The Princess | Page 3

prepare (or were legally
required to
prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO? The Project gratefully accepts contributions in
money, time, scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts,
royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you
can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This Etext prepared by ddNg E-Ching
This is a prototype copy! A more presentable version will be coming up
after my exams.
The Princess
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
PROLOGUE
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the
set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants,
wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their
Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college,
visiting the son,--the son
A Walter too,--with others of our set,
Five
others: we were seven at Vivian-place.
And me that morning Walter showed the house,
Greek, set with busts:
from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their
names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones
of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones
of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together;
celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of
sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in
sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles
of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk
and deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armour hung.
And 'this' he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir
Ralph's at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all
about him'--which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that
dealt with knights,
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who
laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady,
one that armed
Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate,

Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.

'O miracle of women,' said the book,
'O noble heart who, being
strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent,
nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death,
But now when all was lost
or seemed as lost--
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of
sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire--
Brake with a blast of trumpets
from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled
some beneath her horses' heels,
And some were whelmed with
missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the
rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle
of noble womanhood!'
So sang the gallant glorious chronicle;
And, I all rapt in this, 'Come
out,' he said,
'To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia
with the rest.' We went
(I kept the book and had my finger in it)

Down through the park: strange was the sight to me;
For all the
sloping pasture murmured, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.

There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders
of their Institute
Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone

And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the
moment, playing, now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,

Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp: and
somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired

A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here
were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle
waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter:
round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And
shook the lilies: perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models
jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up
before the dusky groves

And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And
there through twenty posts of telegraph
They flashed a saucy message
to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in
hand with Science; otherwhere
Pure sport; a herd of boys with
clamour bowled
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about
Like

tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance,
and flew through light
And shadow, while the twangling violin

Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial
aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.
Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed,
but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt,

Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Through one wide chasm of
time and frost they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all
within
The sward was trim as any garden lawn:
And here we lit on
Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From
neighbour seats: and there was Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt
against the wall,
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child
half woman as she was, had wound
A scarf of orange round the stony
helm,
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk,
That