DEDICATED TO THE PASSENGERS AND THOSE AWAITING WORD OF THEIR FATE ON THE LOST MALAYSIAN FLIGHT. The Two Voices by Alfred Tennyson COMPLIMENTS OF WIKISOURCE A still small voice spake unto me, Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be? Then to the still small voice I said; Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made. To which the voice did urge reply; To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: Thro crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew. I said, When first the world began Young Nature thro five cycles ran, And in the sixth she moulded man. She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast. Thereto the silent voice replied; Self-blinded are you by your pride: Look up thro night: the world is wide. This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres? It spake, moreover, in my mind: Tho thou wert scatterd to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind. Then did my response clearer fall: No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all. To which he answerd scoffingly; Good soul! suppose I grant it thee, Wholl weep for thy deficiency? Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference Is cancelld in the world of sense? I would have said, Thou canst not know, But my full heart, that workd below, Raind thro my sight its overflow. Again the voice spake unto me: Thou art so steepd in misery, Surely twere better not to be. Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep: Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep. I said, The years with change advance: If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance. Some turn this sickness yet might take, Evn yet. But he: What drug can make A witherd palsy cease to shake? I wept, Tho I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow; And men, thro novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not. Yet, said the secret voice, some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime. Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heavens starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night. Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells. I said that all the years invent; Each month is various to present The world with some development. Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho watching from a ruind tower How grows the day of human power? The highest-mounted mind, he said, Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead. Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main? Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down, Flood with full daylight glebe and town? Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dreamd not yet. Thou hast not gaind a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite. Twere better not to breathe or speak, Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek. Moreover, but to seem to find Asks what thou lackest, thought resignd, A healthy frame, a quiet mind. I said, When I am gone away, He dared not tarry, men will say, Doing dishonour to my clay. This is more vile, he made reply, To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh, Than once from dread of pain to die. Sick art thou a divided will Still heaping on the fear of ill The fear of men, a coward still. Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground? The memory of the witherd leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garnerd Autumn-sheaf. Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust; The right ear, that is filld with dust, Hears little of the false or just. Hard task, to pluck resolve, I cried, From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride! Nay rather yet that I could raise One hope that warmd me in the days While still I yearnd for human praise. When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flashd and rung. I sung the joyful Paean clear, And, sitting, burnishd without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And mete the bounds of hate and love As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about To search thro all I felt or saw, The springs of life, the depths of awe, And reach the law within the law: At least, not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed, To pass, when Life her light withdraws, Not void of righteous self-applause, Nor in a merely selfish cause In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honourd, known, And like a warrior overthrown; Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears, When, soild with noble dust, he hears His countrys war-song thrill his ears: Then dying of a mortal stroke, What time the foemans line is broke. And all the war is rolld in smoke. Yea! said the voice, thy dream was good, While thou abodest in the bud. It was the stirring of the blood. If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? Then comes the check, the change, the fall. Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. There is one remedy for all. Yet hadst thou, thro enduring pain, Linkd month to month with such a chain Of knitted purport, all were vain. Thou hadst not between death and birth Dissolved the riddle of the earth. So were thy labour little worth. That men with knowledge merely playd, I told thee hardly nigher made, Tho scaling slow from grade to grade; Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind, Named man, may hope some truth to find, That bears relation to the mind. For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon. Cry, faint not: either Truth is born Beyond the polar gleam forlorn, Or in the gateways of the morn. Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope Beyond the furthest nights of hope, Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope. Sometimes a little corner shines, As over rainy mist inclines A gleaming crag with belts of pines. I will go forward, sayest thou, I shall not fail to find her now. Look up, the fold is on her brow. If straight thy track, or if oblique, Thou knowst not. Shadows thou dost strike, Embracing cloud, Ixion-like; And owning but a little more Than beasts, abidest lame and poor, Calling thyself a little lower Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl! Why inch by inch to darkness crawl? There is one remedy for all. O dull, one-sided voice, said I, Wilt thou make everything a lie, To flatter me that I may die? I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds. I cannot hide that some have striven, Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with Heaven: Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, And did not dream it was a dream; But heard, by secret transport led, Evn in the charnels of the dead, The murmur of the fountain-head Which did accomplish their desire, Bore and forbore, and did not tire, Like Stephen, an unquenched fire. He heeded not reviling tones, Nor sold his heart to idle moans, Tho cursed and scornd, and bruised with stones: But looking upward, full of grace, He prayd, and from a happy place Gods glory smote him on the face. The sullen answer slid betwixt: Not that the grounds of hope were fixd, The elements were kindlier mixd. I said, I toil beneath the curse, But, knowing not the universe, I fear to slide from bad to worse. And that, in seeking to undo One riddle, and to find the true, I knit a hundred others new: Or that this anguish fleeting hence, Unmanacled from bonds of sense, Be fixd and frozn to permanence: For I go, weak from suffering here; Naked I go, and void of cheer: What is it that I may not fear? Consider well, the voice replied, His face, that two hours since hath died; Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride? Will he obey when one commands? Or answer should one press his hands? He answers not, nor understands. His palms are folded on his breast: There is no other thing expressd But long disquiet merged in rest. His lips are very mild and meek: Tho one should smite him on the cheek, And on the mouth, he will not speak. His little daughter, whose sweet face He kissd, taking his last embrace, Becomes dishonour to her race His sons grow up that bear his name, Some grow to honour, some to shame, But he is chill to praise or blame. He will not hear the north wind rave, Nor, moaning, household shelter crave From winter rains that beat his grave. High up the vapours fold and swim: About him broods the twilight dim: The place he knew forgetteth him. If all be dark, vague voice, I said, These things are wrapt in doubt and dread, Nor canst thou show the dead are dead. The sap dries up: the plant declines. A deeper tale my heart divines. Know I not Death? the outward signs? I found him when my years were few; A shadow on the graves I knew, And darkness in the village yew. From grave to grave the shadow crept: In her still place the morning wept: Touchd by his feet the daisy slept. The simple senses crownd his head: Omega! thou art Lord, they said; We find no motion in the dead. Why, if man rot in dreamless ease, Should that plain fact, as taught by these, Not make him sure that he shall cease? Who forged that other influence, That heat of inward evidence, By which he doubts against the sense? He owns the fatal gift of eyes, That read his spirit blindly wise, Not simple as a thing that dies. Here sits he shaping wings to fly: His heart forebodes a mystery: He names the name Eternity. That type of Perfect in his mind In Nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself in every wind.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:24:58 +0000
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