The Long Stone

by Alfred Tennyson, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

A Ballad

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I

The clay is blue in Ketsby pit,
The stone between is grey,
Laid bed on bed, as a mason lays
A wall, and goes away.

There are snakes curled up in the grey stone
That never had a head,
And thunderbolts lie in the clay
As smooth and cold as lead.

Will Maltby worked in Ketsby pit
From the year that he was nine;
He knew the beds as the parson knows
His Prayer Book, line by line:

The band that splits as clean as slate,
The band that rings like a bell,
The band that weeps when the snow goes off,
And the band that stands too well.

He sold the snakes at the Plough Inn door
To the carrier, for a penny;
For the snakes were many in the hill,
And the pennies were not many.

There came a man from Cambridge town
When the barley stood in sheaf,
A little hammer at his belt,
A lens to read a leaf.

He gave a shilling for a snake
Where the carrier gave a penny;
He said the kinds were in the hill,
And the kinds were very many.

He sat on the end of the barrow-plank
With his hat upon his knee,
And said that Ketsby, in its day,
Had lain beneath the sea;

That the snakes had swum, and the thunderbolts
Were the bones of cuttle-things
That went in shoals where the barley stands
And the lark goes up and sings.

"And there's one," said Mr. Pell, "I want
Above all things in the clay:
As long as a boat, with a fish's fins,
And a beak like a heron's, grey;

"And its eye is as round as your kitchen clock,
And ringed about with bone.
If ever you find it, send me word,
And leave the thing alone.

"There's a sovereign for it, if it comes out whole,
And nothing, if it break."
He went away by the carrier's cart
With a shilling's worth of snake.

And the winter came to Ketsby pit,
And the pit was cold and still,
And the snakes went back to a penny apiece,
And the long fish lay in the hill.

II

All winter Will worked Ketsby pit
With a lantern at the face,
And at Candlemas, at the fall of the day,
He found it in its place.

First came a curve like a cart-wheel's rim,
Then a row of little bones
As close as the teeth of a carding-comb,
Laid flat among the stones;

And then the eye. It was round as a clock,
And ringed with plates of bone;
It had looked like that before Adam was,
At nothing, all alone.

He did not lift a hammer to it;
He let the lantern burn low,
And looked, as you look at a sleeping face
You think that you should know;

Then he laid his coat across the eye,
And went home in the cold,
And told his mother, over the fire,
Of a thing that was very old.

He went to the parson for the pen,
For he could not write his name,
And the letter went to Cambridge town,
And the answer quickly came:

"Cover it close and leave it be
Till Easter. It has lain
Since the sea went out of Lincolnshire,
And it can wait again."

But the frost came down in Candlemas week
And whitened the face like meal,
And a hair-crack ran across the jaw
Where the frost had set its seal.

"The next hard frost will split it through,"
Said Will, "from eye to tail,
And he'll come at Easter all this way
To a heap of broken shale."

So he cut away the clay beneath
To have it whole and free,
And he shored the bank with an old ash post
Cut from the hedgerow tree.

He worked three days in the bitter cold
With his fingers bound in rag,
And the tail came out, joint after joint,
Into a sacking bag.

On the fourth day came a western wind,
And the snow went into rain,
And the water ran through the Ketsby beds
Like a sickness in a vein.

The band that weeps when the snow goes off
Wept all the Tuesday night;
The band that stands too well stood well
Till the turning of the light.

Then it came down. The carrier heard,
On the road beyond the hill,
A sound like a barn-door slammed by the wind,
And then the pit was still.

They came from the farm with spades and bars,
From the Plough with a light apiece,
And dug as you dig for a breathing man,
And then, more slow, for peace.

They found him at the second hour
With his face against the stone,
And one hand laid along the jaw
As if the thing were his own.

They carried him home to his mother's house,
Down the lane and past the mill;
And the frost came back on the broken bank,
And the long fish lay in the hill.

III

His mother was a widow-woman,
Mary Maltby by name;
She had buried his father and his sister Nan,
And the spade was the same.

They laid him by the south porch wall
Below the sundial's face,
Where the shadow walks the hours round
And never leaves its place.

The parson said he was not lost,
But gone before, to rise;
And Mary said, "I hear you, sir,"
And looked at him with dry eyes.

At Easter came the Cambridge man
With two men and a wain,
And straw to pack, and a canvas sheet
Against the April rain.

He stood a long while at the pit
Where the fallen band lay wide,
And he took his hat off, and he looked
At the ash post, split, beside.

He came to Mary Maltby's door
And stood with his hat in his hand,
And he said what a gentleman says; and she
Said she did understand.

He laid five sovereigns on the board,
And she let the money lie.
"It was one, if it came out whole," she said,
"And it didn't. Nor did I."

"Where will it go?" said Mary then.
"To Cambridge, to a long room
With a glass upon the case," he said,
"And a fire against the gloom,

"Where all who come may stand and learn
The old world's very face."
"And will they know," said Mary then,
"Who had it from its place?"

