Obiit, Aldworth, October 6th, 1892

The moonlight lay with glory on his face
    About whose bed in grief the nation bowed,
    And darkly flew the wild October cloud:
Sobbed the pale morn, and came with faltering pace
    As if it feared to lift a dead man’s shroud;
    And all the streams made lamentation loud.

But such majestic calm was in his look
    As seemed to say, ‘Why weeping o’er me bend,
    Or bid me longer here on earth attend
Whose home is Heaven?’  His hand held Shake-
        speare’s book—
    Shakespeare, so soon to greet him as a friend!
    And so he went companioned, to the end.

Then to the poet, crowned with power and years,
    One bore the wreath of immortality,
    And laid his chaplet of green laurel by.
Wept England; over-seas a land in tears
    For its own bard, caught up the bitter cry
    That rings right round the world when singers die.

For he, the music-maker of the earth,
    Who ruled of right by sound’s melodious sway,
    Who still within his heart had words to say,
Turned to the home whence all his song had birth;
    The first, last, Laureate of a golden day,
    Untouched by time, passed painlessly away.

But as men sorrowed for the glory gone,
    And the dark dumbness fallen upon the time,
    There rang from Heaven triumphant angel-chime,
And voices cried, “Behold the twain are one,
    The friend beloved, who left him ere his prime,
    The friend who made Love’s great Memorial Rhyme.”

And lo! at ending of that heavenly psalm
    The silent sunshine flooded all the lea,
    The golden leaf scarce fluttered from the tree,
The distant ocean lay in autumn-calm;
    There was “no moaning at the bar,” when he—
    Our princely poet-soul, put out to sea.

But we are left disconsolate; no lyre
    To sound a people’s glory, soothe its pain,
    No trumpet-call to chivalry again,
No words of subtlest feeling, finest fire
    To keep us still a nation, and no strain
    To bring new Knowledge to a wiser reign.

He was true patriot, and his soul was set
    To give our England flowers of song for weeds.
    He planted well, he scattered fruitful seeds;
He showed us love was more than coronet,
    And in the jarring of a hundred creeds
    Taught life and truth were hid in noble deeds.

Yet most that purest passion for a maid
    And manly love with maiden virtue crowned,
    Availed to keep our social fabric sound;
And loving Arthur well, he well pourtrayed
    That kingliest Arthur of the Table Round,
    Who entered Heaven to heal him of Earth’s wound.

And he has entered Heaven by earth unharmed;
    Years could not blanch a single lock with grey,
    Time could not steal a single bolt away,
Nor blunt the sword wherewith his soul was armed:
    But from this shore, whereon he might not stay,
    His music nevermore shall die away.

Now he is gone, who up the windy ways
    Followed the shepherd to the bleating fold;
    Who, when the level plain was laid in gold,
Ran with the reapers, learnt their Doric phrase,
    And to his great iambic’s stately mould
    Caught back rich words that never can grow old.

Now he is gone, who spoke with Greece and Rome,
    And took the herdsman’s sunny pipe, and played
    Idyllic music fit for English shade;
Who in his ocean-sounding island home
    Walked with the mighty Homer unafraid,
    And Saxon metre to his thunder made.

I shall not find his welcome at the home,
    Nor front those searching eyes that when we met
    Would ask what father’s-features lingered yet;
Nor mark the sun-browned ample forehead’s dome,
    Strong Norman mouth-swirls, cheeks whereon was set
    The powerful seal of the Plantagenet.

I shall not press that soft and tender hand,
    Nor hear far off his rich voice like a bell
    Ring after crying “Friend! farewell, farewell!”
Nor see the dreaming dark-cloaked poet stand
    Like some Velasquez figure in the dell,
    Where o’er his face full shadow rose and fell.

Friends! we no more shall climb the darkened down
    And hear him measure music to the beat
    Of summer seas reverberant at his feet;
Never in orchard-garden overblown
    With spice of rose and lily, and  made sweet
    With song of birds, can share his arbour seat,

And listen to the tale of boyhood days
    Not quite forgotten, in the Lincoln land
    Of corn that yellowed to the yellow sand,
Where first he strove to win a mother’s praise
    By warbling with his brother, hand in hand,
    The wild-wood notes her heart could understand,

Or move from boyhood’s day and personal theme
    To hint of curious workmanship confessed
    In some great thought his labour had expressed,
To talk of nations, and the poet’s dream
    Of England, free, pure, faithful, self-possessed,
    His fears for Modred’s battle in the West.

With him we cannot claim the moorland walk
    And watch the sunlight shoot athwart the rain,
    Or halt to hear new bird-notes in the lane;
Or see him stoop from philosophic talk
    To shred some simple wayside weed in twain,
    And marvel at the miracle made plain.

