Part IV

—“Art for art, art for truth.”

Early Poems To the Queen Claribel—a Melody Lilian Isabel Mariana To —— (“Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn”) Madeline Song—The Owl Second Song to the Same Recollections of the Arabian Nights Ode to Memory Song (“A spirit haunts the year’s last hours”) Adeline A Character The Poet The Poet’s Mind The Sea-Fairies The Deserted House The Dying Swan A Dirge Love and Death The Ballad of Oriana Circumstance The Merman The Mermaid Sonnet to J. M. K. The Lady of Shalott Mariana in the South Eleänore The Miller’s Daughter Fatima Œnone The Sisters To—— (“I send you here a sort of allegory”) The Palace of Art Lady Clara Vere de Vere The May Queen New Year’s Eve Conclusion The Lotos-Eaters Dream of Fair Women Margaret The Blackbird The Death of the Old Year To J. S. “You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease” “Of old sat Freedom on the heights” “Love thou thy land, with love far-brought” The Goose The Epic Morte d’Arthur The Gardener’s Daughter; or, The Pictures Dora Audley Court Walking to the Mail Edwin Morris; or, The Lake St. Simeon Stylites The Talking Oak Love and Duty The Golden Year Ulysses Locksley Hall Godiva The Two Voices The Day-Dream:—Prologue The Sleeping Palace The Sleeping Beauty The Arrival The Revival The Departure L’Envoi Epilogue Amphion St. Agnes Sir Galahad Edward Gray Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue To ——, after reading a Life and Letters To E.L., on his Travels in Greece Lady Clare The Lord of Burleigh Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere: a Fragment A Farewell The Beggar Maid The Vision of Sin “Come not, when I am dead” The Eagle “Move eastward, happy earth, and leave” “Break, break, break” The Poet’s Song Appendix—Suppressed Poems Elegiacs The “How” and the “Why” Supposed Confessions The Burial of Love To —— (“Sainted Juliet! dearest name !”) Song (“I’ the glooming light”) Song (“The lintwhite and the throstlecock”) Song (“Every day hath its night”) Nothing will Die All Things will Die Hero to Leander The Mystic The Grasshopper Love, Pride and Forgetfulness Chorus (“The varied earth, the moving heaven”) Lost Hope The Tears of Heaven Love and Sorrow To a Lady Sleeping Sonnet (“Could I outwear my present state of woe”) Sonnet (“Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon”) Sonnet (“Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good”) Sonnet (“The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain”) Love The Kraken English War Song National Song Dualisms We are Free οἱ ῥέοντες. “Mine be the strength of spirit, full and free” To — (“All good things have not kept aloof”) Buonaparte Sonnet (“Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!”) The Hesperides Song (“The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit”) Rosalind Song (“Who can say”) Kate Sonnet (“Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar”) Poland To — (“As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood”) O Darling Room To Christopher North The Skipping Rope Timbuctoo Bibliography of the _Poems_ of 1842

Preface

A Critical edition of Tennyson’s poems has long been an acknowledged want. He has taken his place among the English Classics, and as a Classic he is, and will be, studied, seriously and minutely, by many thousands of his countrymen, both in the present generation as well as in future ages. As in the works of his more illustrious brethren, so in his trifles will become subjects of curious interest, and assume an importance of which we have no conception now. Here he will engage the attention of the antiquary, there of the social historian. Long after his politics, his ethics, his theology have ceased to be immediately influential, they will be of immense historical significance. A consummate artist and a consummate master of our language, the process by which he achieved results so memorable can never fail to be of interest, and of absorbing interest, to critical students.

I must, I fear, claim the indulgence due to one who attempts, for the first time, a critical edition of a text so perplexingly voluminous in variants as Tennyson’s. I can only say that I have spared neither time nor labour to be accurate and exhaustive. I have myself collated, or have had collated for me, every edition recorded in the British Museum Catalogue, and where that has been deficient I have had recourse to other public libraries, and to the libraries of private friends. I am not conscious that I have left any variant unrecorded, but I should not like to assert that this is the case. Tennyson was so restlessly indefatigable in his corrections that there may lurk, in editions of the poems which I have not seen, other variants; and it is also possible that, in spite of my vigilance, some may have escaped me even in the editions which have been collated, and some may have been made at a date earlier than the date recorded. But I trust this has not been the case.

Of the Bibliography I can say no more than that I have done my utmost to make it complete, and that it is very much fuller than any which has hitherto appeared. That it is exhaustive I dare not promise.

With regard to the Notes and Commentaries, I have spared no pains to explain everything which seemed to need explanation. There are, I think, only two points which I have not been able to clear up, namely, the name of the friend to whom the _The Palace of Art_ was addressed, and the name of the friend to whom the _Verses after reading a Life and Letters_ were addressed. I have consulted every one who would be likely to throw light on the subject, including the poet’s surviving sister, many of his friends, and the present Lord Tennyson, but without success; so the names, if they were not those of some imaginary person, appear to be irrecoverable. The Prize Poem, _Timbuctoo_, as well as the poems which were temporarily or finally suppressed in the volumes published in 1830 and 1832 have been printed in the Appendix: those which were subsequently incorporated in his Works, in large type; those which he never reprinted, in small.

The text here adopted is that of 1857, but Messrs. Macmillan, to whom I beg to express my hearty thanks, have most generously allowed me to record all the variants which are still protected by copyright. I have to thank them, too, for assistance in the Bibliography. I have also to thank Mr. J. T. Wise for his kindness in lending me the privately printed volume containing the _Morte d’Arthur, Dora,_ etc.

Introduction

I

The development of Tennyson’s genius, methods, aims and capacity of achievement in poetry can be studied with singular precision and fulness in the history of the poems included in the present volume. In 1842 he published the two volumes which gave him, by almost general consent, the first place among the poets of his time, for, though Wordsworth was alive, Wordsworth’s best work had long been done. These two volumes contained poems which had appeared before, some in 1830 and some in 1832, and some which were then given to the world for the first time, so that they represent work belonging to three eras in the poet’s life, poems written before he had completed his twenty-second year and belonging for the most part to his boyhood, poems written in his early manhood, and poems written between his thirty-first and thirty-fourth year.

The poems published in 1830 had the following title-page: “_Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson._ London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830”. They are fifty-six in number and the titles are:—

_Claribel_. _Lilian_. _Isabel_. Elegiacs.* The “How” and the “Why”. _Mariana_. To —— . Madeline. The Merman. The _Mermaid_. Supposed Confessions of a second-rate sensitive mind not in unity with itself.* The Burial of Love. To — (Sainted Juliet dearest name.) _Song. The Owl._ _Second Song. To the same._ _Recollections of the Arabian Nights._ _Ode to Memory_. Song. (I’ the glooming light.) _Song. (A spirit haunts.)_ _Adeline_. _A Character._ Song. (The lint-white and the throstle cock.) Song. (Every day hath its night.) _The Poet._ _The Poet’s Mind._ Nothing will die.* All things will die.* Hero to Leander. The Mystic. _The Dying Swan._ _A Dirge._ The Grasshopper. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness. Chorus (in an unpublished drama written very early). Lost Hope. The Deserted House.*† The Tears of Heaven. Love and Sorrow. To a Lady Sleeping. Sonnet. (Could I outwear my present state of woe.) Sonnet. (Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon.) Sonnet. (Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good.) Sonnet. (The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain.) Love. _Love and Death._ The Kraken.* _The Ballad of Oriana._ _Circumstance._ English War Song. National Song. _The Sleeping Beauty._ Dualisms. We are Free. The Sea-Fairies.*† _Sonnet to J.M.K._ οἱ ῥέοντες

Of these the poems in _italics_ appeared in the edition of 1842, and were not much altered. Those with an asterisk were, in addition to the italicised poems, afterwards included among the _Juvenilia_ in the collected works (1871-1872), though excluded from all preceding editions of the poems. Those with both a dagger and an asterisk were restored in editions previous to the first collected editions of the works.

In December, 1832, appeared a second volume (it is dated on the title-page, 1833): “Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Moxon, MDCCCXXXIII.” This contains thirty poems:—

Sonnet.†† (Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free.) To— .†† (All good things have not kept aloof.) Buonaparte.†† Sonnet I. (O Beauty passing beauty, sweetest Sweet.) Sonnet II.†† (But were I loved, as I desire to be.) _The Lady of Shalott_.* _Mariana in the South._* _Eleanore._ _The Miller’s Daughter._* φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν Ἔμμεν ἀνήρ. _Œnone_. _The Sisters._ To— . (With the Palace of Art.)* _The Palace of Art_* _The May Queen._ _New Year’s Eve._ The Hesperides. _The Lotos Eaters._ Rosalind.†† _A Dream of Fair Women_* Song. (Who can say.) _Margaret_. Kate. Sonnet. Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection. Sonnet.†† On the result of the late Russian invasion of Poland. Sonnet.†† (As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood.) O Darling Room. To Christopher North. _The Death of the Old Year._ _To J. S._

Of these the poems italicised were included in the edition of 1842; those marked with an asterisk being greatly altered and in some cases almost rewritten, those marked with a dagger being practically unaltered. To those reprinted in the collected works a double dagger is prefixed.

In 1842 appeared the two volumes which contained, in addition to the selections made from the two former volumes, several new poems:—

“Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In two volumes. London: Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII.”

The first volume is divided into two parts: Selections from the poems published in 1830, _Claribel_ to the _Sonnet to J. M. K._ inclusive. Selections from the poems of 1832, _The Lady of Shalott_ to _The Goose_ inclusive. The second volume contains poems then, with two exceptions, first published.

The Epic. Morte d’Arthur. The Gardener’s Daughter. Dora. Audley Court. Walking to the Mail. St. Simeon Stylites. Conclusion to the May Queen. The Talking Oak. Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Love and Duty. Ulysses. Locksley Hall. Godiva. The Two Voices. The Day Dream. Prologue. The Sleeping Palace. The Sleeping Beauty. The Arrival. The Revival. The Departure. Moral. L’Envoi. Epilogue. Amphion. St. Agnes. Sir Galahad. Edward Gray. Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock. Lady Clare. The Lord of Burleigh. Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. A Farewell. The Beggar Maid. The Vision of Sin. The Skipping Rope. “Move Eastward, happy Earth.” “Break, break, break.” The Poet’s Song.

Only two of these poems had been published before, namely, _St. Agnes_, which was printed in _The Keepsake_ for 1837, and _The Sleeping Beauty_ in _The Day Dream_, which was adopted with some alterations from the 1830 poem, and only one of these poems was afterwards suppressed, _The Skipping Rope_, which was, however, allowed to stand till 1851. In 1843 appeared the second edition of these poems, which is merely a reprint with a few unimportant alterations, and which was followed in 1845 and in 1846 by a third and fourth edition equally unimportant in their variants, but in the fourth _The Golden Year_ was added. In the next edition, the fifth, 1848, _The Deserted House_ was included from the poems of 1830. In the sixth edition, 1850, was included another poem, _To— , after reading a Life and Letters_, reprinted, with some alterations, from the _Examiner_ of 24th March, 1849.

The seventh edition, 1851, contained important additions. First the Dedication to the Queen, then _Edwin Morris_, the fragment of _The Eagle_, and the stanzas, “Come not when I am dead,” first printed in _The Keepsake_ for 1851, under the title of _Stanzas_. In this edition the absurd trifle _The Skipping Rope_ was excised and finally cancelled. In the eighth edition, 1853, _The Sea-Fairies,_ though greatly altered, was included from the poems of 1830, and the poem _To E. L. on his Travels in Greece_ was added. This edition, the eighth, may be regarded as the final one. Nothing afterwards of much importance was added or subtracted, and comparatively few alterations were made in the text from that date to the last collected edition in 1898.

All the editions up to, and including, that of 1898 have been carefully collated, so that the student of Tennyson can follow step by step the process by which he arrived at that perfection of expression which is perhaps his most striking characteristic as a poet. And it was indeed a trophy of labour, of the application “of patient touches of unwearied art”. Whoever will turn, say to _The Palace of Art_, to _Œnone_, to the _Dream of Fair Women_, or even to _The Sea-Fairies_ and to _The Lady of Shalott_, will see what labour was expended on their composition. Nothing indeed can be more interesting than to note the touches, the substitution of which measured the whole distance between mediocrity and excellence. Take, for example, the magical alteration in the couplet in the _Dream of Fair Women_:—

One drew a sharp knife thro’ my tender throat Slowly,—and nothing more,

into

The bright death quiver’d at the victim’s throat; Touch’d; and I knew no more.

