Alfred, Lord Tennyson(1809–1892)
Sonnet 95
By night we lingered on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirred;
T h e brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:6
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes7
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that pealed
From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease,
The white kine 0 glimmered, and the treescattle
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
W e n t out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fallen leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love's d u m b cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
T h e faith, the vigor, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen through wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
T h e dead m a n touched me from the past,
And all at once it seemed at last
The living soul was flashed on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirled
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
T h e deep pulsations of the world,
/ E o n i a n music8 measuring out
The steps of Time—the shocks of C h a n c e —
T h e blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancelled, stricken through with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-molded forms of speech,
Or even for intellect to reach
Through memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk revealed
T h e knolls once more where, couched at ease,
The white kine glimmered, and the treescattle
Laid their dark arms about the field.
And sucked from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
T h e large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
T h e lilies to and fro, and said
"The dawn, the dawn, and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.