Tennyson and his friends - Unknown

O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know
The limits of resistance, and the bounds
Determining concession; still be bold
Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;
And be thy heart a fortress to maintain
The day against the moment, and the year
Against the day; thy voice, a music heard
Thro’ all the yells and counter-yells of feud
And faction, and thy will, a power to make
This ever-changing world of circumstance,
In changing, chime with never-changing Law.

The Drive at Farringford, showing on the left the “Wellingtonia” planted by Garibaldi.
From a drawing by W. Biscombe Gardner.

TO GIFFORD PALGRAVE[30]

Ulysses, much-experienced man,
Whose eyes have known this globe of ours,
Her tribes of men, and trees, and flowers,
From Corrientes to Japan,

To you that bask below the Line,
I soaking here in winter wet—
The century’s three strong eights[31] have met
To drag me down to seventy-nine

III

In summer if I reach my day—
To you, yet young, who breathe the balm
Of summer-winters by the palm
And orange grove of Paraguay,

I tolerant of the colder time,
Who love the winter woods, to trace
On paler heavens the branching grace
Of leafless elm, or naked lime,

And see my cedar green, and there
My giant ilex keeping leaf
When frost is keen and days are brief—
Or marvel how in English air

My yucca, which no winter quells,
Altho’ the months have scarce begun,
Has push’d toward our faintest sun
A spike of half-accomplish’d bells—

VII

Or watch the waving pine which here
The warrior of Caprera set,[32]
A name that earth will not forget
Till earth has roll’d her latest year—

VIII

I, once half-crazed for larger light
On broader zones beyond the foam,
But chaining fancy now at home
Among the quarried downs of Wight,

Not less would yield full thanks to you
For your rich gift, your tale of lands
I know not,[33] your Arabian sands;
Your cane, your palm, tree-fern, bamboo,

The wealth of tropic bower and brake;
Your Oriental Eden-isles,[34]
Where man, nor only Nature smiles;
Your wonder of the boiling lake;[35]

Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,[36]
Phra-bat[37] the step; your Pontic coast;
Crag-cloister;[38] Anatolian Ghost;[39]
Hong-Kong,[40] Karnac,[41] and all the rest.

XII

Thro’ which I follow’d line by line
Your leading hand, and came, my friend,
To prize your various book, and send
A gift of slenderer value, mine.

TO THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

At times our Britain cannot rest,
At times her steps are swift and rash;
She moving, at her girdle clash
The golden keys of East and West.

Not swift or rash, when late she lent
The sceptres of her West, her East,
To one, that ruling has increased
Her greatness and her self-content.

III

Your rule has made the people love
Their ruler. Your viceregal days
Have added fulness to the phrase
Of “Gauntlet in the velvet glove.”

But since your name will grow with Time,
Not all, as honouring your fair fame
Of Statesman, have I made the name
A golden portal to my rhyme:

But more, that you and yours may know
From me and mine, how dear a debt
We owed you, and are owing yet
To you and yours, and still would owe.

For he[42]—your India was his Fate,
And drew him over sea to you—
He fain had ranged her thro’ and thro’,
To serve her myriads and the State,—

VII

A soul that, watch’d from earliest youth,
And on thro’ many a brightening year,
Had never swerved for craft or fear,
By one side-path, from simple truth;

VIII

Who might have chased and claspt Renown
And caught her chaplet here—and there
In haunts of jungle-poison’d air
The flame of life went wavering down;

But ere he left your fatal shore,
And lay on that funereal boat,
Dying, “Unspeakable” he wrote
“Their kindness,” and he wrote no more;

And sacred is the latest word;
And now the Was, the Might-have-been,
And those lone rites I have not seen,
And one drear sound I have not heard,

Are dreams that scarce will let me be,
Not there to bid my boy farewell,
When That within the coffin fell,
Fell—and flash’d into the Red Sea,

XII

Beneath a hard Arabian moon
And alien stars. To question, why
The sons before the fathers die,
Not mine! and I may meet him soon;

XIII

But while my life’s late eve endures,
Nor settles into hueless gray,
My memories of his briefer day
Will mix with love for you and yours.

TO W. E. GLADSTONE

We move, the wheel must always move,
Nor always on the plain,
And if we move to such a goal
As Wisdom hopes to gain,
Then you that drive, and know your Craft,
Will firmly hold the rein,
Nor lend an ear to random cries,
Or you may drive in vain,
For some cry “Quick” and some cry “Slow,”
But, while the hills remain,
Up hill “Too-slow” will need the whip,
Down hill “Too-quick,” the chain.