Or, in the same poem:—

What nights we had in Egypt! I could hit His humours while I cross’d him. O the life I led him, and the dalliance and the wit,

into

We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburn’d Canopus. O my life In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit, The flattery and the strife.

Or, in _Mariana in the South_:—

She mov’d her lips, she pray’d alone, She praying, disarray’d and warm From slumber, deep her wavy form In the dark lustrous mirror shone,

into

Complaining, “Mother, give me grace To help me of my weary load”. And on the liquid mirror glow’d The clear perfection of her face.

How happy is this slight alteration in the verses _To J. S._ which corrects one of the falsest notes ever struck by a poet:—

A tear Dropt on _my tablets_ as I wrote.

A tear Dropt on _the letters_ as I wrote.

or where in _Locksley Hall_ a splendidly graphic touch of description is gained by the alteration of “_droops_ the trailer from the crag” into “_swings_ the trailer”.

So again in _Love and Duty_:—

Should my shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, _so put it back_. For calmer hours in memory’s darkest hold,

where by altering “so put it back” into “remand it thou,” a somewhat ludicrous image is at all events softened.

What great care Tennyson took with his phraseology is curiously illustrated in _The May Queen_. In the 1842 edition “Robin” was the name of the May Queen’s lover. In 1843 it was altered to “Robert,” and in 1845 and subsequent editions back to “Robin”.

Compare, again, the old stanza in _The Miller’s Daughter_:—

How dear to me in youth, my love, Was everything about the mill; The black and silent pool above, The pool beneath it never still,

with what was afterwards substituted:—

I loved the brimming wave that swam Through quiet meadows round the mill, The sleepy pool above the dam, The pool beneath it never still.

Another most felicitous emendation is to be found in _The Poet_, where the edition of 1830 reads:—

And in the bordure of her robe was writ Wisdom, a name to shake Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit.

This in 1842 appears as:—

And in her raiment’s hem was trac’d in flame Wisdom, a name to shake All evil dreams of power—a sacred name.

Again, in the _Lotos Eaters_

_Three thunder-cloven thrones of oldest snow_ Stood sunset-flushed

is changed into

_Three silent pinnacles of aged snow_.

So in _Will Waterproof_ the cumbrous

Like Hezekiah’s backward runs The shadow of my days,

was afterwards simplified into

Against its fountain upward runs The current of my days.

Not less felicitous have been the additions made from time to time. Thus in _Audley Court_ the concluding lines ran:—

The harbour buoy, With one green sparkle ever and anon Dipt by itself.

But what vividness is there in the subsequent insertion of

“Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm.”

between the first line and the second.

So again in the _Morte d’Arthur_ how greatly are imagery and rhythm improved by the insertion of

Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,

between

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time,

and

Counting the dewy pebbles, fix’d in thought.

There is an alteration in Œnone which is very interesting. Till 1884 this was allowed to stand:—

The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, _and the cicala sleeps_.

No one could have known better than Tennyson that the cicala is loudest in the torrid calm of the noonday, as Theocritus, Virgil, Byron and innumerable other poets have noticed; at last he altered it, but at the heavy price of a cumbrous pleonasm, into “and the winds are dead”.

He allowed many years to elapse before he corrected another error in natural history—but at last the alteration came. In _The Poet’s Song_ in the line—

The swallow stopt as he hunted the _bee_,

the “fly” which the swallow does hunt was substituted for what it does not hunt, and that for very obvious reasons.

But whoever would see what Tennyson’s poetry has owed to elaborate revision and scrupulous care would do well to compare the first edition of _Mariana in the South_, _The Sea-Fairies_, _Œnone_, _The Lady of Shalott_, _The Palace of Art_ and _A Dream of Fair Women_ with the poems as they are presented in 1853. Poets do not always improve their verses by revision, as all students of Wordsworth’s text could abundantly illustrate; but it may be doubted whether, in these poems at least, Tennyson ever made a single alteration which was not for the better. Fitzgerald, indeed, contended that in some cases, particularly in _The Miller’s Daughter_, Tennyson would have done well to let the first reading stand, but few critics would agree with him in the instances he gives. We may perhaps regret the sacrifice of such a stanza as this—

Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent, Whose round leaves hold the gathered shower, Each quaintly folded cuckoo pint, And silver-paly cuckoo flower.

II

Tennyson’s genius was slow in maturing. The poems contributed by him to the volume of 1827, _Poems by Two Brothers_, are not without some slight promise, but are very far from indicating extraordinary powers. A great advance is discernible in _Timbuctoo_, but that Matthew Arnold should have discovered in it the germ of Tennyson’s future powers is probably to be attributed to the youth of the critic. Tennyson was in his twenty-second year when the _Poems Chiefly Lyrical_ appeared, and what strikes us in these poems is certainly not what Arthur Hallam saw in them: much rather what Coleridge and Wilson discerned in them. They are the poems of a fragile and somewhat morbid young man in whose temper we seem to see a touch of Hamlet, a touch of Romeo and, more healthily, a touch of Mercutio. Their most promising characteristic is the versatility displayed. Thus we find _Mariana_ side by side with the _Supposed Confessions_, the _Ode to Memory_ with οἱ ῥέοντες, _The Ballad of Oriana_ with _The Dying Swan_, _Recollections of The Arabian Nights_ with _The Poet_. Their worst fault is affectation. Perhaps the utmost that can be said for them is that they display a fine but somewhat thin vein of original genius, after deducing what they owe to Coleridge, to Keats and to other poets. This is seen in the magical touches of description, in the exquisite felicity of expression and rhythm which frequently mark them, in the pathos and power of such a poem as _Oriana_, in the pathos and charm of such poems as _Mariana_ and _A Dirge_, in the rich and almost gorgeous fancy displayed in _The Recollections_.

The poems of 1833 are much more ambitious and strike deeper notes. Here comes in for the first time that σπουδαιότης, that high seriousness which is one of Tennyson’s chief characteristics—we see it in _The Palace of Art_, in _Œnone_ and in the verses _To J. S._ But in intrinsic merit the poems were no advance on their predecessors, for the execution was not equal to the design. The best, such as _Œnone_, _A Dream of Fair Women_, _The Palace of Art_, _The Lady of Shalott_—I am speaking of course of these poems in their first form—were full of extraordinary blemishes. The volume was degraded by pieces which were very unworthy of him, such as _O Darling Room_ and the verses _To Christopher North_, and affectations of the worst kind deformed many, nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect lay in the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod, sometimes quaintly affected, and we can never go far without encountering lines, stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file. The power and charm of Tennyson’s poetry, even at its ripest, depend very largely, often mainly, on expression, and the couplet which he envied Browning,

The little more, and how much it is, The little less, and what worlds away,

is strangely applicable to his own art. On a single word, on a subtle collocation, on a slight touch depend often his finest effects: “the little less” reduces him to mediocrity, “the little more” and he is with the masters. To no poetry would the application of Goethe’s test be, as a rule, more fatal—that the real poetic quality in poetry is that which remains when it has been translated literally into prose.

Whoever will compare the poems of 1832 with the same poems as they appeared in 1842 will see that the difference is not so much a difference in degree, but almost a difference in kind. In the collection of 1832 there were three gems, _The Sisters_, the lines _To J. S._ and _The May Queen_. Almost all the others which are of any value were, in the edition of 1842, carefully revised, and in some cases practically rewritten. If Tennyson’s career had closed in 1833 he would hardly have won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present century. The nine years which intervened between the publication of his second volume and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him, and transformed a mere dilettante into a master. Much has been said about the brutality of Lockhart’s review in the _Quarterly_. In some respects it was stupid, in some respects it was unjust, but of one thing there can be no doubt—it had a most salutary effect. It held up the mirror to weaknesses and deficiencies which, if Tennyson did not care to acknowledge to others, he must certainly have acknowledged to himself. It roused him and put him on his mettle. It was a wholesome antidote to the enervating flattery of coteries and “apostles” who were certainly talking a great deal of nonsense about him, as Arthur Hallam’s essay in the _Englishman_ shows. During the next nine years he published nothing, with the exception of two unimportant contributions to certain minor periodicals.[1] But he was educating himself, saturating himself with all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece and Rome, of modern Italy, of Germany and of his own country, studying theology, metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy and travels, observing nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a naturalist. Nor was he a recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life of his time, following with the keenest interest all the great political and social movements, the progress and effects of the Reform Bill, the troubles in Ireland, the troubles with the Colonies, the struggles between the Protectionists and the Free Traders, Municipal Reform, the advance of the democracy, Chartism, the popular education question. He travelled on the Continent, he travelled in Wales and Scotland, he visited most parts of England, not as an idle tourist, but as a student with note-book in hand. And he had been submitted also to the discipline which is of all disciplines the most necessary to the poet, and without which, as Goethe says, “he knows not the heavenly powers”: he had “ate his bread in sorrow”. The death of his father in 1831 had already brought him face to face, as he has himself expressed it, with the most solemn of all mysteries. In 1833 he had an awful shock in the sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam, “an overwhelming sorrow which blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death”. He had other minor troubles which contributed greatly to depress him,—the breaking up of the old home at Somersby, his own poverty and uncertain prospects, his being compelled in consequence to break off all intercourse with Miss Emily Selwood. It is possible that _Love and Duty_ may have reference to this sorrow; it is certain that _The Two Voices_ is autobiographical.

Such was his education between 1832 and 1842, and such the influences which were moulding him, while he was slowly evolving _In Memoriam_ and the poems first published in the latter year. To the revision of the old poems he brought tastes and instincts cultivated by the critical study of all that was best in the poetry of the world, and more

## particularly by a familiarity singularly intimate and affectionate with

the masterpieces of the ancient classics; he brought also the skill of a practised workman, for his diligence in production was literally that of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the sister art—_nulla dies sine line’_. Into the composition of the new poems all this entered. He was no longer a trifler and a Hedonist. As Spedding has said, his former poems betrayed “an over-indulgence in the luxuries of the senses, a profusion of splendours, harmonies, perfumes, gorgeous apparel, luscious meals and drinks, and creature comforts which rather pall upon the sense, and make the glories of the outward world to obscure a little the world within”. Like his own _Lady of Shalott_, he had communed too much with shadows. But the serious poet now speaks. He appeals less to the ear and the eye, and more to the heart. The sensuous is subordinated to the spiritual and the moral. He deals immediately with the dearest concerns of man and of society. He has ceased to trifle. The σπουδαιότης, the high seriousness of the true poet, occasional before, now pervades and enters essentially into his work. It is interesting to note how many of these poems have direct didactic purpose. How solemn is the message delivered in such poems as _The Palace of Art_ and _The Vision of Sin_, how noble the teaching in _Love and Duty_, in _Œnone_, in _Godiva_, in _Ulysses_; to how many must such a poem as _The Two Voices_ have brought solace and light; how full of salutary lessons are the political poems _You ask me, why, though ill at ease_ and _Love thou thy Land_, and how noble is their expression! And, even where the poems are less directly didactic, it is such refreshment as busy life needs to converse with them, so pure, so wholesome, so graciously human is their tone, so tranquilly beautiful is their world. Who could lay down _The Miller’s Daughter, Dora, The Golden Year, The Gardener’s Daughter, The Talking Oak, Audley Court, The Day Dream_ without something of the feeling which Goethe felt when he first laid down _The Vicar of Wakefield?_ In the best lyrics in these volumes, such as _Break, Break_, and _Move Eastward_, _Happy Earth_, the most fastidious of critics must recognise flawless gems. In the two volumes of 1842 Tennyson carried to perfection all that was best in his earlier poems, and displayed powers of which he may have given some indication in his cruder efforts, but which must certainly have exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine of his rational admirers. These volumes justly gave him the first place among the poets of his time, and that supremacy he maintained—in the opinion of most—till the day of his death. It would be absurd to contend that Tennyson’s subsequent publications added nothing to the fame which will be secured to him by these poems. But this at least is certain, that, taken with _In Memorium_, they represent the crown and flower of his achievement. What is best in them he never excelled and perhaps never equalled. We should be the poorer, and much the poorer, for the loss of anything which he produced subsequently, it is true; but would we exchange half a dozen of the best of these poems or a score of the best sections of _In Memoriam_ for all that he produced between 1850 and his death?

