Sidor som bilder
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For power. Let her know her place; 195 She is the second, not the first.

A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain, and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With Wisdom, like the younger child;

For she is earthly of the mind,

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul,
O friend, who camest to thy goal

So early, leaving me behind.

I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.

CXV

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick3 About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood, that live their lives
A growing hedge, usually of hawthorn.

200

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And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom

250

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660

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; but for a little space I go:

e meanwhile far over moor and fell

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"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."

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Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,

Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

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.

"O delightful Sirmio," from Cat. Carm. 31. "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.

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.

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