Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/A Character

by Alfred Tennyson

For other versions of this work, see A Character (Tennyson).

A CHARACTER.

 

I.
With a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, "The wanderings
Of this most intricate universe
Teach me the nothingness of things."
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

II.
He spake of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;
Then looking as 'twere in a glass,
He smoothed his chin and sleeked his hair,
And said the earth was beautiful.

III.
He spake of virtue: not the gods
More purely, when they wish to charm
Pallas and Juno sitting by:
And with a sweeping of the arm,
And a lacklustre deadblue eye,
Devolved his rounded periods.

IV.
Most delicately hour by hour
He canvassed human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds
In impotence of fancied power.

V.
With lips depressed as he were meek,
Himself unto himself he sold:
Upon himself himself did feed:
Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,
And other than his form of creed,
With chiselled features clear and sleek.