A Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;
All things will change
Thro’ eternity.
‘Tis the world’s winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro’ and thro’,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill’d with life anew.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro’ eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

[Analysis of Nothing Will Die]

A Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field, or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

[Analysis of The Splendour Falls]

A Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet!
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.

Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite quite sure
That there is one to love me!
Then let come what come may
To a life that has been so sad,
I shall have had my day.

[Analysis of O let the solid ground]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

“There was a frost
Last night!” she said,
“And the stove was forgot
When we went to bed,
And the greenhouse plants
Are frozen dead!”

By the breakfast blaze
Blank-faced spoke she,
Her scared young look
Seeming to be
The very symbol
Of tragedy.

The frost is fiercer
Than then to-day,
As I pass the place
Of her once dismay,
But the greenhouse stands
Warm, tight, and gay,

While she who grieved
At the sad lot
Of her pretty plants —
Cold, iced, forgot —
Herself is colder,
And knows it not.

[Analysis of The Frozen Greenhouse]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

From Wynyard’s Gap the livelong day,
The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
We jaunted on,–
My fancy-man and jeering John,
And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
The inn that beamed thereby.

For months we had padded side by side,
Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoore wide,
And where the Parret ran.
We’d faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man.

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
My man and I;
“King’s Stag,” “Windwhistle” high and dry,
“The Horse” on Hintock Green,
The cosy house at Wynyard’s Gap,
“The Hut” renowned on Bredy Knap,
And many another wayside tap
Where folks might sit unseen.

Now as we trudged–O deadly day,
O deadly day!–
I teased my fancy-man in play
And wanton idleness.
I walked alongside jeering John,
I laid his hand my waist upon;
I would not bend my glances on
My lover’s dark distress.

Thus Poldon top at last we won,
At last we won,
And gained the inn at sink of sun
Far-famed as “Marshall’s Elm.”
Beneath us figured tor and lea,
From Mendip to the western sea–
I doubt if finer sight there be
Within this royal realm.

Inside the settle all a-row–
All four a-row

We sat, I next to John, to show
That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favored mate, and Mother Lee
Passed to my former one.

Then in a voice I had never heard,
I had never heard,
My only Love to me: “One word,
My Lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear?–
His? After all my months o’care?”
God knows ’twas not! But, O despair!
I nodded–still to tease.

Then up he sprung, and with his knife–
And with his knife
He let out jeering Johnny’s life,
Yes; there, at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John’s blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
Knew that the deed was done.

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-chester jail
My love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta’en in time o’ need;
(Blue Johnny stole right many a steed
Ere his last fling he flung.)

Thereaft I walked the world alone,
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropped his dead-born child.
‘Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.

And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined–

The ghost of him I’d die to kiss
Rose up and said: “Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I rest may find!”

O doubt not but I told him then,
I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
Since we joined lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind stirred to call up day . . .

–‘Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.

[Background and Analysis of A Trampwoman’s Tragedy]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
And called in friends.

Time has tired me since we met here
When the folk now dead were young,
And the viands were outset here
And quaint songs sung.

And the worm has bored the viol
That used to lead the tune,
Rust eaten out the dial
That struck night’s noon.

Now no Christmas brings in neighbours,
And the New Year comes unlit;
Where we sang the mole now labours,
And spiders knit.

Yet at midnight if here walking,
When the moon sheets wall and tree,
I see forms of old time talking,
Who smile on me.

[Analysis of The House of Hospitalities]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

It’s a dark drama, this; and yet I know the house, and date;
That is to say, the where and when John Channing met his fate.
The house was one in High Street, seen of burghers still alive,
The year was some two centuries bygone; seventeen-hundred and five.

And dying was Channing the grocer. All the clocks had struck eleven,
And the watchers saw that ere the dawn his soul would be in Heaven;
When he said on a sudden: ” I should like to kiss her before I go, —
For one last time!” They looked at each other and murmured, ” Even so.”

She’d just been haled to prison, his wife; yea, charged with shaping his death:
By poison, ’twas told; and now he was nearing the moment of his last breath:
He, witless that his young housemate was suspect of such a crime,
Lay thinking that his pangs were but a malady of the time.

Outside the room they pondered gloomily, wondering what to do,
As still he craved her kiss — the dying man who nothing knew:
” Guilty she may not be,” they said; ” so why should we torture him
In these his last few minutes of life? Yet how indulge his whim?”

And as he begged there piteously for what could not be done,
And the murder-charge had flown about the town to every one,
The friends around him in their trouble thought of a hasty plan,
And straightway set about it. Let denounce them all who can.

” O will you do a kindly deed — it may be a soul to save;
At least, great misery to a man with one foot in the grave?”
Thus they to the buxom woman not unlike his prisoned wife;
” The difference he’s past seeing; it will soothe his sinking life.”

Well, the friendly neighbour did it; and he kissed her; held her fast;
Kissed her again and yet again. ” I — knew she’d — come at last! —
Where have you been? — Ah, kept away! — I’m sorry — overtried —
God bless you!” And he loosed her fell back tiredly, and died.

His wife stood six months after on the scaffold before the crowd,
Ten thousand of them gathered there; fixed, silent, and hard-browed,
To see her strangled and burnt to dust, as was the verdict then
On women truly judged, or false, of doing to death their men.

