The Early Poems Author:Alfred Lord Tennyson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SONG. A Spirit haunts the year's last hours Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers : To himself he talks; For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work ... more »you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers : Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. The air is damp, and hush'd, and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death ; My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. A CHARACTER. With a half-glance upon the sky At night he said, ' The wanderings Of this most intricate Universe Teach me the nothingness of things.' Yet could not all creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye. He spake of beauty : that the dull Saw no divinity in grass, Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as 'twere in a glass, He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his hair, And said the earth was beautiful. He spake of virtue : not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by: And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods. Most delicately hour by hour He canvass'd human mysteries, And trod on silk, as if the winds Blew his own praises in his eyes, And stood aloof from other minds In impotence of fancied power. With lips depress'd as he were meek, Himself unto himself he sold : Upon himself himself did feed : Quiet, dispassionate,...« less