Poems of Tennyson Author:Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1903 Original Publisher: Ginn Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / General Poetry / American / General Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or miss... more »ing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Ill SELECTIONS FROM EPIC POEMS THE PRINCESS, BOOK VII So was their sanctuary violated, So their fair college turn'd to hospital; At first with all confusion: by and by Sweet order lived again with other laws: A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere 5 Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talk'd, They sang, they read : till she not fair began To gather light, and she that was, became Her former beauty treble; and to and fro to With books, with flowers, with Angel offices, Like creatures native unto gracious act, And in their own clear element, they moved. But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 15 Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke : but oft Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field : void was her use, And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 20 O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, And suck the blinding splendour from the sand, And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 25 Expunge, the world : so fared she gazing there; So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came, And found fair peace once more among the sick. And twilight dawn'd ; and morn by morn the lark 30 Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gy...« less