A Character

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

　　

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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. 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 smooth’d his chin and sleek’d his hair, And said the earth was beautiful. 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 lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods. Most delicately hour by hour He canvass’d 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. With lips depress’d 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 chisell'd features clear and sleek.

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