The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord TennysonTennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
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The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
English poetry -- 19th century
Each sun which from the centre flings
Grand music and redundant fire,
The burning belts, the mighty rings,
The murmurous planets' rolling choir,
The globefilled arch that, cleaving air,
Lost in its effulgence sleeps,
The lawless comets as they glare,
And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps
In wayward strength, are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.
XI
=Lost Hope=
You cast to ground the hope which once was mine,
But did the while your harsh decree deplore,
Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine,
My heart, where Hope had been and was no more.
So on an oaken sprout
A goodly acorn grew;
But winds from heaven shook the acorn out,
And filled the cup with dew.
XII
=The Tears of Heaven=
Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep,
Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years,
And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.
XIII
=Love and Sorrow=
O maiden, fresher than the first green leaf
With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,
Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
Doth hold the other half in sovranty.
Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:
Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,
Issue of its own substance, my heart's night
Thou canst not lighten even with _thy_ light,
All powerful in beauty as thou art.
Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,
Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side,
So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep
They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.
XIV
=To a Lady Sleeping=
O thou whose fringèd lids I gaze upon,
Through whose dim brain the wingèd dreams are born,
Unroof the shrines of clearest vision,
In honour of the silverfleckèd morn:
Long hath the white wave of the virgin light
Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.
Thou all unwittingly prolongest night,
Though long ago listening the poisèd lark,
With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene,
Over heaven's parapets the angels lean.
XV
=Sonnet=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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