' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

[Mikiesboy]

13 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

 

 

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

 

 

 

This one ... shouts, it screams.. even though the the poet says:

this:

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

 

and this:

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;

[MichaelS36]

On 5/27/2020 at 10:45 AM, 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

 

 

To me it means... Though I loved … I still have need of the others like me, of love, and touch. And that 'opiate' .. maybe sex.. can bring relief at least for a time. 

[AC Benus]

 

73.

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 31, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

74.

Take wings of fancy, and ascend,

  And in a moment set thy face

  Where all the starry heavens of space

Are sharpened to a needle's end;

 

Take wings of foresight; lighten through

  The secular abyss to come,

  And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb

Before the mouldering of a yew;

 

And if the matin songs, that woke

  The darkness of our planet, last,

  Thine own shall wither in the vast,

Ere half the lifetime of an oak.

 

Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers

  With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;

  And what are they when these remain

The ruined shells of hollow towers?

 

 

75.

What hope is here for modern rhyme

  To him, who turns a musing eye

  On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie

Foreshortened in the tract of time?

 

These mortal lullabies of pain

  May bind a book, may line a box,

  May serve to curl a maiden's locks;

Or when a thousand moons shall wane

 

A man upon a stall may find,

  And, passing, turn the page that tells

  A grief, then changed to something else,

Sung by a long-forgotten mind.

 

But what of that? My darkened ways

  Shall ring with music all the same;

  To breathe my loss is more than fame,

To utter love more sweet than praise.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 1, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

76.

Again at Christmas did we weave

  The holly round the Christmas hearth;

  The silent snow possessed the earth,

And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:

 

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,

  No wing of wind the region swept,

  But over all things brooding slept

The quiet sense of something lost.

 

As in the winters left behind,

  Again our ancient games had place,

  The mimic picture's breathing grace,

And dance and song and hoodman-blind.

 

Who showed a token of distress?

  No single tear, no mark of pain:

  O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?

O grief, can grief be changed to less?

 

O last regret, regret can die!

  No -- mixt with all this mystic frame,

  Her deep relations are the same,

But with long use her tears are dry.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

77.

"More than my brothers are to me" --

  Let this not vex thee, noble heart!

  I know thee of what force thou art

To hold the costliest love in fee.

 

But thou and I are one in kind,

  As moulded like in Nature's mint;

  And hill and wood and field did print

The same sweet forms in either mind.

 

For us the same cold streamlet curled

  Through all his eddying coves, the same

  All winds that roam the twilight came

In whispers of the beauteous world.

 

At one dear knee we proffered vows,

  One lesson from one book we learned,

  Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turned

To black and brown on kindred brows.

 

And so my wealth resembles thine,

  But he was rich where I was poor,

  And he supplied my want the more

As his unlikeness fitted mine.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

78.

If any vague desire should rise,

  That holy Death, ere Arthur died,

  Had moved me kindly from his side,

And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;

 

Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,

  The grief my loss in him had wrought,

  A grief as deep as life or thought,

But stayed in peace with God and man.

 

I make a picture in the brain;

  I hear the sentence that he speaks;

  He bears the burthen of the weeks

But turns his burthen into gain.

 

His credit thus shall set me free;

  And, influence-rich to soothe and save,

  Unused example from the grave

Reach out dead hands to comfort me.

 

 

79.

Could I have said while he was here,

  "My love shall now no further range;

  There cannot come a mellower change,

For now is love mature in ear."

 

Love, then, had hope of richer store:

  What end is here to my complaint?

  This haunting whisper makes me faint,

"More years had made me love thee more.'

 

But Death returns an answer sweet:

  "My sudden frost was sudden gain,

  And gave all ripeness to the grain,

It might have drawn from after-heat."

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

80.

I wage not any feud with Death

  For changes wrought on form and face;

  No lower life that earth's embrace

May breed with him, can fright my faith.

 

Eternal process moving on,

  From state to state the spirit walks;

  And these are but the shattered stalks,

Or ruined chrysalis of one.

