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Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Princess (prologue)
Work rating: Medium

Sir Walter Vivian all a summer`s day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people:  thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron.  I was there
From college, visiting the son,—the son
A Walter too,—with others of our set,
Five others:  we were seven at Vivian-place.

	And me that morning Walter showed the house,
Greek, set with busts:  from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm:  and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers` arms and armour hung.

	And `this` he said `was Hugh`s at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph`s at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him`—which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights,
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed
Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.

	`O miracle of women,` said the book,
`O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier`s death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost—
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire—
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses` heels,
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!`

	So sang the gallant glorious chronicle;
And, I all rapt in this, `Come out,` he said,
`To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia with the rest.`  We went
(I kept the book and had my finger in it)
Down through the park:  strange was the sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders of their Institute
Taught them with facts.  One reared a font of stone
And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing, now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp:  and somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon:  Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields:  and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter:  round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies:  perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran:  a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And there through twenty posts of telegraph
They flashed a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light
And shadow, while the twangling violin
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.

	Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins.  High-arched and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Through one wide chasm of time and frost they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all within
The sward was trim as any garden lawn:
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From neighbour seats:  and there was Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt against the wall,
As gay as any.  Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child half woman as she was, had wound
A scarf of orange round the stony helm,
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk,
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook
Glow like a sunbeam:  near his tomb a feast
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests,
And there we joined them:  then the maiden Aunt
Took this fair day for text, and from it preached
An universal culture for the crowd,
And all things great; but we, unworthier, told
Of college:  he had climbed across the spikes,
And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor`s dogs; and one
Discussed his tutor, rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneered with sanctimonious theory.
	But while they talked, above their heads I saw
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought
My book to mind:  and opening this I read
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls,
And much I praised her nobleness, and `Where,`
Asked Walter, patting Lilia`s head (she lay
Beside him) `lives there such a woman now?`

	Quick answered Lilia `There are thousands now
Such women, but convention beats them down:
It is but bringing up; no more than that:
You men have done it:  how I hate you all!
Ah, were I something great!  I wish I were
Some might poetess, I would shame you then,
That love to keep us children!  O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college like a man`s,
And I would teach them all that men are taught;
We are twice as quick!`  And here she shook aside
The hand that played the patron with her curls.

	And one said smiling `Pretty were the sight
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns,
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph
Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.`
                       At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandaled foot:
`That`s your light way; but I would make it death
For any male thing but to peep at us.`

	Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed;
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she:
But Walter hailed a score of names upon her,
And `petty Ogress`, and `ungrateful Puss`,
And swore he longed at college, only longed,
All else was well, for she-society.
They boated and they cricketed; they talked
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics;
They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans;
They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends,
And caught the blossom of the flying terms,
But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place,
The little hearth-flower Lilia.  Thus he spoke,
Part banter, part affection.
                            `True,` she said,
`We doubt not that.  O yes, you missed us much.
I`ll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.`

	She held it out; and as a parrot turns
Up through gilt wires a crafty loving eye,
And takes a lady`s finger with all care,
And bites it for true heart and not for harm,
So he with Lilia`s.  Daintily she shrieked
And wrung it.  `Doubt my word again!` he said.
`Come, listen! here is proof that you were missed:
We seven stayed at Christmas up to read;
And there we took one tutor as to read:
The hard-grained Muses of the cube and square
Were out of season:  never man, I think,
So mouldered in a sinecure as he:
For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet,
And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,
We did but talk you over, pledge you all
In wassail; often, like as many girls—
Sick for the hollies and the yews of home—
As many little trifling Lilias—played
Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,
And ~what`s my thought~ and ~when~ and ~where~ and ~how~,
As here at Christmas.`
                      She remembered that:
A pleasant game, she thought:  she liked it more
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.
But these—what kind of tales did men tell men,
She wondered, by themselves?
                            A half-disdain
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips:
And Walter nodded at me; `~He~ began,
The rest would follow, each in turn; and so
We forged a sevenfold story.  Kind? what kind?
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill
Time by the fire in winter.`
                            `Kill him now,
The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,`
Said Lilia; `Why not now?` the maiden Aunt.
`Why not a summer`s as a winter`s tale?
A tale for summer as befits the time,
And something it should be to suit the place,
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,
Grave, solemn!`
               Walter warped his mouth at this
To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed
And Lilia woke with sudden-thrilling mirth
An echo like a ghostly woodpecker,
Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt
(A little sense of wrong had touched her face
With colour) turned to me with `As you will;
Heroic if you will, or what you will,
Or be yourself you hero if you will.`

	`Take Lilia, then, for heroine` clamoured he,
`And make her some great Princess, six feet high,
Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you
The Prince to win her!`
                       `Then follow me, the Prince,`
I answered, `each be hero in his turn!
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream.—
Heroic seems our Princess as required—
But something made to suit with Time and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,
A talk of college and of ladies` rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade,
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all—
This ~were~ a medley! we should have him back
Who told the "Winter`s tale" to do it for us.
No matter:  we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space.`
                            So I began,
And the rest followed:  and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs.
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