them rose

A cry that shiver 'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills

done

All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge.

250

But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed his shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, 209

And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood; for all his face was white

And colourless, and like the wither'd moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with
drops

Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls-
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne-were parch'd with
dust;

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.

220

So like a shatter'd column lay the king;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

229

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the good old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have not been since the light that
led

The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world;
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.''

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to

friend?

260

For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.1
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest-if indeed I go-
For all my mind is clouded with a doubt-
To the island-valley of Avilion;*
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep-meadow 'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted

swan

That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull 270 Look'd one black dot against the verge of

dawn,

And on the mere the wailing died away.

ULYSSES†

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws upto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know

not me.

1 Cp. Paradise Lost, II, 1051 (p. 255). The earthly paradise of medieval romance, corresponding to the Grecian Isles of the Blest. The germ of this poem is found, not in the Odyssey, but in the story which Dante makes Ulysses tell of his adventures (Inferno, XXVI, 91 ff.). It was written shortly after the death of Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam (see In Memoriam), and voiced, said Tennyson, his "feelings about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life more simply than anything in In Memoriam." (Memoir, I. 196). It is an admirable complement to The Lotos-Eaters. Of lines 62-64 Carlyle said: "These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole Lachrymatories as I read."

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2 10
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all,
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin
fades
20

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish 'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on
life

Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were

30

Moans round with many voices.* Come, my friends,

60

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,†
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are,

we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 70

LOCKSLEY HALL‡

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

curlews call,

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

40

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,—

50

That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs;
the deep

2 Stars in the constellation Taurus, supposed to be harbingers of rain. Eneid, 1, 744.

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime

* Successive heavy monosyllables, long vowels, and full pauses, combine to make this a passage of remarkable weight and slowness. Compare note on preceding poem, 1. 259. This was intended to be a purely dramatic poem, giving expression to the conflicting and somewhat morbid feelings characteristic perhaps of introspective youth at any time, but with particular reference both to contemporary social conditions in England (it was published in 1842) and to the fresh spur given to imagination by the discoveries in science and mechanics. Some forty years later, Tennyson wrote a sequel, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful

land reposed;

the copses ring,

And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the spring.

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,

the stately ships,

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

that would be.

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;

In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

20

mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary moorland! barren shore!

O my Amy,

O the barren, 40

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy? having known

me to decline

should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute

observance hung.

heart than mine!

Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being

sets to thee.''

sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,