 

Nor blame I Death, because he bare

  The use of virtue out of earth:

  I know transplanted human worth

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

 

For this alone on Death I wreak

  The wrath that garners in my heart;

  He put our lives so far apart

We cannot hear each other speak.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

81.

Dip down upon the northern shore,

  O sweet new-year delaying long;

  Thou doest expectant nature wrong;

Delaying long, delay no more.

 

What stays thee from the clouded noons,

  Thy sweetness from its proper place?

  Can trouble live with April days,

Or sadness in the summer moons?

 

Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,

  The little speedwell's darling blue,

  Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew,

Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.

 

O thou, new-year, delaying long,

  Delayest the sorrow in my blood,

  That longs to burst a frozen bud

And flood a fresher throat with song.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

82.

When I contemplate all alone

  The life that had been thine below,

  And fix my thoughts on all the glow

To which thy crescent would have grown;

 

I see thee sitting crowned with good,

  A central warmth diffusing bliss

  In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,

On all the branches of thy blood;

 

Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;

  For now the day was drawing on,

  When thou should'st link thy life with one

Of mine own house, and boys of thine

 

Had babbled "Uncle" on my knee;

  But that remorseless iron hour

  Made cypress of her orange flower,

Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.

 

I seem to meet their least desire,

  To clap their cheeks, to call them mine.

  I see their unborn faces shine

Beside the never-lighted fire.

 

I see myself an honoured guest,

  Thy partner in the flowery walk

  Of letters, genial table-talk,

Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;

 

While now thy prosperous labor fills

  The lips of men with honest praise,

  And sun by sun the happy days

Descend below the golden hills

 

With promise of a morn as fair,

  And all the train of bounteous hours

  Conduct by paths of growing powers,

To reverence and the silver hair;

 

Till slowly worn her earthly robe,

  Her lavish mission richly wrought,

  Leaving great legacies of thought,

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;

 

What time mine own might also flee,

  As linked with thine in love and fate,

  And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait

To the other shore, involved in thee,

 

Arrive at last the blessed goal,

  And He that died in Holy Land

  Would reach us out the shining hand,

And take us as a single soul.

 

What reed was that on which I leant?

  Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake

  The old bitterness again, and break

The low beginnings of content.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 7, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

83.

This truth came borne with bier and pall

  I felt it, when I sorrowed most,

  'Tis better to have loved and lost,

Than never to have loved at all --

 

O true in word, and tried in deed,

  Demanding, so to bring relief

  To this which is our common grief,

What kind of life is that I lead;

 

And whether trust in things above

  Be dimmed of sorrow, or sustained;

  And whether love for him have drained

My capabilities of love;

 

Your words have virtue such as draws

  A faithful answer from the breast,

  Through light reproaches, half exprest,

And loyal unto kindly laws.

 

My blood an even tenor kept,

  Till on mine ear this message falls,

  That in Vienna's fatal walls

God's finger touched him, and he slept.

 

The great Intelligences fair

  That range above our mortal state,

  In circle round the blessed gate,

Received and gave him welcome there;

 

And led him through the blissful climes,

  And showed him in the fountain fresh

  All knowledge that the sons of flesh

Shall gather in the cycled times.

 

But I remained, whose hopes were dim,

  Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,

  To wander on a darkened earth,

Where all things round me breathed of him. '

 

O friendship, equal-poised control,

  O heart, with kindliest motion warm,

  O sacred essence, other form,

O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!

 

Yet none could better know than I,

  How much of act at human hands

  The sense of human will demands

By which we dare to live or die.

 

Whatever way my days decline,

  I felt and feel, tho' left alone,

  His being working in mine own,

The footsteps of his life in mine;

 

A life that all the Muses decked

  With gifts of grace, that might express

  All-comprehensive tenderness,

All-subtilising intellect:

 

And so my passion hath not swerved

  To works of weakness, but I find

  An image comforting the mind,

And in my grief a strength reserved.

 

Likewise the imaginative woe,

  That loved to handle spiritual strife

  Diffused the shock through all my life,

But in the present broke the blow.

 

My pulses therefore beat again

  For other friends that once I met;

  Nor can it suit me to forget

The mighty hopes that make us men.

