' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

[Mikiesboy]

22 hours ago, AC Benus said:

stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

  And gather dust and chaff, and call

  To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

This speaks loudly now. Many people are feeling lost and sad. It's the time to meditate and look for messages of hope and goodness.

[AC Benus]

2 hours ago, Mikiesboy said:

This speaks loudly now. Many people are feeling lost and sad. It's the time to meditate and look for messages of hope and goodness.

Thank you, Tim. These feelings of crossover, from his times (when death was frequent) to ours, is what motivated me to start posting In Memoriam at this time

[Mikiesboy]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

Thank you, Tim. These feelings of crossover, from his times (when death was frequent) to ours, is what motivated me to start posting In Memoriam at this time

They are wonderful ... all of them.

[AC Benus]

 

 

56.

Peace; come away: the song of woe

  Is after all an earthly song:

  Peace; come away: we do him wrong

To sing so wildly: let us go.

 

Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;

  But half my life I leave behind:

  Methinks my friend is richly shrined;

But I shall pass; my work will fail.

 

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,

  One set slow bell will seem to toll

  The passing of the sweetest soul

That ever looked with human eyes.

 

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,

  Eternal greetings to the dead;

  And "Ave, Ave, Ave," said,

"Adieu, adieu," for evermore.

 

 

57.

In those sad words I took farewell:

  Like echoes in sepulchral halls,

  As drop by drop the water falls

In vaults and catacombs, they fell;

 

And, falling, idly broke the peace

  Of hearts that beat from day to day,

  Half-conscious of their dying clay,

And those cold crypts where they shall cease.

 

The high Muse answered: "Wherefore grieve

  Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?

  Abide a little longer here,

And thou shalt take a nobler leave."

Tennyson

 

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

58.

He passed; a soul of nobler tone:

  My spirit loved and loves him yet,

  Like some poor girl whose heart is set

On one whose rank exceeds her own.

 

He mixing with his proper sphere,

  She finds the baseness of her lot,

  Half jealous of she knows not what,

And envying all that meet him there.

 

The little village looks forlorn;

  She sighs amid her narrow days,

  Moving about the household ways,

In that dark house where she was born.

 

The foolish neighbors come and go,

  And tease her till the day draws by:

  At night she weeps, "How vain am I!

How should he love a thing so low?"

 

 

59.

If, in thy second state sublime,

  Thy ransomed reason change replies

  With all the circle of the wise,

The perfect flower of human time;

 

And if thou cast thine eyes below,

  How dimly charactered and slight,

  How dwarfed a growth of cold and night,

How blanched with darkness must I grow!

 

Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,

  Where thy first form was made a man;

  I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can

The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

60.

Though if an eye that's downward cast

  Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,

  Then be my love an idle tale,

And fading legend of the past;

 

And thou, as one that once declined,

  When he was little more than boy,

  On some unworthy heart with joy,

But lives to wed an equal mind;

 

And breathes a novel world, the while

  His other passion wholly dies,

  Or in the light of deeper eyes

Is matter for a flying smile.

 

 

61.

Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven,=1>

  And love in which my hound has part,

  Can hang no weight upon my heart

In its assumptions up to heaven;

 

And I am so much more than these,

  As thou, perchance, art more than I,

  And yet I spare them sympathy,

And I would set their pains at ease.

 

So mayst thou watch me where I weep,

  As, unto vaster motions bound,

  The circuits of thine orbit round

A higher height, a deeper deep.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

62.

Dost thou look back on what hath been,

  As some divinely gifted man,

  Whose life in low estate began

And on a simple village green;

 

5Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,

  And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

  And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star;

 

Who makes by force his merit known

  And lives to clutch the golden keys,

  To mould a mighty state's decrees,

And shape the whisper of the throne;

 

And moving up from high to higher,

  Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope

  The pillar of a people's hope,

The centre of a world's desire;

 

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,

  When all his active powers are still,

  A distant dearness in the hill,

A secret sweetness in the stream,

 

The limit of his narrower fate,

  While yet beside its vocal springs

  He played at counsellors and kings,

With one that was his earliest mate;

 

Who ploughs with pain his native lea

  And reaps the labour of his hands,

  Or in the furrow musing stands;

"Does my old friend remember me?"

