 
 By lying priest's the peasant's votes con- 
 trolled. 
 
 All freedom vanish 'd, 
 The true men banish'd. 
 He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone. 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 120 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Peace-lovers we — sweet Peace we all desire — 
 Peace-lovers we — but who can trust a liar? — 
 
 Peace-lovers, haters 
 
 Of shameless traitors, 
 We hate not France, but this man's heart 
 of stone. 
 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 
 We hate not France, but France has lost 
 
 her voice 
 This man is France, the man they call her 
 choice. 
 
 By tricks and spying, 
 By craft and lying. 
 And murder was her freedom overthrown. 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 
 "Vive I'Empereur" may follow by and bye; 
 "God save the Queen" is here a truer cry. 
 
 God save the Nation, 
 
 The toleration, 
 And the free speech that makes a Briton 
 known. 
 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 
 121 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Rome's dearest daughter now is captive 
 
 France, 
 The Jesuit laughs.and reckoning on his chance, 
 
 Would, unrelenting, 
 
 Kiss all dissenting, 
 Till we were left to fight for truth alone. 
 
 Britons, guard your own. 
 
 Call home your ships across Biscayan tides, 
 To blow the battle from their oaken sides. 
 
 Why waste they yonder 
 
 Their idle thunder? 
 Why stay they there to guard a foreign 
 throne ? 
 
 Seamen, guard your own. 
 
 We were the best of marksmen long ago, 
 We won old battles with our strength, the 
 bow. 
 
 Now practise, yeomen. 
 Like those bowmen, 
 Till your balls fly as their true shafts have 
 flown. 
 
 Yeomen, guard your own. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 His soldier-ridden Highness might incline 
 To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine: 
 
 Shall we stand idle. 
 
 Nor seek to bridle 
 His vile aggressions, till we stand alone? 
 
 Make their cause your own. 
 
 Should he land here, and for one hour 
 
 prevail. 
 There must no man go back to bear the 
 tale: 
 
 No man to bear it — 
 Swear it! We swear it! 
 Although we fought the banded world alone, 
 We swear to guard our own. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLVIII 
 Hands all Round 
 
 [Published in Tlie Examiner, February 9, 1852. Reprinted, 
 slightly altered, in Life, vol. i., p. 345. Included, almost 
 entirely rewritten, in Collected Works.] 
 
 First drink a health, this solemn night, 
 
 A health 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 best Conservative 
 
 Who lops the mouldered branch away. 
 
 Hands all round! 
 God the tyrant's hope confound! 
 To this great cause of Freedom drink, my 
 friends, 
 And the great name of England round 
 and round. 
 
 124 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 A health to Europe's honest men! 
 
 Heaven guard them from her tyrants' 
 jails! 
 From wronged Poerio's noisome den, 
 
 From iron limbs and tortured nails! 
 We curse the crimes of Southern kings, 
 
 The Russian whips and Austrian rods — 
 We likewise have our evil things: 
 
 Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods. 
 
 Yet hands all round! 
 God the tyrant's cause confound! 
 To Europe's better health we drink, my 
 friends, 
 And the great name of England round 
 and round. 
 
 What health to France, if France be she 
 Whom martial progress only charms? 
 
 Yet tell her — better to be free 
 
 Than vanquish all the world in arms. 
 
 Her frantic city's flashing heats 
 
 But fire, to blast the hopes of men. 
 
 Why change the titles of your streets? 
 
 I2S 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 You fools, you'll want them all again. 
 
 Hands all round! 
 God the tyrant's cause confound! 
 To France, the wiser France, we drink, my 
 friends, 
 And the great name of England round 
 and round. 
 
 Gigantic daughter of the West, 
 
 We drink to thee across the flood, 
 We know thee most, we love thee best, 
 
 For art thou not of British blood? 
 Should war's mad blast again be blown, 
 
 Permit not thou the tyrant powers 
 To fight thy mother here alone. 
 
 But let thy broadsides roar with ours. 
 Hands all round! 
 
 God the tyrant's cause confound! 
 To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends, 
 
 And the great name of England round 
 and round. 
 
 O rise, our strong Atlantic sons. 
 
 When war against our freedom springs! 
 126 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 O speak to Europe through your guns! 
 
 They can be understood by kings. 
 You must not mix our Queen with those 
 
 That wish to keep their people fools; 
 Our freedom's foemen are her foes, 
 She comprehends the race she rules. 
 
 Hands all round! 
 God the tyrant's cause confound! 
 To our dear kinsmen of the West, my 
 friends, 
 And the great name of England round 
 and round. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 XLIX 
 
 Suggested by Reading an 
 
 Article in a Newspaper 
 
 [Published in The Examiner, February 14, 1852. This poem 
 has never been acknowledged, nor has it hitherto been iden- 
 tified as by Tennyson. In Life, vol. i., p. 346, following the 
 reprint of "Britons, Guard your Own" and "Hands all 
 Round" (contributed by Tennyson above the signature of 
 Merlin), we are told that "Other contributions appeared 
 in The Examiner, but my father did not think them good 
 enough to be reprinted." With this plain hint, the following 
 poem, may be definitely accepted as from Tennyson's pen. J 
 
 To the Editor of The Examiner. 
 
 Sir, — I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin. 
 The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not 
 so good: yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's 
 style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough 
 some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may be induced 
 to admit it. Taliessen. 
 
 How much I love this writer's manly style! 
 By such men led, our press had ever been 
 The public conscience of our noble isle, 
 Severe and quick to feel a civic sin, 
 To raise the people and chastise the times 
 With such a heat as Hves in great creative 
 rhymes. 
 
 128 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 you, the Press ! what good from you might 
 
 spring ! 
 What power is yours to blast a cause or 
 bless! 
 
 1 fear for you, as for some youthful king, 
 Lest you go wrong from power in excess. 
 
 Take heed of your wide privileges! we. 
 The thinking men of England, loathe a 
 tyranny. 
 
 A freeman is, I doubt not, freest here; 
 The single voice may speak his mind 
 
 aloud ; 
 An honest isolation need not fear 
 
 The Court, the Church, the Parhament 
 
 the crowd. 
 No, nor the Press! and look you well to 
 
 that — 
 We must not dread in you the nameless 
 
 autocrat. 
 
 And you, dark Senate of the pubUc pen, 
 You may not, like yon tyrant, deal in 
 spies. 
 
 9 139 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Yours are the public acts of public men, 
 But yours are not their household pri- 
 vacies. 
 
 I grant you one of the great Powers on 
 earth, 
 
 But be not you the blatant traitors of the 
 hearth. 
 
 You hide the hand that writes: it must 
 
 be so, 
 For better so you fight for public ends; 
 But some you strike can scarce return the 
 
 blow; 
 You should be all the nobler, O my 
 
 friends. 
 Be noble, you! nor work with faction's tools 
 To charm a lower sphere of fulminating 
 
 fools. 
 
 But knowing all your power to heat or cool, 
 To soothe a civic wound or keep it raw. 
 Be loyal, if you wish for wholesome rule: 
 Our ancient boast is this — we reverence 
 law. 
 
 130 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We still were loyal in our wildest fights, 
 Or loyally disloyal battled for our rights. 
 
 Grief and Shame if while I preach of laws 
 Whereby to guard our Freedom from 
 
 offence — 
 
 And trust an ancient manhood and the 
 cause 
 Of England and her health of common- 
 sense — 
 
 There hang within the heavens a dark dis- 
 grace, 
 
 Some vast Assyrian doom to burst upon 
 our race. 
 
 1 feel the thousand cankers of our State, 
 I fain would shake their triple - folded 
 
 ease. 
 The hogs who can believe in nothing great, 
 Sneering bedridden in the down of Peace 
 Over their scrips and shares, their meats 
 
 and wine. 
 With stony smirks at all things human and 
 divine ! 
 
 131 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 I honor much, I say, this man's appeal. 
 
 We drag so deep in our commercial mire. 
 We move so far from greatness, that I feel 
 
 Exception to be character'd in fire. 
 Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall 
 
 see 
 The British Goddess, sleek Respectability. 
 