Nor ever view soft veils of vapour drawn
    From the ‘grey sea’ beyond the Sussex glade,
    Nor watch from Aldworth’s height, the morning made,
Nor ever leave the cedar-scented lawn
    To thread the high-o’er-arching colonnade
    Of cloistral trees that gave the poet shade.

And when the birds have sought their ilex home,
    And the magnolia pours its fragrance rare,
    We shall not mount again his turret stair
And hear the strong deep-chested music come,
    While light in hand within his simple chair
    He summoned sound to people all the air,

And set the rafters ringing to the wail
    Of a great nation for its warrior dead,
    The boom of cannon and the mourner’s tread;
Or bade the bugle’s elfin echoes fail,
    The long low lights on castle walls be shed—
    Then shut the book in dream, and bowed his head.

Nor ever after meat when lamps are lit,
    About the shining table drawing nigher,
    Feel the fine soul that flashed forth at desire;
Sharp sallies, rapier-thrusts of genial wit
    That called for friend, and bade the foe retire,
    And filled the hall with laughter, and with fire.

The hall is filled with silence and with tears!
    The stately hound that licked his dying hand,
    Fair-flewed, rough-chested, sorrowful must stand,
Must wonder why no well-loved step he hears,
    Or, restless, roam among the funeral band
    That comes to bear his master thro’ the land.

Yea! bear him down, by weald, and wood, and town;
    He knew each rosy farm, he loved each lane,
    For he was home-bred English.  Lo! the plain
Is gold from harvest; he, whom Death has mown
    In ripeness, goes to where our goodliest grain
    Is garnered, till the Christ return again.

Bear him in some triumphal leafy car,
    Laced round with moss, with laurel interwove,
    And let the simple pall be strewn above
With all white flowers that pure and fragrant are—
    Wild roses, on the pall embroidered, prove
    His zeal for knightliness, our England’s love.

But bear him when the sunset, saffron-gold,
    Floods the pale Heaven, above the moorland height,
    And in the west one waning star hangs bright;
For now the race is run, the tale is told,
    One last lone star sinks down into the night,
    Our one last prophet vanishes from sight.

For, though I find thy voice in hall or cot,
    And see thy words on every flying sheet,
    Or hear thee lisped by children in the street,
And murmured in the cloister,—Thou art not.
    Thy soul, that shunned earth’s restlessness and
            heat,
    Has sought Heaven’s unapproachable retreat.

I trace the brooklet swirling to the plain
    From near the copse beside thy father’s door,
    That ancient grove whence ‘holy waters’ pour;¹
I pass by thorpe and tower toward the main,
    I roam the long sands thou didst love of yore,²
    But ah! thy feet have left the lonely shore.

Far off, by Cam, I catch the careless chimes,³
Through close-cropt meads and stately halls I
            stray,
    Where those disciples of thy glorious day⁴
Made mirth and music underneath the limes,
    Thou with the twelve—nigh latest didst thou stay;
    But now the last leaf falls, the world is grey.

I wander to the chapel by the mere,
    I win the Hall, beyond the grove of pine,⁵
    Where-over, Skiddaw doth at day’s decline
Shed back its fern-flushed glory.  Thou wert there—
    There didst out-roll ‘Morte d’Arthur’ line on line
    To willing ears—thy ghost alone is mine.

Or leaving Thames I seek by chalky dell⁶
    My father’s terrace-garden o’er the flood,
    Where once a bride and bridegroom-poet stood,
And heard in June-tide air the marriage bell
    Ring thro’ the walnuts that “the hour is good
    When noble man weds noblest woman-hood.”

There are now perchance in thought slow moveth one
    Pale and in pain: she hears another sound,
    Her eyes for sorrow cannot leave the ground,
The gentlest wife that ever bore a son,
    Who once for Love and Life, went gaily-gowned,
    And now, for Death, with weeds is wrapt around.

Then to the church close-bosomed in the chine,⁷
    Where moves and moans the silver Severn sea,
    I turn.  I feel thy spirit, joyous, free;
There lies the heart, once lost, now wholly thine,
    Of whose true wards thy music held the key;
    There men who mourn shall surely meet with
        thee.

¹ Holywell Wood, at Somersby, Lincolnshire.
² Skegness, Lincolnshire.
³ The Lime Walk, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1828-1831.
⁴ The society of twelve undergraduate friends, at Cambridge known as “The Apostles”.
⁵ Mirehouse, Home of the Speddings, 1835.
⁶ Shiplake-on-Thames, where Tennyson was married, 1850.
⁷ Clevedon, 31^st Jan., 1834.

(Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, p. 3)

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Land of the earlier morn, the later night,
        Of distance beyond distance; broader skies
Where the lark sings, and where the swallow flies,
This unperplexed, and that with clearer sight;
Here swirl no streams, no prattle of delight
Comes from the brook, no bubbling springs arise;
Deep channelled waters, where the bulrush sighs,
Slope, ladder-like, to Heaven, silver bright.
Here pale-faced prisoned labour never comes,
No furnace roar the shepherd’s sleep alarms,
Only at times the steamy thresher hums
Among the poplars whisp’ring round the farms;
And all the year, to urge the ploughman’s hand,
The great sea-sickle gleams about the land.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 217)

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Uncared for, outcast from the living hell,
    The hull that crossed the main,
The hand of Mammon drove them forth to sell,
    To be as exiles slain.

? and galled, with hollow, sunken,
    Rib-furrowed, heads hung down,
They passed to their blood-scented Paradise
    In Antwerp’s careless town.

Slow as for funeral, lo! with many a pause
    They went their fate to find—
For pain the gum down-roping from their jaws:
    The maimed, the halt, the blind.

Through Antwerp’s street the drear procession
            moved,
    The very pavement groaned,
These were the horses English hearts had loved
    And England had disowned.

Two hundred horses had done their best,
    Served Britain to the end;
Two hundred going to their solemn rest
    With only Death for friend.

Two hundred horses foaled across the sea.
    Their island’s joy and pride,
They had not bargained for their labour’s fee
    That pain to death should ride.

This was the surest hunter ever reined,
    That won the famous race,
This to the clang of arms was steeled and
            trained,
    That learned a lady’s pace.

That, once, the wisest in the land bestrode,
    And this a prince had borne,
This to the stall the jolly plowman rode
    That knew the coachman’s horn.

Condemned they went to where the knackers
            slay,—
    Their crime was being old;
One only curse their backs to-day,—
    The greed of man for gold.

On, on, they staggered thro’ an alien street,
    The bearer’s of our name,
And not a heart that in compassion beat
    And not a tongue cried “shame!”

The bells for prayer rang clear above the crowd,
    The priests went to and fro,
None said, “this sorry work was disallowed
    By Christ long years ago.”

(Fife Free Press & Kirkcaldy Guardian, 19 March 1910, p. 3)

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For now the people began to come swarming up from the plains beneath, and from tower and town and hamlet, till in truth the night “was busy as the day.”  And it was worthwhile to have witnessed that sunset.  A light veil of cloud was over the sea to the west, and the sun shone upon the veil, and made it as though it had been a tissue of fleecy gold.  Then suddenly the great gold-red ball disappeared, but still its light fell in patches upon the waving, heaving, filmy carpet of lilac vapour above the silent sea.  But there, dark against the sky, stood the great dusky-brown stack,—motionless, and dull, and meaningless.  At 9.30 p.m., the master architect called upon the stalwart son of the fire-god to broach the second barrel of paraffin and besprinkle the top of the pile.  A great wind arose, and the air was heard to sing through the flues.

The parson who seemed to be a leading spirit was now called on to give an account of that 19th July in 1588, and this he did; and as his words died away, a cheer broke the temporary silence.  Then a detachment was told off to go to the point of Skiddaw, in view of Keswick Town; and at 10 p.m. sharp red light seemed to break from underground at that far point, and in a moment the rosy glow was seen to irradiate the crowd by the beacon on the summit, and make the place a very mountain-height of phantasy or demon glory, as dreamed of in some wizard’s tale.  Rockets whizzed up to heaven, and fell in stars and golden rain.  Another moment, and a lady was seen to touch the summit of the pyre with a long wand of fire,—a peat, saturated with paraffin, at the end of a long pole.  And in a second the whole mass, with a roar, leapt into flame, and flung a banner of glorious golden light far off to the westward over the vale, in the direction of Bassenthwaite and the Wythop Woods,—a flame with at least three hundred square feet of fire in it, as I heard.  Then “Rule, Britannia!” and cheers for Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Raleigh and Howard, were heard, and the Bonfire Committee must needs have been glad.  “The red glare of Skiddaw” had indeed “roused the burghers of Carlisle.”

Rockets went upward from either point.  At about 10.45 silence was called for, and Macaulay’s “Ballad of the Armada” was given by a schoolmaster, as I learned afterwards, of the neighbouring parish of Brigham.  Three cheers were called for and given.  The Chairman of the Bonfire Committee was lifted and carried enthusiastically round the beacon-fire on the shoulders of his fire-making comrades.  At 11, red lights were again displayed, and bouquets of rockers sailed up and broke in beauty.  The National Anthem was sung, and leaving the Armada beacon to burn to its heart content for another two days or more, the crowd gradually began to disperse, and “down the hill, down the hill,” the hundreds of spectators went with shout and song, or with silence and in thought of the Spanish Armada, and the eventful beacon-night three hundred years ago.        

(Spectator, 61 (28 July 1888), 1028-9)

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