[1] In _The Keepsake_, “St. Agnes’ Eve”; in _The Tribute_, “Stanzas”: “Oh! that ’twere possible”. Between 1831 and 1832 he had contributed to _The Gem_ three, “No more,” “Anacreontics,” and “A Fragment”; in _The Englishman!s Magazine_, a Sonnet; in _The Yorkshire Literary Annual_, lines, “There are three things that fill my heart with sighs”; in _Friendship’s Offering_, lines, “Me my own fate”.

III

The poems of 1842 naturally divide themselves into seven groups:—

(i.) _Studies in Fancy._

_Claribel_. _Lilian_. _Isabel_. _Madeline_. _A Spirit Haunts_. _Recollections of the Arabian Nights_. _Adeline_. _The Dying Swan_. _A Dream of Fair Women_. _The Sea-Fairies_. _The Deserted House_. _Love and Death_. _The Merman_. _The Mermaid_. _The Lady of Shalott_. _Eleanore_. _Margaret_. _The Death of the Old Year_. _St. Agnes._ _Sir Galahad_. _The Day Dream_. _Will Waterproof’s Monologue_. _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_. _The Talking Oak_. _The Poet’s Song_.

(ii.) _Studies of Passion._

_Mariana_. _Mariana in the South._ _Oriana_. _Fatima_. _The Sisters_. _Locksley Hall_. _Edward Gray_.

(iii.) _Psychological Studies._

_A Character_. _The Poet_. _The Poet’s Mind_. _The Two Voices_. _The Palace of Art_. _The Vision of Sin_. _St. Simeon Stylites_.

(iv.) _Idylls._ (_a_.) Classical.

_Œnone_. _The Lotos Eaters_. _Ulysses_.

(_b_.) English.

_The Miller’s Daughter_. _The May Queen_. _Morte d’Arthur_. _The Gardener’s Daughter_. _Dora_. _Audley Court_. _Walking to the Mail_. _Edwin Morris_. _The Golden Year_.

(v.) _Ballads._

_Oriana_. _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_. _Edward Gray_. _Lady Clare_. _The Lord of Burleigh_. _The Beggar Maid_.

(vi.) _Autobiographical._

_Ode to Memory_. _Sonnet to J. M. K_. _To—— with the Palace of Art_. _To J.S._ _Amphion_. _To E. L. on his Travels in Greece_. _To—— after reading a Life and Letters_. _“Come not when I am Dead_.” _A Farewell_. “_Move Eastward, Happy Earth_.” “_Break, Break, Break_.”

(vii.) _Political Group._

_“You ask me.”_ _“Of old sat Freedom.”_ _“Love thou thy Land.”_ _The Goose._

In surveying these poems two things must strike every one— their very wide range and their very fragmentary character. There is scarcely any side of life on which they do not touch, scarcely any phase of passion and emotion to which they do not give exquisite expression. Take the love poems: compare _Fatima_ with _Isabel_, _The Miller’s Daughter_ with _Locksley Hall_, _The Gardener’s Daughter_ with _Madeline_, or _Mariana_ with Cleopatra in the _Dream of Fair Women_. When did love find purer and nobler expression than in _Love and Duty?_ When has sorrow found utterance more perfect than in the verses _To J.S_., or the passion for the past than in _Break, Break, Break_, or revenge and jealousy than in _The Sisters?_ In _The Two Voices_, _The Palace of Art_ and _The Vision of Sin_ we are in another sphere. They are appeals to the soul of man on subjects of momentous concern to him. And each is a masterpiece. What is proper to philosophy and what is proper to poetry have never perhaps been so happily blended. They have all the sensuous charm of Keats, but the prose of Hume could not have presented the truths which they are designed to convey with more lucidity and precision. In that superb fragment the _Morte d’Arthur_ we have many of the noblest attributes of Epic poetry. _ënone_ is the perfection of the classical idyll, _The Gardener’s Daughter_ and the idylls that follow it of the romantic. _Sir Galahad_ and _St. Agnes_ are in the vein of Keats and Coleridge, but Keats and Coleridge have produced nothing more exquisite and nothing so ethereal. _The Lotos Eaters_ is perhaps the most purely delicious poem ever written, the _ne plus ultra_ of sensuous loveliness, and yet the poet who gave us that has given us also the political poems, poems as trenchant and austerely dignified in style as they are pregnant with practical wisdom. There is the same versatility displayed in the trifles.

But all is fragmentary. No thread strings these jewels. They form a collection of gems unset and unarranged. Without any system or any definite scope they have nothing of that unity in diversity which is so perceptible in the lyrics and minor poems of Goethe and Wordsworth. Capricious as the gyrations of a sea-gull seem the poet’s moods and movements. We have now the reveries of a love-sick maiden, now the picture of a soul wrestling with despair and death; here a study from rural life, or a study in character, there a sermon on politics, or a descent into the depths of psychological truth, or a sketch from nature. But nothing could be more concentrated than the power employed to shape each fragment into form. What Pope says of the _Æneid_ may be applied with very literal truth to these poems:—

Finish’d the whole, and laboured every part With patient touches of unwearied art.

In the poems of 1842 we have the secret of Tennyson’s eminence as a poet as well as the secret of his limitations. He appears to have been constitutionally deficient in what the Greeks called _architektoniké_, combination and disposition on a large scale. The measure of his power as a constructive artist is given us in the poem in which the English idylls may be said to culminate, namely, _Enoch Arden_. _In Memoriam_ and the _Idylls of the King_ have a sort of spiritual unity, but they are a series of fragments tacked rather than fused together. It is the same with _Maud_, and it is the same with _The Princess_. His poems have always a tendency to resolve themselves into a series of cameos: it is only the short poems which have organic unity. A gift of felicitous and musical expression which is absolutely marvellous; an instinctive sympathy with what is best and most elevated in the sphere of ordinary life, of ordinary thought and sentiment, of ordinary

## activity with consummate representative power; a most rare faculty of

seizing and fixing in very perfect form what is commonly so inexpressible because so impalpable and evanescent in emotion and expression; a power of catching and rendering the charm of nature with a fidelity and vividness which resemble magic; and lastly, unrivalled skill in choosing, repolishing and remounting the gems which are our common inheritance from the past: these are the gifts which will secure permanence for his work as long as the English language lasts.

In his power of crystallising commonplaces he stands next to Pope, in subtle felicity of expression beside Virgil. And, when he says of Virgil that we find in his diction “all the grace of all the muses often flowering in one lonely word,” he says what is literally true of his own work. As a master of style his place is in the first rank among English classical poets. But his style is the perfection of art. His diction, like the diction of Milton and Gray, resembles mosaic work. With a touch here and a touch there, now from memory, now from unconscious assimilation, inlaying here an epithet and there a phrase, adding, subtracting, heightening, modifying, substituting one metaphor for another, developing what is latent in the suggestive imagery of a predecessor, laying under contribution the most intimate familiarity with what is best in the literature of the ancient and modern world, the unwearied artist toils patiently on till his precious mosaic work is without a flaw. All the resources of rhetoric are employed to give distinction to his style and every figure in rhetoric finds expression in his diction: Hypallage as in

_The pillard dusk_ Of sounding sycamores.

—_Audley Court_.

Paronomasia as in

The seawind sang _Shrill, chill_ with flakes of foam.

—_Morte d’Arthur_.

Oxymoron as

_Behold_ them _unbeheld, unheard Hear_ all.

—_Œnone._

Hyperbaton as in

The _dew-impearled_ winds of dawn.

—_Ode to Memory._

Metonymy as in

The _bright death_ quiver’d at the victim’s throat.

—_Dream of Fair Women_.

or in

For some three _careless moans_ The summer pilot of an empty heart.

—_Gardener’s Daughter_.

No poet since Milton has employed what is known as Onomatopoeia with so much effect. Not to go farther than the poems of 1842, we have in the _Morte d’Arthur_:—

So all day long the noise of battle _rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea;_

or

_Dry clashed_ his harness in the icy caves And _barren chasms_, and all to left and right The _bare black cliff clang’d round_ him, as he bas’d His feet _on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels—_

or the exquisite

I heard the _water lapping on the crag,_ And the _long ripple washing in the reeds._

So in _The Dying Swan,_

And _the wavy swell of the soughing reeds._

See too the whole of _Oriana_ and the description of the dance at the beginning of _The Vision of Sin._

Assonance, alliteration, the revival or adoption of obsolete and provincial words, the transplantation of phrases and idioms from the Greek and Latin languages, the employment of common words in uncommon senses, all are pressed into the service of adding distinction to his diction. His diction blends the two extremes of simplicity and artificiality, but with such fine tact that this strange combination has seldom the effect of incongruity. Longinus has remarked that “as the fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light round the sophistries of rhetoric they become invisible”.[2] What Longinus says of “sublimity” is equally true of sincerity and truthfulness in combination with exquisitely harmonious expression. We have an illustration in Gray’s _Elegy_. Nothing could be more artificial than the style, but what poem in the world appeals more directly to the heart and to the eye? It is one thing to call art to the assistance of art, it is quite another thing to call art to the assistance of nature. And this is what both Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from shocking us, “passes in music out of sight”. But this cannot be said of Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have “the knightly growth that fringed his lips” for a moustache, “azure pillars of the hearth” for ascending smoke, “ambrosial orbs” for apples, “frayed magnificence” for a shabby dress, “the secular abyss to come” for future ages, “the sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue” for the life of Christ, “up went the hush’d amaze of hand and eye” for a gesture of surprise, and the like. One of the worst instances is in _In Memoriam_, where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to collapse into the falsetto of strained artificiality in the second:—

To rest beneath the clover sod That takes the sunshine and the rains, _Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God._

An illustration of the same thing, almost as offensive, is in _Enoch Arden_, where, in an otherwise studiously simple diction, Enoch’s wares as a fisherman become

Enoch’s _ocean spoil_ In ocean-smelling osier.

But these peculiarities are less common in the earlier poems than in the later: it was a vicious habit which grew on him.

But, if exception may sometimes be taken to his diction, no exception can be taken to his rhythm. No English poet since Milton, Tennyson’s only superior in this respect, had a finer ear or a more consummate mastery over all the resources of rhythmical expression. What colours are to a painter rhythm is, in description, to the poet, and few have rivalled, none have excelled Tennyson in this. Take the following:—

And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain _On the bald street strikes the blank day._

—_In Memoriam._

See particularly _In Memoriam_, cvii., the lines beginning “Fiercely flies,” to “darken on the rolling brine”: the description of the island in _Enoch Arden_; but specification is needless, it applies to all his descriptive poetry. It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it, as here:—

No gray old grange or lonely fold, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple style from mead to mead, Or sheep walk up the windy wold.

—_In Memoriam,_ c.

Or here:—

The meal sacks on the whitened floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.

—_The Miller’s Daughter._

His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare’s, it has not the massiveness and majesty of Milton’s, it has not the austere grandeur of Wordsworth’s at its best, it has not the wavy swell, “the linked sweetness long drawn out” of Shelley’s, but its distinguishing feature is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge said of Claudian’s style may be applied to it: “Every line, nay every word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise”. is earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and easy than his later.[3] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for ever.

In his description of nature he is incomparable. Take the following from _The Dying Swan_:—

Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, Shone out their crowning snows. One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will,

or the opening scene in _Œnone_ and in _The Lotos Eaters_, or the meadow scene in _The Gardener’s Daughter_, or the conclusion of _Audley Court_, or the forest scene in the _Dream of Fair Women_, or this stanza in _Mariana in the South_:—

There all in spaces rosy-bright Large Hesper glitter’d on her tears, And deepening through the silent spheres, Heaven over Heaven rose the night.

A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:—

The _wrinkled_ sea beneath him _crawls_.

—_The Eagle_.

Or here of a ship at sea, in the distance:—

And on through zones of light and shadow _Glimmer away to the lonely deep._

—_To the Rev. F. D. Maurice._

Or here of waters falling high up on mountains:—

Their thousand _wreaths of dangling water-smoke._

—_The Princess._

Or of a water-fall seen at a distance:—

And _like a downward smoke_ the slender stream Along the cliff _to fall and pause and fall_ did seem.

