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.
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![Wc know not, and we know not why we moan. Where ? and I stared from every eagle- ])eak, I thridded the black heart of all the woods, I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and ''n the storms Of Autumn swept across the city, and heard The murmur of their temples chanting me, Me, me, the desolate Mother! Where ? — and turn'd, And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man, And grieved for man thro' all ray grief for thee, — Tlie jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth, The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft, The scorpion crawling over naked skulls; — I saw the tiger in the ruiu'd fane Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee I saw not; and far on, and, following out A league of labyrinthine darkness, came On three grav heads beneath a gleaming rift. Wiiere ? and I heard one voice from all the three We know not, for we spin the lives of men. And not of Gods, and know not why we spin! There is a Fate beyond us. Nothing knew. Last as the likeness of a dj'ing man, Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn A far-otff riendship that he comes no more. So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry, Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow past Before me, crying The Bright one in the highest Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest, And Briglit and Dark have sworn that I, the child Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the Power That lifts her buried life from gloom to bloom, Should be for ever and for evermore The Bride of Darkness. So the Shadow wail'd. Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven. I would not mingle with their feasts; to me Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the lips. Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite. The man, that only lives and loves an hour Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities, My quick tears kill'd the flower, my rav- ings husli'd The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd To send my life thro' olive-yard and vine And golden grain, my gift to helpless man. Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barley- spears Were hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun, Pale at my grief, drew down before his time Sickening, and ^tna kept her winter snow. Then He, the brother of this Darkness, He Who stil is highest, glancing from his height On earth a fruitless fallow, when he miss'd The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise Anil prayer of men, decreed that thou should'st dwell For nine white moons of each whole year with me, Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King. Once more the reaper in the gleam of dawn Will see me by the landmark far away. Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor, Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange. Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content With them, who still are highest. Those gray heads, What meant they by their Fate beyond the Fates But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down. As we bore down the Gods before us? Gods, To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to sta^,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452597_0824.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