 

I woo your love: I count it crime

  To mourn for any overmuch;

  I, the divided half of such

A friendship as had mastered Time;

 

Which masters Time indeed, and is

  Eternal, separate from fears:

  The all-assuming months and years

Can take no part away from this:

 

But Summer on the steaming floods,

  And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,

  And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,

That gather in the waning woods,

 

And every pulse of wind and wave

  Recalls, in change of light or gloom,

  My old affection of the tomb,

And my prime passion in the grave:

 

My old affection of the tomb,

  A part of stillness, yearns to speak:

  "Arise, and get thee forth and seek

A friendship for the years to come.

 

"I watch thee from the quiet shore;

  Thy spirit up to mine can reach;

  But in dear words of human speech

We two communicate no more."

 

And I, "Can clouds of nature stain

  The starry clearness of the free?

  How is it? Canst thou feel for me

Some painless sympathy with pain?"

 

And lightly does the whisper fall:

  `'Tis hard for thee to fathom this;

  I triumph in conclusive bliss,

And that serene result of all.'

 

So hold I commerce with the dead;

  Or so methinks the dead would say;

  Or so shall grief with symbols play

And pining life be fancy-fed.

 

Now looking to some settled end,

  That these things pass, and I shall prove

  A meeting somewhere, love with love,

I crave your pardon, O my friend;

 

If not so fresh, with love as true,

  I, clasping brother-hands, aver

  I could not, if I would, transfer

The whole I felt for him to you.

 

For which be they that hold apart

  The promise of the golden hours?

  First love, first friendship, equal powers,

That marry with the virgin heart.

 

Still mine, that cannot but deplore,

  That beats within a lonely place,

  That yet remembers his embrace,

But at his footstep leaps no more,

 

My heart, though widowed, may not rest

  Quite in the love of what is gone,

   But seeks to beat in time with one

That warms another living breast.

 

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,

  Knowing the primrose yet is dear,

  The primrose of the later year,

As not unlike to that of Spring.

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

84.

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,

  That rollest from the gorgeous gloom

  Of evening over brake and bloom

And meadow, slowly breathing bare

 

The round of space, and rapt below

  Through all the dewy-tasselled wood,

  And shadowing down the horned flood

In ripples, fan my brows and blow

 

The fever from my cheek, and sigh

  The full new life that feeds thy breath

  Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,

Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

 

From belt to belt of crimson seas

  On leagues of odour streaming far,

  To where in yonder orient star

A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."

Tennyson

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

This particular sequence from In Memoriam is...well, fill in your own adjectives... The sweep of these poems leaves me amazed, sad, inspired... The poetic growth from the beginning examples to these is all too evident. The loss of his man has burned away most of the impurities of Tennyson's art. 

No. 82, for example, is an imagined 'what if' scenario, as if the two had never been parted. The poet imagines a long life as he sits back and encourages and nurtures Arthur's poetic greatness, which is duly acclaimed by an admiring public. When Hallam's natural lifespan is drawing to a close, Tennyson paints this image:

Till slowly worn her earthly robe,

  Her lavish mission richly wrought,

  Leaving great legacies of thought,

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;

 

What time mine own might also flee,

  As linked with thine in love and fate,

  And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait

To the other shore, involved in thee,

 

Arrive at last the blessed goal,

  And He that died in Holy Land

  Would reach us out the shining hand,

And take us as a single soul.

 

What more beautiful love poetry has even been written? Hallam's "legacies of thought" is here, and the poet has made them both immortal, as if "a single soul." 

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

85.

I passed beside the reverend walls

  In which of old I wore the gown;

  I roved at random through the town,

And saw the tumult of the halls;

 

And heard once more in college fanes

  The storm their high-built organs make,

  And thunder-music, rolling, shake

The prophet blazoned on the panes;

 

And caught once more the distant shout,

  The measured pulse of racing oars

  Among the willows; paced the shores

And many a bridge, and all about

 

The same gray flats again, and felt

  The same, but not the same; and last

  Up that long walk of limes I past

To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

 

Another name was on the door:

  I lingered; all within was noise

  Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys

That crashed the glass and beat the floor;

 