Or here again:—

We left the dying ebb that _faintly lipp’d The flat red granite._

Or here of a wave:—

Like a wave in the wild North Sea _Green glimmering toward the summit_ bears with all _Its stormy crests that smoke_ against the skies Down on a bark.

—_Elaine._

That beech will _gather brown_, This _maple burn itself away_.

—_In Memoriam._

The _wide-wing’d sunset_ of the misty marsh.

—_Last Tournament._

But illustrations would be endless. Nothing seems to escape him in Nature. Take the following:—

Like _a purple beech among the greens Looks out of place_.

—_Edwin Morris_.

Or

Delays _as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green_.

—_The Princess_.

As _black as ash-buds in the front of March_.

—_The Gardener’s Daughter_.

A gusty April morn That _puff’d_ the swaying _branches into smoke_.

—_Holy Grail_.

So with flowers, trees, birds and insects:—

The fox-glove _clusters dappled bells_.

—_The Two Voices_.

The sunflower:—

_Rays round with flame its disk of seed_.

—_In Memoriam_.

The dog-rose:—

_Tufts of rosy-tinted snow_.

—_Two Voices_.

A _million emeralds_ break from the _ruby-budded lime_.

—_Maud_.

In gloss and hue the chestnut, _when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within_. —_The Brook_.

Or of a chrysalis:—

And flash’d as those _Dull-coated_ things, _that making slide apart Their dusk wing cases, all beneath there burns A Jewell’d harness_, ere they pass and fly.

—_Gareth and Lynette_.

So again:—

Wan-sallow, as _the plant that feeds itself, Root-bitten by white lichen_.

—_Id_.

And again:—

All the _silvery gossamers_ That _twinkle into green and gold_.

—_In Memoriam_.

His epithets are in themselves a study: “the _dewy-tassell’d_ wood,” “the _tender-pencill’d_ shadow,” “_crimson-circl’d_ star,” the “_hoary_ clematis,” “_creamy_ spray,” “_dry-tongued_ laurels”. But whatever he describes is described with the same felicitous vividness. How magical is this in the verses to Edward Lear:—

Naiads oar’d A _glimmering shoulder_ under _gloom_ Of _cavern pillars_.

Or this:—

She lock’d her lips: she left me where I stood: “Glory to God,” she sang, and past afar, Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood, Toward the morning-star.

—_A Dream of Fair Women_.

But if in the world of Nature nothing escaped his sensitive and sympathetic observation,—and indeed it might be said of him as truly as of Shelley’s _Alastor_

Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,

—he had studied the world of books with not less sympathy and attention. In the sense of a profound and extensive acquaintance with all that is best in ancient and modern poetry, and in an extraordinarily wide knowledge of general literature, of philosophy and theology, of geography and travel, and of various branches of natural science, he is one of the most erudite of English poets. With the poetry of the Greek and Latin classics he was, like Milton and Gray, thoroughly saturated. Its influence penetrates his work, now in indirect reminiscence, now in direct imitation, now inspiring, now modifying, now moulding. He tells us in _The Daisy_ how when at Como “the rich Virgilian rustic measure of _Lari Maxume_” haunted him all day, and in a later fragment how, as he rowed from Desenzano to Sirmio, Catullus was with him. And they and their brethren, from Homer to Theocritus, from Lucretius to Claudian, always were with him. I have illustrated so fully in the notes and elsewhere[4] the influence of the Greek and Roman classics on the poems of 1842 that it is not necessary to go into detail here. But a few examples of the various ways in which they affected Tennyson’s work generally may be given. Sometimes he transfers a happy epithet or expression in literal translation, as in:—

On either _shining_ shoulder laid a hand,

which is Homer’s epithet for the shoulder—

ἀνὰ φαιδίμῳ ὤμῳ

—_Od_., xi., 128.

It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,

exactly the

ἕος ἐβόησεν ἀλέκτωρ (Until the cock _shouted_).

—_Batrachomyomachia_, 192.

And all in passion utter’d a _dry_ shriek,

which is the _sicca vox_ of the Roman poets. So in _The Lotos Eaters_:—

His voice was _thin_ as voices from the grave,

which is Theocritus’ voice of Hylas from his watery grave:—

ἀραιὰ δ’ Ἱκετο φωνά

So in _The Princess_, sect. i.:—

And _cook’d his spleen_,

which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, _Il_., iv., 513:—

ἐπι νηυσὶ χόλον θυμαλγέα πέσσει (At the ships he cooks his heart-grieving spleen).

Again in _The Princess_, sect. iv.:—

_Laugh’d with alien lips,_

which is Homer’s (_Od_., 69-70)—

διδ’ ἤδη γναθμοῖσι γελῴων ἀλλοτρίοισι

So in _Edwin Morris_—

All perfect, finished _to the finger nail_,

which is a phrase transferred from Latin through the Greek; _cf._, Horace, _Sat_., i., v., 32:—

_Ad unguem_ Factus homo

(A man fashioned to the finger nail).

“The _brute_ earth,” _In Memoriam_, cxxvii., which is Horace’s

_Bruta_ tellus.

—_Odes_, i., xxxiv., 9.

So again:—

A bevy of roses _apple-cheek’d_

in _The Island_, which is Theocritus’ μαλοπάρῃος. The line in the _Morte d’Arthur_,

This way and that, dividing the swift mind,

is an almost literal translation of Virgil’s _Æn._, iv., 285:—

Atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc (And this way and that he divides his swift mind).

Another way in which they affect him is where, without direct imitation, they colour passages and poems as in _Œnone_, _The Lotos Eaters_, _Tithonus_, _Tiresias_, _The Death of Œnone_, _Demeter and Persephone_, the passage beginning “From the woods” in _The Gardener’s Daughter_, which is a parody of Theocritus, _Id._, vii., 139 _seq._, while the Cyclops’ invocation to Galatea in Theocritus, _Id._, xi., 29-79, was plainly the model for the idyll, “Come down, O Maid,” in the seventh section of _The Princess_, just as the tournament in the same poem recalls closely the epic of Homer and Virgil. Tennyson had a wonderful way of transfusing, as it were, the essence of some beautiful passage in a Greek or Roman poet into English. A striking illustration of this would be the influence of reminiscences of Virgil’s fourth _Æneid_ on the idyll of _Elaine and Guinevere_. Compare, for instance, the following: he is describing the love-wasted Elaine, as she sits brooding in the lonely evening, with the shadow of the wished-for death falling on her:—

But when they left her to herself again, Death, like a friend’s voice from a distant field, Approaching through the darkness, call’d; the owls Wailing had power upon her, and she mix’d Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms Of evening and the moanings of the wind.

How exactly does this recall, in a manner to be felt rather than exactly defined, a passage equally exquisite and equally pathetic in Virgil’s picture of Dido, where, with the shadow of her death also falling upon her, she seems to hear the phantom voice of her dead husband, and “mixes her fancies” with the glooms of night and the owl’s funereal wail:—

Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret; Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Sæpe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.

—_Æn._, iv., 460.)

(From it she thought she clearly heard a voice, even the accents of her husband calling her when night was wrapping the earth with darkness; and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains kept oft complaining, drawing out into a wail its protracted notes.)

Similar passages, though not so striking, would be the picture of Pindar’s Elysium in _Tiresias_, the sentiment pervading _The Lotos Eaters_ transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the scenery in _Œnone_ so crowded with details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus. Sometimes we find similes suggested by the classical poets, but enriched by touches from original observation, as here in _The Princess_:—

As one that climbs a peak to gaze O’er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore. ... And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world,

which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv., 275:—

ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἴδε νέφος αἰπολος ἀνήρ ἐρχόμενον κατὰ πόντον ὑπὸ Ζεφύροιο ἰωῆς τῷ δε τ’ ἄνευθεν ἐόντι, μελάντερον ἠΰτε πίσσα, φαίνετ’ ἰὸν κατὰ πόντον, ἄγει δέ τε λαῖλαπα πολλὴν.

(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind.)

So again the fine simile in _Elaine_, beginning

Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,

is at least modelled on the simile in _Iliad_, xv., 381-4, with reminiscences of the same similes in _Iliad_, xv., 624, and _Iliad_, iv., 42-56. The simile in the first section of the _Princess_,

As when a field of corn Bows all its ears before the roaring East,

reminds us of Homer’s

ὡς δ’ ὅτε κινήση Ζέφυρος βαθυλήϊον, ἐλθὼν λάβρος, ἐπαιγίζων, ἐπὶ τ’ ἠμύει ἀσταχύεσσιν.

(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with furious blast, and it bows with all its ears.)

Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following—

Ever fail’d to draw The quiet night into her blood,

from Virgil, _Æn_., iv., 530:—

Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem Accipit._ (And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or bosom),

or than the following (in _Enid_) from Theocritus:—

Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it.

ἐν δὲ μύες στερεοῖσι βραχίοσιν ἄκρον ὑπ’ ὦμον ἔστασαν, ἠύτε πέτροι ὀλοίτροχοι οὕς τε κυλίνδον χειμάῤῥους ποταμὸς μεγάλαις περιέξεσε δίναις.

—_Idyll_, xxii., 48 _seq._ (And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with the mighty eddies.)

But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and intimate acquaintance with the classics. It lay in developing what was suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient classical poetry than its pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole scene or a whole position. Where in _Merlin and Vivian_ Tennyson described

The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall In silence_,

he was merely unfolding to its full Homer’s κῦμα κωφόν—“dumb wave”; just as the best of all comments on Horace’s expression, “Vultus nimium lubricus aspici,” _Odes_, _I._, xix., 8, is given us in Tennyson’s picture of the Oread in Lucretius:—

How the sun delights To _glance and shift about her slippery sides_.

Or take again this passage in the _Agamemnon_, 404-5, describing Menelaus pining in his desolate palace for the lost Helen:—

πόθῳ δ’ ὑπερποντίας φάσμα δόξει δόμων ἀνάσσειν

(And in his yearning love for her who is over the sea a phantom will seem to reign over his palace.)

What are the lines in _Guinevere_ but an expansion of what is latent but unfolded in the pregnant suggestiveness of the Greek poet:—

And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk Thy shadow still would glide from room to room, And I should evermore be vex’d with thee In hanging robe or vacant ornament, Or ghostly foot-fall echoing on the stair—

with a reminiscence also perhaps of Constance’s speech in _King John_, III., iv.

It need hardly be said that these particular passages, and possibly some of the others, may be mere coincidences, but they illustrate what numberless other passages which could be cited prove that Tennyson’s careful and meditative study of the Greek and Roman poets enabled him to enrich his work by these felicitous adaptations.

He used those poets as his master Virgil used his Greek predecessors, and what the elder Seneca said of Ovid, who had appropriated a line from Virgil, might exactly be applied to Tennyson: “Fecisse quod in multis aliis versibus Virgilius fecerat, non surripiendi caus, sed palam imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci”.[5]

He had plainly studied with equal attention the chief Italian poets, especially Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso. On a passage in Dante he founded his _Ulysses_, and imitations of that master are frequent throughout his poems. _In Memoriam_, both in its general scheme as well as in numberless particular passages, closely recalls Petrarch; and Ariosto and Tasso have each influenced his work. In the poetry of his own country nothing seems to have escaped him, either in the masters or the minor poets.[6] To apply the term plagiarism to Tennyson’s use of his predecessors would be as absurd as to resolve some noble fabric into its stones and bricks, and confounding the one with the other to taunt the architect with appropriating an honour which belongs to the quarry and the potter. Tennyson’s method was exactly the method of two of the greatest poets in the world, Virgil and Milton, of the poet who stands second to Virgil in Roman poetry, Horace, of one of the most illustrious of our own minor poets, Gray.

An artist more fastidious than Tennyson never existed. As scrupulous a purist in language as Cicero, Chesterfield and Macaulay in prose, as Virgil, Milton, and Leopardi in verse, his care extended to the nicest minutiæ of word-forms. Thus “ancle” is always spelt with a “c” when it stands alone, with a “k” when used in compounds; thus he spelt “Idylls” with one “l” in the short poems, with two “l’s” in the epic poems; thus the employment of “through” or “thro’,” of “bad” or “bade,” and the retention or suppression of “e” in past participles are always carefully studied. He took immense pains to avoid the clash of “s” with “s,” and to secure the predominance of open vowels when rhythm rendered them appropriate. Like the Greek painter with his partridge, he thought nothing of sacrificing good things if, in any way, they interfered with unity and symmetry, and thus, his son tells us, many stanzas, in themselves of exquisite beauty, have been lost to us.

