XXX

=Sonnet=

[Published in the Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832.  Edited by C.F.  Edgar, London:  Longman and Co.  Reprinted in the Athenaeum, 4 May, 1867.]

  There are three things that fill my heart with sighs
  And steep my soul in laughter (when I view
  Fair maiden forms moving like melodies),
  Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue.

  There are three things beneath the blessed skies
  For which I live—­black eyes, and brown and blue;
  I hold them all most dear; but oh! black eyes,
  I live and die, and only die for you.

  Of late such eyes looked at me—­while I mused
  At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane
  In old Bayona, nigh the Southern Sea—­
  From an half-open lattice looked at me.

  I saw no more only those eyes—­confused
  And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain.

=Poems, 1833=

[The poems numbered XXXI-XXXIX were published in the 1832 volume (Poems by Alfred Tennyson.  London:  Edward Moxon, 94 New Bond Street.  MDCCCXXXIII; published December, 1832), and were thereafter suppressed.]

XXXI

=Sonnet=

  Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet! 
    How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs;
  I only ask to sit beside thy feet. 
    Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes,
  Might I but kiss thy hand!  I dare not fold
    My arms about thee—­scarcely dare to speak. 
  And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
    As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek. 
  Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
    Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
    The subtle spirit.  Even while I spoke,
  The bare word KISS hath made my inner soul
    To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note
    Hath melted in the silence that it broke.

XXXII

=The Hesperides=

    Hesperus and his daughters three
    That sing about the golden tree. 
      —­COMUS.

  The Northwind fall’n, in the newstarred night
  Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
  The hoary promontory of Soloe
  Past Thymiaterion, in calmed bays,
  Between the Southern and the Western Horn,
  Heard neither warbling of the nightingale,
  Nor melody o’ the Lybian lotusflute
  Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope
  That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue,
  Beneath a highland leaning down a weight
  Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade,
  Came voices, like the voices in a dream,
  Continuous till he reached the other sea.

Song

  I