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ON SUBLIMITY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O tell me not of vales in tenderest green
Last Line: Who feels the genuine force of high sublimity!
Alternate Author Name(s): Tennyson, Lord Alfred; Tennyson, 1st Baron; Tennyson Of Aldworth And Farringford, Baron


O TELL me not of vales in tenderest green,
The poplar's shade, the plantane's graceful tree;
Give me the wild cascade, the rugged scene,
The loud surge bursting o'er the purple sea:
On such sad views my soul delights to pore,
By Teneriffe's peak, or Kilda's giant height,
Or dark Loffoden's melancholy shore,
What time grey eve is fading into night;
When by that twilight beam I scarce descry
The mingled shades of earth and sea and sky.

Give me to wander at midnight alone,
Through some august cathedral, where, from high,
The cold, clear moon on the mosaic stone
Comes glancing in gay colours gloriously,
Through windows rich with gorgeous blazonry,
Gilding the niches dim, where, side by side,
Stand antique mitred prelates, whose bones lie
Beneath the pavement, where their deeds of pride
Were graven, but long since are worn away
By constant feet of ages day by day.

Then, as Imagination aids, I hear
Wild heavenly voices sounding from the quoir,
And more than mortal music meets mine ear,
Whose long, long notes among the tombs expire,
With solemn rustling of cherubic wings,
Round those vast columns which the roof upbear;
While sad and undistinguishable things
Do flit athwart the moonlit windows there;
And my blood curdles at the chilling sound
Of lone, unearthly steps, that pace the hallow'd ground!

I love the starry spangled heav'n, resembling
A canopy with fiery gems o'erspread,
When the wide loch with silvery sheen is trembling,
Far stretch'd beneath the mountain's hoary head.
But most I love that sky, when, dark with storms,
It frowns terrific o'er this wilder'd earth,
While the black clouds, in strange and uncouth forms,
Come hurrying on ward in their ruinous wrath;
And shrouding in their deep and gloomy robe
The burning eyes of heav'n and Dian's lucid globe!

I love your voice, ye echoing winds, that sweep
Thro' the wide womb of midnight, when the veil
Of darkness rests upon the mighty deep,
The labouring vessel, and the shatter'd sail --
Save when the forked bolts of lightning leap
On flashing pinions, and the mariner pale
Raises his eyes to heaven. Oh! who would sleep
What time the rushing of the angry gale
Is loud upon the waters? -- Hail, all hail!
Tempest and clouds and night and thunder's rending peal!

All hail, Sublimity! thou lofty one,
For thou dost walk upon the blast, and gird
Thy majesty with terrors, and thy throne
Is on the whirlwind, and thy voice is heard
In thunders and in shakings: thy delight
Is in the secret wood, the blasted heath,
The ruin'd fortress, and the dizzy height,
The grave, the ghastly charnel - house of death,
In vaults, in cloisters, and in gloomy piles,
Long corridors and towers and solitary aisles!

Thy joy is in obscurity, and plain
Is nought with thee; and on thy steps attend
Shadows but half-distinguish'd; the thin train
Of hovering spirits round thy pathway bend,
With their low tremulous voice and airy tread,
What time the tomb above them yawns and gapes:
For thou dost hold communion with the dead
Phantoms and phantasies and grisly shapes;
And shades and headless spectres of Saint Mark,
Seen by a lurid light, formless and still and dark!

What joy to view the varied rainbow smile
On Niagara's flood of matchless might,
Where all around the melancholy isle
The billows sparkle with their hues of light!
While, as the restless surges roar and rave,
The arrowy stream descends with awful sound,
Wheeling and whirling with each breathless wave,
Immense, sublime, magnificent, profound!
If thou hast seen all this, and could'st not feel,
Then know, thine heart is fram'd of marble or of steel.

The hurricane fair earth to darkness changing,
Kentucky's chambers of eternal gloom,
The swift-pac'd columns of the desert ranging
Th' uneven waste, the violent Simoom,
Thy snow-clad peaks, stupendous Gungotree!
Whence springs the hallow'd Jumna's echoing tide,
Hoar Cotopaxi's cloud-capt majesty,
Enormous Chimborazo's naked pride,
The dizzy Cape of winds that cleaves the sky,
Whence we look down into eternity,

The pillar'd cave of Morven's giant king,
The Yanar, and the Geyser's boiling fountain,
The deep volcano's inward murmuring,
The shadowy Colossus of the mountain;
Antiparos, where sun-beams never enter;
Loud Stromboli, amid the quaking isles;
The terrible Maelstroom, around his centre
Wheeling his circuit of unnumber'd miles:
These, these are sights and sounds that freeze the blood,
Yet charm the awe-struck soul which doats on solitude.

Blest be the bard, whose willing feet rejoice
To tread the emerald green of Fancy's vales,
Who hears the music of her heavenly voice,
And breathes the rapture of her nectar'd gales!
Blest be the bard, whom golden Fancy loves,
He strays for ever thro' her blooming bowers,
Amid the rich profusion of her groves,
And wreathes his forehead with her spicy flowers
Of sunny radiance; but how blest is he
Who feels the genuine force of high Sublimity!







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