[2] _De Sublimitate,_ xvii.

[3] Tennyson’s blank verse in the _Idylls of the King_ (excepting in the _Morte d’Arthur_ and in the grander passages), is obviously modelled in rhythm on that of Shakespeare’s earlier style seen to perfection in _King John_. Compare the following lines with the rhythm say of _Elaine_ or _Guinevere_;—

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost; As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit: And so he’ll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

—_King John_, III., iv.

[4] _Illustrations of Tennyson_.

[5] Seneca, third _Suasoria_.

[6] For fuller illustrations of all this, and for the influence of the ancient classics on Tennyson, I may perhaps venture to refer the reader to my _Illustrations of Tennyson_. And may I here take the opportunity of pointing out that nothing could have been farther from my intention in that book than what has so often been most unfairly attributed to it, namely, an attempt to show that a charge of plagiarism might be justly urged against Tennyson. No honest critic, who had even cursorily inspected the book, could so utterly misrepresent its purpose.

IV

Tennyson’s place is not among the “lords of the visionary eye,” among seers, among prophets, but not the least part of the debt which his countrymen owe to him is his dedication of his art to the noblest purposes. At a time when poetry was beginning to degenerate into what it has now almost universally become—a mere sense-pampering siren, and when critics were telling us, as they are still telling us, that we are to understand by it “all literary production which attains the power of giving pleasure by its form as distinct from its matter,” he remained true to the creed of his great predecessors. “L’art pour art,” he would say, quoting Georges Sand, “est un vain mot: l’art pour le vrai, l’art pour le beau et le bon, voila la religion que je cherche.” When he succeeded to the laureateship he was proud to remember that the wreath which had descended to him was

greener from the brows Of him that utter’d nothing base,

and he was a loyal disciple of that poet whose aim had been, in his own words, “to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, to feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous”.[7] Wordsworth had said that he wished to be regarded as a teacher or as nothing, but unhappily he did not always distinguish between the way in which a poet and a philosopher should teach. He forgot that the didactic element in a poem should be, to employ a homely illustration, what garlic should be in a salad, “scarce suspected, animate the whole,” that the poet teaches not as the moralist and the preacher teach, but as nature and life teach us. He taught us when he wrote _The Fountain_ and _The Highland Reaper, The Leach-gatherer_ and _Michael_, he merely wearied us when he sermonised in _The Excursion_ and in _The Prelude_. Tennyson never makes this mistake. He is seldom directly didactic. Would he inculcate subjugation to the law of duty—he gives us the funeral ode on Wellington, _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, and _Love and Duty_. Would he inculcate resignationto the will of God, and the moral efficacy of conventional Christianity—he gives us _Enoch Arden_. Would he picture the endless struggle between the sensual and the spiritual, and the relation of ideals to life—he gives us the _Idylls of the King_. Would he point to what atheism may lead—he gives us _Lucretius_. Poems which are masterpieces of sensuous art, such as mere æsthetes, like Rosetti and his school, must contemplate with admiring despair, he makes vehicles of the most serious moral and spiritual teaching. _The Vision of Sin_ is worth a hundred sermons on the disastrous effects of unbridled profligacy. In _The Palace of Art_ we have the quintessence of _The Book of Ecclesiastes_ and much more besides. Even in _The Lotos Eaters_ we have the mirror held up to Hedonism. On the education of the affections and on the purity of domestic life must depend very largely, not merely the happiness of individuals, but the well-being of society, and how wide a space is filled by poems in Tennyson’s works bearing influentially on these subjects is obvious. And they admit us into a pleasaunce with which it is good to be familiar, so pure and wholesome is their atmosphere, so tranquilly beautiful the world in which the characters move and the little dramas unfold themselves. They preach nothing, but deep into every heart must sink their silent lessons. “Upon the sacredness of home life,” writes his son, “he would maintain that the stability and greatness of a nation largely depend; and one of the secrets of his power over mankind was his true joy in the family duties and affections.” What sermons have we in _The Miller’s Daughter_, in _Dora_, in _The Gardener’s Daughter_ and in _Love and Duty_. _The Princess_ was a direct contribution to a social question of momentous importance to our time. _Maud_ had an immediate political purpose, while in _In Memoriam_ he became the interpreter and teacher of his generation in a still higher sense.

Since Shakespeare no English poet has been so essentially patriotic, or appealed so directly to the political conscience of the nation. In his noble eulogies of the English constitution and of the virtue and wisdom of its architects, in his spirit-stirring pictures of the heroic

## actions of our forefathers and contemporaries both by land and sea, in

his passionate denunciations of all that he believed would detract from England’s greatness and be prejudicial to her real interests, in his hearty sympathy with every movement and with every measure which he believed would contribute to her honour and her power, in all this he stands alone among modern poets. But if he loved England as Shakespeare loved her, he had other lessons than Shakespeare’s to teach her. The responsibilities imposed on the England of our time—and no poet knew this better—are very different from those imposed on the England of Elizabeth. An empire vaster and more populous than that of the Cæsars has since then been added to our dominion. Millions, indeed, who are of the same blood as ourselves and who speak our language have, by the folly of common ancestors, become aliens. But how immense are the realms peopled by the colonies which are still loyal to us, and by the three hundred millions who in India own us as their rulers: of this vast empire England is now the capital and centre. That she should fulfil completely and honourably the duties to which destiny has called her will be the prayer of every patriot, that he should by his own efforts contribute all in his power to further such fulfilment must be his earnest desire. It would be no exaggeration to say that Tennyson contributed more than any man who has ever lived to what may be called the higher political education of the English-speaking races. Of imperial federation he was at once the apostle and the pioneer. In poetry which appealed as probably no other poetry has appealed to every class, wherever our language is spoken, he dwelt fondly on all that constitutes the greatness and glory of England, on her grandeur in the past, on the magnificent promise of the part she will play in the future, if her sons are true to her. There should be no distinction, for she recognises no distinction between her children at home and her children in her colonies. She is the common mother of a common race: one flag, one sceptre, the same proud ancestry, the same splendid inheritance. “How strange England cannot see,” he once wrote, “that her true policy lies in a close union with her colonies.”

Sharers of our glorious past, Shall we not thro’ good and ill Cleave to one another still? Britain’s myriad voices call, Sons be welded all and all Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart and soul! One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne!

Thus did the poetry of Tennyson draw closer, and thus will it continue to draw closer those sentimental ties—ties, in Burke’s phrase, “light as air, but strong as links of iron,” which bind the colonies to the mother country; and in so doing, if he did not actually initiate, he furthered, as no other single man has furthered, the most important movement of our time. Nor has any man of genius in the present century—not Dickens, not Ruskin—been moved by a purer spirit of philanthropy, or done more to show how little the qualities and actions which dignify humanity depend, or need depend, on the accidents of fortune. He brought poetry into touch with the discoveries of science, and with the speculations of theology and metaphysics, and though, in treating such subjects, his power is not, perhaps, equal to his charm, the debt which his countrymen owe him, even intellectually, is incalculable.

[7] See Wordsworth’s letter to Lady Beaumont, _Prose Works_, vol. ii., p. 176.

Early Poems

To the Queen

This dedication was first prefixed to the seventh edition of these poems in 1851, Tennyson having succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate, 19th Nov., 1850.

Revered, beloved[1]—O you that hold A nobler office upon earth Than arms, or power of brain, or birth Could give the warrior kings of old,

Victoria,[2]—since your Royal grace To one of less desert allows This laurel greener from the brows Of him that utter’d nothing base;

And should your greatness, and the care That yokes with empire, yield you time To make demand of modern rhyme If aught of ancient worth be there;

Then—while[3] a sweeter music wakes, And thro’ wild March the throstle calls, Where all about your palace-walls The sun-lit almond-blossom shakes—

Take, Madam, this poor book of song; For tho’ the faults were thick as dust In vacant chambers, I could trust Your kindness.[4] May you rule us long.

And leave us rulers of your blood As noble till the latest day! May children of our children say, “She wrought her people lasting good;[5]

“Her court was pure; her life serene; God gave her peace; her land reposed; A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, Wife and Queen;

“And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet[6]

“By shaping some august decree, Which kept her throne unshaken still, Broad-based upon her people’s will,[7] And compass’d by the inviolate sea.”

MARCH, 1851.

[1] 1851. Revered Victoria, you that hold.

[2] 1851. I thank you that your Royal grace.

[3] This stanza added in 1853.

[4] 1851. Your sweetness.

[5] In 1851 the following stanza referring to the first Crystal Palace, opened 1st May, 1851, was inserted here:—

She brought a vast design to pass, When Europe and the scatter’d ends Of our fierce world were mixt as friends And brethren, in her halls of glass.

[6] 1851. Broader yet.

[7] With this cf. Shelley, _Ode to Liberty_:—

Athens diviner yet Gleam’d with its crest of columns _on the will_ Of man.

Claribel

a melody

First published in 1830.

In 1830 and in 1842 edd. the poem is in one long stanza, with a full stop in 1830 ed. after line 8; 1842 ed. omits the full stop. The name “Claribel” may have been suggested by Spenser (_F. Q._, ii., iv., or Shakespeare, _Tempest_).

1

Where Claribel low-lieth The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall: But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, Thick-leaved, ambrosial, With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, Where Claribel low-lieth.

2

At eve the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone: At noon the wild bee[1] hummeth About the moss’d headstone: At midnight the moon cometh, And looketh down alone. Her song the lintwhite swelleth, The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, The callow throstle[2] lispeth, The slumbrous wave outwelleth, The babbling runnel crispeth, The hollow grot replieth Where Claribel low-lieth.

[1] 1830. “Wild” omitted, and “low” inserted with a hyphen before “hummeth”.

[2] 1851 and all previous editions, “fledgling” for “callow”.

Lilian

First printed in 1830.

1

Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She’ll not tell me if she love me, Cruel little Lilian.

2

When my passion seeks Pleasance in love-sighs She, looking thro’ and thro’[1] me Thoroughly to undo me, Smiling, never speaks: So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gather’d wimple[2] Glancing with black-beaded eyes, Till the lightning laughters dimple The baby-roses in her cheeks; Then away she flies.

3

Prythee weep, May Lilian! Gaiety without eclipse Wearieth me, May Lilian: Thro’[3] my very heart it thrilleth When from crimson-threaded[4] lips Silver-treble laughter[5] trilleth: Prythee weep, May Lilian.

4

Praying all I can, If prayers will not hush thee, Airy Lilian, Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee, Fairy Lilian.

[1] 1830. Through and through me.

[2] 1830. Purfled.

[3] 1830. Through.

[4] With “crimson-threaded” _cf._ Cleveland’s _Sing-song on Clarinda’s Wedding_, “Her _lips those threads of scarlet dye_”; but the original is _Solomons Song_ iv. 3, “Thy lips are _like a thread of scarlet_”.

[5] 1830. Silver treble-laughter.

Isabel

First printed in 1830. Lord Tennyson tells us (_Life of Tennyson_, i., 43) that in this poem his father more or less described his own mother, who was a “remarkable and saintly woman”. In this as in the other poems elaborately painting women we may perhaps suspect the influence of Wordsworth’s _Triad_, which should be compared with them.

1

Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity, Clear, without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane Of her still spirit[1]; locks not wide-dispread, Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity, Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood, Revered Isabel, the crown and head, The stately flower of female fortitude, Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead.[2]

2

The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime; a prudence to withhold; The laws of marriage[3] character’d in gold Upon the blanched[4] tablets of her heart; A love still burning upward, giving light To read those laws; an accent very low In blandishment, but a most silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the heart and brain, tho’ undescried, Winning its way with extreme gentleness Thro’[5] all the outworks of suspicious pride; A courage to endure and to obey; A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway, Crown’d Isabel, thro’[6] all her placid life, The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.

3

The mellow’d reflex of a winter moon; A clear stream flowing with a muddy one, Till in its onward current it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother: A leaning and upbearing parasite, Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite, With cluster’d flower-bells and ambrosial orbs Of rich fruit-bunches leaning on each other— Shadow forth thee:—the world hath not another (Though all her fairest forms are types of thee, And thou of God in thy great charity) Of such a finish’d chasten’d purity,

[1] With these lines may be compared Shelley, _Dedication to the Revolt of Islam_:—

And through thine eyes, e’en in thy soul, I see A lamp of vestal fire burning eternally.

[2] Lowlihead a favourite word with Chaucer and Spenser.

[3] 1830. Wifehood.

[4] 1830. Blenched.

[5] 1830 and all before 1853. Through.

[6] 1830. Through.

Mariana

“Mariana in the moated grange.”—_Measure for Measure_.

First printed in 1830.

This poem as we know from the motto prefixed to it was suggested by Shakespeare (_Measure for Measure_, iii., 1, “at the moated grange resides this dejected Mariana,”) but the poet may have had in his mind the exquisite fragment of Sappho:—

δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ Πληϊαδες, μέδαι δὲ νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὥρα, ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

“The moon has set and the Pleiades, and it is midnight: the hour too is going by, but I sleep alone.” It was long popularly supposed that the scene of the poem was a farm near Somersby known as Baumber’s farm, but Tennyson denied this and said it was a purely “imaginary house in the fen,” and that he “never so much as dreamed of Baumbers farm”. See _Life_, i., 28.

With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the peach[1] to the garden-wall.[2] The broken sheds look’d sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, “My life is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;[3] She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, “The night is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen’s low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed[4] morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, “The day is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blacken’d waters slept, And o’er it many, round and small, The cluster’d marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarled bark: For leagues no other tree did mark[5] The level waste, the rounding gray.[6] She only said, “My life is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away,[7] In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, “The night is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak’d; The blue fly sung in the pane;[8] the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d, Or from the crevice peer’d about. Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, “My life is dreary, He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound, Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping[9] toward his western bower. Then, said she, “I am very dreary, He will not come,” she said; She wept, “I am aweary, aweary, O God, that I were dead!”

[1] 1863. Pear.

[2] 1872. Gable-wall.

[3] With this beautiful couplet may be compared a couplet of Helvius Cinna:—

Te matutinus flentem conspexit Eous, Te flentem paullo vidit post Hesperus idem.

(_Cinnae Reliq._ Ed. Mueller, p. 83.)

[4] 1830. _Grey_-eyed. _Cf. Romeo and Juliet_, ii., 3,

“The _grey morn_ smiles on the frowning night”.

[5] 1830, 1842, 1843. Dark.

[6] 1830. Grey.

[7] 1830. An’ away.

[8] All editions before 1851. I’ the pane. With this line _cf. Maud_, I., vi., 8, “and the shrieking rush of the wainscot mouse”.

[9] 1830. Downsloped was westering in his bower.

To——

First printed in 1830.

The friend to whom these verses were addressed was Joseph William Blakesley, third Classic and Senior Chancellor’s Medallist in 1831, and afterwards Dean of Lincoln. Tennyson said of him: “He ought to be Lord Chancellor, for he is a subtle and powerful reasoner, and an honest man”.—_Life_, i., 65. He was a contributor to the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, and died in April, 1885. See memoir of him in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.

1

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain The knots that tangle human creeds,[1] The wounding cords that[2] bind and strain The heart until it bleeds, Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn Roof not a glance so keen as thine: If aught of prophecy be mine, Thou wilt not live in vain.

2

Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit; Falsehood shall bear her plaited brow: Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit. Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords Can do away that ancient lie; A gentler death shall Falsehood die, Shot thro’ and thro’[3] with cunning words.

3

Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger’s touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel[4] which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok brook the livelong night, And heaven’s mazed signs stood still In the dim tract of Penuel.

[1] 1830. The knotted lies of human creeds.

[2] 1830. “Which” for “that”.

[3] 1830. Through and through.

[4] The reference is to Genesis xxxii. 24-32.

Madeline

First published in 1830.

1

Thou art not steep’d in golden languors, No tranced summer calm is thine, Ever varying Madeline. Thro’[1] light and shadow thou dost range, Sudden glances, sweet and strange, Delicious spites and darling angers, And airy[2] forms of flitting change.

2

Smiling, frowning, evermore, Thou art perfect in love-lore. Revealings deep and clear are thine Of wealthy smiles: but who may know Whether smile or frown be fleeter? Whether smile or frown be sweeter, Who may know? Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Light-glooming over eyes divine, Like little clouds sun-fringed, are thine, Ever varying Madeline. Thy smile and frown are not aloof From one another, Each to each is dearest brother; Hues of the silken sheeny woof Momently shot into each other. All the mystery is thine; Smiling, frowning, evermore, Thou art perfect in love-lore, Ever varying Madeline.

3

A subtle, sudden flame, By veering passion fann’d, About thee breaks and dances When I would kiss thy hand, The flush of anger’d shame O’erflows thy calmer glances, And o’er black brows drops down A sudden curved frown: But when I turn away, Thou, willing me to stay, Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest; But, looking fixedly the while, All my bounding heart entanglest In a golden-netted smile; Then in madness and in bliss, If my lips should dare to kiss Thy taper fingers amorously,[3] Again thou blushest angerly; And o’er black brows drops down A sudden-curved frown.

[1] 1830. Through.

[2] 1830. Aery.

[3] 1830. Three-times-three; though noted as an _erratum_ for amorously.

Song—The Owl

First printed in 1830.

1

When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.

2

When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.

Second Song—To the Same

First printed in 1830.

1

Thy tuwhits are lull’d I wot, Thy tuwhoos of yesternight, Which upon the dark afloat, So took echo with delight, So took echo with delight, That her voice untuneful grown, Wears all day a fainter tone.

2

I would mock thy chaunt anew; But I cannot mimick it; Not a whit of thy tuwhoo, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, With a lengthen’d loud halloo, Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.

Recollections of the Arabian Nights

First printed in 1830.

With this poem should be compared the description of Harun al Rashid’s Garden of Gladness in the story of Nur-al-din Ali and the damsel Anis al Talis in the Thirty-Sixth Night. The style appears to have been modelled on Coleridge’s _Kubla Khan_ and _Lewti_, and the influence of Coleridge is very perceptible throughout the poem.

When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow’d back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat’s shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime[1] Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Anight my shallop, rustling thro’[2] The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove The citron-shadows in the blue: By garden porches on the brim, The costly doors flung open wide, Gold glittering thro’[3] lamplight dim, And broider’d sofas[4] on each side: In sooth it was a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Often, where clear-stemm’d platans guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head down a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The sloping of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms[5] unmown, which crept Adown to where the waters slept. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

A motion from the river won Ridged the smooth level, bearing on My shallop thro’ the star-strown calm, Until another night in night I enter’d, from the clearer light, Imbower’d vaults of pillar’d palm, Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb Heavenward, were stay’d beneath the dome Of hollow boughs.—A goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Still onward; and the clear canal Is rounded to as clear a lake. From the green rivage many a fall Of diamond rillets musical, Thro’ little crystal[6] arches low Down from the central fountain’s flow Fall’n silver-chiming, seem’d to shake The sparkling flints beneath the prow. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Above thro’[7] many a bowery turn A walk with vary-colour’d shells Wander’d engrain’d. On either side All round about the fragrant marge From fluted vase, and brazen urn In order, eastern flowers large, Some dropping low their crimson bells Half-closed, and others studded wide With disks and tiars, fed the time With odour in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Far off, and where the lemon-grove In closest coverture upsprung, The living airs of middle night Died round the bulbul[8] as he sung; Not he: but something which possess’d The darkness of the world, delight, Life, anguish, death, immortal love, Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress’d. Apart from place, withholding[9] time, But flattering the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Black the[10] garden-bowers and grots Slumber’d: the solemn palms were ranged Above, unwoo’d of summer wind: A sudden splendour from behind Flush’d all the leaves with rich gold-green, And, flowing rapidly between Their interspaces, counterchanged The level lake with diamond-plots Of dark and bright.[11] A lovely time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, Distinct with vivid stars inlaid,[12] Grew darker from that under-flame: So, leaping lightly from the boat, With silver anchor left afloat, In marvel whence that glory came Upon me, as in sleep I sank In cool soft turf upon the bank, Entranced with that place and time, So worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Thence thro’ the garden I was drawn—[13] A realm of pleasance, many a mound, And many a shadow-chequer’d lawn Full of the city’s stilly sound,[14] And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks, Thick rosaries[15] of scented thorn, Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

With dazed vision unawares From the long alley’s latticed shade Emerged, I came upon the great Pavilion of the Caliphat. Right to the carven cedarn doors, Flung inward over spangled floors, Broad-based flights of marble stairs Ran up with golden balustrade, After the fashion of the time, And humour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

The fourscore windows all alight As with the quintessence of flame, A million tapers flaring bright From twisted silvers look’d[16] to shame The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream’d Upon the mooned domes aloof In inmost Bagdat, till there seem’d Hundreds of crescents on the roof Of night new-risen, that marvellous time, To celebrate the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Then stole I up, and trancedly Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes Amorous, and lashes like to rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl, Flowing beneath[17] her rose-hued zone; The sweetest lady of the time, Well worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

Six columns, three on either side, Pure silver, underpropt[18] a rich Throne of the[19] massive ore, from which Down-droop’d, in many a floating fold, Engarlanded and diaper’d With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirr’d With merriment of kingly pride, Sole star of all that place and time, I saw him—in his golden prime, THE GOOD HAROUN ALRASCHID!

[1] “Golden prime” from Shakespeare. “That cropp’d the _golden prime_ of this sweet prince.” (_Rich. III._, i., sc. ii., 248.)

[2] 1830. Through.

[3] 1830. Through.

[4] 1830 and 1842. Sophas.

[5] 1830. Breaded blosms.

[6] 1830. Through crystal.

[7] 1830. Through.

[8] “Bulbul” is the Persian for nightingale. _Cf. Princes_, iv., 104:—

“O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan Shall brush her veil”.

[9] 1830. Witholding. So 1842, 1843, 1845.

[10] 1830. Blackgreen.

[11] 1830. Of saffron light.

[12] 1830. Unrayed.

[13] 1830. Through ... borne.

[14] Shakespeare has the same expression: “The hum of either army _stilly sounds_”. (_Henry V._, act iv., prol.)

[15] 1842. Roseries.

[16] 1830. Wreathed.

[17] 1830. Below.

[18] 1830. Underpropped. 1842. Underpropp’d.

[19] 1830. O’ the.

Ode to Memory

First printed in 1830.

After the title in 1830 ed. is “Written very early in life”. The influence most perceptible in this poem is plainly Coleridge, on whose _Songs of the Pixies_ it seems to have been modelled. Tennyson considered it, and no wonder, as one of the very best of “his early and peculiarly concentrated Nature-poems”. See _Life_, i., 27. It is full of vivid and accurate pictures of his Lincolnshire home and haunts. See _Life_, i., 25-48, _passim_.

1

Thou who stealest fire, From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit my low desire! Strengthen me, enlighten me! I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.

2

Come not as thou camest[1] of late, Flinging the gloom of yesternight On the white day; but robed in soften’d light Of orient state. Whilome thou camest with the morning mist, Even as a maid, whose stately brow The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kiss’d,[2] When she, as thou, Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits, Which in wintertide shall star The black earth with brilliance rare.

3

Whilome thou camest with the morning mist. And with the evening cloud, Showering thy gleaned wealth into my open breast, (Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind Never grow sere, When rooted in the garden of the mind, Because they are the earliest of the year). Nor was the night thy shroud. In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope. The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence; and the cope Of the half-attain’d futurity, Though deep not fathomless, Was cloven with the million stars which tremble O’er the deep mind of dauntless infancy. Small thought was there of life’s distress; For sure she deem’d no mist of earth could dull Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful: Sure she was nigher to heaven’s spheres, Listening the lordly music flowing from The illimitable years.[3] O strengthen me, enlighten me! I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.

4

Come forth I charge thee, arise, Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes! Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest Memory! Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall Which ever sounds and shines A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs, aloof descried: Come from the woods that belt the grey hill-side, The seven elms, the poplars[4] four That stand beside my father’s door, And chiefly from the brook[5] that loves To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, In every elbow and turn, The filter’d tribute of the rough woodland. O! hither lead thy feet! Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds, Upon the ridged wolds, When the first matin-song hath waken’d[6] loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn, What time the amber morn Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud.

