IV I A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime 1 In the little grove where I sit-ah, wherefore cannot I be Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea, The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land? 2 Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small ! And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite; And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar; And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall; 1 Ruby-budded lime.] The descriptive touches in this and similar stanzas were mainly suggested at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, which had recently become the poet's home, and is a paradise of natural beauty, with its rich woodlands, its birds and flowers, its wide breezy downs, and its lovely glimpses of the sea. And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light; But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star! 3 When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race? I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd; I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor; But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face. O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud; Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor. 4 I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal; I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way: For nature is one with rapine,1 a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey. 1 Nature... rapine.] Cp. In Memoriam, lv.: "Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.' 5 We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower; Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed? Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour; We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame; However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. 6 A monstrous eft 1 was of old the Lord and Master of Earth, For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran, And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race. As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man: He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base? 1 Eft.] Usually a newt; here a saurian reptile. In Tennyson's journal for May 22, 1854, he mentions a visit to the Crystal Palace, and his being pleased with the Iguanodons and Ichthyosaurs' (Life, i. 376). 7 The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor; The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice. I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain; For not to desire or admire,1 if a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.2 8 For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis 3 hid by the veil. Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about? Our planet 4 is one, the suns are many, the world is wide. 1 Not to admire.] Cp. Horace, Ep. i. 6: "Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum." 2 Garden of spice.] Cp. Cant. iv. 16: "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.' " 3 Isis.] The great Nature_goddess of Egypt, who was by some Greek writers identified with Demeter (the Earth goddess), and who was worshipped in Rome under the Empire with a variety of mystic rites. Our planet.] In 1854 Tennyson said, à propos of Whewell's Plurality of Worlds: "It is inconceivable that the whole universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun" (Life, i. 379). Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail? Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout? I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide. 9 Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways, Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot, Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies; From the long-neck'd geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not, Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.1 ΙΟ And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill. Ah Maud, you milk - white fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. 1 Poisonous flies.] So Idylls ("Lancelot and Elaine"): "The tiny trumpeting gnat can break our dream May buzz so loud-we scorn them, but they sting." |