Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight665
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.

May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.670
My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart's heart, my ownest own, farewell; It is but for a little space I go:

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell

"Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!

Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"No light had we; for that we do repent,
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. 5
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"No light! so late! and dark and chill the night! O, let us in, that we may find the light! Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?

O, let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now."

10

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,

I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

1 This poem was composed in 1880, after a day's ramble over the peninsula of Sirmio, which stretches, almost cut off from the mainland, into the Lake of Garda, Italy. Catullus, the Latin lyric poet, had a villa on Sirmio, and the region is full of memories of him and his poems. Tennyson was rowed out to Sirmio from Desenzano, a town at the southern end of the lake.

2 "O delightful Sirmio," from Cat. Carm. 31. 3"Brother, hail and then farewell!" the solemn words of farewell to the dead. The reference is to Catullus's tribute to his dead brother, Carm. 101.

4 An echo of Catullus', Carm. vii. 31. "Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque Ocelle;" (Sirmio, scarcely an island, a little darling of an island.)

1 Tennyson believed that the "two Locksley Halls were likely to be in the future two of the most historically interesting of his poems, as descriptive of the tone of the age at two distant periods of his life." H. Tennyson's Memoir, ii. 329.