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.
796/870 page 760
![There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, There a single sordid attic holds the liv- ing aud the dead. There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor. And the crowded conch of incest in the warrens of the poor. Naj; your pardon, cry yaur forward, yours are hope and youth, but I — Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow witli the cry, Lame and old, and past his time, and pass- ing now into the uigiit; Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light. Light the fading gleam of Even* light the glimmer of the dawn ? Aged eyes mry take the growing glimmer for the gleam witlidrawn. Far aw.ay beyond her myriad coming clianges earlh will be Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me. Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earihl^'-best, Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest ? Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve, CiX)ok and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve. Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own. Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone. Worthier soul was he than I am, sound aud honest, rustic Squire, Kindly landlord, boon companion—youth- ful jealousy is a liar. Cast the poison from your bosom, onst the madness from your brain. Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain. Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower schooJi, Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool. Yonder lies our young sea-village — Art and Grace are less and less : Science grows and Beauty dwindles — roofs of slated hideousncss ! There is one old Hostel left us v. here they swing the Locksley shield. Till the peasant cow shall butt the Liot. passant from his field. Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence, In the common deluge drowning old polit- ical common-sense! *Poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled ! All I loved are vanish'd voices all my steps are on the dead. All the world is ghost to me, and as the phantom disap])ears. Forward far and far from here is all the hope of eighty years. In tliis Hostel — I remember—I repent it o'er his grave — Like a clown — by chance he met me — I refused the hand he gave. From that casement where the trailer man- tles all the mouldering bricks — I was then in early boyhood, Edith but a child of si.x — While I shelter'd in this archway from a day of driving showers — Peept the winsome face of Edith like a flower among the flowers. Here to-night! the Hall to-morrow, when tliey toU the Chapel bell! Shall I hear in one dark room a wailing, I have loved thee well. Then a peal that shakes the portal — one lias come to claim his bride. Her that shrank, and put me from her. shriek'd, and started from my side — Silent echoes! you, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452597_0796.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
