Song: A Spirit haunts the year's last hours

First printed in 1830.

The poem was written in the garden at the Old Rectory, Somersby; an autumn scene there which it faithfully describes. This poem seems to have haunted Poe, a fervent admirer of Tennyson's early poems.

1
  A Spirit haunts the year's last hours
  Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
  To himself he talks;
  For at eventide, listening earnestly,
  At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
  In the walks;
  Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
  Of the mouldering flowers:
  Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
  Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

2
  The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
  As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
  An hour before death;
  My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
  At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
  And the breath
  Of the fading edges of box beneath,
  And the year's last rose.
  Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
  Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

• About Lord Alfred Tennyson