Where once we held debate, a band

  Of youthful friends, on mind and art,

  And labour, and the changing mart,

And all the framework of the land;

 

When one would aim an arrow fair,

  But send it slackly from the string;

  And one would pierce an outer ring,

And one an inner, here and there;

 

And last the master-bowman, he,

  Would cleave the mark. A willing ear

  We lent him. Who, but hung to hear

The rapt oration flowing free

 

From point to point, with power and grace

  And music in the bounds of law,

  To those conclusions when we saw

The God within him light his face,

 

And seem to lift the form, and glow

  In azure orbits heavenly-wise;

  And over those ethereal eyes

The bar of Michael Angelo.

Tennyson

 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

86.

Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,

  Rings Eden through the budded quicks,

  O tell me where the senses mix,

O tell me where the passions meet,

 

Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ

  Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,

  And in the midmost heart of grief

Thy passion clasps a secret joy:

 

And I -- my harp would prelude woe --

  I cannot all command the strings;

  The glory of the sum of things

Will flash along the chords and go.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

87.

Witch-elms that counterchange the floor

  Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;

  And thou, with all thy breadth and height

Of foliage, towering sycamore;

 

How often, hither wandering down,

  My Arthur found your shadows fair,

  And shook to all the liberal air

The dust and din and steam of town:

 

He brought an eye for all he saw;

  He mixt in all our simple sports;

  They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts

And dusty purlieus of the law.

 

O joy to him in this retreat,

  Immantled in ambrosial dark,

  To drink the cooler air, and mark

The landscape winking through the heat:

 

O sound to rout the brood of cares,

  The sweep of scythe in morning dew,

  The gust that round the garden flew,

And tumbled half the mellowing pears!

 

O bliss, when all in circle drawn

  About him, heart and ear were fed

  To hear him as he lay and read

The Tuscan poets on the lawn:

 

Or in the all-golden afternoon

  A guest, or happy sister, sung,

  Or here she brought the harp and flung

A ballad to the brightening moon:

 

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,

  Beyond the bounding hill to stray,

  And break the livelong summer day

With banquet in the distant woods;

 

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,

  Discussed the books to love or hate,

  Or touched the changes of the state,

Or threaded some Socratic dream;

 

But if I praised the busy town,

  He loved to rail against it still,

  For "ground in yonder social mill

We rub each other's angles down,

 

"And merge," he said, "in form and gloss

  The picturesque of man and man."

  We talked: the stream beneath us ran,

The wine-flask lying couched in moss,

 

Or cooled within the glooming wave;

  And last, returning from afar,

  Before the crimson-circled star

Had fall'n into her father's grave,

 

And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,

  We heard behind the woodbine veil

  The milk that bubbled in the pail,

And buzzings of the honied hours.

Tennyson

 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by AC Benus

[Mikiesboy]

6 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

87.

Witch-elms that counterchange the floor

  Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;

  And thou, with all thy breadth and height

Of foliage, towering sycamore;

All of these poems are a wonder. But this one tells us much of the love and respect they had each for the other.  Perhaps the pain of loss is lessening now for Tennyson, and he can look back and remember good times with less pain.

[AC Benus]

Two things stand out for me as I read No. 87 this morning. First, how poetically accomplished Tennyson brings in the thought of the Land of Milk and Honey at the poem's end. It is done so subtly, and inspires me as a poet to try and do better. And the other part is:   

O bliss, when all in circle drawn

  About him, heart and ear were fed

  To hear him as he lay and read

The Tuscan poets on the lawn.

 

It conjures the beautiful description Ovid makes when he says all of nature gathered around to hear Orpheus lament his lost love. And connected to this thought is how some ancient Greeks, especially the Spartans, said this is exact time same-sex love sprang into being, with Orpheus showing the way. 

 

This poem is awash in nostalgia, but the love here lifts it high above anything maudlin. It's an inspiration.   

[Lyssa]

5 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Two things stand out for me as I read No. 87 this morning. First, how poetically accomplished Tennyson brings in the thought of the Land of Milk and Honey at the poem's end. It is done so subtly, and inspires me as a poet to try and do better. And the other part is:   

O bliss, when all in circle drawn

  About him, heart and ear were fed

  To hear him as he lay and read

The Tuscan poets on the lawn.

