LORD TENNYSON

If such a dreamy touch should fall,

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt; My guardian angel will speak out

In that high place, and tell thee all.

��The wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul ?

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life ;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope thro* darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

IX

' So careful of the type ? ' but no.

From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, l A thousand types are gone

I care for nothing, all shall go.

�� �