5

Large dowries doth the raptured eye To the young spirit present When first she is wed; And like a bride of old In triumph led, With music and sweet showers Of festal flowers, Unto the dwelling she must sway. Well hast thou done, great artist Memory, In setting round thy first experiment With royal frame-work of wrought gold; Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay, And foremost in thy various gallery Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls Upon the storied walls; For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee, That all which thou hast drawn of fairest Or boldest since, but lightly weighs With thee unto the love thou bearest The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like, Ever retiring thou dost gaze On the prime labour of thine early days: No matter what the sketch might be; Whether the high field on the bushless Pike, Or even a sand-built ridge Of heaped hills that mound the sea, Overblown with murmurs harsh, Or even a lowly cottage[7] whence we see Stretch’d wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like emblems of infinity,[8] The trenched waters run from sky to sky; Or a garden bower’d close With plaited[9] alleys of the trailing rose, Long alleys falling down to twilight grots, Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender: Whither in after life retired From brawling storms, From weary wind, With youthful fancy reinspired, We may hold converse with all forms Of the many-sided mind, And those[10] whom passion hath not blinded, Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded. My friend, with you[11] to live alone, Were how much[12] better than to own A crown, a sceptre, and a throne! O strengthen, enlighten me! I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.

[1] 1830. Cam’st.

[2] 1830. Kist.

[3] Transferred from _Timbuctoo_.

And these with lavish’d sense Listenist the lordly music flowing from The illimitable years.

[4] The poplars have now disappeared but the seven elms are still to be seen in the garden behind the house. See Napier, _The Laureate’s County_, pp. 22, 40-41.

[5] This is the Somersby brook which so often reappears in Tennyson’s poetry, cf. _Millers Daughter, A Farewell_, and _In Memoriam_, 1 xxix. and c.

[6] 1830. Waked. For the epithet “dew-impearled” _cf._ Drayton, _Ideas_, sonnet liii., “amongst the dainty _dew-impearled flowers_,” where the epithet is more appropriate and intelligible.

[7] 1830. The few.

[8] 1830 and 1842. Thee.

[9] 1830. Methinks were, so till 1850, when it was altered to the present reading.

[10] The cottage at Maplethorpe where the Tennysons used to spend the summer holidays. (See _Life_, i., 46.)

[11] 1830. Emblems or Glimpses of Eternity.

[12] 1830. Pleached. The whole of this passage is an exact description of the Parsonage garden at Somersby. See _Life_, i., 27.

Song

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.

Adeline

First printed in 1830.

1

Mystery of mysteries, Faintly smiling Adeline, Scarce of earth nor all divine, Nor unhappy, nor at rest, But beyond expression fair With thy floating flaxen hair; Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes Take the heart from out my breast. Wherefore those dim looks of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

2

Whence that aery bloom of thine, Like a lily which the sun Looks thro’ in his sad decline, And a rose-bush leans upon, Thou that faintly smilest still, As a Naïad in a well, Looking at the set of day, Or a phantom two hours old Of a maiden passed away, Ere the placid lips be cold? Wherefore those faint smiles of thine, Spiritual Adeline?

3

What hope or fear or joy is thine? Who talketh with thee, Adeline? For sure thou art not all alone: Do beating hearts of salient springs Keep measure with thine own? Hast thou heard the butterflies What they say betwixt their wings? Or in stillest evenings With what voice the violet woos To his heart the silver dews? Or when little airs arise, How the merry bluebell rings[1] To the mosses underneath? Hast thou look’d upon the breath Of the lilies at sunrise? Wherefore that faint smile of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

4

Some honey-converse feeds thy mind, Some spirit of a crimson rose In love with thee forgets to close His curtains, wasting odorous sighs All night long on darkness blind. What aileth thee? whom waitest thou With thy soften’d, shadow’d brow, And those dew-lit eyes of thine,[2] Thou faint smiler, Adeline?

5

Lovest thou the doleful wind When thou gazest at the skies? Doth the low-tongued Orient[3] Wander from the side of[4] the morn, Dripping with Sabæan spice On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn, Breathing Light against thy face, While his locks a-dropping[5] twined Round thy neck in subtle ring Make a _carcanet of rays_,[6] And ye talk together still, In the language wherewith Spring Letters cowslips on the hill? Hence that look and smile of thine, Spiritual Adeline.

[1] This conceit seems to have been borrowed from Shelley, _Sensitive Plant_, i.:—

And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music.

[2] _Cf._ Collins, _Ode to Pity_, “and _eyes of dewy light_”.

[3] What “the low-tongued Orient” may mean I cannot explain.

[4] 1830 and all editions till 1853. O’.

[5] 1863. A-drooping.

[6] A carcanet is a necklace, diminutive from old French “Carcan”. Cf. _Comedy of Errors_, in., i, “To see the making of her Carcanet”.

A Character

First printed in 1830.

The only authoritative light thrown on the person here described is what the present Lord Tennyson gives, who tells us that “the then well-known Cambridge orator S—was partly described”. He was “a very plausible, parliament-like, self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society”. The character reminds us of Wordsworth’s Moralist. See _Poet’s Epitaph_;—

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling, Nor form nor feeling, great nor small; A reasoning, self-sufficient thing, An intellectual all in all.

Shakespeare’s fop, too (Hotspur’s speech, _Henry IV._, i., i., 2), seems to have suggested a touch or two.

With a half-glance upon the sky At night he said, “The wanderings Of this most intricate Universe Teach me the nothingness of things”. Yet could not all creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye.

He spake of beauty: that the dull Saw no divinity in grass, Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as ’twere in a glass, He smooth’d his chin and sleek’d his hair, And said the earth was beautiful.

He spake of virtue: not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by: And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods.

Most delicately hour by hour He canvass’d human mysteries, And trod on silk, as if the winds Blew his own praises in his eyes, And stood aloof from other minds In impotence of fancied power.

With lips depress’d as he were meek, Himself unto himself he sold: Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, With chisell’d features clear and sleek.

The Poet

First printed in 1830.

In this poem we have the first grand note struck by Tennyson, the first poem exhibiting the σπουδαιότης of the true poet.

The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,[1] The love of love.

He saw thro’[2] life and death, thro’[3] good and ill, He saw thro’[4] his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll,

Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded The secretest walks of fame: The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing’d with flame,—

Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, And of so fierce a flight, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light

And vagrant melodies the winds which bore Them earthward till they lit; Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower, The fruitful wit

Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew Where’er they fell, behold, Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew A flower all gold,

And bravely furnish’d all abroad to fling The winged shafts of truth, To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring Of Hope and Youth.

So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, Tho’[5] one did fling the fire. Heaven flow’d upon the soul in many dreams Of high desire.

Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world Like one[6] great garden show’d, And thro’ the wreaths of floating dark upcurl’d, Rare sunrise flow’d.

And Freedom rear’d in that august sunrise Her beautiful bold brow, When rites and forms before his burning eyes Melted like snow.

There was no blood upon her maiden robes Sunn’d by those orient skies; But round about the circles of the globes Of her keen eyes

And in her raiment’s hem was traced in flame WISDOM, a name to shake All evil dreams of power—a sacred name.[7] And when she spake,

Her words did gather thunder as they ran, And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, Making earth wonder,

So was their meaning to her words. No sword Of wrath her right arm whirl’d,[8] But one poor poet’s scroll, and with _his_ word She shook the world.

[1] The expression, as is not uncommon with Tennyson, is extremely ambiguous; it may mean that he hated hatred, scorned scorn, and loved love, or that he had hatred, scorn and love as it were in quintessence, like Dante, and that is no doubt the meaning

[2] 1830. Through.

[3] 1830. Through.

[4] 1830. Through.

[5] 1830 till 1851. Though.

[6] 1830. A.

[7] 1830.

And in the bordure of her robe was writ Wisdom, a name to shake Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit.

[8] 1830. Hurled.

The Poet’s Mind

First published in 1830. A companion poem to the preceding.

After line 7 in 1830 appears this stanza, afterwards omitted:—

Clear as summer mountain streams, Bright as the inwoven beams, Which beneath their crisping sapphire In the midday, floating o’er The golden sands, make evermore To a blossom-starrèd shore. Hence away, unhallowed laughter!

1

Vex not thou the poet’s mind With thy shallow wit: Vex not thou the poet’s mind; For thou canst not fathom it. Clear and bright it should be ever, Flowing like a crystal river; Bright as light, and clear as wind.

2

Dark-brow’d sophist, come not anear; All the place[1] is holy ground; Hollow smile and frozen sneer Come not here. Holy water will I pour Into every spicy flower Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around. The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer. In your eye there is death, There is frost in your breath Which would blight the plants. Where you stand you cannot hear From the groves within The wild-bird’s din. In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants, It would fall to the ground if you came in. In the middle leaps a fountain Like sheet lightning, Ever brightening With a low melodious thunder; All day and all night it is ever drawn From the brain of the purple mountain Which stands in the distance yonder: It springs on a level of bowery lawn, And the mountain draws it from Heaven above, And it sings a song of undying love; And yet, tho’[2] its voice be so clear and full, You never would hear it; your ears are so dull; So keep where you are: you are foul with sin; It would shrink to the earth if you came in.

[1] 1830. The poet’s mind. With this may be compared the opening stanza of Gray’s _Installation Ode_: “Hence! avaunt! ’tis holy ground,” and for the sentiments _cf_. Wordsworth’s _Poet’s Epitaph._

[2] 1830 to 1851. Though.

The Sea Fairies

First published in 1830 but excluded from all editions till its restoration, when it was greatly altered, in 1853. I here give the text as it appeared in 1830; where the present text is the same as that of 1830 asterisks indicate it.

This poem is a sort of prelude to the _Lotos-Eaters_, the burthen being the same, a siren song: “Why work, why toil, when all must be over so soon, and when at best there is so little to reward?”

Slow sailed the weary mariners, and saw Between the green brink and the running foam White limbs unrobed in a chrystal air, Sweet faces, etc. ... middle sea.

SONG

Whither away, whither away, whither away? Fly no more! Whither away wi’ the singing sail? whither away wi’ the oar? Whither away from the high green field and the happy blossoming shore? Weary mariners, hither away, One and all, one and all, Weary mariners, come and play; We will sing to you all the day; Furl the sail and the foam will fall From the prow! one and all Furl the sail! drop the oar! Leap ashore! Know danger and trouble and toil no more. Whither away wi’ the sail and the oar? Drop the oar, Leap ashore, Fly no more! Whither away wi’ the sail? whither away wi’ the oar? Day and night to the billow, etc. ... over the lea; They freshen the silvery-crimson shells, And thick with white bells the cloverhill swells High over the full-toned sea. Merrily carol the revelling gales Over the islands free: From the green seabanks the rose downtrails To the happy brimmèd sea. Come hither, come hither, and be our lords, For merry brides are we: We will kiss sweet kisses, etc. ... With pleasure and love and revelry; ... ridgèd sea. Ye will not find so happy a shore Weary mariners! all the world o’er; Oh! fly no more! Harken ye, harken ye, sorrow shall darken ye, Danger and trouble and toil no more; Whither away? Drop the oar; Hither away, Leap ashore; Oh! fly no more—no more. Whither away, whither away, whither away with the sail and the oar?

Slow sail’d the weary mariners and saw, Betwixt the green brink and the running foam, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest To little harps of gold; and while they mused, Whispering to each other half in fear, Shrill music reach’d them on the middle sea.

Whither away, whither away, whither away? fly no more. Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore? Day and night to the billow the fountain calls; Down shower the gambolling waterfalls From wandering over the lea: Out of the live-green heart of the dells They freshen the silvery-crimsoned shells, And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells High over the full-toned sea: O hither, come hither and furl your sails, Come hither to me and to me: Hither, come hither and frolic and play; Here it is only the mew that wails; We will sing to you all the day: Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, For here are the blissful downs and dales, And merrily merrily carol the gales, And the spangle dances in bight[1] and bay, And the rainbow forms and flies on the land Over the islands free; And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand; Hither, come hither and see; And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave, And sweet is the colour of cove and cave,

And sweet shall your welcome be: O hither, come hither, and be our lords For merry brides are we: We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words: O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten With pleasure and love and jubilee: O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten When the sharp clear twang of the golden cords Runs up the ridged sea. Who can light on as happy a shore All the world o’er, all the world o’er? Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more.

[1] Bight is properly the coil of a rope; it then came to mean a bend, and so a corner or bay. The same phrase occurs in the _Voyage of Maledune_, v.: “and flung them in bight and bay”.

The Deserted House

First printed in 1830, omitted in all the editions till 1848 when it was restored. The poem is of course allegorical, and is very much in the vein of many poems in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

1

Life and Thought have gone away Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide:

2

All within is dark as night: In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before.

3

Close the door, the shutters close, Or thro’[1] the windows we shall see The nakedness and vacancy Of the dark deserted house.

4

Come away: no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground.

5

Come away: for Life and Thought Here no longer dwell; But in a city glorious— A great and distant city—have bought A mansion incorruptible. Would they could have stayed with us!

[1] 1848 and 1851. Through.

The Dying Swan

First printed in 1830.

The superstition here assumed is so familiar from the Classics as well as from modern tradition that it scarcely needs illustration or commentary. But see Plato, _Phaedrus_, xxxi., and Shakespeare, _King John_, v., 7.

1

The plain was grassy, wild and bare, Wide, wild, and open to the air, Which had built up everywhere An under-roof of doleful gray.[1] With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan, And[2] loudly did lament. It was the middle of the day. Ever the weary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went.

2

Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, Shone out their crowning snows. One willow over the water[3] wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was[4] the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro’[5] the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

3

The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear; And floating about the under-sky, Prevailing in weakness, the coronach[6] stole Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear; But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold, Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold; As when a mighty people rejoice With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold, And the tumult of their acclaim is roll’d Thro’[7] the open gates of the city afar, To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star. And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among, Were flooded over with eddying song.

[1] 1830. Grey.

[2] 1830 till 1848. Which.

[3] 1863. River.

[4] 1830. Sung.

[5] 1830. Through.

[6] A coronach is a funeral song or lamentation, from the Gaelic _Corranach_. _Cf_. Scott’s _Waverley_, ch. xv., “Their wives and daughters came clapping their hands and _crying the coronach_ and shrieking”.

[7] 1830 till 1851. Through.

A Dirge

First printed in 1830.

1

Now is done thy long day’s work; Fold thy palms across thy breast, Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest. Let them rave. Shadows of the silver birk[1] Sweep the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

2

Thee nor carketh[2] care nor slander; Nothing but the small cold worm Fretteth thine enshrouded form. Let them rave. Light and shadow ever wander O’er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

3

Thou wilt not turn upon thy bed; Chaunteth not the brooding bee Sweeter tones than calumny? Let them rave. Thou wilt never raise thine head From the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

4

Crocodiles wept tears for thee; The woodbine and eglatere Drip sweeter dews than traitor’s tear. Let them rave. Rain makes music in the tree O’er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

5

Round thee blow, self-pleached[3] deep, Bramble-roses, faint and pale, And long purples[4] of the dale. Let them rave. These in every shower creep. Thro’[5] the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

6

The gold-eyed kingcups fine: The frail bluebell peereth over Rare broidry of the purple clover. Let them rave. Kings have no such couch as thine, As the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

7

Wild words wander here and there; God’s great gift of speech abused Makes thy memory confused: But let them rave. The balm-cricket[6] carols clear In the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.

[1] Still used in the north of England for “birch”.

[2] Carketh. Here used transitively, “troubles,” though in Old English it is generally intransitive, meaning to be careful or thoughtful; it is from the Anglo-Saxon _Carian_; it became obsolete in the seventeenth century. The substantive cark, trouble or anxiety, is generally in Old English coupled with “care”.

[3] Self-pleached, self-entangled or intertwined. _Cf_. Shakespeare, “pleached bower,” _Much Ado_, iii., i., 7.

[4] 1830. “_Long purples_,” thus marking that the phrase is borrowed from Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, iv., vii., 169:—

and _long purples_ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name. It is the purple-flowered orchis, _orchis mascula_.

[5] 1830. Through.

[6] Balm cricket, the tree cricket; _balm_ is a corruption of _baum_.

Love and Death

First printed in 1830.

What time the mighty moon was gathering light[1] Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise, And all about him roll’d his lustrous eyes; When, turning round a cassia, full in view Death, walking all alone beneath a yew, And talking to himself, first met his sight: “You must begone,” said Death, “these walks are mine”. Love wept and spread his sheeny vans[2] for flight; Yet ere he parted said, “This hour is thine; Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath, So in the light of great eternity Life eminent creates the shade of death; The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall, But I shall reign for ever over all”.[3]

[1] The expression is Virgil’s, _Georg_., i., 427: “Luna revertentes cum primum _colligit ignes_”.

[2] Vans used also for “wings” by Milton, _Paradise Lost_, ii., 927-8:—

His sail-broad _vans_ He spreads for flight.

So also Tasso, _Ger. Lib_., ix., 60: “Indi spiega al gran volo i _vanni_ aurati”.

[3] _Cf. Lockley Hall Sixty Years After_: “Love will conquer at the last”.

The Ballad of Oriana

First published in 1830, not in 1833.

This fine ballad was evidently suggested by the old ballad of Helen of Kirkconnel, both poems being based on a similar incident, and both being the passionate soliloquy of the bereaved lover, though Tennyson’s treatment of the subject is his own. Helen of Kirkconnel was one of the poems which he was fond of reciting, and Fitzgerald says that he used also to recite this poem, in a way not to be forgotten, at Cambridge tables. _Life_, i., p. 77.

My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana. There is no rest for me below, Oriana. When the long dun wolds are ribb’d with snow, And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow, Oriana, Alone I wander to and fro, Oriana.

Ere the light on dark was growing, Oriana, At midnight the cock was crowing, Oriana: Winds were blowing, waters flowing, We heard the steeds to battle going, Oriana; Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, Oriana.

In the yew-wood black as night, Oriana, Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana, While blissful tears blinded my sight By star-shine and by moonlight, Oriana, I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana.

She stood upon the castle wall, Oriana: She watch’d my crest among them all, Oriana: She saw me fight, she heard me call, When forth there stept a foeman tall, Oriana, Atween me and the castle wall, Oriana.

The bitter arrow went aside, Oriana: The false, false arrow went aside, Oriana: The damned arrow glanced aside, And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride, Oriana! Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride, Oriana!

Oh! narrow, narrow was the space, Oriana. Loud, loud rung out the bugle’s brays, Oriana. Oh! deathful stabs were dealt apace, The battle deepen’d in its place, Oriana; But I was down upon my face, Oriana.

They should have stabb’d me where I lay, Oriana! How could I rise and come away, Oriana? How could I look upon the day? They should have stabb’d me where I lay, Oriana They should have trod me into clay, Oriana.

O breaking heart that will not break, Oriana! O pale, pale face so sweet and meek, Oriana! Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak, And then the tears run down my cheek, Oriana: What wantest thou? whom dost thou seek, Oriana?

I cry aloud: none hear my cries, Oriana. Thou comest atween me and the skies, Oriana. I feel the tears of blood arise Up from my heart unto my eyes, Oriana. Within my heart my arrow lies, Oriana.

O cursed hand! O cursed blow! Oriana! O happy thou that liest low, Oriana! All night the silence seems to flow Beside me in my utter woe, Oriana. A weary, weary way I go, Oriana.

When Norland winds pipe down the sea, Oriana, I walk, I dare not think of thee, Oriana. Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree, I dare not die and come to thee, Oriana. I hear the roaring of the sea, Oriana.

Circumstance

First published in 1830.

Two children in two neighbour villages Playing mad pranks along the healthy leas; Two strangers meeting at a festival; Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall; Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease; Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower, Wash’d with still rains and daisy-blossomed; Two children in one hamlet born and bred; So runs[1] the round of life from hour to hour.

[1] 1830. Fill up.

The Merman

First printed in 1830.

1

Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone, Singing alone Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne?

2

I would be a merman bold; I would sit and sing the whole of the day; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power; But at night I would roam abroad and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower; And holding them back by their flowing locks I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss’d me Laughingly, laughingly; And then we would wander away, away To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high, Chasing each other merrily.

3

There would be neither moon nor star; But the wave would make music above us afar— Low thunder and light in the magic night— Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other and whoop and cry All night, merrily, merrily; They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, Laughing and clapping their hands between, All night, merrily, merrily: But I would throw to them back in mine Turkis and agate and almondine:[1] Then leaping out upon them unseen I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss’d me Laughingly, laughingly. Oh! what a happy life were mine Under the hollow-hung ocean green! Soft are the moss-beds under the sea; We would live merrily, merrily.

[1] Almondine. This should be “almandine,” the word probably being a corruption of alabandina, a gem so called because found at Alabanda in Caria; it is a garnet of a violet or amethystine tint. _Cf._ Browning, _Fefine at the Fair_, xv., “that string of mock-turquoise, these _almandines_ of glass”.

The Mermaid

First printed in 1830.

1

Who would be A mermaid fair, Singing alone, Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl, On a throne?

2

I would be a mermaid fair; I would sing to myself the whole of the day; With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair; And still as I comb’d I would sing and say, “Who is it loves me? who loves not me?” I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall, Low adown, low adown, From under my starry sea-bud crown Low adown and around, And I should look like a fountain of gold Springing alone With a shrill inner sound, Over the throne In the midst of the hall; Till that[1] great sea-snake under the sea From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps Would slowly trail himself sevenfold Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate With his large calm eyes for the love of me. And all the mermen under the sea Would feel their[2] immortality Die in their hearts for the love of me.

3

But at night I would wander away, away, I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks, And lightly vault from the throne and play With the mermen in and out of the rocks; We would run to and fro, and hide and seek, On the broad sea-wolds in the[3] crimson shells, Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea. But if any came near I would call, and shriek, And adown the steep like a wave I would leap From the diamond-ledges that jut from the dells; For I would not be kiss’d[4] by all who would list, Of the bold merry mermen under the sea; They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me, In the purple twilights under the sea; But the king of them all would carry me, Woo me, and win me, and marry me, In the branching jaspers under the sea; Then all the dry pied things that be In the hueless mosses under the sea Would curl round my silver feet silently, All looking up for the love of me. And if I should carol aloud, from aloft All things that are forked, and horned, and soft Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea, All looking down for the love of me.

[1] Till 1857. The.

[2] Till 1857. The.

[3] 1830. ’I the. So till 1853.

[4] 1830 Kist.

Sonnet to J. M. K.

First printed in 1830, not in 1833.

This sonnet was addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, the well-known Editor of the _Beowulf_ and other Anglo-Saxon poems. He intended to go into the Church, but was never ordained, and devoted his life to early English studies. See memoir of him in _Dict, of Nat. Biography_.

My hope and heart is with thee—thou wilt be A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee: Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily; But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy To embattail and to wall about thy cause With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.

The Lady of Shalott

First published in 1833.

This poem was composed in its first form as early as May, 1832 or 1833, as we learn from Fitzgerald’s note—of the exact year he was not certain (_Life of Tennyson_, i., 147). The evolution of the poem is an interesting study. How greatly it was altered in the second edition of 1842 will be evident from the collation which follows. The text of 1842 became the permanent text, and in this no subsequent material alterations were made. The poem is more purely fanciful than Tennyson perhaps was willing to own; certainly his explanation of the allegory, as he gave it to Canon Ainger, is not very intelligible: “The new-born love for something, for some one in the wide world from which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities”. Poe’s commentary is most to the point: “Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces as the _Lady of Shallot_? As well unweave the ventum textilem”.—_Democratic Review_, Dec., 1844, quoted by Mr. Herne Shepherd. Mr. Palgrave says (selection from the _Lyric Poems of Tennyson_, p. 257) the poem was suggested by an Italian romance upon the Donna di Scalotta. On what authority this is said I do not know, nor can I identify the novel. In Novella, lxxxi., a collection of novels printed at Milan in 1804, there is one which tells but very briefly the story of Elaine’s love and death, “Qui conta come la Damigella di scalot mori per amore di Lancealotto di Lac,” and as in this novel Camelot is placed near the sea, this may be the novel referred to. In any case the poem is a fanciful and possibly an allegorical variant of the story of Elaine, Shalott being a form, through the French, of Astolat.

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