 Alas for her and all her small delights! 
 She feels not how the social frame is 
 rack'd. 
 She loves a little scandal which excites; 
 
 A little feeling is a want of tact. 
 For her there lie in wait millions of foes. 
 And yet the "not too much" is all the rule 
 she knows. 
 
 Poor soul! behold her: what decorous calm! 
 She, with her week-day worldliness suf- 
 ficed. 
 Stands in her pew and hums her decent 
 psalm 
 With decent dippings at the name of 
 Christ ! 
 
 132 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And she has mov'd in that smooth way so 
 
 long, 
 She hardly can believe that she shall suffer 
 
 wrong. 
 
 Alas, our Church! alas, her growing ills, 
 
 And those who tolerate not her tolerance, 
 
 But needs must sell the burthen of their 
 
 wills 
 
 To that half -pagan harlot kept by France ! 
 
 Free subjects of the kindliest of all thrones, 
 
 Headlong they plunge their doubts among 
 
 old rags and bones. 
 
 Alas, Church writers, altercating tribes — 
 The vessel and your Church may sink in 
 storms. 
 Christ cried: Woe, woe, to Pharisees and 
 Scribes ! 
 Like them, you bicker less for truth than 
 forms. 
 I sorrow when I read the things you write. 
 What unheroic pertness! what un-Christian 
 spite I 
 
 133 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Alas, our youth, so clever yet so small, 
 Thin dilettanti deep in nature's plan, 
 
 Who make the emphatic One, by whom is 
 all, 
 An essence less concentred than a man! 
 
 Better wild Mahmoud's war-cry once again! 
 
 fools, we want a manlike God and God- 
 
 like men! 
 
 Go, frightful omens. Yet once more I turn 
 To you that mould men's thoughts; I 
 call on you 
 
 To make opinion warlike, lest we learn 
 A sharper lesson than we ever knew 
 
 1 hear a thunder though the skies are fair, 
 But shrill you, loud and long, the warning- 
 note: Prepare! 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 1865-1866 
 
 [Published in Good Words Magazine for March, 1868. This 
 little poem has never been reprinted, nor is any reference 
 made to it in the L,i]e, where many much more worthless 
 poems are printed. It is, however, quite genuine, as Tenny- 
 son's name was appended to it in the magazine.] 
 
 I STOOD on a tower in the wet, 
 
 And new year and old year met, 
 
 And winds were roaring and blowing; 
 
 And I said "O years, that meet in tears, 
 
 Have ye aught that is worth the Knowing? 
 
 Science enough and exploring, 
 
 Wanderers coming and going, 
 
 Matter enough for deploring. 
 
 But aught that is worth the Knowing?" 
 
 Seas at my feet were flowing, 
 
 Waves on the shingle pouring, 
 
 Old year roaring and blowing, 
 
 And new year blowing and roaring. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LI 
 Alcaics 
 
 [Published in the Marlborough College magazine. The MarU 
 6Mr«aM, of September 20, 1871. One of Tennyson's experiments 
 in quantity. The last two lines are quoted in the Lije, vol. 
 ii., p. 12, as the "comic end of an Alcaic in quantity."] 
 
 Up sprang the dawn unspeakably radiant, 
 Sending from all that luminous orient 
 Far splendor: and sweet larks ascending, 
 Hailed v/ith a glorious hymn the sunrise. 
 
 Fortune was all-kind, for through the lovely 
 
 vale, 
 Forth flamed the sun o'er silvery foliage. 
 
 Thine early rising well repaid thee 
 
 Munificently rewarded artist. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LII 
 Sapphics 
 
 [Printed in Professor Jebb's Primer of Greek Literature, Mac- 
 millan & Co., 1877, p. 60. One of Tennyson's quantitative 
 experiments. "My father confessed that he believed he 
 knew the quantity of every v/ord in the English language 
 except, perhaps, 'scissors.' We asked him to make a Sapphic 
 stanza in quantity, with the Greek cadence. He gave us 
 this" (lines quoted, Life, vol. ii., p. 23^)] : 
 
 Faded every violet, all the roses; 
 Gone the glorious promise, and the victim 
 Broken in this anger of Aphrodite 
 Yields to the victor! 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LIII 
 
 The Rosebud 
 
 [The following fragment was published in " Ros Rosarum ex 
 Horto Poeiarum, Dew of the ever-living Rose, gathered from 
 the Poets' Gardens of many Lands by E. V. B[oyle]." London, 
 Elliot Stock, iS8s, p. 230. Miss Boyle was "the charming 
 and gifted lady who had illustrated his 'May Queen,' and 
 whose drawings of children he admired" {Life, vol. ii., p. 311).] 
 
 The night with sudden odor reel'd, 
 The southern stars a music peal'd, 
 Warm beams across the meadow stole; 
 For Love flew over grove and field, 
 Said "Open, Rosebud, open, yield 
 Thy fragrant soul." 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LIV 
 
 [The following six lines were recently discovered written in 
 Tennyson's autograph and signed by him, on the fly-leaf of a 
 volume illustrated by Bewick, in the library of the late Lord 
 Ra vensworth .] 
 
 A GATE and a field half ploughed, 
 A solitary cow, 
 A child with a broken slate. 
 And a titmarsh in the bough, — 
 But where alack is Bewick 
 To tell the meaning now? 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 LV 
 
 [It was originally intended by Tennyson that this poem 
 should form part of his 1833 volume. It was put in type, 
 and according to custom copies were distributed among his 
 friends, when on the eve of publication he decided to omit it. 
 Again in 1869 it was sent to press with a new third part added, 
 and was again withdrawn, the third part only — "The Golden 
 Supper," founded on a story in Boccaccio's Decameron — 
 being published in the volume The Holy Grail. In 1866, 1870, 
 and in 1875 attempts had been made by the late Mr. Heme 
 Shepherd to publish editions of "The Lover's Tale," reprinted 
 from stray copies in existence of the 1833 printing. Each 
 of these attempts Tennyson repressed, and at last, in 1897, the 
 complete poem, as now included in the Collected Works, was 
 issued with an apologetic reference to the necessity of re- 
 printing the poem to prevent its circulation in an authorized 
 form. But the 1879 issue is considerably altered from the 
 original issue of 1833, as written by Tennyson in his nineteenth 
 year. Since only as a product of Tennyson's youth does the 
 poem merit attention, it has seemed good to reprint it here 
 as originally written. For a boy of nineteen it is wonderful: 
 for a man of seventy — as Tennyson was in 1879 — it is little 
 more than twaddle. Better for his reputation had he left 
 it as written in 1828.] 
 
 The Lover's Tale. A Fragment 
 
 The Poem of the Lover's Tale (the lover is sup- 
 posed to be himself a poet) was written in my 
 nineteenth year, and conseqitently contains nearly 
 as many faults as words. That I deemed it not 
 wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its pub- 
 
 140 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 lication — an apology, lame, and poor, and some- 
 what impertinent to boot; so that if its infirmities 
 meet with more laughter than charity in the 
 world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. 
 I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of 
 Art, and it is not without considerable misgivings 
 that I have ventured to publish even this frag- 
 ment of it. "Enough," says the old proverb "is 
 as good as a feast." 
 
 Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, 
 Filling with purple gloom the vacancies 
 Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas 
 Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down 
 
 rare sails. 
 White as white clouds, floated from sky to 
 
 sky. 
 Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay. 
 Like to a quiet mind in the loud world, 
 Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea 
 Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside, 
 And withers on the breast of peaceful love. 
 Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that 
 
 fledged 
 
 141 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The hills that watch 'd thee, as Love 
 
 watcheth Love, — 
 In thine own essence, and delight thyself 
 To make it wholly thine on sunny days. 
 Keep thou thy name of "Lover's bay." 
 
