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,=1> "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

I've been listening to a lot of Viotti recently. Here is a charming example; the finale to his 26th (!!!) violin concerto. Hope it brings a smile

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

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

This might be the only piece of blowhard Braytoven I ever post, but perhaps all of his egotistical works should be performed on guitar

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

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

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

@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.

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

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

@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....

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

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.