Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO LORD TENNYSON; ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY, AUGUST 6, 1889, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO LORD TENNYSON; ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY, AUGUST 6, 1889, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Master and seer! Too swift on noiseless feet
Last Line: And all our english race awaits thy latest word!
Subject(s): Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892); Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron


MASTER and seer! too swift on noiseless feet
Thy hurrying decades fleet with stealthy pace;
Yet not the less thy voice is clear and sweet,
And still thy genius mingles strength with grace.
On thy broad brow alone and reverend face
Thy fourscore winters show, not on thy mind.
Stay, Time, a little while thy headlong chase!
Or passing, one Immortal leave behind;
For we are weak, and changeful as the wind.

For him long since the dying swan would sing,
The dead soul pine in splendid misery.
He winged the legend of the blameless King,
And crossed to Lotusland the enchanted sea;
Heard the twin voices strive for mastery,
Faithful and faithless; and with prescient thought
Saw Woman rising in the days to be
To heights of knowledge in the past unsought;
These his eye marked, and those his wisdom taught.

And he it was whose musing ear o'er-heard
The love-tale sweet in death and madness end;
Who sang the deathless dirge, whose every word
Fashions a golden statute for his friend.
May all good things his waning years attend
Who told of Rizpah mourning for her dead!
Or in verse sweet as pitying ruth could lend
The childish sufferer on her hopeless bed;
Thoughts, pure and high, of precious fancy bred.

His it is still to scan with patient eye
The book of Nature, writ with herb and tree;
The buds of March unfold, the lush flowers die,
When sighs of Autumn wail o'er land and sea,
And those great orbs which wheel from age to age,
Cold, unregarding fires that seem to blight
All yearning hope and chill all noble rage;
And yet were dead, and void, maybe, of light,
Till first they swam upon a mortal's sight.

Master and friend, stay yet, for there is none
Worthy to take thy place to-day, or wear
Thy laurel when thy singing-days are done.
As yet the halls of song are mute and bare,
Nor voice melodious wakes the tuneless air,
Save some weak faltering accents faintly heard.
Stay with us; 'neath thy spell the world grows fair.
Our hearts revive, our inmost souls are stirred,
And all our English race awaits thy latest word!





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