 

It conjures the beautiful description Ovid makes when he says all of nature gathered around to hear Orpheus lament his lost love. And connected to this thought is how some ancient Greeks, especially the Spartans, said this is exact time same-sex love sprang into being, with Orpheus showing the way. 

 

This poem is awash in nostalgia, but the love here lifts it high above anything maudlin. It's an inspiration.   

Reading this poem is like traveling on the way to Arkadia. 🙂

[AC Benus]

 

 

88.

He tasted love with half his mind,

  Nor ever drank the inviolate spring

  Where nighest heaven, who first could fling

This bitter seed among mankind;

 

That could the dead, whose dying eyes

  Were closed with wail, resume their life,

  They would but find in child and wife

An iron welcome when they rise:

 

'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,

  To pledge them with a kindly tear,

  To talk them o'er, to wish them here,

To count their memories half divine;

 

But if they came who passed away,

  Behold their brides in other hands;

  The hard heir strides about their lands,

And will not yield them for a day.

 

Yea, though their sons were none of these,

  Not less the yet-loved sire would make

  Confusion worse than death, and shake

The pillars of domestic peace.

 

Ah dear, but come thou back to me:

  Whatever change the years have wrought,

  I find not yet one lonely thought

That cries against my wish for thee.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

A Queer Theory interpretation of No. 88 would point out the opposite-sex love shown here is dry and tied to patrimonial wealth. That is, to the land and to the duty of producing a male heir. For within the framework of these contractual situations, the thought of an actual return of husband and father is framed in words like "bitter", "hard", "iron welcome", "will not yield", "confusion", "shake the domestic peace". 

In contrast, Tennyson by simple comparison says same-sex love is free of all envy and monetary concerns. The poet would find not a thing to grumble about if his Arthur should be returned to him.  

Edited June 17, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

89.

When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,

  And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;

  Or underneath the barren bush

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;

 

Come, wear the form by which I know

  Thy spirit in time among thy peers;

  The hope of unaccomplished years

Be large and lucid round thy brow.

 

When summer's hourly-mellowing change

  May breathe, with many roses sweet,

  Upon the thousand waves of wheat,

That ripple round the lonely grange;

 

Come: not in watches of the night,

  But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,

  Come, beauteous in thine after form,

And like a finer light in light.

Tennyson

 

Edited June 14, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

90.

If any vision should reveal

  Thy likeness, I might count it vain

  As but the canker of the brain;

Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal

 

To chances where our lots were cast

  Together in the days behind,

  I might but say, I hear a wind

Of memory murmuring the past.

 

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view

  A fact within the coming year;

  And tho' the months, revolving near,

Should prove the phantom-warning true,

 

They might not seem thy prophecies,

  But spiritual presentiments,

  And such refraction of events

As often rises ere they rise.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

 

 

90.=1>

If any vision should reveal=1>

  Thy likeness, I might count it vain

  As but the canker of the brain;

Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal

 

To chances where our lots were cast

  Together in the days behind,

  I might but say, I hear a wind

Of memory murmuring the past.

 

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view

  A fact within the coming year;

  And tho' the months, revolving near,

Should prove the phantom-warning true,

 

They might not seem thy prophecies,

  But spiritual presentiments,

  And such refraction of events

As often rises ere they rise.

Tennyson

 

 

It sounds as if the grieving heart is trying to armor itself against memory and remembered love. 

[AC Benus]

 

 

91.

I shall not see thee. Dare I say

  No spirit ever brake the band

  That stays him from the native land

Where first he walked when clasped in clay?

 

No visual shade of some one lost,

  But he, the Spirit himself, may come

  Where all the nerve of sense is numb;

Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.

 

O, therefore from thy sightless range

  With gods in unconjectured bliss,

  O, from the distance of the abyss

Of tenfold-complicated change,

 

Descend, and touch, and enter; hear

  The wish too strong for words to name;

  That in this blindness of the frame

My Ghost may feel that thine is near.

Tennyson

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by AC Benus