Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,[29] Sweet as new buds in Spring. No memory labours longer from the deep Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep To gather and tell o’er Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain Compass’d, how eagerly I sought to strike Into that wondrous track of dreams again! But no two dreams are like. As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years, In yearnings that can never be exprest By sighs or groans or tears; Because all words, tho’ cull’d[30] with choicest art, Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat. [1] Suggested apparently by Denham, _Verses on Cowley’s Death_:— Old Chaucer, like the morning star To us discovers Day from far. [2] Here follow in 1833 two stanzas excised in 1842:— In every land I thought that, more or less, The stronger sterner nature overbore The softer, uncontrolled by gentleness And selfish evermore: And whether there were any means whereby, In some far aftertime, the gentler mind Might reassume its just and full degree Of rule among mankind. [3] 1833. Screamed. [4] The Latin _testudo_ formed of the shields of soldiers held over their heads. [5] 1883 to 1848 inclusive. Stedfast. [6] 1833. Clasping jasmine turned Its twined arms festooning tree to tree. Altered to present reading, 1842. [7] A lady, _i. e._, Helen. [8] Tennyson has here noticed what is so often emphasised by Greek writers, that tallness was a great beauty in women. See Aristotle, _Ethics_, iv., 3, and Homer, _passim, Odyssey_, viii., 416; xviii., 190 and 248; xxi., 6. So Xenophon in describing Panthea emphasises her tallness, _Cyroped._, v. [9] 1883. Sovran lady. [10] As the old men say, _Iliad_, iii., 156-8. [11] The one is Iphigenia. [12] Aulis. [13] It was not till 1884 that this line was altered to the reading of the final edition, _i. e._, “Which men called Aulis in those iron years”. For the “iron years” of that reading _cf._ Thomson, _Spring_, 384, “_iron_ times”.