Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The poetical works of Alfred Tennyson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
791/870 page 755
![LOCKSLEY HALL SL\TY YEARS AFTER. Late, my grandson ! half the morning have 1 paced these sandy tracts, Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts, Wander'd hack to living boyhood while I I heard the cnrlews call, I myself so close on death, and death it- self in Locksley Hall. So — your happy suit was blasted — she the faultless, the divine ; And you liken — boyish babble—this boy-love of yours with mine. I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past; Babble, babble; our old England m.a}' go down in babble at last. ' Curse him ! curse your fellow-victim ' call him dotard in your rage? Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age. Jilted for a wealthier ! wealthier? yet per- haps she was not wise ; I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes. In the hall there hangs a painting — Amy's arms about my neck — Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck. In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown ; I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone. Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake ? You, not you ! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make. Amy loved me. Amy fail'd me, Atny was a timid child; But your Judith — but your worldhng — she had never driven me wild She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring. She that finds a winter sunset fairer that a morn of Spring. She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lea-e of life, While she vows till death shall part us/' she the would-be-widow wife. She the worldling born of wcrldlings — father, mother — be content, Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent. Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground. Lies the warrioi-, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound. Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his piide; Dead the wariior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died. Yet how often I and Amy in the moulder- ing aisle have stood. Gazing for one ])eusive moment on that founder of our blood. There again I stood today, and where of old we knelt in prayer. Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley — there^ All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled. Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child. Dead — and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now, I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow. Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears, Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452597_0791.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