 See, sirs. 
 Even now the Goddess of the Past, that 
 
 takes 
 The heart, and sometimes touch eth but one 
 
 string 
 That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes 
 Sweeps suddenly all its half - moulder'd 
 
 chords 
 To an old melody, begins to play 
 On those first-moved fibres of the brain. 
 I come. Great Mistress of the ear and eye: 
 Oh! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind 
 Rain thro' my sight, and strangling sorrow 
 
 weigh 
 Mine utterance with lameness. Tho' long 
 
 years 
 Have hollow'd out a valley and a gulf 
 Betwixt the native land of Love and me, 
 Breathe but a little on me, and the 
 142 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Will draw me to the rising of the sun, 
 The lucid chambers of the morning-star, 
 And East of Life. 
 
 Permit me, friend, I prithee, 
 To pass my hand across my brows, and 
 
 muse 
 On those dear hills, that nevermore will 
 
 meet 
 The sight that throbs and aches beneath 
 
 my touch, 
 As tho' there beat a heart in either eye; 
 For when the outer lights are darken'd thus, 
 The memory's vision hath a keener edge. 
 It grows upon me now — the semicircle 
 Of dark-blue waters, and the narrow fringe 
 Of curving beach — its wreaths of dripping 
 
 green — 
 Its pale pink shells — the summer-house aloft 
 That open'd on the pines with doors of 
 
 glass, 
 A mountain-nest — the pleasure-boat that 
 
 rock'd 
 Light-green with its own shadow, keel to 
 
 keel, 
 
 143 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Upon the crispings of the dappled wave, 
 That blanched upon its side. 
 
 O Love, O Hope, 
 They come, they crowd upon me all at 
 
 once — 
 Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things, 
 That sometimes on the horizon of the mind 
 Lies folded — often sweeps athwart in 
 
 storm — 
 They flash across the darkness of my brain. 
 The many pleasant days, the moonlit 
 
 nights, 
 The dewy dawnings and the amber eves. 
 When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I, 
 Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd 
 Beneath some low-brow'd cavern, where the 
 
 wave 
 Plash 'd, sapping its worn ribs (the while 
 
 without. 
 And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine. 
 And shook its earthy socket, for we heard. 
 In rising and in falling with the tide, 
 Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and 
 
 creak) 
 
 144 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent; 
 And mine, with love too high to be ex- 
 
 press'd. 
 Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from 
 All contemplation of all forms, did pause 
 To worship mine own image, laved in light, 
 The centre of the splendors, all unworthy 
 Of such a shrine — mine image in her eyes, 
 By diminution made most glorious. 
 Moved with their motions, as those eyes 
 
 were moved 
 With motions of the soul, as my heart 
 
 beat 
 Time to the melody of hers. Her face 
 Was starry-fair, not pale, tenderly flush'd 
 As 'twere with dawn. She was dark -haired, 
 
 dark-eyed : 
 Oh, such dark eyes! a single glance of them 
 Will govern a whole life from birth to death, 
 Careless of all things else, led on with Ught 
 In trances and in visions: look at them. 
 You lose yourself in utter ignorance; 
 You cannot find their depth; for they go 
 
 back, 
 
 lo I4S 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And farther back, and still withdraw them- 
 selves 
 Quite into the deep soul, that evermore, 
 Fresh springing from her fountains in the 
 
 brain. 
 Still pouring thro', floods with redundant 
 
 light 
 Her narrow portals. 
 
 Trust me, long ago 
 I should have died, if it were possible 
 To die in gazing on that perfectness 
 Which I do bear within me: I had died 
 But from my farthest lapse, my latest 
 
 ebb. 
 Thine image, like a charm of light and 
 
 strength 
 Upon the waters, push'd me back again 
 On these deserted sands of barren life. 
 The' from the deep vault, where the heart 
 
 of hope 
 Pell into dust, and crumbled in the dark — 
 Forgetting how to render beautiful 
 Her countenance with quick and health- 
 ful blood — 
 
 146 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Thou didst not sway me upward, could I 
 
 perish 
 With such a costly casket in the grasp 
 Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o'er- 
 
 stepp'd 
 The slippery footing of his narrow wit. 
 And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art 
 
 light, 
 To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers, 
 And length of days, and immortality 
 Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd. 
 
 For Time and Grief abode too long with 
 
 Life, 
 And like all other friends i' the world, at 
 
 last 
 They grew aweary of her fellowship: 
 So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death, 
 And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of 
 
 Life; 
 But thou didst sit alone in the inner house, 
 A wakeful portress, and didst parle with 
 
 Death, 
 "This is a charmed dwelling which I hold"; 
 147 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 So Death gave back, and would no further 
 
 come. 
 Yet is my life nor in the present time, 
 Nor in the present place. To me alone, 
 Push'd from his chair of regal heritage, 
 The Present is the vassal of the Past: 
 So that, in that I have lived, do I live, 
 And cannot die, and am, in having been, 
 A portion of the pleasant yesterday. 
 Thrust forward on to-day and out of place; 
 A body journeying onward, sick with toil. 
 The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy 
 
 weight 
 And all the senses weaken'd in all, save 
 
 that 
 Which, long ago, they had glean'd and 
 
 gamer 'd up 
 Into the granaries of memory — 
 The clear brow, bulwark of the precious 
 
 brain. 
 Now seam'd and chink'd with years — and 
 
 all the while 
 The light soul twines and mingles with the 
 
 growths 
 
 148 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of vigorous early days, attracted, won. 
 Married, made one with, molten into all 
 The beautiful in Past of act or place. 
 Even as the all-enduring camel, driven 
 Far from the diamond fountain by the 
 
 palms 
 Toils onward thro' the middle moonlit 
 
 nights, 
 Shadow'd and crimson'd with the drifting 
 
 dust. 
 Or when the white heats of the blinding 
 
 noons 
 Beat from the concave sand; yet in him 
 
 keeps 
 A draught of that sweet fountain that he 
 
 loves, 
 To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit 
 From bitterness of death. 
 
 Ye ask me, friends, 
 When I began to love. How should I tell 
 
 ye? 
 Or from the after-fulness of my heart, 
 Flow back again unto my slender spring 
 And first of love, tho' every turn and depth 
 1 49 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Between is clearer in ray life than all 
 Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask. 
 How should the broad and open flower tell 
 What sort of bud it was, when press'd to- 
 gether 
 In its green sheath, close-lapt in silken 
 
 folds. 
 It seem'd to keep its sweetness to itself. 
 Yet was not the less sweet for that it 
 
 seem'd? 
 For young Life knows not when young Life 
 
 was born, 
 But takes it all for granted: neither Love, 
 Warm in the heart, his cradle, can remember 
 Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied. 
 Looking on her that brought him to the 
 
 light: 
 Or as men know not when they fall asleep 
 Into delicious dreams, our other life, 
 So know I not when I began to love. 
 This is my sum of knowledge — that my 
 
 love 
 Grew with myself — say rather, was my 
 
 growth, 
 
 150 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 My inward sap, the hold I have on earth, 
 My outward circling air wherein I breathe. 
 Which yet upholds my life, and evermore 
 Was to me daily life and daily death: 
 For how should I have lived and not have 
 
 loved? 
 Can ye take off the sweetness from the 
 
 flower. 
 The color and the sweetness from the rose. 
 And place them by themselves ; or set apart 
 Their motions and their brightness from 
 
 the stars, 
 And then point out the flower or the star? 
 Or build a wall betwixt my life and love, 
 And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus: 
 In that I live I love; because I love 
 I live: whate'er is fountain to the one 
 Is fountain to the other; and whene'er 
 Our God unknits the riddle of the one. 
 There is no shade or fold of mystery 
 Swathing the other. 
 
 Many, many years, 
 (For they seem many and my most of Ufe, 
 And well I could have linger 'd in that porch, 
 151 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 So unproportion'd to the dwelling-place), 
 In the Maydews of childhood, opposite 
 The flush and dawn of youth, we lived to- 
 gether, 
 Apart, alone together on those hills. 
 Before he saw my day my father died, 
 And he was happy that he saw it not: 
 But I and the first daisy on his grave 
 From the same clay came into light at once. 
 As Love and I do number equal years 
 So she, my love, is of an age with me. 
 How like each other was the birth of each ! 
 On the same morning, almost the same hour. 
 Under the self-same aspect of the stars 
 (Oh falsehood of all starcraft!) we were born. 
 How like each other was the birth of each! 
 The sister of my mother — she that bore 
 Camilla close beneath her beating heart. 
 Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child. 
 With its true-touched pulses in the flow 
 And hourly visitation of the blood. 
 Sent notes of preparation manifold, 
 And mellow'd echoes of the outer world — 
 My mother's sister, mother of my love, 
 152 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Who had a twofold claim upon my heart, 
 One twofold mightier than the other was, 
 In giving so much beauty to the world. 
 And so much wealth as God had charged 
 
 her with 
 Loathing to put it from herself for ever, 
 Left her own life with it; and dying thus, 
 Crown'd with her highest act the placid face 
 And breathless body of her good deeds past. 
 
