To-night ungather'd let us leave / Alfred Tennyson

CIV

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.

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography