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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. by errata led to ent jne pelure, 'a^on d 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 TENNYSON : SELECT POEMS LE 12 x;ii» TENNYSON : SELECT POEMS ' CONTAINING THE * LITERATURE PRESCRIBED FOR THE JUNIOR MATRICU- LATION AND JUNIOR LEAVING EXAMINATIONS, I9OI. BDITKD WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDIX. BY W. J. ALEXANDER, Ph.D., Professor of English in University College, Toronto. TORONTO : THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED. 1900. l // n* ':l&ti. *j Cu THE LADY OF SHALOTT. PART I. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot ; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below. The island of Shalott. 5 .)«^T^^ i "Willows whiten, aspens quiver, cc .y-^ iT. ^cb-lQ^ '^ ''" Mc- A^i^t?^... Little breezes dusk and shiver ^ ^^^%Z^ ^^^*^ ^'^ Thro' the wave that runs for ever o ^^.l uA,'t-,i -tf O^t-lt f \i 1^ By the margin, willow-veil'd, c.i>t'^^'- Slide the heavy barges trail'd , -»^ , / uf I ^^ ®^^^ horses; and unhail'd ^ ^^,4^^./ t.'^ .cyt/ic^rw M4J1./: ^-'''-^ The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd 7 ' Skimming down to Camelot ; But who hath seen her wave her hand ? Or at the casement seen her stand ? 25 Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott % \:s^\'^^ '-- 15 20 r THE LADY OP SHALOTT. Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to tower'd Camelot : And by the moon the reaper weary. Piling sheaves in uplands airy, ^ Listening, whispers ' 'Tis the fairy ^^/^■^ ^'T^c/^ , Lady of Shalott.' / ^5v PART II. &'■ 27 80 86 ^' A^UO^V^ There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she. The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot : There the river eddy whirls. And there the surly village-churls, so'-»-"'^S' And the red cloaks of market girls^ Pass onward from Shalott. 40 46 60 25 ^-/y- 1 Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, i.^f,.^ An abbot on an ambling pad, ( Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, 'ia.\ 65 28 TBNNYSON. :^i u .^' Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot ; And sometimes thro' the mirror blue /jrt f.-: ^ The knights come riding two and two : Q^j^i. 4^0^ She hath no loyal knight and true, ) aJbrr^^ The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights. For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot : Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed ; 60 ( 66 ^'TO^ H^-i^' I' 1; X / * I am half sick of shadows,' said ^^' ' 1 cp/;'(, /uaJi^M The Lady of Shalott. -<^>^<^* '' / PART III. A bow-shot from her bower-eaves. He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, 75, ,. And flamed upon the brazen greaves ^^- >'^^ .-'^. ^j^-; orz- Mt^ Of bold Sir Lancelot. t: A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd ( 'l^.^i^LKx^-^^^''^--'^^^ % ^ i -r To a lady in his shield. That sparkled on the yellow field. Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glitter'd free. Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot : 80 85 60 65 J' urv ./^MLaert^i' 75/, . 80 85 96 100 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 39 And from his blazon'd ba^nc slung ^ ^ o->^><^i^=^^^ A mighty silver bugle hung, '^'<^^ ^ ''l^uuyri, ^ '^^ And as he rode his armour rung, "^ * i 7iJi Beside remote Shalott. 90 All in the blue unclouded weather Thiok-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather. The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together. As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro' the /purple) night, Below the starry clusters bright. Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd ; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode ; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, * Tirra lirra,* by the river Sang Sir Jjancelot. She left the web, she left the loom, , She made three pacgg thro' the room, Civf^ She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume. She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide ; The mirror crack'd from side to side ; * The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott. 105 ■>(£^ 110 115 30 v^' a- 1^ J 1" A ir^ ,/f^ I TENNYSON. PART IV. In the stormy east-wind straining, » The pale yellow wo6ds were waning, /'^ - <' ->-i^(^ S i^cX He said, * She has a lovely face ; / ''* / God in his mercy lend her grace. "P 7 170 ■'^'X. The Lady of Shalott.' A '^"^ ^•C'CU^^X^i Or^i-Cy> iJlA^ ja. /* C-^tlC'K^ ^'t^^ 145 'j 32 TENNYSON. (ENONE. There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 6 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargaruo 10 Stands up and takes the morning : but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown of Troas. Hither came at noon 15 Mournful (Enone, wandering forlorn Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, 20 Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff. * O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noon-day quiet holds the hill : 25 The grasshopper is silent in the grass : The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops : the golden bee Is lily-cradled : I alone awake. 30 ) CENONB. n 10 15 20 25 30 My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life. * O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 85 Hear me, O Earth, hear me, O Hills, O Caves That house the cold crown'd snake ! O mountain brooks, I am the daughter of a River-God, Hear me, for I will speak, and build up all My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls 40 Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gather'd shape : for it may be That, while I speak of it, a little while My heart may wander from its deeper woe. * O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 45 Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. I waited underneath the dawning hills. Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark. And dewy dark aloft the mountain pine : Beautiful Paris, evil- hearted Paris, 50 Leading a jet-black goat white-hom'd, white-hooved. Came up from reedy Simois all alone. * O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Far-off the torrent call'd me from the cleft : Far up the solitary morning smote 55 The streaks of virgin snow. With down-dropt eyes I sat alone : white-breasted like a star Fronting the dawn he moved ; a leopard skin Droop'd from his shoulder, but his sunny hair Cluster'd about his temples like a God's : 60 And his cheek brighten'd as the foam-bow brightens When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart Went forth to embrace him coming ere he came. If i 34 TENNYSON. * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm 65 Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold, That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech Came down upon my heart. * " My own CEnone, 70 Beautif ul-brow'd CEnone, my own soul, Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingrav'n * For the most fair,' would seem to award it thine. As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace 75 Of movement, and the charm of married brows." * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He prest the blossom of his lips to mine, And added " This was cast upon the board. When all the full-faced presence of the Gods 80 Ranged in the halls of Peleus ; whereupon Rose feud, with question unto whom 'twere due : But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve. Delivering, that to me, by common voice Elected umpire, Herfe comes to-day, 85 Pallas and Aphrodite, claiming each This meed of fairest. Thou, within the cave Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Mayst well behold them unbeheld, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of Gods." 90 * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came. Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, 96 And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, i I (ENOKE. 36 Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, Lotus and lilies : and a wind arose, And overhead the wandering ivy and vine, This way and that, in many a wild festoon 100 Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. * O mother Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit. And o'er him flowed a golden cloud, and lean'd 105 Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods Rise up for reverence. She to Paris made 110 Proflfer of royal power, ample rule Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue "Wherewith to embellish state, " from many a vale And river-sunder'd champaign clothed with corn. Or labour'd mine undrainable of ore. 115 Honour," she said, " and homage, tax and toll, From many an inland town and haven large, Mast-throng'd beneath her shadowing citadel In glassy bays among her tallest towers." *0 mother Ida, harken ere I die. 120 Still she spake on and still she spake of power, " Which in all action is the end of all ; Power fitted to the season ; wisdom-bred And throned of wisdom — from all neighbour crowns Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand 125 Fail from the sceptre-staffl Such boon from me, From me, Heaven's Queen, Paris, to thee king-born, A shepherd all thy life but yet king-born, Should come most welcome, seeing men, in power 36 TENNYSON. Only, are likest gods, who have attain'd 130 Rest in a happy place, and quiet seats Above the thunder, with undying bliss In knowledge of their own supremacy." ' Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit 1 35 Out at arm's-length, so much the thought of power Flatter'd his spirit ; but Pallas where she stood Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold, 140 The while, above, her full and earnest eye Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. ' "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 145 Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law. Acting the law we live by without fear ; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 150 * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Again she said : " I woo thee not with gifts. Sequel of guerdon could not alter me To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am. So shalt thou find me fairest. 155 Yet, indeed, If gazing on divinity disrobed Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair, Unbias'd by self- profit, oh ! rest thee sure That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee, 160 So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood, (ENONE. sr ShaJl strike within thy pulses, like a God's, To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks, Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, 165 Circled thro^ all experiences, pure law, Commeasure perfect freedom." ' Here she ceas'd, And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, " O Paris, Give it to Pallas !" but he heard me not, 170 Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me ! ' mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Idalian Aphrodite beautiful. Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, 175 With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her ht^id throat And shoulder : from the violets her light foot Shone rosy- white, and o'er her rounded form 180 Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes. The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh, 185 Half-whisper'd in his ear, " I promise thee The fairest and most loving wife in Greece," She spoke and laugh'd : I shut my sight for fear : But when I look'd, Paris had raised his arm. And I beheld great Here's angry eyes, 190 As she withdrew into the golden cloud. And I was left alone within the bower ; And from that time to this I am alone, And I shall be alone until I die. I 38 TENinrSON. 195 * Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest — why fairest wife ? am I not fair t My love hath told me so a thousand times. Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday. When I past by, a wild and wanton pard. Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail 200 Crouch'd fawning in the weed. Most loving is she ? Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains 205 Flash in the pools of whirling Simois. ' mother, hear me yet before I die. They came, they cut away my tallest pines. My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist Sweep thro' them ; never see them over-laid With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud, Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. ' O mother, hear me yet before I die. I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds, Among the fragments tumbled from the glens. Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her The Abominable, that uninvited came Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall And cast the golden fruit upon the board, 210 215 220 225 CENONE. 89 And bred this change ; that I might speak my mind, And tell her to her face how much I hate Her presence, hated both of Gods and men. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. 230 Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times, In this green valley, under this green hill, Ev'n on this hand, and sitting on this stone 1 Seal'd it with kisses 1 water'd it with tears 1 O happy tears, and how unlike to these ! 235 happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face 1 O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight 1 death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud. There are enough unhappy on this earth. Pass by the happy souls, that love to live : 240 1 pray thee, pass before my light of life, And shadow all my soul, that I may die. Thou weighest heavy on the heart within, "Weigh heavy on my eyelids : let me die. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. 245 I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me, more and more. Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see 250 My far-c i doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it is born : her child ! — a shudder comes Across me : never child be born of me, Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyen ! 255 ' mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone. Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me 40 TENNYSON. Walking the cold and starless road of Death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. I will rise and go Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says A fire dances before her, and a sound Rings ever in her ears of armed men. What this may be I know not, but I know That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day. All earth and air seem only burning fire.' 260 265 / A\^*' c-' n >) f.U- U^-rl:. -7T \ 5i ,1" THE LOTOS-EATERS. w '-/, i^ * Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the land, * This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 6 Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. .^^ -;;,>f ^'^'A (Full-faced above the valley stood the moon - p"^ > /? ■k^-£j '^ryyi. ^* *''^ /T^* And like a downward smoke, the slender stream '''^^^ V/" ' 7 Along the clifif to fall and pause and fall did seem. % ctJiL'^u^yi q A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke, jfj.\y "' Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; ■ i - And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, jyi^^-^ Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land : far off, three mountain tops, 15 Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd : and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. r. THE LOTOS-EATERS. UA^c^ 41 ^/ The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West : thro' mountain clefts the dale 20 ^ /— Was seen far inland, and the yellow down y\,c^^-^-rt n (^-^^ 'J^-^-^ Border'd with "palm, and many a winding vale f / And meadow, set with slender galingale ; .a^^'P^ '^'\^7^j /^ A land where all things always seemed the same And round about the keel with faces pale, ^r^»^ n y^<. t^^vc/ .^ -/•yu. ^-> :. •Tu*- u^ci^lcv 42 / i TENN7S0N. Of shadowy g ranite , in a gleaming pass ; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 60 Than tir'd eyei. ds upon tir'd eyes ; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 55 , . And from the craggy ledge the pop£y hangs in sleep. if . .A / / II. vv V V ^hy are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, . -ii^Z-^-^^ p )i , \ And utterly consumed with sharp distress, c.-P'-^'^ j;^«KtA'*^i " y While all things else have rest from weariness ? •irfc-'^ *^'^ )^ Kr '^^ things have rest : why should we toil alone. (. }i. A W C^:f^>"' n We only toil, who are the first of things. And make perpetual moan, c^* jB/l'tJ^ Still from one sorrow to another thrown : Nor ever fold our wings, . ^j'^x And cease from wanderings, , i.^i ,J^ Nor steen our brows in slun Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ; f '^^ .66 (AV \^ ^ y j;i"or harken what the inner spirit sings, ^'\jeAsi^J^<;'^'' ■ ^ ) / V o*^ A/ ^ Why should, we onjy toily the roof, and crown of things %\ V / .'V J^ G > III. Lo ! in the middle of the wood. The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there xrows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo ! sweeten'd with the summer light. The full- juiced apple waxmg over-mellow, 70 75 ■^1^ Ct^ci-(c\ 50 Pul skies. 65 eep. THE LOTOS-EATERS. Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. 