Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson. 18091892706. Come down, O Maid
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: | |
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), | |
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? | |
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease | |
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, | 5 |
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; | |
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, | |
For Love is of the valley, come thou down | |
And find him; by the happy threshold, he, | |
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, | 10 |
Or red with spirted purple of the vats, | |
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk | |
With Death and Morning on the silver horns, | |
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, | |
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, | 15 |
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls | |
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: | |
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down | |
To find him in the valley; let the wild | |
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave | 20 |
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill | |
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, | |
That like a broken purpose waste in air: | |
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales | |
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth | 25 |
Arise to thee; the children call, and I | |
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, | |
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; | |
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn, | |
The moan of doves in immemorial elms, | 30 |
And murmuring of innumerable bees. |