Prefatory Poem To My Brother’s Sonnets

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

　　

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Midnight June 30 1879 I. Midnight–in no midsummer tune The breakers lash the shores: The cuckoo of a joyless June Is calling out of doors: And thou hast vanish’d from thine own To that which looks like rest, True brother, only to be known By those who love thee best. II. Midnight–and joyless June gone by, And from the deluged park The cuckoo of a worse July Is calling thro’ the dark: But thou art silent underground, And o’er thee streams the rain, True poet, surely to be found When Truth is found again. III. And now, in these unsummer’d skies The summer bird is still, Far off a phantom cuckoo cries From out a phantom hill; And thro’ this midnight breaks the sun Of sixty years away, The light of days when life begun, The days that seem to-day, When all my griefs were shared with thee, As all my hopes were thine– As all thou wert was one with me, May all thou art be mine!

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