 So we were born, so orphan'd. She was 
 
 motherless, 
 And I without a father. So from each 
 Of those two pillars which from earth up- 
 hold 
 Our childhood, one had fall'n away, and all 
 The careful burthen of our tender years 
 Trembled upon the other. He that gave 
 Her life, to me dehghtedly fulfill'd 
 All loving-kindnesses, all offices 
 Of watchful care and trembling tenderness. 
 He waked for both: he pray'd for both: 
 
 he slept 
 Dreaming of both : nor was his love the less 
 153 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Because it was divided, and shot forth 
 Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome 
 
 shade, 
 Wherein we rested sleeping or awake, 
 And sang aloud the matin-song of life. 
 
 She was my foster-sister: on one arm 
 The flaxen ringlets of our infancies 
 Wander'd, the while we rested : one soft lap 
 Pillow'd us both: one common light of eyes 
 Was on us as we lay: our baby lips, 
 Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence 
 The stream of life, one stream, one life, one 
 
 blood. 
 One sustenance, which, still as thought grew 
 
 large. 
 Still larger moulding all the house of thought, 
 Perchance assimilated all our tastes 
 And future fancies. 'Tis a beautiful 
 And pleasant meditation, that whate'er 
 Our general mother meant for me alone, 
 Our mutual mother dealt to both of us: 
 So what was earliest mine in earliest life, 
 I shared with her in whom myself remains, 
 154 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 As was our childhood, so our infancy, 
 They tell me, was a very miracle 
 Of fellow-feeling and communion. 
 They tell me that we would not be alone, — 
 We cried when we were parted; when I 
 
 wept. 
 Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, 
 Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved 
 The sound of one-another's voices more 
 Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and 
 
 learn'd 
 To lisp in tune together: that we slept 
 In the same cradle always, face to face. 
 Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing 
 
 lip. 
 Folding each other, breathing on each other, 
 Dreaming together, (dreaming of each other 
 They should have added), till the morning 
 
 light 
 Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane 
 Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke 
 To gaze upon each other. If this be true, 
 At thought of which my whole soul lan- 
 guishes 
 
 155 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath — 
 
 as the' 
 A man in some still garden should infuse 
 Rich atar in the bosom of the rose. 
 Till, drunk with its own wine, and overfull 
 Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself. 
 It fall on its own thorns — if this be true — 
 And that way my wish leaneth evermore 
 Still to believe it — 'tis so sweet a thought, 
 Why in the utter stillness of the soul 
 Doth question'd memory answer not, nor 
 
 tell. 
 Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn, 
 Most loveliest, most delicious union? 
 
 Oh, happy, happy outset of my days! 
 Green springtide, April promise, glad new 
 
 year 
 Of Being, which with earliest violets, 
 And lavish carol of clear-throated larks, 
 Fill'd all the march of life — I will not speak 
 
 of thee: 
 These have not seen thee, these can never 
 
 know thee 
 
 156 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 They cannot understand me. Pass we then 
 A term of eighteen years. Ye would but 
 
 laugh, 
 If I should tell ye how I hoard in thought 
 Those rhymes, "The Lion and the Unicorn," 
 "The Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds," "Ban- 
 bury Cross," 
 "The Gander" and "The Man of Mitylene," 
 And all the quaint old scraps of ancient 
 
 crones. 
 Which are as gems set in my memory. 
 Because she learn'd them with me. Or 
 
 what profits it 
 To tell ye that her father died, just ere 
 The daffodil was blown; or how we found 
 The drowned seaman on the shore? These 
 
 things 
 Unto the quiet daylight of your minds 
 Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of 
 
 mine 
 Show traced with flame. Move with me to 
 
 that hour. 
 Which was the hinge on which the door of 
 
 Hope, 
 
 157 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Once turning, open'd far into the out- 
 ward, 
 
 And never closed again. 
 
 I well remember, 
 
 It was a glorious morning, such a one 
 
 As dawns but once a season. Mercury 
 
 On such a morning would have flung him- 
 self 
 
 From cloud to cloud, and swum with 
 balanced wings 
 
 To some tall mountain. On that day the 
 year 
 
 First felt his youth and strength, and from 
 his spring 
 
 Moved smiling toward his summer. On 
 that day. 
 
 Love waking shook his wings, (that charged 
 the winds 
 
 With spiced May -sweets from bound to 
 bound) and blew 
 
 Fresh fire into the Sun, and from within 
 
 Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his 
 soul 
 
 Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far off 
 iS8 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 His mountain-altars, his high hills, with 
 
 flame 
 Milder and purer. Up the rocks we wound; 
 The great pine shook with lonely sounds of 
 
 joy, 
 That came on the sea-wind. As mountain 
 
 brooks 
 Our bloods ran free: the sunshine seem'd to 
 
 brood 
 More warmly on the heart than on the 
 
 brow. 
 We often paused, and looking back, we saw 
 The clefts and openings in the hills all fill'd 
 With the blue valley and the glistening 
 
 brooks, 
 And with the low dark groves — a land of 
 
 Love, 
 Where Love was worshipp'd upon every 
 
 height, 
 Where Love was worshipp'd under every 
 
 tree — 
 A land of promise, flowing with the milk 
 And honey of delicious memories 
 Down to the sea, as far as eye could ken, 
 159 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 From verge to verge it was a holy land. 
 Still growing holier as you near'd the bay, 
 For where the temple stood. When we had 
 
 reach 'd 
 The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd, 
 I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her 
 
 brows 
 And mine wove chaplets of the self-same 
 
 fl-ower, 
 Which she took smiling, and with my work 
 
 there 
 Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice 
 
 she told me 
 (For I remember all things), to let grow 
 The flowers that run poison in their veins. 
 She said, "the evil flourish in the world": 
 Then playfully she gave herself the lie : 
 "Nothing in nature is unbeautiful, 
 So, brother, pluck and spare not." So I 
 
 wove 
 Even the dull -blooded poppy, "whose red 
 
 flower, 
 Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise. 
 Like to the wild youth of an evil king, 
 1 60 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Is without sweetness, but who crowns him- 
 self 
 Above the secret poisons of his heart 
 In his old age," — a graceful thought of hers 
 Graven on my fancy ! As I said, with these 
 She crown 'd her forehead. O how like a 
 
 nymph, 
 A stately mountain-nymph, she look'd! how 
 
 native 
 Unto the hills she trod on! What an 
 
 angel ! 
 How clothed with beams! My eyes, fix'd 
 
 upon hers. 
 Almost forgot ever to move again. 
 My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss 
 That shoot across the soul in prayer, and 
 
 show us 
 That we are surely heard. Methought a 
 
 light 
 Burst from the garland I had woven, and 
 
 stood 
 A soUd glory on her bright black hair: 
 A light, methought, broke from her dark, 
 
 dark eyes 
 
 n i6i 
 
 ^•/ 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And shot itself into the singing winds; 
 
 A light, methought, flash'd even from her 
 
 white robe, 
 As from a glass in the sun, and fell about 
 My footsteps on the mountains. 
 
 About sunset 
 We came unto the hill of woe, so call'd 
 Because the legend ran that, long time since, 
 One rainy night, when every wind blew 
 
 loud, 
 A woful man had thrust his wife and child 
 With shouts from off the bridge, and follow- 
 ing, plunged 
 Into the dizzy chasm below. Below, 
 Sheer thro' the black-wall'd cliff the rapid 
 
 brook 
 Shot down his inner thunders, built above 
 With matted bramble and the shining gloss 
 Of ivy - leaves, whose low - hung tresses, 
 
 dipp'd 
 In the fierce stream, bore downward with 
 
 the wave. 
 The path was steep and loosely strown with 
 
 crags. 
 
