Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
70 Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows0 of the happier dead. burial mounds
Release me, and restore me to the ground.
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave;
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn,
75 I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
1833,1859 I860
Break, Break, Break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me. 5 O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
7. The walls of Troy ('Ilion') were supposed to have been built to the strains of the god Apollo's music.
.
TH E EPI C [MORT E D'ARTHUR ] / 112 7 O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! 10And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! 15Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. 1834 1842
The Epic [Morte d'Arthur]1
At Francis Allen's on the Christmas eve?
The game of forfeits done?the girls all kissed
Beneath the sacred bush? and passed0 away? mistletoe /gone
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
5 The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then halfway ebbed; and there we held a talk,
How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,
Or gone or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out io With cutting eights0 that day upon the pond, figure eights
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bumped the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
15 Now harping on the church-commissioners,2
Now hawking at geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right through the world: 'at home was little left,
20 And none abroad; there was no anchor, none,
To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapped 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
25 At college; but another which you had?
1. At age twenty-four Tennyson proposed to write d'Arthur' into his long narrative poem Idylls of the a long epic on King Arthur. Five years later he had King; it appears there as the twelfth book, The completed one book of the twelve, the story of Passing of Arthur. At that time the 'Epic' frameArthur's death, which he published in 1842 under work was discarded and some lines added. The the title 'Morte d'Arthur.' In this early version the 1842 version can be reconstructed from The Pass- story is given a framework, 'The Epic,' which con-ing of Arthur, which incorporates 'Morte d'Arthur sists of a short introductory section (fifty-one lines) (lines 170?440; only two lines are modified). and an epilogue (thirty lines), describing a party on 2. Commissioners appointed by the government Christmas Eve in modern times, at which the poet in 1835 to regulate the finances of the Anglican ('Everard Hall') reads 'Morte d'Arthur' to his Church. friends. In 1869 Tennyson incorporated 'Morte
