Tennyson

When the dumb hour, clothed in black,

Brings the dreams about my bed,

Call me not so often back,

Silent voices of the dead,

Toward the lowland ways behind me,

And the sunlight that is gone!

Call me rather, silent voices,

Forward to the starry track,

Glimmering up the heights beyond me,

On, and always on!

These lines were dictated by Tennyson shortly before his death. In the new golden treasury a note is appended: “if a friendship of near half a century may allow me to say it, those solemn words, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, give the key to Alfred Tennyson inmost nature, his life and his poetry.”