The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;l
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

First published in 1842.

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly 2 borne,
Dip forward under starry light,

And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.

First published in 1842. No alteration.

This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to which it ..refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning between blossoming hedges". See Life of Tennyson, vol. i., p. 223.

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill ;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

1 One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing could exceed the vividness of the words " wrinkled" and "crawls" here.

2 1842 to 1853. Lightly.