COME DOWN, O MAID
by: Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
- OME down, O maid, from yonder
mountain height:
- What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
- In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
- But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
- To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
- To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
- And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
- For Love is of the valley, come thou down
- And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
- Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
- Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
- Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
- With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
- Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
- Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
- That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
- To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
- But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
- To find him in the valley; let the wild
- Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
- The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
- Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke
- That like a broken purpose waste in air:
- So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
- Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
- Arise to thee; the children call, and I
- Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
- Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
- Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
- The moan of doves is immemorial elms,
- And murmuring of innumberable bees.
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POEMS BY ALFRED TENNYSON |
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