An artist more fastidious than
Tennyson
never existed.
Tennyson
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.
--'? none'.
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". [1] 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". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] 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 '? none' 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 [1] 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--
[Greek: ana phaidimps omps]
--'Od'. , xi. , 128.
It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,
exactly the
[Greek: heos eboaesen alektor] (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:--
[Greek: araia d' Iketo ph_ona]
(_Thin_ came the voice).
So in 'The Princess', sect. i. :--
And _cook'd his spleen_,
which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'. , iv. , 513:--
[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]
(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)--
[Greek: did' aedae gnathmoisi gelps_on allotrioisi]
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' [Greek: maloparaeos].
The line in the 'Morte d'Arthur',
This way and that, dividing the swift mind,
is an almost literal translation of Virgil's 'Aen'. , 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 'Oenone', 'The Lotos Eaters',
'Tithonus', 'Tiresias', 'The Death of Oenone', '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 'Aeneid' 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
Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.
--'Aen'. , 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
'? none' 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:--
[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer
erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa
pollaen. ]
(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
[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]
(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, 'Aen'. , 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.
[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais. ]
--'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 [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"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:--
[Greek: pothoi d' uperpontias phasma doxei dom_on anassein. ]
(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 causa sed palam
imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci". [4]
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. [5] 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
minutiae 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.
[Footnote 1: 'De Sublimitate,' xvii. ]
[Footnote 2: 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. ]
[Footnote 3: 'Illustrations of Tennyson'. ]
[Footnote 4: Seneca, third 'Suasoria'. ]
[Footnote 5: 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". [1] 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
resignation to 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 aesthetes, 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 Caesars
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.
[Footnote 1: See Wordsworth's letter to Lady Beaumont, 'Prose Works',
vol. ii. , p. 176. ]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
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
Eleanore
The Miller's Daughter
Fatima *
? none
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
Moral
L'Envoi
Epilogue
Amphion
St. Agnes
Sir Galahad
Edward Gray
Will Waterproofs 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
[Greek: oi rheontes]
"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
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.
[Footnote 1: 1851. Revered Victoria, you that hold. ]
[Footnote 2: 1851. I thank you that your Royal grace. ]
[Footnote 3: This stanza added in 1853. ]
[Footnote 4: 1851. Your sweetness. ]
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 6: 1851. Broader yet. ]
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 1: 1830. "Wild" omitted, and "low" inserted with a hyphen
before "hummeth". ]
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 1: 1830. Through and through me. ]
[Footnote 2: 1830. Purfled. ]
[Footnote 3: 1830. Through. ]
[Footnote 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'". ]
[Footnote 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,
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 2: Lowlihead a favourite word with Chaucer and Spenser. ]
[Footnote 3: 1830. Wifehood. ]
[Footnote 4: 1830. Blenched. ]
[Footnote 5: 1830 and all before 1853. Through. ]
[Footnote 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:--
[Greek: deduke men ha selanna kai Plaeiades, mesai de nuktes, para d'
erchet h'ora ego de mona kateud'o. ]
"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! ".
[Footnote 1: 1863. Pear. ]
[Footnote 2: 1872. Gable-wall. ]
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 4: 1830. _Grey_-eyed. 'Cf'. 'Romeo and Juliet', ii. , 3,
"The _grey morn_ smiles on the frowning night". ]
[Footnote 5: 1830, 1842, 1843. Dark. ]
[Footnote 6: 1830. Grey. ]
[Footnote 7: 1830. An' away. ]
[Footnote 8: All editions before 1851. I' the pane. With this line
'cf'. 'Maud', I. , vi.
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.
--'? none'.
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". [1] 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". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] 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 '? none' 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 [1] 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--
[Greek: ana phaidimps omps]
--'Od'. , xi. , 128.
It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,
exactly the
[Greek: heos eboaesen alektor] (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:--
[Greek: araia d' Iketo ph_ona]
(_Thin_ came the voice).
So in 'The Princess', sect. i. :--
And _cook'd his spleen_,
which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'. , iv. , 513:--
[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]
(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)--
[Greek: did' aedae gnathmoisi gelps_on allotrioisi]
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' [Greek: maloparaeos].
The line in the 'Morte d'Arthur',
This way and that, dividing the swift mind,
is an almost literal translation of Virgil's 'Aen'. , 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 'Oenone', 'The Lotos Eaters',
'Tithonus', 'Tiresias', 'The Death of Oenone', '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 'Aeneid' 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
Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.
--'Aen'. , 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
'? none' 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:--
[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer
erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa
pollaen. ]
(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
[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]
(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, 'Aen'. , 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.
[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais. ]
--'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 [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"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:--
[Greek: pothoi d' uperpontias phasma doxei dom_on anassein. ]
(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 causa sed palam
imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci". [4]
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. [5] 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
minutiae 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.
[Footnote 1: 'De Sublimitate,' xvii. ]
[Footnote 2: 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. ]
[Footnote 3: 'Illustrations of Tennyson'. ]
[Footnote 4: Seneca, third 'Suasoria'. ]
[Footnote 5: 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". [1] 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
resignation to 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 aesthetes, 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 Caesars
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.
[Footnote 1: See Wordsworth's letter to Lady Beaumont, 'Prose Works',
vol. ii. , p. 176. ]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
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
Eleanore
The Miller's Daughter
Fatima *
? none
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
Moral
L'Envoi
Epilogue
Amphion
St. Agnes
Sir Galahad
Edward Gray
Will Waterproofs 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
[Greek: oi rheontes]
"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
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.
[Footnote 1: 1851. Revered Victoria, you that hold. ]
[Footnote 2: 1851. I thank you that your Royal grace. ]
[Footnote 3: This stanza added in 1853. ]
[Footnote 4: 1851. Your sweetness. ]
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 6: 1851. Broader yet. ]
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 1: 1830. "Wild" omitted, and "low" inserted with a hyphen
before "hummeth". ]
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 1: 1830. Through and through me. ]
[Footnote 2: 1830. Purfled. ]
[Footnote 3: 1830. Through. ]
[Footnote 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'". ]
[Footnote 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,
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 2: Lowlihead a favourite word with Chaucer and Spenser. ]
[Footnote 3: 1830. Wifehood. ]
[Footnote 4: 1830. Blenched. ]
[Footnote 5: 1830 and all before 1853. Through. ]
[Footnote 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:--
[Greek: deduke men ha selanna kai Plaeiades, mesai de nuktes, para d'
erchet h'ora ego de mona kateud'o. ]
"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! ".
[Footnote 1: 1863. Pear. ]
[Footnote 2: 1872. Gable-wall. ]
[Footnote 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. ]
[Footnote 4: 1830. _Grey_-eyed. 'Cf'. 'Romeo and Juliet', ii. , 3,
"The _grey morn_ smiles on the frowning night". ]
[Footnote 5: 1830, 1842, 1843. Dark. ]
[Footnote 6: 1830. Grey. ]
[Footnote 7: 1830. An' away. ]
[Footnote 8: All editions before 1851. I' the pane. With this line
'cf'. 'Maud', I. , vi.