 162 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We mounted slowly: yet to both of us 
 It was delight, not hindrance: unto both 
 Delight from hardship to be overcome, 
 And scorn of perilous seeming; unto me 
 Intense delight and rapture that I breathed, 
 As with a sense of nigher Deity, 
 With her to whom all outward fairest 
 
 things 
 Were by the busy mind referr'd, compared. 
 As bearing no essential fruits of excellence. 
 Save as they were the types and shadow- 
 
 ings 
 Of hers — and then that I became to her 
 A tutelary angel as she rose, 
 And with a fearful self -impelling joy 
 Saw round her feet the country far away, 
 Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows, 
 Burst into open prospect — heath and hill. 
 And hollow lined and wooded to the lips — 
 And steep-down walls of battlemented rock 
 Gilded with broom or shiver'd into peaks — 
 And glory of broad waters interfused. 
 Whence rose as it were breath and steam 
 
 of gold; 
 
 163 
 
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 And over all the great wood rioting 
 And climbing, starr'd at slender intervals 
 With blossom-tufts of purest white; and 
 
 last, 
 Framing the mighty landskip to the west, 
 A purple range of mountain cones, between 
 Whose interspaces gush'd, in blinding bursts. 
 The incorporate light of sun and sea. 
 
 At length, 
 Upon the tremulous bridge, that from be- 
 neath 
 Seem'd with a cobweb filament to link 
 The earthquake-shatter'd chasm, hung with 
 
 shrubs, 
 We paused with tears of rapture. All the 
 
 West, 
 And even unto the middle South was ribb'd 
 And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun 
 
 beneath 
 Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, 
 
 shower'd down 
 Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over 
 That various wilderness a tissue of light 
 Unparallel'd. On the other side the moon, 
 164 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still, 
 And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf, 
 Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes 
 To indue his lustre; most unloverlike; 
 Since in his absence full of light and joy, 
 And giving light to others. But this 
 
 chief est, 
 Next to her presence whom I loved so well. 
 Spoke loudly, even into my inmost heart. 
 As to my outward hearing: the loud stream. 
 Forth-issuing from his portals in the crag, 
 (A visible link unto the home of my heart,) 
 Ran amber toward the West, and nigh the 
 
 sea. 
 Parting my own loved mountains, was re- 
 ceived, 
 Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy 
 Of that small bay. Which into open main 
 Glow'd intermingUng close beneath the sun. 
 Spirit of Love! that little hour was bound. 
 Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee; 
 Thy fires from heaven had touch'd it, and 
 
 the earth 
 They fell on became hallow'd evermore. 
 i6s 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We turn'd: our eyes met: hers were bright, 
 
 and mine 
 Were dim with floating tears, that shot the 
 
 sunset 
 In Ughtnings round me; and my name was 
 
 borne 
 Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has 
 
 been 
 A hallow'd memory, Hke the names of old; 
 A center'd, glory-circled memory, 
 And a peculiar treasure, brooking not 
 Exchange or currency: and in that hour 
 A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist 
 Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs, 
 A moment, ere the onward whirlwind 
 
 shatter it, 
 Waver'd and floated — which was less than 
 
 Hope, 
 Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope; 
 But which was more and higher than all 
 
 Hope, 
 Because all other Hope hath lower aim; 
 Even that this name to which her seraph 
 
 lips 
 
 i66 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Did lend such gentle utterance, this one 
 
 name 
 In some obscure hereafter, might inwreathe 
 (How lovelier, nobler then!) her life, her 
 
 love. 
 With my life, love, soul, spirit and heart and 
 
 strength. 
 
 "Brother," she said, "let this be call'd 
 
 henceforth 
 The Hill of Hope"; and I replied, "O sister, 
 My will is one with thine ; the Hill of 
 
 Hope." 
 Nevertheless, we did not change the name. 
 
 Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip- 
 depths : 
 Love wraps his wings on either side the 
 
 heart. 
 Constraining it with kisses close and warm, 
 Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts 
 So that they pass not to the shrine of sound. 
 Else had the Ufe of that delighted hour 
 Drunk in the largeness of the utterance 
 167 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of Love; but how should earthly measure 
 
 mete 
 The Heavenly-unmeasured or unlimited 
 
 Love, 
 Which scarce can tune his high majestic 
 
 sense 
 Unto the thunder-song that wheels the 
 
 spheres ; 
 Scarce living in the .lEolian harmony, 
 And flowing odor of the spacious air; 
 Scarce housed in the circle of this earth : 
 Be cabin'd up in words and syllables, 
 Which waste with the breath that made 
 
 'em? Sooner earth 
 Might go round Heaven, and the straight 
 
 girth of Time 
 Inswathe the fullness of Eternity, 
 Than language grasp the infinite of Love. 
 
 day, which did enwomb that happy hour. 
 Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day! 
 O Genius of that hour which dost uphold 
 Thy coronal of glory like a God, 
 Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen, 
 i68 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Who walk before thee, and whose eyes are 
 
 dim 
 With gazing on the Hght and depth of 
 
 thine, 
 Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours! 
 Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die. 
 For bliss stood round me like the lights of 
 
 Heaven, 
 That cannot fade, they are so burning 
 
 bright. 
 Had I died then, I had not known the 
 
 death ; 
 Planting my feet against this mound of 
 
 time 
 I had thrown me on the vast, and from this 
 
 impulse 
 Continuing and gathering ever, ever, 
 Agglomerated swiftness, I had lived 
 That intense moment thro' eternity. 
 Oh, had the Power from whose right hand 
 
 the light 
 Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand 
 
 floweth 
 The shadow of Death, perennial effluences, 
 i6g 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Whereof to all that draw the wholesome 
 
 air, 
 Somewhile the one must overflow the other ; 
 Then had he stemm'd my day with night 
 
 and driven 
 My current to the fountain whence it 
 
 sprang, — 
 Even his own abiding excellence, — 
 On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had 
 
 fall'n 
 Unfelt, and like the sun I gazed upon, 
 Which, lapt it seeming dissolution. 
 And dipping his head low beneath the 
 
 verge. 
 Yet bearing round about him his own 
 
 day. 
 In confidence of unabated strength; 
 Steppeth from Heaven to Heaven, from light 
 
 to light 
 And holdeth his undimmed forehead far 
 Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud; 
 So bearing on thro' Being limitless 
 The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged 
 Glory in glory, without sense of change. 
 170 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 We trod the shadow of the downward 
 
 hill; 
 We pass'd from light to dark. On the 
 
 other side 
 Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall, 
 Which none have fathom'd. If you go far 
 
 in, 
 (The country people rumor,) you may hear 
 The moaning of the woman and the child, 
 Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. 
 I too have heard a sound — perchance of 
 
 streams 
 Running far-on within its inmost halls, 
 The home of darkness; but the cavern- 
 mouth, 
 Half overtraded with a wanton weed. 
 Gives birth to a brawling stream, that 
 
 stepping lightly 
 Adown a natural stair of tangled roots, 
 Is presently received in a sweet grave 
 Of eglantines, a place of burial 
 Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen. 
 But taken with the sweetness of the place. 
 It giveth out a constant melody 
 171 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower 
 
 down 
 Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, 
 
 makes 
 Cushions of yellow sand ; and from the woods 
 That belt it rise three dark, tall cypresses; 
 Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe. 
 That men plant over graves. 
 
 Hither we came, 
 And sitting down upon the golden moss 
 Held converse sweet and low — low con- 
 verse sweet. 
 In which our voices bore least part. The 
 
 wind 
 Told a love-tale beside us, how he woo'd 
 The waters, and the crisped waters lisp'd 
 The kisses of the wind, that, sick with love, 
 Fainted at intervals, and grew again 
 To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape 
 Fancy so fair as is this memory. 
 Methought all excellence that ever was 
 Had drawn herself from many thousand 
 
 years. 
 And all the separate Edens of this earth, 
 172 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 To centre in this place and time. I listen'd 
 And her words stole with most prevailing 
 
 sweetness 
 Into my heart, as thronged fancies come, 
 All unawares, into the poet's brain; 
 Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung, 
 When summer winds break their soft sleep 
 
 with sighs, 
 Creep down into the bottom of the flower. 
 Her words were like a coronal of wild 
 
 blooms 
 Strung in the very negligence of art. 
 Or in the art of Nature, where each rose 
 Doth faint upon the bosom of the other, 
 Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears : 
 So each with each inwoven lived with each. 
 And were in union more than double-sweet. 
 What marvel my Camilla told me all? 
 It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place, 
 And I was as the brother of her blood, 
 And by that name was wont to live in her 
 
 speech. 
 Dear name! which had too much of near- 
 ness in it, 
 
 173 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And heralded the distance of this time. 
 At first her voice was very sweet and low, 
 As tho' she were afeard of utterance; 
 But in the onward current of her speech, 
 (As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks 
 Are fashion'd by the channel which they 
 
 keep,) 
 Her words did of their meaning borrow 
 
 sound. 
 Her cheek did catch the color of her words. 
 I heard and trembled, yet I could but 
 
 hear; 
 My heart paused — my raised eyelids would 
 
 not fall. 
 But still I kept my eyes upon the sky. 
 I seem'd the only part of Time stood still, 
 And saw the motion of all other things; 
 While her words, syllable by syllable. 
 Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear 
 Fell: and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to 
 
 speak. 
 But she spake on, for I did name no wish. 
 What marvel my Camilla told me all 
 Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love, 
 174 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 "Perchance," she said, "retum'd." Even 
 
 then the stars 
 Did tremble in their stations as I gazed; 
 But she spake on, for I did name no wish. 
 No wish — no hope. Hope was not wliolly 
 
 dead, 
 But breathing hard at the approach of 
 
 Death, 
 Updrawn in expectation of her charge — 
 Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine 
 No longer in the dearest use of mine — 
 The written secrets of her inmost soul 
 Lay like an open scroll before my view. 
 And my eyes read, they read aright, her 
 
 heart 
 Was Lionel's: it seem'd as tho' a link 
 Of some light chain within my inmost frame 
 Was riven in twain: that life I heeded not 
 Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the 
 
 grave. 
 The darkness of the grave and utter night, 
 Did swallow up my vision: at her feet, 
 Even the feet of her I loved, I fell, 
 Smit with exceeding sorrow unto Death. 
 
 175 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Then had the Earth beneath me yawning 
 
 given 
 Sign of convulsion, and thro' horrid rifts 
 Sent up the moaning of unhappy Spirits 
 Imprison'd in her centre, with the heat 
 Of their infolding element ; had the Angels, 
 The watchers at Heaven's gate, push'd 
 
 them apart. 
 And from the golden threshold had down- 
 
 roU'd 
 Their heaviest thunder — I had lain as still, 
 And blind and motionless, as then I lay! 
 White as quench 'd ashes, cold as were the 
 
 hopes 
 Of my lorn love ! What happy air shall woo 
 The wither'd leaf fall'n in the woods, or 
 
 blasted 
 Upon the bough? a lightning-stroke had 
 
 come 
 Even from that Heaven in whose light I 
 
 bloom 'd 
 And taken away the greenness of my life. 
 The blossom and the fragrance. Who was 
 
 cursed 
 
 176 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 But I? who miserable but I? even Misery- 
 Forgot herself in that extreme distress, 
 And with the overdoing of her part 
 Did fall away into oblivion. 
 The night in pity took away my day, 
 Because my grief as yet was newly bom; 
 Of too weak eyes to look upon the 
 
 light; 
 And with the hasty notice of the ear. 
 Frail Life was startled from the tender 
 
 love 
 Of him she brooded over. Would I had 
 
 lain 
 Until the pleached ivy-tress had wound 
 Round my worn limbs, and the wild briar 
 
 had driven 
 Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining 
 
 brows, 
 Leaning its roses on my faded eyes. 
 The wind had blown above me, and the 
 
 rain 
 Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded snake 
 Had nestled in this bosom throne of Love, 
 But I had been at rest for evermore. 
 177 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Long time entrancement held me: all too 
 
 soon, 
 Life (like a wanton too-ofBcious friend, 
 Who will not hear denial, vain and rude 
 With proffer of unwish'd for services) 
 Entering all the avenues of sense, 
 Pass'd thro' into his citadel, the brain, 
 With hated warmth of apprehensiveness : 
 And first the chillness of the mountain 
 
 stream 
 Smote on my brow, and then I seem'd to 
 
 hear 
 Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears. 
 Who with his head below the surface dropt. 
 Listens the dreadful murmur indistinct 
 Of the confused seas, and knoweth not 
 Beyond the sound he lists : and then came in 
 O'erhead the white light of the weary 
 
 moon. 
 Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. 
 Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to 
 
 me 
 Him who should own that name? or had 
 
 my fancy 
 
 178 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 So lethargised discernment in the sense, 
 That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes, 
 Warping their nature, till they minister'd 
 Unto her swift conceits? 'Twere better 
 
 thus. 
 If so be that the memory of that sound, 
 With mighty evocation, had updrawn 
 The fashion and the phantasm of the form 
 It should attach to. There was no such 
 
 thing — 
 It was the man she loved, even Lionel, 
 The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel, 
 The low-voiced, tender-spirited Lionel, 
 All joy; who drew the happy atmosphere 
 Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears. 
 To him the honey-dews of orient hope. 
 Oh ! rather had some loathly ghastful brow, 
 Half-bursten from the shroud, in cerecloth 
 
 bound. 
 The dead skin withering on the fretted bone. 
 The very Spirit of Paleness made still paler 
 By the shuddering moonlight, fix'd his eyes 
 
 on mine 
 Horrible with the anger and the heat 
 179 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of the remorseful soul alive within, 
 And damn'd unto his loathed tenement, 
 Methinks I could have sooner met that gaze. 
 Oh, how her choice did leap forth from his 
 
 eyes! 
 Oh, how her love did clothe itself in smiles 
 About his lips! This was the very arch- 
 mock 
 And insolence of uncontrolled Fate, 
 When the effect weigh'd seas upon my head 
 To twit me with the cause. 
 
 Why how was this? 
 Could he not walk what paths he chose, nor 
 
 breathe 
 What airs he pleased? Was not the wide 
 
 earth free. 
 With all her interchange of hill and plain. 
 To him as well as me? I know not, 'faith: 
 But Misery, like a fretful wayward child. 
 Refused to look his author in the face. 
 Must he come my way too? was not the 
 
 South, 
 The East, the West all open, if he had 
 fall'n 
 
 1 80 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 In love in twilight? Why should he come 
 
 my way, 
 Robed in those robes of light I must not 
 
 wear, 
 With that great crown of beams about his 
 
 brows? 
 Come like an Angel to a damned soul, 
 To tell him of the bliss he had with God; 
 Come like a careless and a greedy heir, 
 That scarce can wait the reading of the will 
 Before he takes possession? Was mine a 
 
 mood 
 To be invaded rudely, and not rather 
 A sacred, secret, unapproached woe 
 Unspeakable. I was shut up with grief; 
 She took the body of my past delight, 
 Narded, and swathed, and balm'd it for 
 
 herself, 
 And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre 
 Where man had never lain. I was led 
 
 mute 
 Into her temple like a sacrifice; 
 I was the High-priest in her hohest place. 
 Not to be loudly broken in upon. 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as 
 
 these well-nigh 
 O'erbore the limits of my brain; but he 
 Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm up- 
 
 stay'd 
 From earth. I thought it was an adder's 
 
 fold, 
 And once I strove to disengage myself. 
 But fail'd I was so feeble. She was there 
 
 too: 
 She bent above me too : her cheek was 
 
 pale, 
 Oh ! very fair and pale : rare pity had stolen 
 The living bloom away, as tho' a red rose 
 Should change into a white one suddenly. 
 Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the 
 
