ALFRED TENNYSON. Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway, The tender blossom flutter down; Unloved, that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself away; Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air; Unloved, by many a sandy bar, The brook shall babble down the plain, Uncared for, gird the windy grove, The sailing moon in creek and cove; Till from the garden and the wild A fresh association blow, And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger's child; As year by year the laborer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills. DOUBT. You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true: Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gathered strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, 197 O YET We trust that somehow good That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall So runs my dream: but what am I? THE wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature, then, at strife, That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope through darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, "So careful of the type?" but no. From scarpéd cliff and quarried stone She cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go. "Thou makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death: The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more." And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law, Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravin, shrieked against his creed, Who loved, who suffered countless ills, No more? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music matched with him. O life as futile, then, as frail! O for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil. GARDEN SONG, COME into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die. All night have the roses heard To the dancers dancing in tune; I said to the lily, "There is but one I said to the rose, "The brief night goes rose, "For ever and ever, mine." And the soul of the rose went into my blood, As the music clashed in the hall; And long by the garden lake I stood, For I heard your rivulet fall From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; From the meadow your walks have left So sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes, To the woody hollows in which we meet And the valleys of Paradise. The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree; The white lake-blossom fell into the lake As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; But the rose was awake all night for your sake, |