No More Learning

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by. [1]

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, [2]
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.


[Footnote 1: 'The Keepsake':--But go thou by. ]

[Footnote 2: 'The Keepsake' has a small 't' for Time. ]








THE EAGLE

{FRAGMENT}

First published in 1851. It has not been altered.


He clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing
could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here. ]








MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH. . .

First published in 1842.
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly [1] borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.


[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1853. Lightly. ]







BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. . .

First published in 1842. No alteration.

This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to
which it refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the
morning between blossoming hedges". See 'Life of Tennyson', vol. i. , p.
223.

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.