Explore "The Suppressed Poems" by Alfred Tennyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O maiden, fresher than the first green leaf / With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea, / Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee / That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief / Doth hold the other half in sovranty. / Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline: / Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine: / Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine / My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart, / Issue of its own substance, my heart's night / Thou canst not lighten even with "thy" light, / All powerful in beauty as thou art. / Almeida, if my heart were substanceless, / Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side, / So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide, / But lose themselves in utter emptiness. / Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep / They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.