Nor toil for title, place, or touch

Of pension, neither count on praise :
It grows to guerdon after-days:
Nor deal in watch-words overmuch;

Not clinging to some ancient saw;

Not master'd by some modern term; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm And in its season bring the law;

That from Discussion's lip may fall

:

With Life, that, working strongly, binds— Set in all lights by many minds,

To close the interests of all.

For Nature also, cold and warm,

And moist and dry, devising long, Thro' many agents making strong, Matures the individual form.

Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.

So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that, which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.

A saying, hard to shape an act;

For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.

Ev'n now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom—
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.
A slow-develop'd strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States-

The warders of the growing hour,

But vague in vapour, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.
Of many changes, aptly join'd,

Is bodied forth the second whole,
Regard gradation, lest the soul
Of Discord race the rising wind;
A wind to puff your idol-fires,

And heap their ashes on the head;
To shame the boast so often made,1
That we are wiser than our sires.

Oh, yet, if Nature's evil star

Drive men in manhood, as in youth,
To follow flying steps of Truth
Across the brazen bridge of war-2

If New and Old, disastrous feud,

Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true, till Time shall close,
That Principles are rain'd in blood;

Not yet the wise of heart would cease
To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt,
But with his hand against the hilt,
Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;

Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay,3

Would serve his kind in deed and word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword,
That knowledge takes the sword away—

Would love the gleams of good that broke
From either side, nor veil his eyes :
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke:

11842. The boasting words we said.

2 Possibly suggested by Homer's expression, àvà πTOλéμOLO YEPúpas, II., viii., 549, and elsewhere; but Homer's and Tennyson's meaning can hardly be the same, In Homer the "bridges of war seem to mean the spaces between the lines of tents in a bivouac in Tennyson the meaning is probably the obvious one.

3 All up to and including 1851. Not less, though dogs of Faction bay.

To-morrow yet would reap to-day,

As we bear blossom of the dead;

Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed
Raw haste, half-sister to Delay.

THE GOOSE

This was first published in 1842. No alteration has since been made in it. This poem, which was written at the time of the Reform Bill agitation, is a political allegory showing how illusory were the supposed advantages held out by the Radicals to the poor and labouring classes. The old woman typifies these classes, the stranger the Radicals, the goose the Radical programme, Free Trade and the like, the eggs such advantages as the proposed Radical measures might for a time seem to confer, the cluttering goose, the storm and whirlwind the heavy price which would have to be paid for them in the social anarchy resulting from triumphant Radicalism. The allegory may be narrowed to the Free Trade question.

I Knew an old wife lean and poor,
Her rags scarce held together;
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather.

He held a goose upon his arm,

He utter'd rhyme and reason,

Here, take the goose, and keep you warm,

It is a stormy season".

She caught the white goose by the leg,

A goose—'twas no great matter.

The goose let fall a golden egg

With cackle and with clatter.

She dropt the goose, and caught the pelf,
And ran to tell her neighbours;
And bless'd herself, and cursed herself,
And rested from her labours.

And feeding high, and living soft,
Grew plump and able-bodied;
Until the grave churchwarden doff'd,
The parson smirk'd and nodded.

So sitting, served by man and maid,
She felt her heart grow prouder:
But, ah! the more the white goose laid
It clucked and cackled louder.

It clutter'd here, it chuckled there;
It stirr'd the old wife's mettle :
She shifted in her elbow-chair,
And hurl'd the pan and kettle.

"A quinsy choke thy cursed note! Then wax'd her anger stronger : "Go, take the goose, and wring her throat, I will not bear it longer".

Then yelp'd the cur, and yawl'd the cat;
Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer.
The goose flew this way and flew that,
And fill'd the house with clamour.

As head and heels upon the floor
They flounder'd all together,
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather:

He took the goose upon his arm,
He utter'd words of scorning;

"So keep you cold, or keep you warm,
It is a stonny morning".

The wild wind rang from park and plain,
And round the attics rumbled,

Till all the tables danced again,
And half the chimneys tumbled.

The glass blew in, the fire blew out,
The blast was hard and harder.
Her cap blew off, her gown blew up,

And a whirlwind clear'd the larder;

And while on all sides breaking loose
Her household fled the danger,
Quoth she, "The Devil take the goose,
And God forget the stranger!"

THE EPIC

First published in 1842; "tho'" for " though" in line 44 has been the only alteration made since 1850.

This Prologue was written, like the Epilogue, after "The Epic "' had been composed, being added, Fitzgerald says, to anticipate or excuse "the faint Homeric echoes," to give a reason for telling an old-world tale. The poet "mouthing out his hollow oes and aes" is, we are told, a good description of Tennyson s tone and manner of reading.

At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,—
The game of forfeits done—the girls all kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away—
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The person taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,1
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith

Right thro' the world, "at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,
To hold by ". Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him".
"And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassail-bowl.”
Why, yes," I said, we knew your gift that way

66

At college: but another which you had,

I mean of verse (for so we held it then),

What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he burnt

His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books"-2

And then to me demanding why? "Oh, sir,

He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 'twas nothing—that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:

1 A burning topic with the clergy in and about 1833.
21843 to 1844.
You know," said Frank, "he flung
His epic of King Arthur in the fire!"

The present reading, 1850.