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Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight665
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.670
My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart's heart, my ownest own, farewell;
It is but for a little space I go:

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,

I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

1 This poem was composed in 1880. after a day's ramble over the peninsula of Sirmio, which stretches, almost cut off from the mainland, into the Lake of Garda, Italy. Catullus, the Latin lyric poet, had a villa on Sirmio, and the region is full of memories of him and his poems. Tennyson was rowed out to Sirmio from Desenzano, a town at the southern end of the lake.

2 "O delightful Sirmio," from Cat. Carm. 31. "Brother, hail and then farewell!" the solemn words of farewell to the dead. The reference is to Catullus's tribute to his dead brother, Carm. 101.

An echo of Catullus', Carm. vii. 31. "Pacne insularum, Sirmio, insularumque Ocelle;" (Sirmio, scarcely an island, a little darling of an island.)

1 Tennyson believed that the "two Locksley Halls were likely to be in the future two of the most historically interesting of his poems, as descriptive of the tone of the age at two distant periods of his life." H. Tennyson's Memoir, ii. 329.

He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers

Sisters, brothers—and the beasts-whose pains are hardly less than ours!

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?

Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,

105

Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

4 Edward III (1312-1377), a contemporary of Timur. "Here" Europe, as distinguished from Asia. 5 Chaucer, Wyclif, Langland, etc.

Probably the cruelties committed in the Peasant Revolt in France, as Tennyson refers to this later (p. 606, l. 157, and n.), or possibly those practised by the Black Prince in the French War. Horrible deeds are recorded by Froissart in his account of the Jaquerie, e. g. Chron., Chap. CLXXXII and CLXXXIV.

7i. e. the French populace. Demos is the Greek word for the masses, the common people. The reference is to the French Revolution and the "Gospel," then preached, of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

An allusion to recent disturbances in Ireland.

You that woo the Voices-tell them "old experience is a fool,"

Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

i. e. of those who work in the fields, or the laboring classes.

10 Hustings, the platform from which a political orator addresses the people at a Parliamentary election.