Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/879

 LORD TENNYSON

Death is the end of life; ah, why

Should life all labour be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?

All things are taken from us, and become

Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.

Let us alone. What pleasure can we have

To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence; ripen, fall and cease:

Give Ub long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half -shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream'

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,

Which will not leave the myrrh-bubh on the height;

To hear each other's whibper'd speech,

Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,

With those old faces of our infancy

Heap'd over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass'

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change;

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