27
I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;
5 I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest, io The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest.3
I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 15 Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
28
The time draws near the birth of Christ.4 The moon is hid, the night is still; The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
2. The Deity, being outside time, sees (rather than 3. Complacency resulting from some deficiency foresees) whether or not the rest of life ('more of ('want'). life,' line 11) will be pointless. If pointless, then 4. The first Christmas after Hallam's death the way for the speaker to deal with his self-scorn (1833); the setting is Tennyson's family home in ('proper scorn') might be to seek death. Lincolnshire.
.
IN MEMORIAM, EPILOGUE / 1153
5 Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor, Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound; 10Each voice four changes5 on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. 15This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wished no more to wake, And that my hold on life would break Before I heard those bells again; 20But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controlled me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touched with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule.
29
With such compelling cause to grieve As daily vexes household peace, And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christmas eve;
5 Which brings no more a welcome guest To enrich the threshold of the night With showered largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs 10 Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,6 That guard the portals of the house;
Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new; 15 Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time? They too will die.
30
With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth;
5. Different sequences in which church bells are observances of the Christmas season to be folpealed. lowed. 6. Personifying the spirits who expect customary
.
1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
A rainy cloud possessed the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas eve.
5
At our old pastimes in the hall We gamboled, making vain pretense Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech; 10 We heard them sweep the winter land; And in a circle hand-in- hand Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, though every eye was dim, 15 A merry song we sang with him Last year; impetuously we sang.
We ceased; a gentler feeling crept Upon us: surely rest is meet.0 proper, appropriate 'They rest,' we said, 'their sleep is sweet,'
20 And silence followed, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range; Once more we sang: 'They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
25 'Rapt from7 the fickle and the frail With gathered power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil8 to veil.'
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 30 Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.
34
