Poetry Friday: Bugle Song

Here's a poem that I think would make a great picture book (although the words are so visually evocative that maybe it doesn't need images). It is the Bugle Song, from Alfred Tennyson's The Princess (1847).


The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.


Tennyson was apparently a descendant of Edward I (according to Wikipedia), whose castles I posted about yesterday, which ties it all together nicely.

The Poetry Friday roundup today is at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy.