So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:

Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,

135 Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

10

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; 15
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin
fades

Forever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

20

25

30

As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay

35

40

1 This poem is a contrast study to the Lotus Eaters. Hallam Tennyson tells us (Memoirs, I., 196) that it was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and that it gave Tennyson's "feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life, perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam.' The immediate source of the poem is a passage in Dante's Inf., xxvi., 90. A group of stars in the constellation of Taurus, their rising at a certain time of the year was associated with the beginning of the rainy season. Cf. Vergil. Eneid, I., 744.

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,

My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel:

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall!
For them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,

My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine; I never felt the kiss of love,

Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will.

THE EPIC

(INTRODUCTION TO MORTE D'Arthur)
(From Poems, 1842)

At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,—
The game of forfeits done-the girls all kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away-
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, 5
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk.
How all the old honour had from Christmas
gone,

Or gone or dwindled down to some old games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond, 15
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners, 13
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith

Right thro' the world, "at home was little left. And none abroad: there was no anchor, none, 2) To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him." "And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassailbowl."

His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books"

And then to me demanding why? "Oh, sir,
He thought that nothing new was said, or else 30
Something so said 'twas nothing—that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:
God knows: he has a mint of reasons: ask.
It pleased me well enough." "Nay, nay," said
Hall,

"Why take the style of those heroic times? 35
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth"

MORTE D'ARTHUR

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,

That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 10
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all