Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

Extracts from In Memoriam: ‘The Danube to the Severn gave’

XIX

THE DANUBE to the Severn gave

The darken’d heart that beat no more;

They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,

And hush’d my deepest grief of all,

When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again

Is vocal in its wooded walls;

My deeper anguish also falls,

And I can speak a little then.