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THE WINDOW;

OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS.

FOUR years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to exercise his art upon. He had been very successful in setting such old songs as 'Orpheus with his lute,' and I drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet, whose almost only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my promise.

December, 1870.

A. TENNYSON.

THE WINDOW.

ON THE HILL.

THE lights and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down
on the plain.

A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's
eye!

Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her
window-pane,

When the winds are up in the
morning?

Clouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that
cannot be still,

All running on one way to the home of my love,

You are all running on, and I stand on
the slope of the hill,

And the winds are up in the morn-
ing!

Follow, follow the chase!

And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on.

O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face?

And my heart is there before you are
come, and gone,

When the winds are up in the
morning!

Follow them down the slope!
And I follow them down to the window-
pane of my dear,

And it brightens and darkens and brightens like my hope,

And it darkens and brightens and darkens
like my fear,

And the winds are up in the
morning.

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Bite, frost, bite!

You roll up away from the light The blue wood-louse, and the plump dormouse,

And the bees are still'd, and the flies are

kill'd,

And you bite far into the heart of the

house,

But not into mine.

Bite, frost, bite!

The woods are all the searer,

The fuel is all the dearer,
The fires are all the clearer,

My spring is all the nearer,

You have bitten into the heart of the

earth,

But not into mine.

SPRING.

Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there,
Birds' song and birds' love,
And you with gold for hair!
Birds' song and birds' love,

Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,

To love once and for ever.

Men's love and birds' love,

And women's love and men's! And you my wren with a crown of gold, You my queen of the wrens! You the queen of the wrens

We'll be birds of a feather,

I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens, And all in a nest together.

THE LETTER.

Where is another sweet as my sweet, Fine of the fine, and shy of the shy? Fine little hands, fine little feet

Dewy blue eye.

Shall I write to her? shall I go?

Ask her to marry me by and by? Somebody said that she'd say no; Somebody knows that she'll say ay!

Ay or no, if ask'd to her face?

Ay or no, from shy of the shy? Go, little letter, apace, apace, Fly;

Fly to the light in the valley below Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye: Somebody said that she'd say no; Somebody knows that she'll say ay!

NO ANSWER.

The mist and the rain, the mist and the rain!

Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
And never a glimpse of her window-pane !
And I may die but the grass will grow,
And the grass will grow when I am gone,
And the wet west wind and the world
will go on.

Ay is the song of the wedded spheres,
No is trouble and cloud and storm,

Ay is life for a hundred years,

No will push me down to the worm, And when I am there and dead and gone, The wet west wind and the world will go on.

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And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?

IV.

To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire,

Who scarcely darest to inquire, 'What is it makes me beat so low?'

Something it is which thou hast lost,

Some pleasure from thine early years. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,

That grief hath shaken into frost!

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will, and cries,

'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'

v.

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold:

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

VI.

One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That Loss is common to the race'And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor,while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his yast and wandering grave. change of rythm.

Ye know no more than I who wrought At that last hour to please him well; Who mused on all I had to tell, And something written, something thought;

Expecting still his advent home;

And ever met him on his way

With wishes, thinking, ' here to-day,' Or 'here to-morrow will he come.'

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, That sittest ranging golden hair; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;

And thinking, 'this will please him
best,'

She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night; And with the thought her colour burns;

And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turn'd, the curse Had fallen, and her future Lord Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,

Or kill'd in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?

And what to me remains of good? To her, perpetual maidenhood, And unto me no second friend.

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