To-night ungather’d let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
(Lord Alfred Tennyson)
More Poetry from Lord Alfred Tennyson:
Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems based on Topics: Death & Dying, Night, Time, Place, Summer, Past, Dancing, Running- Crossing The Bar (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
- The Grandmother (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
- Spring (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
- Of Old Sat Freedom (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: The Prelude (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
- To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the N (Lord Alfred Tennyson Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Night Poems, Time Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Place Poems, Past Poems, Summer Poems, Running Poems, Dancing PoemsBased on Keywords: mime, wassail, arcs, lightens, christmas-eve, ungather
- The Wild Knight (Gilbert Keith Chesterton Poems)
- Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto II. (Matthew Prior Poems)
- Hermann And Dorothea - VI. Klio (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Poems)
- The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society (Oliver Goldsmith Poems)
- A Story Of Plantagenet (Nora Pembroke Poems)