Walking To The Mail

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

        John.        I’m glad I walk’d.        How fresh the meadows look
Above the river, and, but a month ago,
The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.
Is yon plantation where this byway joins
The turnpike?
        James.     Yes.
        John.        And when does this come by?
        James.     The mail? At one o’clock.
        John.        What is it now?
        James.     A quarter to.
        John.        Whose house is that I see?
No, not the County Member’s with the vane:
Up higher with the yew-tree by it, and half
A score of gables.
        James.     That?        Sir Edward Head’s:
But he’s abroad: the place is to be sold.
        John.        Oh, his. He was not broken.
        James.     No, sir, he,
Vex’d with a morbid devil in his blood
That veil’d the world with jaundice, hid his face
From all men, and commercing with himself,
He lost the sense that handles daily life—
That keeps us all in order more or less—
And sick of home went overseas for change.
        John.        And whither?
        James.     Nay, who knows? he’s here and there.
But let him go; his devil goes with him,
As well as with his tenant, Jockey Dawes.
        John.        What’s that?
        James.     You saw the man—on Monday, was it?—
There by the hump-back’d willow; half stands up
And bristles; half has fall’n and made a bridge;
And there he caught the younker tickling trout—
Caught in flagrante—what’s the Latin word?—
Delicto; but his house, for so they say,
Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook
The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,
And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay’d:
The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs,
And all his household stuff; and with his boy
Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt,
Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him, ‘What!
You’re flitting!’ ‘Yes, we’re flitting,’ says the ghost
(For they had pack’d the thing among the beds).
‘Oh, well,’ says he, ‘you flitting with us too—
Jack, turn the horses’ heads and home again’.
        John.        He left his wife behind; for so I heard.
        James.     He left her, yes. I met my lady once:
A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.
        John.     Oh, yet, but I remember, ten years back—
’Tis now at least ten years—and then she was—
You could not light upon a sweeter thing:
A body slight and round and like a pear
In growing, modest eyes, a hand a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin
As clean and white as privet when it flowers.
        James.     Ay, ay, the blossom fades and they that loved
At first like dove and dove were cat and dog.
She was the daughter of a cottager,
Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride,
New things and old, himself and her, she sour’d
To what she is: a nature never kind!
Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say.
Kind nature is the best: those manners next
That fit us like a nature second-hand;
Which are indeed the manners of the great.
        John.     But I had heard it was this bill that past,
And fear of change at home, that drove him hence.
        James.        That was the last drop in the cup of gall.
I once was near him, when his bailiff brought
A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince
As from a venomous thing: he thought himself
A mark for all, and shudder’d, lest a cry
Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes
Should see the raw mechanic’s bloody thumbs
Sweat on his blazon’d chairs; but, sir, you know
That these two parties still divide the world—
Of those that want, and those that have: and still
The same old sore breaks out from age to age
With much the same result. Now I myself,
A Tory to the quick, was as a boy
Destructive, when I had not what I would.
I was at school—a college in the South:
There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit,
His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;
We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She,
With meditative grunts of much content,
Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.
By night we dragg’d her to the college tower
From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,
And on the leads we kept her till she pigg’d.
Large range of prospect had the mother sow,
And but for daily loss of one she loved,
As one by one we took them—but for this—
As never sow was higher in this world—
Might have been happy: but what lot is pure!
We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,
And so return’d unfarrowed to her sty.
        John.     They found you out?
        James.    Not they.
        John.     Well—after all—
What know we of the secret of a man?
His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,
That we should mimic this raw fool the world,
Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,
As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity—more from ignorance than will,
But put your best foot forward, or I fear
That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes
With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand
As you shall see—three pyebalds and a roan.