 mom. 
 And some few drops of that distressful rain 
 Being wafted on the wind, drove in my 
 
 sight. 
 And being there they did break forth afresh 
 In a new birth, immingled with my own, 
 And still bewept my grief, keeping un- 
 changed 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The purport of their coinage. Her long 
 
 ringlets, 
 Drooping and beaten with the plaining 
 
 wind, 
 Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro: 
 For in the sudden anguish of her heart, 
 Loosed from their simple thrall they had 
 
 flowed abroad. 
 And onward floating in a full, dark wave. 
 Parted on either side her argent neck. 
 Mantling her form half-way. She, when I 
 
 woke. 
 After my refluent health made tender quest 
 Unanswer'd, for I spake not: for the sound 
 Of that dear voice so musically low, 
 And now first heard with any sense of pain. 
 As it had taken life away before. 
 Choked all the syllables that in my throat 
 Strove to uprise, laden with mournful 
 
 thanks, 
 From my full heart: and ever since that 
 
 hour, 
 My voice hath somewhat f alter'd — and what 
 
 wonder 
 
 183 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 That when hope died, part of her eloquence 
 Died with her? He, the bUssful lover, too, 
 From his great hoard of happiness distill'd 
 Some drops of solace ; like a vain rich man, 
 That, having always prosper'd in the world, 
 Folding his hands, deals comfortable words 
 To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth, 
 Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase. 
 Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd 
 More to the inward than the outward ear. 
 As rain of the midsummer midnight soft 
 Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the 
 
 green 
 Of the dead spring — such as in other minds 
 Had film'd the margents of the recent wound. 
 And why was I to darken their pure love. 
 If, as I knew, they two did love each other. 
 Because my own was darken'd ? Why was I 
 To stand within the level of their hopes, 
 Because my hope was widow'd, like the cur 
 In the child's adage? Did I love Camilla? 
 Ye know that I did love her : to this present 
 My full-orb'd love hath waned not. Did 
 
 I love her, 
 
 184 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And could I look upon her tearful eyes? 
 Tears wept for me; for me — weep at my 
 
 grief ? 
 What had she done to weep ? why should she 
 
 weep? 
 Oh, innocent of spirit— let my heart 
 Break rather — whom the gentlest airs of 
 
 Heaven 
 Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness. 
 Her love did murder mine; what then? 
 
 She deem'd 
 I wore a brother's mind; she call'd me 
 
 brother : 
 She told me all her love : she shall not weep. 
 
 The brightness of a burning thought awhile 
 Battailing with the glooms of my dark will, 
 Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself, 
 Upon the depth of an unfathom'd woe. 
 Reflex of action. Starting up at once, 
 As men do from a vague and horrid dream, 
 And throwing by all consciousness of self, 
 In eager haste I shook him by the hand; 
 Then flinging myself down upon my knees, 
 1 8s 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Even where the grass was warm where I 
 
 had lain, 
 I pray'd aloud to God that he would hold 
 The hand of blessing over Lionel, 
 And her whom he would make his wedded 
 
 wife — 
 Camilla! May their days be golden days. 
 And their long life a dream of linked love, 
 From which may rude Death never startle 
 
 them, 
 But grow upon them like a glorious vision 
 Of unconceived and awful happiness. 
 Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and 
 
 sounds, 
 Swallowing its precedent in victory. 
 Let them so love that men and boys may 
 
 say, 
 Lo ! how they love each other ! till their love 
 Shall ripen to a proverb unto all. 
 Known when their faces are forgot in the 
 
 land. 
 And as for me, Camilla, as for me. 
 Think not thy tears will make my name 
 
 grow green 
 
 1 86 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew. 
 The course of Hope is dried — the life o' the 
 
 plant — 
 They will but sicken the sick plant more. 
 Deem then that I love thee but as brothers 
 
 do, 
 So shalt thou love me still as sisters do; 
 Or if thou dream'st aught farther, dream 
 
 but how 
 I could have loved thee, had there been 
 
 none else 
 To love as lovers, loved again by thee. 
 
 Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spake. 
 When I did see her weep so ruefully; 
 For sure my love should ne'er induce the 
 
 front 
 And mask of Hate, whom woful aliments 
 Of unavailing tears and heart-deep moans 
 Feed and envenom, as the milky blood 
 Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. 
 Shall Love pledge Hatred in his bitter 
 
 draughts. 
 And batten on his poisons? Love forbid! 
 187 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, 
 And Hate is strange beneath the roof of 
 
 Love. 
 O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these 
 
 tears 
 Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine 
 
 image, 
 The subject of thy power, be cold in her. 
 Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source 
 Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward 
 
 flow. 
 So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to 
 
 death. 
 Received unto himself a part of blame, 
 Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner, 
 Who when the woful sentence hath been 
 
 past. 
 And all the clearness of his fame hath 
 
 gone 
 Beneath the shadow of the curse of man, 
 First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom 
 
 awaked, 
 And looking round upon his tearful friends, 
 Forthwith and in his agony conceives 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime — 
 For whence without some guilt should such 
 grief be? 
 
 So died that hour, and fell into the abysm 
 Of forms outworn, but not to me outworn, 
 Who never hail'd another worth the Life 
 That made it sensible. So died that hour, 
 Like odor rapt into the winged wind 
 Borne into ahen lands and far away. 
 There be some hearts so airy-fashioned, 
 That in the death of Love, if e'er they 
 
 loved, 
 On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride 
 
 highly 
 Above the perilous seas of Change and 
 
 Chance — 
 Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheer- 
 fulness ; 
 As the tall ship, that many a dreary year, 
 Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea. 
 All through the livelong hours of utter dark, 
 Showers slanting light upon the dolorous 
 wave. 
 
 189 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 For me all other Hopes did sway from 
 
 that 
 Which hung the frailest: falling, they fell 
 
 too, 
 Crush'd link on link into the beaten earth, 
 And love did walk with banish'd Hope no 
 
 more, 
 It was ill-done to part ye. Sisters fair; 
 Love's arms were wreathed about the neck 
 
 of Hope, 
 And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in 
 
 her breath 
 In that close kiss, and drank her whisper'd 
 
 tales. 
 They said that Love would die when Hope 
 
 was gone. 
 And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after 
 
 Hope; 
 At last she sought out Memory, and they 
 
 trod 
 The same old paths where Love had walk'd 
 
 with Hope, 
 And Memory fed the soul of Love with 
 
 tears. 
 
 190 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 II 
 
 From that time forth I would not see her 
 
 more; 
 But many weary moons I lived alone — 
 Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. 
 Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea 
 All day I watch 'd the floating isles of 
 
 shade, 
 And sometimes on the shore, upon the 
 
 sands 
 Insensibly I drew her name, until 
 The meaning of the letters shot into 
 My brain; anon the wanton billow wash'd 
 Them over, till they faded like my love. 
 The hollow caverns heard me — the black 
 
 brooks 
 Of the mid-forest heard me — the soft winds, 
 Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers, 
 Paused in their course to hear me, for my 
 
 voice 
 Was all of thee: the merry linnet knew me. 
 The squirrel knew me, and the dragon-fly 
 191 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Shot by me like a flash of purple fire. 
 The rough briar tore my bleeding palms; 
 
 the hemlock, 
 Brow-high, did strike my forehead as I past; 
 Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path, 
 Nor bruised the wild-bird's egg. 
 
 Was this the end? 
 Why grew we then together i' the same plot ? 
 Why fed we the same fountain? drew the 
 
 same sun? 
 Why were our mothers' branches of one 
 
 stem? 
 Why were we one in all things, save in that 
 Where to have been one had been the roof 
 
 and crown 
 Of all I hoped and fear'd? if that same 
 
 nearness 
 Were -father to this distance, and that one 
 'Vauntcourier this double f If Affection 
 Living slew Love, and Sympathy hew'd out 
 The bosom-sepulchre of sympathy. 
 
 Chiefly I sought the cavern and the hill 
 Where last we roam'd together, for the sound 
 192 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the 
 
 wind 
 Came wooingly with violet smells. Some- 
 times 
 All day I sat within the cavern-mouth, 
 Fixing my eyes on those three cypress- 
 cones 
 Which spired above the wood; and with 
 
 mad hand 
 Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy-screen, 
 I cast them in the noisy brook beneath. 
 And watch 'd them till they vanished from 
 
 my sight 
 Beneath the bower of wreathed eglantines: 
 And all the fragments of the living rock, 
 (Huge splinters, which the sap of earliest 
 
 showers. 
 Or moisture of the vapor, left in clinging 
 When the shrill storm-blast feeds it from 
 
 behind. 
 And scatters it before, had shatter'd from 
 The mountain, till they fell, and with the 
 
 shock 
 Half dug their own graves,) in mine agony, 
 13 193 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Did I make bare of all the deep rich moss, 
 Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring 
 Had liveried them all over. In my brain 
 The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to 
 
 thought, 
 Like moonlight wandering thro' a mist: my 
 
 blood 
 Crept like the drains of a marsh thro' all my 
 
 body; 
 The motions of my heart seem'd far within 
 
 me, 
 Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses; 
 And yet it shook me, that my frame did 
 
 shudder. 
 As it were drawn asunder by the rack. 
 But over the deep graves of Hope and Fear, 
 The wrecks of ruin'd life and shatter'd 
 
 thought, 
 Brooded one master-passion evermore. 
 Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky 
 Above some great metropolis, earth-shock'd 
 Hung round with ragged-rimmed burning 
 
 folds, 
 Embathing all with wild and woful hues — 
 194 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed' Foems 
 
 Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses 
 Of thunder-shaken columns,, indistinct 
 And fused together in the tyrannous light. 
 
 So gazed I on the ruins of that thought 
 Which was the playmate of my youth — for 
 
 which 
 I lived and breathed: the dew, the sun, the 
 
 rain, 
 Unto the growth of body and of mind; 
 The blood, the breath, the feeling, and the 
 
 motion. 
 The slope unto the current of my years. 
 Which drove them onward — made them 
 
 sensible ; 
 The precious jewel of my honor'd life, 
 Erewhile close couch 'd in golden happiness, 
 Now proved counterfeit, was shaken out. 
 And, trampled on, left to its own decay. 
 
 Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more. 
 Some one had told me she was dead, and 
 
 ask'd me 
 If I would see her burial: then I seem'd 
 
 195 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 To rise, and thro' the forest-shadow borne 
 With more than mortal swiftness, I ran 
 
 down 
 The steepy sea-bank, till I came upon 
 The rear of a procession, curving round 
 The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which 
 Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare 
 A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest 
 
 lawn. 
 Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in 
 
 the distance. 
 From out the yellow woods, upon the hill, 
 Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles 
 Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry, 
 Save those six virgins which upheld the 
 
 bier. 
 Were stoled from head to foot in flowing 
 
 black ; 
 One walk'd abreast with me, and veil'd his 
 
 brow, 
 And he was loud in weeping and in praise 
 Of the departed: a strong sympathy 
 Shook all my soul: I flung myself upon him 
 In tears and cries: I told him all my love, 
 196 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 How I had loved her from the first ; whereat 
 He shrunk and howl'd, and from his brow 
 
 drew back 
 His hand to push me from him ; and the face, 
 The very face and form of Lionel 
 Flash'd though my eyes into my innermost 
 
 brain, 
 And at his feet I seem'd to faint and fall. 
 To fall and die away. I could not rise 
 Albeit I strove to follow. They pass'd on, 
 The lordly Phantasms ! in their floating folds 
 They pass'd and were no more: but I had 
 
 fall'n 
 Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass. 
 Alway th' inaudible, invisible thought 
 Artificer and subject, lord and slave 
 Shaped by the audible and visible. 
 Moulded the audible and visible; 
 All crisped sounds of wave, and leaf and 
 
 wind, 
 Flatter 'd the fancy of my fading brain; 
 The storm-pavilion'd element, the wood. 
 The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave. 
 Were wrought into the tissue of my dream. 
 197 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 The moanings in the forest, the loud stream, 
 Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep; 
 And voices in the distance, calling to me. 
 And in my vision bidding me dream on. 
 Like sounds within the twilight realms of 
 
 dreams. 
 Which wander round the bases of the hills. 
 And murmur in the low-dropt eaves of sleep, 
 But faint within the portals. Oftentimes 
 The vision had fair prelude, in the end 
 Opening on darkness, stately vestibules 
 To cares and shows of Death; whether the 
 
 mind. 
 With a revenge even to itself unknown. 
 Made strange division of its suffering 
 With her, whom to have suffering view'd 
 
 had been 
 Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed 
 
 Spirit, 
 Being blasted in the Present, grew at length 
 Prophetical and prescient of whate'er 
 The Future had in store; or that which 
 
 most 
 Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit 
 198 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed "Poems 
 
 Was of so wide a compass it took in 
 All I had loved, and my dull agony, 
 Ideally to her transferr'd, became 
 Anguish intolerable. 
 
 The day waned; 
 Alone I sat with her: about my brow 
 Her warm breath floated in the utterance 
 Of silver-chorded tones; her lips were 
 
 sunder'd 
 With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in 
 
 light 
 Like morning from her eyes — her eloquent 
 
 eyes, 
 (As I have seen them many hundred times,) 
 Fill'd all with clear pure fire, thro' mine 
 
 down rain'd 
 Their spirit searching splendors. As a 
 
 vision 
 Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd 
 In damp and dismal dungeons underground 
 Confined on points of faith, when strength 
 
 is shocked 
 With torment, and expectancy of worse 
 Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls, 
 199 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Pomes 
 
 All unawares before his half-shut eyes, 
 Comes in upon him in the dead of night, 
 And, with th' excess of sweetness and of 
 
 awe. 
 Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run 
 
 over 
 Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes 
 Shone on my darkness forms which ever 
 
 stood 
 Within the magic cirque of memory, 
 Invisible but deathless, waiting still 
 The edict of the will to reassume 
 The semblance of those rare realities 
 Of which they were the mirrors. Now the 
 
 light, 
 Which was their life, burst thro' the cloud 
 
 of thought 
 Keen, irrepressible. 
 
 It was a room 
 Within the summer - house of which I 
 
 spake, 
 Hung round with paintings of the sea, and 
 
 one 
 A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow 
 
 200 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Clambering, the mast bent, and the riven 
 
 wind 
 In her sail roaring. From the outer day, 
 Betwixt the closest ivies came a broad 
 And solid beam of isolated light, 
 Crowded with driving atomies, and fell 
 Slanting upon that picture, from prime 
 
 youth 
 Well-known, well-loved. She drew it long 
 
 ago 
 Forth gazing on the waste and open sea, 
 One morning when the upblown billow ran 
 Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had 
 
 pour'd 
 Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms 
 Color and life: it was a bond and seal 
 Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles; 
 A monument of childhood and of love, 
 The poesy of childhood; my lost love 
 Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it to- 
 gether 
 In mute and glad remembrance, and each 
 
 heart 
 Grew closer to the other, and the eye 
 
 201 
 
I'ennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like 
 The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low- 
 
 crouch'd, 
 A beauty which is death; when all at once 
 That painted vessel, as with inner life, 
 'Gan rock and heave upon that painted sea; 
 An earthquake, my loud heart-beats, made 
 
 the ground 
 Roll under us, and all at once, soul, life 
 And breath, and motion, pass'd and flow'd 
 
 away 
 To those unreal billows: round and round 
 A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty 
 
 gyves. 
 Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind- 
 driven 
 Far thro' the dizzy dark. Aloud she 
 
 shriek 'd — 
 My heart was cloven with pain. I wound 
 
 my arms 
 About her: we whirl'd giddily: the wind 
 Sung: but I clasp 'd her without fear:- her 
 
 weight 
 Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes 
 
 202 
 
Tennyson's Suppressed Poems 
 
 And parted lips which drank her breath, 
 
 down-hung 
 The jaws of Death: I, screaming, from me 
 
 flung 
 The empty phantom : all the sway and whirl 
 Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I 
 Down welter' d thro' the dark ever and ever. 
 
 THE END 
 
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