"'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep mid-noon: one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, Lotus and lilies; and a wind arose, And overhead the wandering ivy and vine This way and that, in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. * * * * * "O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Idalian Aphroditè beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light feet Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights as she moved. "Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh Half-whisper'd in his ear, 'I promise thee The fairest and most loving wife in Greece.' She spoke and laugh'd: I shut my sight for fear: But when I look'd, Paris had raised his arm, And I beheld great Herè's angry eyes, As she withdrew into the golden cloud, And I was left alone within the bower; And from that time to this I am alone. And I shall be alone until I die." _OEnone._ The afternoon was spent, sometimes in further gardening pursuits, sometimes in a drive around the peaceful Island lanes and thatch-browed villages; frequently there were visitors to be met at Yarmouth, where the Tennysons' carriage might often be seen in the quaint cobbled streets. The soft and lovely colouring of the Solent was one to attract the poet's fancy: and it was after coming freshly one day into sight of the familiar waters of the estuary, and a tide, "that moving seems too full for sound or foam," lapping the lichened sea-walls of Yarmouth, that he composed, in his eighty-first year, the verses that he devised to be placed at the end of his whole collected poems:--"Crossing the Bar." The mystic simplicity of these lines strikes the very key-note of his character. * * * * * "Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west, Under the silver moon: Sleep my little one, sleep my pretty one, sleep!" [Illustration: _Painting by W. H. Margetson._ SWEET AND LOW.]