Ay me! ay me! with what another heart 50 In days far-off, and with what other eyes I used to watch--if I be he that watched-- The lucid outline forming round thee; saw The dim curls kindle into sunny rings; Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood 55 Glow with the glow that slowly crimsoned all Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay, Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm With kisses balmier than half-opening buds Of April, and could hear the lips that kissed 60 Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet, Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers. Yet hold me not for ever in thine East: How can my nature longer mix with thine? 65 Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam Floats up from those dim fields about the homes Of happy men that have the power to die, 70 And grassy barrows of the happier dead. Release me, and restore me to the ground; Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave; Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn; I earth in earth forget these empty courts, 75 And thee returning on thy silver wheels. _Alfred Tennyson._ CCXCIX _THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE._ ‘Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean: Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. 5 ‘Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one, That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 10 ‘Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 15 ‘Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.’ 20 _Alfred Tennyson._ CCC _SONNET._