Tennyson’s Suppressed Poems

II

The Burial of Love

Alfred Tennyson


        HIS eyes in eclipse,
        Pale cold his lips,
The light of his hopes unfed,
        Mute his tongue,
        His bow unstrung
With the tears he hath shed,
Backward drooping his graceful head.

        Love is dead;
        His last arrow sped;
He hath not another dart;
        Go—carry him to his dark deathbed;
Bury him in the cold, cold heart—
        Love is dead.

Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn,
        And unrevenged? Thy pleasant wiles
Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?
        Shall hollow-hearted apathy,
The cruellest form of perfect scorn,
        With langour of most hateful smiles,
For ever write
In the weathered light
        Of the tearless eye
        An epitaph that all may spy?
        No! sooner she herself shall die.

For her the showers shall not fall,
Nor the round sun that shineth to all;
        Her light shall into darkness change;
For her the green grass shall not spring,
Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,
        Till Love have his full revenge.


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