Alfred Lord Tennyson (
1809-
1892)
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped 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 seem’d so fair,
Such splendid
purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the
psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him
fanes of fruitless
prayer,
Who trusted
God was
love indeed
And love
Creation’s final law–
Tho’
Nature,
red in tooth and claw
With
ravine, shriek’d against his
creed–
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the
True, the
Just,
Be blown about the
desert dust,
Or seal’d within the
iron hills?
No more? A
monster then, a
dream,
A
discord.
Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d 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.