He turned his hat round in his hands
As a man turns over clay.
"It will say Ketsby on the card,"
He said, and looked away.

They had it out of the fallen bank
In seven blocks, in straw,
And he chalked a number on every block
From the tail-end to the jaw.

The wain went off by the Lincoln road
At a walking pace, uphill;
And the long fish lay in the wain,
And the boy lay in the hill.

IV

All summer Mary kept the gold
In the crock on the chimney-shelf,
And she did not spend it on bread or coal,
Nor tell the why, to herself.

But at Michaelmas she took down two
And put her shawl about,
And when the parson asked her why,
She said, "To find it out."

She had never been past Brigg in her life,
And Brigg but once, at the fair;
She went by the carrier into Lincoln,
And by the coach from there,

Outside, on the roof, for the half of the fare,
In the rain, and the wind, and the cold;
And the guard put a sack about her knees,
For he saw that she was old.

And the fen went flat as a frozen sea
Under the moving sky,
And the steeples stood up out of it
Like masts of ships gone by.

She thought of what the gentleman said,
That the land had been the sea;
And whether it went as a tide goes out
And comes back where it used to be.

The town was full of young men in gowns
Who went laughing two by two,
And the bells rang out of the college towers
As they had a right to do.

She asked at a gate, and she asked at a door,
And she asked at the foot of a stair,
And an old man with a key on a string
Went up with her, and there,

Where the light came down on the long glass cases
As cold as a church, and as still,
The long fish lay in the glass,
And the boy lay in the hill.

V

It was a long room under the leads,
With the light let in from high;
And the old man named the cases there
As he took her slowly by.

She saw the snakes in rows of ten
That never had a head,
And every one had a name on a card,
And the old man read and read.

She saw the thunderbolts in trays
Laid out as neat as pins,
And a fern in a slab, like a flower kept
In a Bible, among the hymns.

And at the end of the room, alone,
In a case as long as a cart,
Lay the long fish, mended block to block,
And whole in every part:

The tail that Will brought joint by joint
Out of the frozen clay,
The jaw with the frost-crack in it still,
And the eye, ringed round and grey.

She asked the old man for the card,
For she could not read a word;
He read it out in a Sunday voice,
And this is what she heard:

"Ichthyosaurus. Lias.
Ketsby, in Lincolnshire.
Presented to this Museum
By J. Pell, Esquire."

"Is there no more?" said Mary then.
"No more," the old man said.
"There's the place, and there's the gentleman,
And the name of the beast that's dead."

She bent above the long grey glass
Where the round eye lay below,
And her own face lay upon the glass
As faces on water show;

And the eye looked up through the face of her
As it had looked, alone,
At nothing, under a nameless sea,
Before the hills were stone.

"There's a name for you," said Mary then,
"That were dead before the Flood,
And a card, and a glass, and a fire in the grate,
And a man to keep you good;

"And Will that was one-and-twenty years
And found you in the clay,
He's in the parish book at home,
And there he's put away.

"The parson says the Lord keeps all,
And marks the sparrow's fall;
And here's a house where they keep the kinds
In rows along the wall.

"And if His house is kept like this,
With the kinds set out in a row,
Then Will was a snake at a penny apiece,
And there's plenty. Let him go."

The old man jingled the key on the string
And said that it was four;
And Mary looked at the eye again,
And then she said no more.

She went down the stair and out at the gate,
And the bells rang, and were still;
And the long fish lay in the glass,
And the boy lay in the hill.

VI

Now here is a thing that Mary Maltby
Went home and never knew:
The card is written on both its sides,
And the back is turned from view.

For Mr. Pell, on the night it was set,
Sat late by the case alone,
And wrote on the back of the card, and turned
The writing to the stone:

Found by William Maltby, quarryman,
of Ketsby, aged twenty-one,
who was killed by a fall of the bank
in the getting of it out.

Whether he wrote it out of shame,
Or for the boy's own sake,
Or as a careful man sets right
A sum that holds a mistake,

I cannot tell. The words are there;
And if they are read at all,
They are read by the long fish, face to face,
Under the glass, by the wall.

And Mary came home by the coach and the cart
At the back end of the year,
And put three sovereigns in the crock,
And left them lying there.

She took a snake from Ketsby pit
That never had a head,
And set it on the turf by the porch
At the head of Will's long bed.

"If you are gone before," she said,
"Then you can wait for me;
And if you are gone as the kinds are gone,
I shall not need to see."

Then she went home in the falling dark
And wound the kitchen clock,
As a woman does who looks to wake,
And turned the key in the lock.

They sell the snakes at the Plough Inn door;
The carrier pays a penny still;
And the long fish lies in the glass,
And the boy lies in the hill.

The clay is blue in Ketsby pit,
The stone between is grey,
Laid bed on bed, as a mason lays
A wall, and goes away.

✾ ❦ ✾ ❦ ✾

Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, Kalendīs Octōbribus (1 October 2026), ab Alfrēdō Tennysone per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Alfred Tennyson, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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