Tennyson

Edward Fitzgerald who visited him once,

Visited him and never came back,

May only have found him while searching the woods

On a distant lonely wooded track.

 

On a wayward wooded walk after breakfast

With yearning thoughts of going abroad,

Or at the gate alone and waiting, waiting,

Waiting in the garden for Maud.

 

Or sadly mourning for Lionel and Hallam

As he passed into the House of Lords,

Mocking the materialistic values

Which in his youth struck for him such chords.

 

Edward Fitzgerald who visited him once,

Visited him and never came back,

Would not have thought to see or seek him again

Tall and gaunt and dressed in cape of black.

 

Or laying clasping Shakespeare in the moonlight

Through the oriel window streaming,

Calling “Hallam! Hallam!” in his final hours

As Hallam had come to his dreaming.

 

There he, the figure of grieving marble, lay

Like his King Arthur in his passing.

Quiet the hand and voice that his mother tongue

Was to any others surpassing.

 

Having crossed the bar, he then, and his pilot

Hoped finally to see face to face

No Queen, no Gladstone and No Lincolnshire man,

Asleep by Chaucer, his resting place.

 

Copyright © 2017 Grant Fenton – All Rights Reserved