There is sweet music here that softer falls |
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, |
Or night-dews on still waters between walls |
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; |
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, |
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes ; |
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the
blissful skies. |
Here are cool mosses deep, |
And through the moss the ivies creep, |
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers
weep, |
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs
in sleep.
|
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness, |
And utterly consumed with sharp distress, |
While all things else have rest from
weariness ? |
All things have rest : why should we toil
alone, |
We only toil, who are the first of things, |
And make perpetual moan, |
Still from one sorrow to another thrown : |
Nor ever fold our wings, |
And cease from wanderings, |
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm
; |
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, |
‘There is no joy but calm !’ |
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown
of things ?
|
Lo ! in the middle of the wood, |
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud |
With winds upon the branch, and there |
Grows green and broad, and takes no care, |
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon |
Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow |
Falls, and floats adown the air. |
Lo ! sweetened with the summer light, |
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, |
Drops in a silent autumn night. |
All its allotted length of days, |
The flower ripens in its place, |
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no
toil, |
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
|
Hateful is the dark-blue sky, |
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. |
Death is the end of life ; ah, why |
Should life all labour be ? |
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, |
And in a little while our lips are dumb, |
Let us alone. What is it that will last ? |
All things are taken from us, and become |
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. |
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have |
To war with evil ? Is there any peace |
In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? |
All things have rest, and ripen toward the
grave |
In silence; ripen, fall and cease : |
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or
dreamful ease.
|
How sweet it were, hearing the downward
stream, |
With half-shut eyes ever to seem |
Falling asleep in a half-dream ! |
To dream and dream, like yonder amber
light, |
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the
height ; |
To hear each other’s whispered speech ; |
Eating the Lotos day by day, |
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, |
And tender curving lines of creamy spray ; |
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly |
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy
; |
To muse and brood and live again in memory, |
With those old faces of our infancy |
Heaped over with a mound of grass, |
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn
of brass !
|
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, |
And dear the last embraces of our wives |
And their warm tears : but all hath
suffered change : |
For surely now our household hearths are
cold : |
Our sons inherit us : our looks are strange
: |
And we should come like ghosts to trouble
joy. |
Or else the island princes over-bold |
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel
sings |
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy, |
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten
things. |
Is there confusion in the little isle ? |
Let what is broken so remain. |
The Gods are hard to reconcile : |
’Tis hard to settle order once again. |
There is confusion worse then death, |
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, |
Long labour unto agèd breath, |
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars |
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the
pilot-stars.
|
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, |
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing
lowly) |
With half-dropt eyelid still, |
Beneath a heaven dark and holy, |
To watch the long bright river drawing
slowly |
His waters from the purple hill— |
To hear the dewy echoes calling |
From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd
vine— |
To watch the emerald-coloured water falling |
Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine
! |
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling
brine, |
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out
beneath the pine.
|
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak : |
The Lotos blows by every winding creek : |
All day the wind breathes low with mellower
tone : |
Through every hollow cave and alley lone |
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow
Lotos-dust blown. |
We have had enough of action, and of motion
we, |
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard,
when the surge was seething free, |
Where the wallowing monster spouted his
foam-fountains in the sea. |
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an
equal mind, |
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie
reclined |
On the hills like Gods together, careless
of mankind. |
For they lie beside their nectar, and the
bolts are hurled |
Far below them in the valleys, and the
clouds are lightly curled |
Round their golden houses, girdled with the
gleaming world : |
Where they smile in secret, looking over
wasted lands, |
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake,
roaring deeps and fiery sands, |
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and
sinking ships, and praying hands. |
But they smile, they find a music centred
in a doleful song |
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient
tale of wrong, |
Like a tale of little meaning though the
words are strong : |
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that
cleave the soil, |
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with
enduring toil, |
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and
wine and oil ; |
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis
whispered—down in hell |
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian
valleys dwell, |
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of
asphodel. |
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than
toil, the shore |
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and
wave and oar ; |
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not
wander more.
|
Alfred, Lord
Tennyson | Classic
Poems |
|
[ The Brook ] [ Blow, Bugle, Blow ] [ Come into the garden Maud ] [ Tithonus ] [ Ulysses ] [ Tears, Idle Tears ] [ The Lady of Shalott ] [ Song of the Lotus-Eaters ] [ The Charge of the Light Brigade ] [ In the Valley of Cauteretz ] [ In Memoriam ] [ The Eagle ] |