Clear as summer mountain streams,
Bright as the inwoven beams,
Which beneath their crisping sapphire
In the midday, floating o'er
The golden sands, make evermore
To a blossom-starred shore.
Hence away, unhallowed laughter!

1

Vex not thou the poet's mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet's mind;
For thou canst not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,
Flowing like a crystal river;
Bright as light, and clear as wind.

2

Dark-brow'd sophist, come not anear;
All the place [1] is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.
In your eye there is death,
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
Where you stand you cannot hear
From the groves within
The wild-bird's din.
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants,
It would fall to the ground if you came in.
In the middle leaps a fountain
Like sheet lightning,
Ever brightening
With a low melodious thunder;
All day and all night it is ever drawn
From the brain of the purple mountain
Which stands in the distance yonder:
It springs on a level of bowery lawn,
And the mountain draws it from Heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love;
And yet, tho' [2] its voice be so clear and full,
You never would hear it; your ears are so dull;
So keep where you are: you are foul with sin;
It would shrink to the earth if you came in.

[Footnote 1: 1830. The poet's mind. With this may be compared the opening stanza of Gray's 'Installation Ode': "Hence! avaunt! 'tis holy ground," and for the sentiments 'cf'. Wordsworth's 'Poet's Epitaph.'

[Footnote 2: 1830 to 1851. Though.]

THE SEA-FAIRIES

First published in 1830 but excluded from all editions till its restoration, when it was greatly altered, in 1853. I here give the text as it appeared in 1830; where the present text is the same as that of 1830 asterisks indicate it.

This poem is a sort of prelude to the Lotus-Eaters, the burthen being the same, a siren song: "Why work, why toil, when all must be over so soon, and when at best there is so little to reward?"

Slow sailed the weary mariners, and saw
Between the green brink and the running foam
White limbs unrobed in a chrystal air,
Sweet faces, etc.
...
middle sea.

The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Collins, John Churton, 1848-1908, Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 1809-1892

THE POET'S MIND

1

2

THE SEA-FAIRIES

SONG.