Just when I seem'd about to learn!
Where is the thread now?
The old trick! Only I discern—
Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
THE GLORY OF NATURE
If only once the chariot of the Morn
Had scatter'd from its wheels the twilight dun, But once the unimaginable Sun
Flash'd godlike through perennial clouds forlorn,
And shown us Beauty for a moment born:
If only once blind eyes had seen the Spring
Waking among the triumphs of midnoon,
But once had seen the lovely Summer boon,
Pass by in state like a full robed king,
The waters dance, the woodlands laugh and sing:
If only once deaf ears had heard the joy
Of the wild birds, or morning breezes blowing, Of silver fountains from their caverns flowing, Or the deep-voiced rivers rolling by,
Then Night eternal fallen from the sky :
If only once weird Time had rent asunder
The curtain of the Clouds, and shown us Night
Climbing into the awful Infinite,
Those stairs whose steps are worlds above and under,
Glory on glory, wonder upon wonder !
If Lightnings lit the Earthquake on his way
But once, or Thunder spake unto the world;
The realm-wide banners of the Wind unfurl'd;
Earth-prison'd Fires broke loose into the day;
Or the great Seas awoke-then slept for aye!
Ah! sure the heart of Man too strongly tried
By godlike presences so vast and fair,
Withering in dread, or sick in love's despair,
Had wept for ever, and to Heaven cried,
Or struck with lightnings of delight had died.
But He though heir of immortality,
With mortal dust too feeble for the sight, Draws through a veil God's overwhelming light-Use arms the soul; anon there moveth by
A more majestic Angel-and we die.
The edge of thought was blunted by the stress
Of the hard world; my fancy had wax'd dull,
All nature seem'd less nobly beautiful,-
Robb'd of her grandeur and her loveliness;
Methought the Muse within my heart had died,
Till, late, awaken'd at the break of day,
Just as the East took fire and doff'd its gray,
The rich preparatives of light I spied;
But one sole star-none other anywhere-
A wild-rose odour from the fields was borne:
The lark's mysterious joy fill'd earth and air,
And from the wind's top met the hunter's horn;
The aspen trembled wildly, and the morn
Breathed up in rosy clouds, divinely fair!
C. Tennyson-Turner
To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
Cleaving the western sky;
Wing'd too with wind it is, and winnowings
Of birds; as if the day's last hour in rings
Of strenuous flight must die.
Sun-steep'd in fire, the homeward pinions sway
Above the dovecote-tops;
And clouds of starlings, ere they rest with day,
Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play,
By turns in every copse:
Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives,
Save for the whirr within,
You could not tell the starlings from the leaves;
Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves
Away with all its din.
Even thus Hope's hours, in ever-eddying flight,
To many a refuge tend;
With the first light she laugh'd, and the last light
Glows round her still; who natheless in the night
At length must make an end.
And now the mustering rooks innumerable
Together sail and soar,
While for the day's death, like a tolling knell,
Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell,
No more, farewell, no more!
Is Hope not plumed, as 'twere a fiery dart?
And oh thou dying day,
Even as thou goest must she too depart,
And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart
As will not fly away?
THE STEAM THRESHING-MACHINE
WITH THE STRAW-CARRIER
Flush with the pond the lurid furnace burn'd
At eve, while smoke and vapour fill'd the yard ;
The gloomy winter sky was dimly starr'd,
The fly-wheel with a mellow murmur turn'd;
While, ever rising on its mystic stair
In the dim light, from secret chambers borne,
The straw of harvest, sever'd from the corn,
Climb'd, and fell over, in the murky air.
I thought of mind and matter, will and law,
And then of him, who set his stately seal
Of Roman words on all the forms he saw
Of old-world husbandry : I could but feel
With what a rich precision he would draw
The endless ladder, and the booming wheel!
C. Tennyson-Turner
|