Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Alfred Lord Tennyson (18091892)Immortality
I MY own dim life should teach me this, | |
That life shall live for evermore, | |
Else earth is darkness at the core, | |
And dust and ashes all that is; | |
This round of green, this orb of flame, | 5 |
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks | |
In some wild Poet, when he works | |
Without a conscience or an aim. | |
What then were God to such as I? | |
’Twere hardly worth my while to choose | 10 |
Of things all mortal, or to use | |
A little patience ere I die; | |
’Twere best at once to sink to peace | |
Like birds the charming serpent draws, | |
To drop head-foremost in the jaws | 15 |
Of vacant darkness and to cease. | |
II Yet if some voice that man could trust | |
Should murmur from the narrow house, | |
“The cheeks drop in; the body bows; | |
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:” | 20 |
Might I not say? “Yet even here, | |
But for one hour, O Love, I strive | |
To keep so sweet a thing alive:” | |
But I shall turn mine ears and hear | |
The moanings of the homeless sea, | 25 |
The sound of streams that swift or slow | |
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow | |
The dust of continents to be; | |
And Love would answer with a sigh, | |
“The sound of that forgetful shore | 30 |
Will change my sweetness more and more, | |
Half-dead to know that I shall die.” | |
O me, what profits it to put | |
An idle case? If Death were seen | |
At first as Death, Love had not been | 35 |
Or been in narrowest working shut, | |
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, | |
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape | |
Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape, | |
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods. | 40 |
III Oh yet we trust that somehow good | |
Will be the final goal of ill | |
To pangs of nature, sins of will, | |
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; | |
That nothing walks with aimless feet; | 45 |
That not one life shall be destroyed, | |
Or cast as rubbish to the void, | |
When God hath made the pile complete; | |
That not a worm is cloven in vain; | |
That not a moth with vain desire | 50 |
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire, | |
Or but subserves another’s gain. | |
Behold, we know not anything; | |
I can but trust that good shall fall | |
At last—far off—at last, to all, | 55 |
And every winter change to spring. | |
So runs my dream: but what am I? | |
An infant crying in the night: | |
An infant crying for the light: | |
And with no language but a cry. | 60 |
IV The wish that of the living whole | |
No life may fail beyond the grave, | |
Derives it not from what we have | |
The likest God within the soul? | |
Are God and Nature then at strife, | 65 |
That Nature lends such evil dreams? | |
So careful of the type she seems | |
So careless of the single life; | |
That I, considering everywhere | |
Her secret meaning in her deeds, | 70 |
And finding that of fifty seeds | |
She often brings but one to bear, | |
I falter where I firmly trod, | |
And falling with my weight of cares | |
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs | 75 |
That slope thro’ darkness up to God, | |
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, | |
And gather dust and chaff, and call | |
To what I feel is Lord of all, | |
And faintly trust the larger hope. | 80 |
V “So careful of the type”? but no | |
From scarped cliff and quarried stone | |
She cries, “A thousand types are gone: | |
I care for nothing, all shall go. | |
“Thou makest thine appeal to me: | 85 |
I bring to life, I bring to death: | |
The spirit does but mean the breath: | |
I know no more.” And he, shall he, | |
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair, | |
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, | 90 |
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies, | |
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, | |
Who trusted God was love indeed | |
And love Creation’s final law— | |
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw | 95 |
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed— | |
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills, | |
Who battled for the True, the Just, | |
Be blown about the desert dust, | |
Or seal’d within the iron hills? | 100 |
No more? A monster then, a dream, | |
A discord. Dragons of the prime, | |
That tare each other in their slime, | |
Were mellow music match’d with him. | |
O life as futile, then, as frail! | 105 |
O for thy voice to soothe and bless! | |
What hope of answer, or redress? | |
Behind the veil, behind the veil. | |
VI That which we dare invoke to bless; | |
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; | 110 |
He, They, One, All; within, without; | |
The Power in darkness, whom we guess; | |
I found Him not in world or sun, | |
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye; | |
Nor thro’ the questions men may try, | 115 |
The petty cobwebs we have spun: | |
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep, | |
I heard a voice, “believe no more,” | |
And heard an ever-breaking shore | |
That tumbled in the godless deep; | 120 |
A warmth within the breast would melt, | |
The freezing reason’s colder part, | |
And like a man in wrath the heart | |
Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.” | |
No, like a child in doubt and fear: | 125 |
But that blind clamour made me wise; | |
Then was I as a child that cries, | |
But, crying, knows his father near; | |
And what I am beheld again | |
What is, and no man understands; | 130 |
And out of darkness came the hands | |
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men. | |