Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Jewels five-words-long,

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time

Sparkle forever.

The Princess. Part ii. Line 356,

Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
Blow, bugle answer, echoes! dying, dying, dying.

Part iii. Line 352.

O Love! they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
And answer, echoes, answer! dying, dying, dying.
There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.

Line 360.

Part iv. Line 1.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
Sweet is every sound,

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Happy he

Line 21.

Line 33.

Line 36.

Part vii. Line 203.

With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Line 308.

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.

That jewell'd mass of millinery,
That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull.

Gorgonized me from head to foot,

With a stony British stare.

Come into the garden, Maud,

Maud. Part i. ii.

vi. Stanza 6.

xiii. Stanza 2.

For the black bat, night, has flown;
Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.

Ah, Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

cxii. Stanza 1.

Stanza 9.

The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.

Let knowledge grow from more to more.

Part ii. iv. Stanza 3.

In Memoriam. Prologue. Line 25.

1

I held it truth, with him who sings 1
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.2
But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

And topples round the dreary west

A looming bastion fringed with fire.

[blocks in formation]

1 The poet alluded to is Goethe. I know this from Lord Tennyson himself, although he could not identify the passage; and when I submitted to him a small book of mine on his marvellous poem, he wrote, "It is Goethe's creed," on this very passage. - Rev. Dr. GETTY (vicar of Ecclesfield, York.

shire).

2 See Longfellow, page 616.

[blocks in formation]

And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.

"T is better to have loved and lost

Stanza 2.

Stanza 4.

[blocks in formation]

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

Hold thou the good; define it well;

For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.

But what am I?

An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.

So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life.

The great world's altar-stairs,

That slope through darkness up to God.

Who battled for the True, the Just.

1 See Shakespeare, page 144.

ælviii. Stanza 4.

liii. Stanza 4.

liv. Stanza 1.

Stanza 5.

lv. Stanza 2.

Stanz 4.

Ivi. Stanza 5.

2 I sing but as the linnet sings. — GOETHE: Wilhelm Meister, book ii chap. xi.

8 See Crabbe, page 444.

And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance.

In Memoriam. lxiv. Stanza 2.

And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne. So many worlds, so much to do,

So little done, such things to be.

Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,

And while we breathe beneath the sun, The world, which credits what is done, Is cold to all that might have been.

O last regret, regret can die!

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He seems so near, and yet so far.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky!
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow!

[blocks in formation]

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in!

Stanza 5.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace!
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand!
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be !

And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil'd with all ignoble use.

Stanza 7.

Stanza 8.

cxi. Stanza 6

Some novel power

Sprang up forever at a touch,

And hope could never hope too much In watching thee from hour to hour.

In Memoriam. cxii. Stanza 3.

Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd,
In vassal tides that follow'd thought.

Wearing all that weight

Of learning lightly like a flower.

One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.

Stanza 4.

Conclusion. Stanza 10.

Stanza 36.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD
HOUGHTON). 1809-1885.

But on and up, where Nature's heart

Beats strong amid the hills.

Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube. Stanza 2.

Great thoughts, great feelings came to them,

Like instincts, unawares.

The Men of Old.

A man's best things are nearest him,

Lie close about his feet.

I wandered by the brookside,

I wandered by the mill;

I could not hear the brook flow,

The noisy wheel was still.

The beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

Ibid.

The Brookside.

Ibid

« AnteriorContinuar »