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IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON
Nightingales warbled without,
Within was weeping for thee;
Shadows for three dead men
Walk'd in the walks with me,
Shadows of three dead men, and thou
wast one of the three.
Nightingales sang in his woods,
The Master was far away;
Nightingales warbled and sang
Of a passion that lasts but a day;
Still in the house in his coffin the Prince
of courtesy lay.
Two dead men have I known
In courtesy like to thee;
Two dead men have I loved
With a love that ever will be;
Three dead men have I loved, and thou
art last of the three.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Written in 1870 and first printed in Cabinet Edition 1874.
Swainston was the seat of the late Sir John Simeon, in the Isle of Wight.
Here the greater part of "Maud" was written (Waugh). Sir John
died at Fribourg in Switzerland in 1870. The body was brought home for
burial, and this poem was written in the garden at Swainston during the week
that elapsed before the funeral
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