 

 

63.

Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;

  I lull a fancy trouble-tost

  With "Love's too precious to be lost,

A little grain shall not be spilt."

 

And in that solace can I sing,

  Till out of painful phases wrought

  There flutters up a happy thought,

Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:

 

Since we deserved the name of friends,

  And thine effect so lives in me,

  A part of mine may live in thee

And move thee on to noble ends.

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2020 by AC Benus

[Black Paper]

Life

 

The most important things in this world are things that you cannot see.
The most interesting places you will ever visit are places you were meant to be.
The most important things you will ever say will not always be planned for that day.
The most important lesson that you will learn is to make the most of every day.
Never regret or forget those that you have met before,
Or, forget the hard work that you have done for each chore.
You may experience clearance through perseverance,
But, what matters most is, always, to have balance.
You may never understand how greatly you have, in this world, to change your life, your own chance.
You are always able to become better.
Never forget this Spiritual Letter.✨

Edited May 23, 2020 by Black Paper

[AC Benus]

 

64.

You thought my heart too far dis-eased;

  You wonder when my fancies play

  To find me gay among the gay,

Like one with any trifle pleased.

 

The shade by which my life was crost,

  Which makes a desert in the mind,

  Has made me kindly with my kind,

And like to him whose sight is lost;

 

Whose feet are guided through the land,

  Whose jest among his friends is free,

  Who takes the children on his knee,

And winds their curls about his hand:

 

He plays with threads, he beats his chair

  For pastime, dreaming of the sky;

  His inner day can never die,

His night of loss is always there.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 24, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

65.

When on my bed the moonlight falls,

  I know that in thy place of rest

  By that broad water of the west,

There comes a glory on the walls;

 

Thy marble bright in dark appears,

  As slowly steals a silver flame

  Along the letters of thy name,

And o'er the number of thy years.

 

The mystic glory swims away;

  From off my bed the moonlight dies;

  And closing eaves of wearied eyes

I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray;

 

And then I know the mist is drawn

  A lucid veil from coast to coast,

  And in the dark church like a ghost

Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

66.

When in the down I sink my head,

  Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath;

  Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,

Nor can I dream of thee as dead:

 

I walk as ere I walked forlorn,

  When all our path was fresh with dew,

  And all the bugle breezes blew

Reveillee to the breaking morn.

 

But what is this? I turn about,

  I find a trouble in thine eye,

  Which makes me sad I know not why,

Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:

 

But ere the lark hath left the lea

  I wake, and I discern the truth;

  It is the trouble of my youth

That foolish sleep transfers to thee.

 

 

67.

I dreamed there would be Spring no more,

  That Nature's ancient power was lost:

  The streets were black with smoke and frost,

They chattered trifles at the door:

 

I wandered from the noisy town,

  I found a wood with thorny boughs:

  I took the thorns to bind my brows,

I wore them like a civic crown:

 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

  From youth and babe and hoary hairs:

  They called me in the public squares

The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

 

They called me fool, they called me child:

  I found an angel of the night;

  The voice was low, the look was bright;

He looked upon my crown and smiled:

 

He reached the glory of a hand,

  That seemed to touch it into leaf:

  The voice was not the voice of grief,

The words were hard to understand.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

68.

I cannot see the features right,

  When on the gloom I strive to paint

  The face I know; the hues are faint

And mix with hollow masks of night;

 

Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,

  A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,

  A hand that points, and palled shapes

In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;

 

And crowds that stream from yawning doors,

  And shoals of puckered faces drive;

  Dark bulks that tumble half alive,

And lazy lengths on boundless shores;

 

Till all at once beyond the will

  I hear a wizard music roll,

  And through a lattice on the soul

Looks thy fair face and makes it still.

