Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Charles Tennyson Turner 180879The Lachrymatory
F
Were cropp’d by death, when Rome was in her prime,
I brought the phial of his kinsman’s tears,
There placed, as was the wont of ancient time;
Round me, that night, in meads of asphodel,
The souls of the early dead did come and go,
Drawn by that flask of grief, as by a spell,
That long-imprison’d shower of human woe.
As round Ulysses, for the draught of blood,
The heroes throng’d, those spirits flock’d to me,
Where, lonely, with that charm of tears, I stood;
Two, most of all, my dreaming eyes did see;
The young Marcellus, young, but great and good,
And Tully’s daughter, mourn’d so tenderly.