Whence that aery bloom of thine,
Like a lily which the sun
Looks thro’ in his sad decline,
And a rose-bush leans upon,
Thou that faintly smilest still,
As a Naiad in a well,
Looking at the set of day,
Or a phantom two hours old
Of a maiden passed away,
Ere the placid lips be cold?
Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,
Spiritual Adeline?
3
What hope or fear or joy is thine?
Who talketh with thee, Adeline?
For sure thou art not all alone:
Do beating hearts of salient springs
Keep measure with thine own?
Hast thou heard the butterflies
What they say betwixt their wings?
Or in stillest evenings
With what voice the violet woos
To his heart the silver dews?
Or when little airs arise,
How the merry bluebell rings [1]
To the mosses underneath?
Hast thou look’d upon the breath
Of the lilies at sunrise?
Wherefore that faint smile of thine,
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?
4
Some honey-converse feeds thy mind,
Some spirit of a crimson rose
In love with thee forgets to close
His curtains, wasting odorous sighs
All night long on darkness blind.
What aileth thee? whom waitest thou
With thy soften’d, shadow’d
brow,
And those dew-lit eyes of thine, [2]
Thou faint smiler, Adeline?
5
Lovest thou the doleful wind
When thou gazest at the skies?
Doth the low-tongued Orient [3]
Wander from the side of [4] the morn,
Dripping with Sabsean spice
On thy pillow, lowly bent
With melodious airs lovelorn,
Breathing Light against thy face,
While his locks a-dropping [5] twined
Round thy neck in subtle ring
Make a ’carcanet of rays’,[6]
And ye talk together still,
In the language wherewith Spring
Letters cowslips on the hill?
Hence that look and smile of thine,
Spiritual Adeline.
[Footnote 1: This conceit seems to have been
borrowed from Shelley, ‘Sensitive Plant’,
i.:—
And the hyacinth, purple and white and
blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal
anew
Of music.]
[Footnote 2: ‘Cf’. Collins,
‘Ode to Pity’, “and ‘eyes of
dewy light’".]
[Footnote 3: What “the low-tongued Orient”
may mean I cannot explain.]
[Footnote 4: 1830 and all editions till 1853.
O’.]
[Footnote 5: 1863. A-drooping.]
[Footnote 6: A carcanet is a necklace, diminutive
from old French “Carcan”. Cf.
‘Comedy of Errors’, in., i, “To see
the making of her ’Carcanet".]
First printed in 1830.
The only authoritative light thrown on the person
here described is what the present Lord Tennyson gives,
who tells us that “the then well-known Cambridge
orator S—was partly described”.
He was “a very plausible, parliament-like, self-satisfied
speaker at the Union Debating Society “.
The character reminds us of Wordsworth’s Moralist.
See ’Poet’s Epitaph’;—
