Sonnet XLVI
Tennyson 2.
HOW grand he would have stood, had he declined
The needless coronet he donned, as though
Its gilt could heighten his proud aureole’s glow.
But downward he has stepped, a seat to find—
Not with the lords of that imperial kind
Whose simple manhood, fed by love and truth,
Found far from monarchs’ courts perennial youth
In the ideal gardens of the mind;—
But in a throng of blank nobilities
In outward fellowship of lip and eye—
Of empty forms and hollow courtesies;
Thou art become as one of us—they cry.
Another shape than thine must now be worn.
Son of the morning—how thy beams are shorn!