 

 

69.

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance

  And madness, thou hast forged at last

  A night-long Present of the Past

In which we went through summer France.

 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul?

  Then bring an opiate trebly strong,

  Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong

That so my pleasure may be whole;

 

While now we talk as once we talked

  Of men and minds, the dust of change,

  The days that grow to something strange,

In walking as of old we walked

 

Beside the river's wooded reach,

  The fortress, and the mountain ridge,

  The cataract flashing from the bridge,

The breaker breaking on the beach.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

I'm curious what people think of this part of No. 67. 

wandered from the noisy town,

  I found a wood with thorny boughs:

  I took the thorns to bind my brows,

I wore them like a civic crown:

 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

  From youth and babe and hoary hairs:

  They called me in the public squares

The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

 

They called me fool, they called me child:

  I found an angel of the night;

  The voice was low, the look was bright;

He looked upon my crown and smiled:

 

He reached the glory of a hand,

  That seemed to touch it into leaf:

  The voice was not the voice of grief,

The words were hard to understand.

 

 

Might it relate to this passage from No. 69?

 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul?

  Then bring an opiate trebly strong,

  Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong

That so my pleasure may be whole

 

 

[Mikiesboy]

7 hours ago, AC Benus said:

I'm curious what people think of this part of No. 67. 

wandered from the noisy town,

  I found a wood with thorny boughs:

  I took the thorns to bind my brows,

I wore them like a civic crown:

 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

  From youth and babe and hoary hairs:

  They called me in the public squares

The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

 

They called me fool, they called me child:

  I found an angel of the night;

  The voice was low, the look was bright;

He looked upon my crown and smiled:

 

He reached the glory of a hand,

  That seemed to touch it into leaf:

  The voice was not the voice of grief,

The words were hard to understand.

 

 

Might it relate to this passage from No. 69?

 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul?

  Then bring an opiate trebly strong,

  Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong

That so my pleasure may be whole

 

 

it could very well , i find that lots of things in all these poems relate to each other or have common threads

[Parker Owens]

11 hours ago, AC Benus said:

I'm curious what people think of this part of No. 67. 

wandered from the noisy town,

  I found a wood with thorny boughs:

  I took the thorns to bind my brows,

I wore them like a civic crown:

 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

  From youth and babe and hoary hairs:

  They called me in the public squares

The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

 

They called me fool, they called me child:

  I found an angel of the night;

  The voice was low, the look was bright;

He looked upon my crown and smiled:

 

He reached the glory of a hand,

  That seemed to touch it into leaf:

  The voice was not the voice of grief,

The words were hard to understand.

 

 

Might it relate to this passage from No. 69?

 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul?

  Then bring an opiate trebly strong,

  Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong

That so my pleasure may be whole

 

 

I can conceive of connections, though I’m off base, likely as not...

Angel of the night could refer to a vampire or similar creature of the underworld; this might make sense as having credit with the soul., Thus  the poet appears to be asking for a drug to restore him to the pleasures disapproved of by those who spout their own versions of heaven.

[AC Benus]

@Mikiesboy and @Parker Owens Walking out in the night appears in a few of the earlier poems too (like the one where Tennyson apparently walked to Hallam's house and stood there, in front of it, until the frost formed in the morning). To me, in No. 67, he's again going out at night, away from the glib people who laugh behind his back during the day for his mourning the loss of a mere "friend." Out there in the city's shadows, in the sense of cruising, the poet finds some comfort being with his own kind; "I found an angel of the night / The voice was low, the look was bright /He looked upon my crown and smiled." The crown of thorns being his affliction -- either in the sense of having lost the man of his life, or in the sense of being a person ridiculed for his orientation. Naturally, it could be both of these at the same time. "He reached the glory of a hand," signaling physical contact and the relief of just holding or being held by one who understands.

The reason I think this might relate to No. 69 is because he wishes for an opiate not to get high, but simply to calm "the blindfold sense of wrong / That so my pleasure may be whole." In other words, the simultaneous guilt and sense of relief being with another young man physically brings to him, as if he feels he's "cheating" on Hallam.

These are the thoughts I had about these lines....

  

 

[Mikiesboy]

6 hours ago, AC Benus said:

@Mikiesboy and @Parker Owens Walking out in the night appears in a few of the earlier poems too (like the one where Tennyson apparently walked to Hallam's house and stood there, in front of it, until the frost formed in the morning). To me, in No. 67, he's again going out at night, away from the glib people who laugh behind his back during the day for his mourning the loss of a mere "friend." Out there in the city's shadows, in the sense of cruising, the poet finds some comfort being with his own kind; "I found an angel of the night / The voice was low, the look was bright /He looked upon my crown and smiled." The crown of thorns being his affliction -- either in the sense of having lost the man of his life, or in the sense of being a person ridiculed for his orientation. Naturally, it could be both of these at the same time. "He reached the glory of a hand," signaling physical contact and the relief of just holding or being held by one who understands.

The reason I think this might relate to No. 69 is because he wishes for an opiate not to get high, but simply to calm "the blindfold sense of wrong / That so my pleasure may be whole." In other words, the simultaneous guilt and sense of relief being with another young man physically brings to him, as if he feels he's "cheating" on Hallam.

These are the thoughts I had about these lines....

  

 

He's lost his love ... yet we still want and need others. We want physical touch and understanding. I think sometimes about what it would be like to lose that .. like if i lost Michael. It would leave such a huge hole in me ... but even then, time would fill it slowly. And while i may not want another husband, i would still need to be held sometimes, loved maybe. So, what you say here makes sense. i find each of these poems overwhelming but it is how Tennyson dealt with his love and pain. It's his man and who and what he was, it's Hallam's place in his world, what he meant and still does even in though he's passed on. They are each beautiful and i have no idea how he wrote these ... or how you wrote your 150 sonnets.  i don't think i could ever do such things ... and i admire you for being able to. xo

[AC Benus]

 

70.

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,

  And howlest, issuing out of night,

  With blasts that blow the poplar white,

And lash with storm the streaming pane?

 

Day, when my crowned estate begun

  To pine in that reverse of doom,

  Which sickened every living bloom,

And blurred the splendour of the sun;

 

Who usherest in the dolorous hour

  With thy quick tears that make the rose

  Pull sideways, and the daisy close

Her crimson fringes to the shower;

 

Who mightest have heaved a windless flame

  Up the deep East, or, whispering, played

  A chequer-work of beam and shade

Along the hills, yet looked the same.

 

As wan, as chill, as wild as now;

  Day, marked as with some hideous crime,

  When the dark hand struck down through time,

And cancelled nature's best: but thou,

 

Lift as thou mayest thy burthened brows

  Through clouds that drench the morning star,

  And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar,

And sow the sky with flying boughs,

 

And up thy vault with roaring sound

  Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;

  Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,

And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

29 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

 

70.

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,

  And howlest, issuing out of night,

  With blasts that blow the poplar white,

And lash with storm the streaming pane?

 

Day, when my crowned estate begun

  To pine in that reverse of doom,

  Which sickened every living bloom,

And blurred the splendour of the sun;

 

Who usherest in the dolorous hour

  With thy quick tears that make the rose

  Pull sideways, and the daisy close

Her crimson fringes to the shower;

 

Who mightest have heaved a windless flame

  Up the deep East, or, whispering, played

  A chequer-work of beam and shade

Along the hills, yet looked the same.

 

As wan, as chill, as wild as now;

  Day, marked as with some hideous crime,

  When the dark hand struck down through time,

And cancelled nature's best: but thou,

 

Lift as thou mayest thy burthened brows

  Through clouds that drench the morning star,

  And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar,

And sow the sky with flying boughs,

 

And up thy vault with roaring sound

  Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;

  Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,

And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

Tennyson

 

 

What a wintry set of images for a hot, humid day. And so oppressive, like the very air. 

[AC Benus]

 

71.

So many worlds, so much to do,

  So little done, such things to be,

  How know I what had need of thee,

For thou wert strong as thou wert true.

 

The fame is quenched that I foresaw,

  The head hath missed an earthly wreath:

  I curse not nature, no, nor death;

For nothing is that errs from law.

 

We pass; the path that each man trod

  Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:

  What fame is left for human deeds

In endless age? It rests with God.

 

O hollow wraith of dying fame,

  Fade wholly, while the soul exults,

  And self-infolds the large results

Of force that would have forged a name.

Tennyson

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

51 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

The fame is quenched that I foresaw,

  The head hath missed an earthly wreath:

  I curse not nature, no, nor death;

For nothing is that errs from law.

 

We pass; the path that each man trod

  Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:

  What fame is left for human deeds

In endless age? It rests with God.

The second of these quatrains strikes me, for though it is nearly two centuries old, its lines have not yellowed or dimmed with age; indeed, they remain fresh and clear.

The first of these two struck me for the word law. How earnestly our nineteenth century forebears searched for chains of causality and natural laws to govern everything from economics to the psyche. Tennyson may not mean law in that sense here, but the mention of it send my mind in that direction.  

[Mikiesboy]

6 minutes ago, Parker Owens said:

he first of these two struck me for the word law. How earnestly our nineteenth century forebears searched for chains of causality and natural laws to govern everything from economics to the psyche. Tennyson may not mean law in that sense here, but the mention of it send my mind in that direction.  

Yeah, to me law, here, means natural laws.. just the way of things. For each action there is a reaction, a reckoning of some sort.

[AC Benus]

2 hours ago, AC Benus said:

 

71.

So many worlds, so much to do,

  So little done, such things to be,

  How know I what had need of thee,

For thou wert strong as thou wert true.

 

The fame is quenched that I foresaw,

  The head hath missed an earthly wreath:

  I curse not nature, no, nor death;

For nothing is that errs from law.

 

We pass; the path that each man trod

  Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:

  What fame is left for human deeds

In endless age? It rests with God.

 

O hollow wraith of dying fame,

  Fade wholly, while the soul exults,

  And self-infolds the large results

Of force that would have forged a name.

Tennyson

 

@Parker Owens and @Mikiesboy I agree about "that errs from law," and in the context of "nature" in the line above, I read the meaning as "everything that exists in nature follows nature's laws." This includes the love the young men felt for one another.

The beginning and ending strophes revolve around the point that Hallam was already the better-established and much-admired poet from the couple. It may be the cruelest of ironies that if not for the crucible of Arthur's death, Tennyson might have always remained in his partner's artistic shadow.

[Mikiesboy]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

This includes the love the young men felt for one another.

Strangely, in myself, i have never felt i am 'abnormal' and the longer i live and learn about our world, the more normal i know i am/we are.

[AC Benus]

 

 

72.

As sometimes in a dead man's face,

  To those that watch it more and more,

  A likeness, hardly seen before,

Comes out -- to some one of his race:

 

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,

  I see thee what thou art, and know

  Thy likeness to the wise below,

Thy kindred with the great of old.

 

But there is more than I can see,

  And what I see I leave unsaid,

  Nor speak it, knowing Death has made

His darkness beautiful with thee.

 

I leave thy praises unexpressed

  In verse that brings myself relief,

  And by the measure of my grief

I leave thy greatness to be guessed;

 

What practice howsoe'er expert

  In fitting aptest words to things,

  Or voice the richest-toned that sings,

Hath power to give thee as thou wert?

 

I care not in these fading days

  To raise a cry that lasts not long,

  And round thee with the breeze of song

To stir a little dust of praise.

 

Thy leaf has perished 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.

 

So here shall silence guard thy fame;

  But somewhere, out of human view,

  Whate'er thy hands are set to do

Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by AC Benus