SELECTED POETRY.

Auckland Star, Volume XII, Issue 3546, 17 December 1881, Page 4 (Supplement)

SELECTED POETRY.

DESPAIR,

[Alfred Tennyson publishes a dramatic monologue, entitled Despair," in the current number Of the '" Nineteenth Century." It is a story of a man and his wife, who, having lost faith in a good future life, resolve to commit suicide by drowning. Tho woman is drowned, but tho man is rescued by the minister of tho sect lie has abandoned. Tho following are quotations from this poem:—]

Is it you that preached in tho chapel there, looking over the sand, Followed us, too, that night and dogged us and drow us to land 1 What did I feel that night 3 you aro curious. how should I tell 1 Does it matter so much what I felt? you rescued mo. Yet was it well That you camo unwished for, unlookcd for, betwoon mo and the deep and my gloom? Three days sinco. three more dark days of tho godless gloom O£ a life without sun, without health, without hopo, without any delight, Can anything hero upon earth—hut, oh, God! that night! that night! When tho rolling eyes of tho lighthouso there, on tho fatal nock Of land running out into rock—they had saved many hundreds from wreck, Glared on our way toward death, Iremembered, I thought as wo passed, Does it matter how many they saved! We aro all of us wrecked at last. Do you fear? And there came through the roar of the breaker a whisper, a breath, Fear! Am I not with you ? lam frightened at life, not death. And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled

and shone in the sky, Flashing with (Ires as of God, but wo know that their light was a lie. Lightly stop over the sands; tho waters, you hear lliom call: Life, with its anguish and sorrow and errors, away with it all. And sho laid her hand in my own; she was always loyal and sweot, Till tho points in tho foam in the dusk came

pliiying about our feot. Tlioro was v strong sea current could sweep us out of the main, God! Tlki' I folt as I spoke I was hiking the

name in vain. Ah, God I and we turned to each other and

kissed, wo embraced, sho and I. Knowing tlia lovo we used to believo cvcrlttst-

intr would die. We hail read their know-nothing books, and we loaned to tho darker side. Ah, God ! should wo Iliul him 1 Perhaps, perhaps, if wo died, it' wo died. We never had found him on earth; this earth

Is n fatherless hell. Deai- love, forever and over, forever and e"er

farewell! Never a cry so desolate, not since the world begun ; Never a kiss so snd, no, not since tho coming" of

mini ; But tuo blind wave cast mo ashore and you

saved me a valueless life. Not X grain of gratitude, iniiut, you have parted the man from tlio wife, lam loft nlono oil the land; sho is alono on the

sen, If v curso meant aught, I would curso you for not having let mo bo. Have T crazed myself over their horrible infidel

writings? Oh. yes, For these aro tho new dark ages, you sco, of tho inlldol press. When the but comes out of his cavo and the owls are whooping nt noon, And doubt is the lord of this dunghill, and crows to tho sun and the moon, fill the sun and tlio moon of our skies aro both

of thorn turned into blood, And hopo will lmvo broken hor heart running lifter a shadow of good, I'or their knowing and know-nothing books aro scattered from lmnd to hand. >vo have knelt in your know-all cliapeli too, looking over tho sand. All, yea! I lmvo had somo glimmer at tJmcs in ills' gloomiest woo Of God behind nil, after all—tho great God for aught that I know. Cut tho God of lovo and of hell, together they can't bo thought. If there is such a God may tho great God curso him and bring him to nought.