Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Charles Tennyson Turner 1808–79

The Lachrymatory

FROM out the grave of one whose budding years

Were cropp’d by death, when Rome was in her prime,

I brought the phial of his kinsman’s tears,

There placed, as was the wont of ancient time;

Round me, that night, in meads of asphodel,

The souls of the early dead did come and go,

Drawn by that flask of grief, as by a spell,

That long-imprison’d shower of human woe.

As round Ulysses, for the draught of blood,

The heroes throng’d, those spirits flock’d to me,

Where, lonely, with that charm of tears, I stood;

Two, most of all, my dreaming eyes did see;

The young Marcellus, young, but great and good,

And Tully’s daughter, mourn’d so tenderly.