All night no ruder air perplex 10 Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor,0 bright morning star As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; 15 Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run;
3. Hallam expressed enthusiasm for Tennyson's 4. Hallam's body was conveyed back to England early poetry in a review written in 1831. by ship from Trieste, Italy.
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IN MEMORIAM, EPILOGUE / 1145
Dear as the mother to the son, 20 More than my brothers are to me.
10
I hear the noise about thy keel; I hear the bell struck in the night; I see the cabin window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
5 Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, And traveled men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanished life.
So bring him; we have idle dreams; io This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies. O, to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains, 15 Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God;5
Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine, And hands so often clasped in mine,
20 Should toss with tangle0 and with shells. seaweed
11
Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only through the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground;
5 Calm and deep peace on this high wold,? open countryside And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold;
Calm and still light on yon great plain io That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main;
5. Reference to a burial inside a church building rather than in the churchyard.
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
15Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall, And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair; 20Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 12 Lo, as a dove when up she springs To bear through Heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings; 5 Like her I go; I cannot stay; I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away ioO'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies, And see the sails at distance rise, And linger weeping on the marge,0 shore 15And saying; 'Comes he thus, my friend? Is this the end of all my care?' And circle moaning in the air: 'Is this the end? Is this the end?' 20And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn That I have been an hour away. 13 Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these; 5 Which weep a loss forever new, A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have pressed and closed, Silence, till I be silent too; ioWhich weep the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed,
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IN MEMORIAM, EPILOGUE/ 1147
The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come, Time, and teach me, many years, I do not suffer in a dream; is For now so strange do these things seem, Mine eyes have leisure for their tears,
My fancies time to rise on wing, And glance about the approaching sails, As though they brought but merchants' bales,
20 And not the burthen that they bring.
14
If one should bring me this report, That thou? hadst touched the land today, the ship And I went down unto the quay;6
And found thee lying in the port;
5 And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank
And beckoning unto those they know;
