...look like (Write it!) like disaster. 147 Song: Tears, Idle Tears ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth...strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;...

...some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as...strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;...

...remains" in In Memoriam (ix. 1-3) is strongly paralleled in the second stanza of "Tears, Idle Tears": Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That...verge, So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. (iv. 26-30) More subtly, yet even more significantly, the imagery of the third stanza allegorizes and...

...Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), the poet ends each stanza with a variable refrain-line: Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth...sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and stranger, as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto...