Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape, But I was born to other things.
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Sad Hesper0 o'er the buried sun evening star And ready, thou, to die with him, Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done.
5 The team is loosened from the wain,0 hay wagon The boat is drawn upon the shore; Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darkened in the brain.
Bright Phosphor,' fresher for the night, morning star
io By thee the world's great work is heard Beginning, and the wakeful bird; Behind thee comes the greater light.8
The market boat is on the stream, And voices hail it from the brink; i5 Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, And see'st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name9 For what is one, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past,
20 Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
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There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.1
8. Cf. Genesis 1.16: 'the greater light to rule the Charles Lyell discusses the 'interchange of sea and day.' land' that has occurred 'on the surface of our 9. The planet Venus, named for the Roman god-globe': 'In the Mediterranean alone, many flourdess of love, is both the evening star and the morn-ishing inland towns and a still greater number of ing star (visible at different times in different ports now stand where the sea rolled its waves seasons). since the era when civilized nations first grew in 1. In a passage from The Principles of Geology Europe.' (1832), a book well known to Tennyson, Sir
.
1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
5 The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
10 And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For though my lips may breathe adieu,
1 cannot think the thing farewell.
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That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess? 5 I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye,2
Nor through the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun.
If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
io I heard a voice, 'believe no more,'
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep,
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
15 And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered, 'I have felt.'3
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamor made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
