No More Learning

Hours, when the Poet's words and looks
Had yet their native glow:
Not yet the fear of little books
Had made him talk for show:
But, all his vast heart sherris-warm'd,
He flash'd his random speeches;
Ere days, that deal in ana, swarm'd
His literary leeches.

So mix for ever with the past,
Like all good things on earth!
For should I prize thee, couldst thou last,
At half thy real worth?
I hold it good, good things should pass:
With time I will not quarrel:
It is but yonder empty glass
That makes me maudlin-moral.

Head-waiter of the chop-house here,
To which I most resort,
I too must part: I hold thee dear
For this good pint of port.
For this, thou shalt from all things suck
Marrow of mirth and laughter;
And, wheresoe'er thou move, good luck
Shall fling her old shoe after.

But thou wilt never move from hence,
The sphere thy fate allots:
Thy latter days increased with pence
Go down among the pots:
Thou battenest by the greasy gleam
In haunts of hungry sinners,
Old boxes, larded with the steam
Of thirty thousand dinners.

_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins,
Would quarrel with our lot;
_Thy_ care is, under polish'd tins,
To serve the hot-and-hot;
To come and go, and come again,
Returning like the pewit,
And watch'd by silent gentlemen,
That trifle with the cruet.

Live long, ere from thy topmost head
The thick-set hazel dies;
Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread
The corners of thine eyes:
Live long, nor feel in head or chest
Our changeful equinoxes,
Till mellow Death, like some late guest,
Shall call thee from the boxes.

But when he calls, and thou shalt cease
To pace the gritted floor,
And, laying down an unctuous lease
Of life, shalt earn no more;
No carved cross-bones, the types of Death,
Shall show thee past to Heaven:
But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath,
A pint-pot neatly graven.


[Footnote 1: 1842 and all previous to 1853. To full and kindly. ]

[Footnote 2: All previous to 1853:--

Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days. ]


[Footnote 3: All previous to 1853. Though.
]

[Footnote 4: The expression is Shakespeare's, 'Twelfth Night', v. , i. ,

"and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges". ]


[Footnote 5: 1842 to 1843. With motion less or greater. ]




TO----

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS

Originally published in the 'Examiner' for 24th March, 1849; then in the
sixth edition of the poems, 1850, with the second part of the title and
the alterations noted. When reprinted in 1851 one more slight alteration
was made. It has not been altered since. The work referred to was
Moncton Milne's (afterwards Lord Houghton) 'Letters and Literary Remains
of Keats' published in 1848, and the person to whom the poem may have
been addressed was Tennyson's brother Charles, afterwards Charles
Tennyson Turner, to the facts of whose life and to whose character it
would exactly apply. See Napier,'Homes and Haunts of Tennyson', 48-50.
But Sir Franklin Lushington tells me that it was most probably addressed
to some imaginary person, as neither he nor such of Tennyson's surviving
friends as he kindly consulted for me are able to identify the person.


You might have won the Poet's name
If such be worth the winning now,
And gain'd a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim;
But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro' troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice:

And you have miss'd the irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet's crown:
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

"Proclaim the faults he would not show:
Break lock and seal: betray the trust:
Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just
The many-headed beast should know".

Ah, shameless! for he did but sing.
A song that pleased us from its worth;
No public life was his on earth,
No blazon'd statesman he, nor king.