PREFATORY POEM
                        TO MY BROTHER’S SONNETS
                             Alfred Lord Tennyson
           (Part One and Part Three)

        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.

        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!