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The Lover’s Tale Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more, Some one had told me she was dead, and ask’d me If I would see her burial: then I seem’d To rise, and thro’ the forest-shadow borne With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down The sleepy sea-bank, till I came upon The rear of a procession, curving round The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn, Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in the distance, From out the yellow woods, upon the hill, Look’d forth the summit and the pinnacles Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry, Save those six virgins which upheld the bier, Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black; One walk’d abreast with me, and veiled his brow, And he was loud in weeping and in praise Of the departed: a strong sympathy Shook all my soul: I flung myself upon him In tears and cries: I told him all my love, How I had loved her from the first; whereat He shrunk and howl’d, and from his brow drew back His hand to push me from him; and the face The very face and form of Lionel, Flash’d through my eyes into my innermost brain, And at his feet I seemed to faint and fall, To fall and die away. I could not rise, Albeit I strove to follow. They pass’d on, The lordly Phantasms; in their floating folds They pass’d and were no more: but I had fall’n Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass. Always th’ inaudible, invisible thought Artificer and subject, lord and slave Shaped by the audible and visible, Moulded the audible and visible; All crisped sounds of wave, and leaf and wind, Flatter’d the fancy of my fading brain; The storm-pavilion’d element, the wood, The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave, Were wrought into the tissue of my dream. The moanings in the forest, the loud stream, Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep; And voices in the distance, calling to me, And in my vision bidding me dream on, Like sounds within the twilight realms of dreams, Which wander round the bases of the hills, And murmur in the low-dropt eaves of sleep, But faint within the portals. Oftentimes The vision had fair prelude, in the end Opening on darkness, stately vestibules To cares and shows of Death; whether the mind, With a revenge even to itself unknown, Made strange division of its suffering With her, whom to have suffering view’d had been Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed Spirit, Being blasted in the Present, grew at length Prophetical and prescient of whate’er The Future had in store; or that which most Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit Was of so wide a compass it took in All I had loved, and my dull agony. Ideally to her transferred, became Anguish intolerable. The day waned; Alone I sat with her: about my brow Her warm breath floated in the utterance Of silver-chorded tones: her lips were sunder’d With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in light Like morning from her eyes—her eloquent eyes (As I have seen them many hundred times), Fill’d all with clear pure fire, thro’ mine down rain’d Their spirit-searching splendours. As a vision Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay’d In damp and dismal dungeons underground Confined on points of faith, when strength is shock’d With torment, and expectancy of worse Upon the morrow, thro’ the ragged walls, All unawares before his half-shut eyes, Comes in upon him in the dead of night, And with th’ excess of sweetness and of awe, Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run over Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes Shone on my darkness forms which ever stood Within the magic cirque of memory, Invisible but deathless, waiting still The edict of the will to reassume The semblance of those rare realities Of which they were the mirrors. Now the light, Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought Keen, irrepressible. It was a room Within the summer-house of which I spoke, Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow Clambering, the mast bent, and the revin wind In her sail roaring. From the outer day, Betwixt the closest ivies came a broad And solid beam of isolated light, Crowded with driving atomies, and fell Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth Well-known, well-loved. She drew it long ago Forth gazing on the waste and open sea, One morning when the upblown billow ran Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour’d Into the shadowing pencil’s naked forms Colour and life: it was a bond and seal Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles; A monument of childhood and of love, The poesy of childhood; my lost love Symbol’d in storm. We gazed on it together In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart Grew closer to the other, and the eye Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low crouch’d A beauty which is death, when all at once That painted vessel, as with inner life, ‘Gan rock and heave upon that painted sea; An earthquake, my loud heartbeats, made the ground Roll under us, and all at once soul, life, And breath, and motion, pass’d and flow’d away To those unreal billows: round and round A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyves, Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-driven Far through the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek’d— My heart was cloven with pain. I wound my arms About her: we whirl’d giddily: the wind Sung: but I clasp’d her without fear: her weight Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes And parted lips which drank her breath, down hung The jaws of Death: I, screaming, from me flung The empty phantom: all the sway and whirl Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I Down welter’d thro’ the dark ever and ever.

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Alfred Lord Tennyson: I

  • Alfred Lord Tennyson: I

TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.

Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Current Events This Week: January 2023

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Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents

The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales

TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.

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The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Current Events This Week: January 2023

African Americans by the Numbers

Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents

The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales

  • Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?
  • The Twelve Dancing Princesses
  • Current Events This Week: January 2023
  • African Americans by the Numbers
  • Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents
  • The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales