2

Come not as thou eamest1 of late,

Flinging the gloom of yesternight

On the white day; but robed in soften'd light
Of orient state.

Whilome thou eamest with the morning mist,
Even as a maid, whose stately brow

The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kiss'd,2
When she, as thou,

Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight
Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots
Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits,
Which in wintertide shall star

The black earth with brilliance rare.

3

Whilome thou eamest with the morning mist,
And with the evening cloud,

Showering thy gleaned wealth into my open breast, (Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind Never grow sere,

When rooted in the garden of the mind,
Because they are the earliest of the year).
Nor was the night thy shroud.

In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest
Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope.
The eddying of her garments caught from thee
The light of thy great presence; and the cope
Of the half-attain'd futurity,

Though deep not fathomless,

Was cloven with the million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
Small thought was there of life's distress;

For sure she deem'd no mist of earth could dull
Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful:

11830. Cam'st.

21830. Kist.

Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years.1

0 strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,

Thou dewy dawn of memory.

4

Come forth I charge thee, arise,

Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!
Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines
Unto mine inner eye,

Divinest Memory!

Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall

Which ever sounds and shines

grey

A pillar of white light upon the wall
Of purple cliffs, aloof descried :
Come from the woods that belt the
The seven elms, the poplars 2 four
That stand beside my father's door,
And chiefly from the brook 3 that loves
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn,
In every elbow and turn,

3

hill-side,

The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland.
O! hither lead thy feet!
Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds,
Upon the ridged wolds,

When the first matin-song hath waken'd4 loud
Over the dark dewy earth forlorn,

What time the amber morn

Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud.

1 Transferred from Timbuctoo.

And these with lavish'd sense

Listenist the lordly music flowing from

The illimitable years.

2 The poplars have now disappeared but the seven elms are still to be seen in the garden behind the house. See Napier, The Laureate's County, pp. 32, 40-41. This is the Somersby brook which so otten reappears in Tennyson's poetry,

cf. Miller's Daughter, A Farewell, and In Memoriam, Ixxix. and c.

4 1830. Waked. For the epithet dew-impearled" cf. Drayton, Ideas,

sonnet liii., amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers," where the epithet is more appropriate and intelligible.

5

Large dowries doth the raptured eye
To the young spirit present

When first she is wed;

And like a bride of old

In triumph led,

With music and sweet showers
Of festal flowers,

Unto the dwelling she must sway.
Well hast thou done, great artist Memory,
In setting round thy first experiment

With royal frame-work of wrought gold;
Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay,
And foremost in thy various gallery

Place it, where sweetest sunlight fells
Upon the storied walls;

For the discovery

And newness of thine art so pleased thee,
That all which thou hast drawn of fairest
Or boldest since, but lightly weighs
With thee unto the love thou bearest
The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like,
Ever retiring thou dost gaze

On the prime labour of thine early days:

No matter what the sketch might be;

Whether the high field on the bushless Pike,
Or even a sand-built ridge

Of heaped hills that mound the sea,

Overblown with murmurs harsh,

Or even a lowly cottage1 whence we see

Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh,

Where from the frequent bridge,

Like emblems of infinity,2

The trenched waters run from sky to sky;

Or a garden bower'd close

3

With plaited alleys of the trailing rose,

1 The cottage at Maplethorpe where the Tennysons used to spend the summer holidays. (See Life, \., 46.)

21830. Emblems or Glimpses of Eternity.

'1830. Pleached. The whole of this passage is an exact description of the Parsonage garden at Somersby. See Life, i., 27.

Long alleys falling down to twilight grots,
Or opening upon level plots

Of crowned lilies, standing near
Purple-spiked lavender:

Whither in after life retired

From brawling storms,

From weary wind,

With youthful fancy reinspired,

We may hold converse with all forms
Of the many-sided mind,

And those whom passion hath not blinded,
Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.

My friend, with you 2 to live alone,
Were how much better than to own

A crown, a sceptre, and a throne!

0 strengthen, enlighten me!

I faint in this obscurity,

Thou dewy dawn of memory.

SONG

First printed in 1830.

The poem was written in the garden at the Old Rectory, Somersby; an autumn scene there which it faithfully describes. This poem seems to have haunted Poe, a fervent admirer of Tennyson's early poems.

1

A Spirit haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;

For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

Of the mouldering flowers:

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;

Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

11830. The few.

2 1830 and 1842. Thee.

$1830. Methink, were, so till 1850, when it was altered to the present reading.

2

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;

My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath

Of the fading edges of box beneath,

And the year's last rose.

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

ADELINE

First printed in 1830.

1

Mystery of mysteries,

Faintly smiling Adeline,
Scarce of earth nor all divine,
Nor unhappy, nor at rest,

But beyond expression fair
With thy floating flaxen hair;

Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes

Take the heart from out my breast. Wherefore those dim looks of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

2

Whence that aery bloom of thine,
Like a lily which the sun
Looks thro' in his sad decline,
And a rose-bush leans upon,
Thou that faintly smilest still,
As a Naiad in a well,
Looking at the set of day,
Or a phantom two hours old
Of a maiden passed away,
Ere the placid lips be cold?
Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,
Spiritual Adeline?