No More Learning

Then I lose it: it will fly:
Can it overlast the nerves?
Can it overlive the eye?
But the other, like a star,
Thro' the channel windeth far
Till it fade and fail and die,
To its Archetype that waits
Clad in light by golden gates,
Clad in light the Spirit waits
To embrace me in the sky.




XLII

[On the fly-leaf of a book illustrated by Bewick, in the library of
the late Lord Ravensworth, the following lines in Tennyson's autograph
were discovered in 1903. ]

A gate and a field half ploughed,
A solitary cow,
A child with a broken slate,
And a titmarsh in the bough.
But where, alack, is Bewick
To tell the meaning now?




XLIII

=The Skipping-Rope=

[This poem, published in the second volume of _Poems by Alfred
Tennyson_ (in two volumes, London, Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII), was
reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed. ]

Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope
Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!
How fairy-like you fly!
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope--
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.




XLIV

=The New Timon and the Poets=

[From _Punch_, February 28, 1846.
Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his
satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly
attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous
year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833
volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made
the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I
never sent my lines to _Punch_. John Forster did. They were too
bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published
them. '--_Life_, vol. I, p. 245. ]

We know him, out of Shakespeare's art,
And those fine curses which he spoke;
The old Timon, with his noble heart,
That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.

So died the Old: here comes the New:
Regard him: a familiar face:
I _thought_ we knew him: What, it's you
The padded man--that wears the stays--

Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys
With dandy pathos when you wrote,
A Lion, you, that made a noise,
And shook a mane en papillotes.

And once you tried the Muses too:
You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn,
You fall on those who are to you
As captain is to subaltern.

But men of long enduring hopes,
And careless what this hour may bring,
Can pardon little would-be Popes
And Brummels, when they try to sting.

An artist, Sir, should rest in art,
And wave a little of his claim;
To have the deep poetic heart
Is more than all poetic fame.

But you, Sir, you are hard to please;
You never look but half content:
Nor like a gentleman at ease
With moral breadth of temperament.

And what with spites and what with fears,
You cannot let a body be:
It's always ringing in your ears,
'They call this man as good as _me_.