Bertie Wooster and the Old Fifteener

 A proper spring day at last: blue sky, a warming sun and a drying wind – and butterflies! Peacocks flying or basking everywhere, including two at once in the garden, one nectaring at length on a primula. I can't say I've noticed any burnished doves, but....

"In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove."
"So I have been informed, sir."
"Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances."

That's Bertie Wooster (in The Inimitable Jeeves) slightly misquoting a well known line from Tennyson's 'Locksley Hall', a poem little read these days, but one that's well worth a look.  It's written entirely in rhyming couplets, in an unusual meter – technically a modified version of trochaic octameter, which Tennyson called 'the old fifteener line'. A monodrama, like the more famous Maud but ranging more widely. Indeed it is remembered also for apparently foreseeing the coming of both commercial and military aviation, when the narrator 
'Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue...'
It is a long poem (nearly 200 lines), full of anger and looming depression (to escape which the protagonist turns to thinking about the world as it might be in the future – hence the heavens filled with commerce). I think the opening lines at least – which include the one dimly remembered by Bertie Wooster – are rather fine and evocative of the coastal landscapes of Tennyson's Lincolnshire youth...

'Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn'd—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!'