Some of them said as they watched her burn: ” I am glad he never knew,
Since a few hold her as innocent — think such she could not do!
Glad, too, that (as they tell) he thought she kissed him ere he died.”
And they seemed to make no question that the cheat was justified.

[Analysis of The Mock Wife]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

I come to interview a Voiceless ghost;
Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?
Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,
And the unseen waters’ soliloquies awe me.
Where you will next be there’s no knowing,
Facing round about me everywhere,
With your nut-coloured hair,
And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.

Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;
Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;
What have you now found to say of our past –
Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?
Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?
Things were not lastly as firstly well
With us twain, you tell?
But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.

I see what you are doing: you are leading me on
To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,
The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone
At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,
And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow
That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,
When you were all aglow,
And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!

Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,
The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily,
Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,
For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.
Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,
The bringing of me here; nay, bring me here again!
I am just the same as when
Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

[Analysis of After a Journey]

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

I bore a daughter flower-fair,
In Pydel Vale, alas for me;
I joyed to mother one so rare,
But dead and gone I now would be.

Men looked and loved her as she grew,
And she was won, alas for me;
She told me nothing, but I knew,
And saw that sorrow was to be.

I knew that one had made her thrall,
A thrall to him, alas for me;
And then, at last, she told me all,
And wondered what her end would be.

She owned that she had loved too well,
Had loved too well, unhappy she,
And bore a secret time would tell,
Though in her shroud she’d sooner be.

I plodded to her sweetheart’s door
In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
I pleaded with him, pleaded sore,
To save her from her misery.

He frowned, and swore he could not wed,
Seven times he swore it could not be;
” Poverty’s worse than shame,” he said,
Till all my hope went out of me.

” I’ve packed my traps to sail the main” —
Roughly he spake, alas did he —
” Wessex beholds me not again,
‘Tis worse than any jail would be!”

— There was a shepherd whom I knew,
A subtle man, alas for me:
I sought him all the pastures through,
Though better I had ceased to be.

I traced him by his lantern light,
And gave him hint, alas for me,
Of how she found her in the plight
That is so scorned in Christendie.

” Is there an herb . . .?” I asked. ” Or none?”
Yes, thus I asked him desperately.
” — There is,” he said; ” a certain one. . . .”
Would he had sworn that none knew he!

” To-morrow I will walk your way,”
He hinted low, alas for me. —
Fieldwards I gazed throughout next day;
Now fields I never more would see!

The sunset-shine, as curfew strook,
As curfew strook beyond the lea,
Lit his white smock and gleaming crook,
While slowly he drew near to me.

He pulled from underneath his smock
The herb I sought, my curse to be —
” At times I use it in my flock,”
He said, and hope waxed strong in me.

” ‘Tis meant to balk ill-motherings” —
(Ill-motherings! Why should they be?) —
” If not, would God have sent such things?”
So spoke the shepherd unto me.

That night I watched the poppling brew,
With bended back and hand on knee:
I stirred it till the dawnlight grew,
And the wind whiffled wailfully.

” This scandal shall be slain,” said I,
” That lours upon her innocency:
I’ll give all whispering tongues the lie;” —
But worse than whispers was to be.

” Here’s physic for untimely fruit,”
I said to her, alas for me,
Early that morn in fond salute;
And in my grave I now would be.

— Next Sunday came, with sweet church chimes
In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
I went into her room betimes;
No more may such a Sunday be!

” Mother, instead of rescue nigh,”
She faintly breathed, alas for me,
” I feel as I were like to die,
And underground soon, soon should be.”

From church that noon the people walked
In twos and threes, alas for me,
Showed their new raiment — smiled and talked,
Though sackcloth-clad I longed to be.

Came to my door her lover’s friends,
And cheerly cried, alas for me,
” Right glad are we he makes amends,
For never a sweeter bride can be.”

My mouth dried, as ’twere scorched within,
Dried at their words, alas for me:
More and more neighbours crowded in,
(O why should mothers ever be!)

” Ha-ha! Such well-kept news!” laughed they,
Yes — so they laughed, alas for me.
” Whose banns were called in church to-day?” —
Christ, how I wished my soul could flee!

” Where is she? O the stealthy miss,”
Still bantered they, alas for me,
” To keep a wedding close as this. . . .”
Ay, Fortune worked thus wantonly!

” But you are pale — you did not know?”
They archly asked, alas for me,
I stammered, ” Yes — some days — ago,”
While coffined clay I wished to be.

” ‘Twas done to please her, we surmise?”
(They spoke quite lightly in their glee)
” Done by him as a fond surprise?”
I thought their words would madden me.

Her lover entered. ” Where’s my bird? —
My bird — my flower — my picotee?
First time of asking, soon the third!”
Ah, in my grave I well may be.

To me he whispered: ” Since your call — “
So spoke he then, alas for me —
” I’ve felt for her, and righted all.”
— I think of it to agony.

” She’s faint to-day — tired — nothing more — “
Thus did I lie, alas for me. . . .
I called her at her chamber door
As one who scarce had strength to be.

No voice replied. I went within —
O women! scourged the worst are we. . . .
I shrieked. The others hastened in
And saw the stroke there dealt on me.

There she lay — silent, breathless, dead,
Stone dead she lay — wronged, sinless she! —
Ghost-white the cheeks once rosy-red:
Death had took her. Death took not me.

I kissed her colding face and hair,
I kissed her corpse — the bride to be! —
My punishment I cannot bear,
But pray God not to pity me.

[Analysis if A Sunday Morning Tragedy]