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The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson cover

The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Chapter 28: A Dirge
By Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson
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British LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

A scholarly edition assembles the poet's early lyrical, narrative, and occasional pieces alongside juvenilia and poems later suppressed, presenting a critical introduction, commentary, and extensive notes. The editor compares editions, records textual variants, and provides a transcript of poems omitted or revised, plus a full bibliography. Organized both chronologically and thematically, the volume traces the emergence of recurring motifs—memory, loss, love, art and myth—and illuminates the poet's evolving technique through careful collation and explanatory annotation.

A Dirge

First printed in 1830.

1

Now is done thy long day’s work;
Fold thy palms across thy breast,
Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest.
Let them rave.
Shadows of the silver birk[1]
Sweep the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

2

Thee nor carketh[2] care nor slander;
Nothing but the small cold worm
Fretteth thine enshrouded form.
Let them rave.
Light and shadow ever wander
O’er the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

3

Thou wilt not turn upon thy bed;
Chaunteth not the brooding bee
Sweeter tones than calumny?
Let them rave.
Thou wilt never raise thine head
From the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

4

Crocodiles wept tears for thee;
The woodbine and eglatere
Drip sweeter dews than traitor’s tear.
Let them rave.
Rain makes music in the tree
O’er the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

5

Round thee blow, self-pleached[3] deep,
Bramble-roses, faint and pale,
And long purples[4] of the dale.
Let them rave.
These in every shower creep.
Thro’[5] the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

6

The gold-eyed kingcups fine:
The frail bluebell peereth over
Rare broidry of the purple clover.
Let them rave.
Kings have no such couch as thine,
As the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

7

Wild words wander here and there;
God’s great gift of speech abused
Makes thy memory confused:
But let them rave.
The balm-cricket[6] carols clear
In the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.

[1] Still used in the north of England for “birch”.

[2] Carketh. Here used transitively, “troubles,” though in Old English it is generally intransitive, meaning to be careful or thoughtful; it is from the Anglo-Saxon Carian; it became obsolete in the seventeenth century. The substantive cark, trouble or anxiety, is generally in Old English coupled with “care”.

[3] Self-pleached, self-entangled or intertwined. Cf. Shakespeare, “pleached bower,” Much Ado, iii., i., 7.

[4] 1830. “Long purples,” thus marking that the phrase is borrowed from Shakespeare, Hamlet, iv., vii., 169:—

and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.
It is the purple-flowered orchis, orchis mascula.

[5] 1830. Through.

[6] Balm cricket, the tree cricket; balm is a corruption of baum.