ice
Makes daggers at the sharpened eaves,
And bristles all the brakes0 and thorns thickets io To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Above the wood which grides7 and clangs Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Together, in the drifts' that pass To darken on the rolling brine is That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Bring in great logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat; Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
20 Of all things even as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
108
I will not shut me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
6. These allusions to the second coming of Christ would alter; but that the spirit of Christ would still and to the millennium are derived from Revelation grow from more to more.' 20, but Tennyson has interpreted the biblical 7. Clashes with a strident noise. account in his own way. He once told his son of 8. Either cloud drifts or clouds of snow. his conviction that 'the forms of Christian religion
.
1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
5 What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning, though with might
To scale the heaven's highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death? What find I in the highest place,
10 But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face.0 his own face
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
is 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.? Hallam
109
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye
That saw through all the Muses' walk;9 5 Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassioned logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course; High nature amorous of the good,
io But touched with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Through all the years of April blood; A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
15 Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;1 And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unasked, in thine,
20 And find his comfort in thy face; All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have looked on: if they looked in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
a # a
9. The realm of art and literature. description of the Irish temperament in On the 1. A member or descendant of one of the groups Study of Celtic Literature (p. 1619). of peoples populating ancient Britain; cf. Arnold's
.
IN MEMORIAM, 118 / 1181