43 80 IV. '^ ^' -aAdi , /65 things I 70 75 '^' 85 W 90 jjy»#^ '^^'^ Hateful is the dark-blue sky, ^"^ Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life ; ah, why Should life all labour be 1 Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last 1 All things are taken from us, and become Portions and pc»,x jels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil 1 Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave 1 All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence ; ripen, fall and cease : Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease 95 iCt> How sweet it were, bearing the downwctrd stream, With half -shut eyes ever to seem 100 ' (MM'iiM^- Falling asleep^; in a half -dream ! /- u? ^'jyf^^ ,. To dream and dream, lik e yonder amber light, _,^ rf I 7 Which will not leave tlie(myrrh-bush)on the height : -^f^^ [ r I y To hear each others whisper d speech : AJ^yi^^-^ i u^.< .*.'■■ ' Eating the Lotos day by day, ^Op To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, -"Co Q.n.'eJjsyU /'^:.cth / "^/r/ And tender curving lines of creamy spray ; i<^\K. ^4^ /'/i.O J^qJi^ --^^V "Z^./t^ - f^i^^<^ OursonsinKei^tus And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle ? Let what is broken so remain. A our looks are strange : ./,^^X ''^.^ 120 The Gods are hard to reconcile : i/^. c ^< 7-~-4 ci.'-f.\.c^ -U-qfi 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain. Long labour unto aged breath. Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars , And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. '/.■n^ ■'' U Qa^rl^'^^' i/ 130 'l-^t VII. V,'r ^r' ^acic<^ J ^i -^tx^ tlJ^ 120 130 rs. VIII. The Lotos blooms below the barren peak : 145 A lan \ The Lotos blows by every winding creek : \v^^ ^11 day the wind breathes low with mellower tone : '^^Ji^i''^'^ ^ ^ J Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone \y /^ Round and r und the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust ir <** is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 150 Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was ; , /; . f^/ seething ^ree,v * ;'<"'<^ -'7* '<-/ - Where the wallowiflg monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, ^/7«<*YxiiEn the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined y) 136 ti On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. 155 For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world : Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 160 Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song 46 >^atJu-f t % ioO^- i-fU. ^^^ -p.-cry>t 7-7ZA d i C2<£^cf'' 1 TENNYSON. Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of vrrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong ; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, 165 Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil ; Till they perish and they suffer — some, 'tis whisper'd — down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, \tiiuXr>J^' Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 170 ^ ^ Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore ^^-^''^^ Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave an \ oar; Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. cv 'YOU ASK ME, WHY, THO' ILL AT EASE.' ,,/' / / You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, { iC^>2^^ '^^^ ' yl / / - Within this region I subsist, y / Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. /-^ij*-Ji, -T-it It is the land that freemen till, 5 t.q Mitnv^L/ That sober-suited Freedom chose, t The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will ; A land of settled government, V^/^ u.'vrU^ ^r^ A land of just and old renown, 10 ^::(ic^tu,-4 >t^ Aea ^v^ --^ Where Freedom slowly broadens down s?* ^'U-.i^v^c/ From ^ecedent to precedent : ( £^ ^^>lC :^^y 'OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS.' )f wrong, 5 strong; eave the 165 ing toil, ioil; isper'd — dwell, T 170 the shore I an ^. oar ? more. otAAk^ <^i:iaK^j^,Where faction seldom gathers head. 47 1.1 \tX^ But by degrees to fullness wrought, C>L Uy-lHiXt The strength of some diffusive thought ^V^^^i5 Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute , / /I i*^ ' ^ Opinion, and induce a time ' ^ ' /■ When single thought is civil crime, ^- *^<-'>**^ '^^ , And individual freedom' inute ; 'I ^20 ' '. f X ^*^ Tho' Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great — tJt\\"vV Tho' every channel of the State ,yy€^^ \ Should fill and choke with golden sand — Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth. Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky,^ /\j/^ 26 And I will see before I die The palirs and temples of the South. AjL-t:Lq f^^^-c^ f f , ii 'OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS.' '.JiZ^^ti old sat Freedom on the heights, " ^Idc-i -^^^^""^ The thunders breaking at her feet : ^ ^, ,^JxixiJ'l\^^^^^^ Above her shook therstarry lights : ) -^^i l She heard the torrents meet. '^--^''"j. Th^re in her place she did rejoice, l(S,cs}i Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind, ( But fragments of her mighty voice ^ Came rolling on the wind. ,w ^^%<^ '^^^^^4' ,; alxkucoiji c Then stept she down thro' town and field -pOA-U^^n- To mingle with the human race, 10 -/ aj2£u And'part by parfcito men reveal'd ^ •jt-CAr i The fullness of her face — I -?. /3i,*.^4t*>^ -<^ ■'^^'' TENNYSON. '^l/^^.f^ "^' i^Jjwnd. ^0 ^'^ GXfiTfe^her of ma jestic works./ ^^Cm^t^.^^^-^ p ^Utotb-vvwA* fVA^i-i O'vOn -,0- From her isle-altar gazing down, Pf^g v^(,x><^^A--Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, t5lu>ev\jL >-X:^^-'' ^''' LoVe thou thy land, with love far-brought ^*j;' ^ j^x^ . i . i ( '^^<\xi ^JPJi cj-n^-^ From out the storied Past, and used f^*'. ^V^'*% ; ' '' ''^ ^ ^ — -^ , but transfused ^'^^,^,-a^ J^' ^ OLlCU^A Ctr 'VuiiJf^ IcZ^J^ ^Ccer^ cUJ, c/>i. f-uJtf^, Thro' future time by power of thought. ^;,, ,u 'yff^ W^ 4 J ■^•jto'vA '<^ vocP~*y'" A $ 10 5? '•'*'' ^ ;^^ ^"^^^ J^ ^(j^^j-c:^^ • •^ ^ But gentle words are always gain-: 'w That from Discussion's lip may fall -JitiUl^^JV With Life, that, working strongly, binds — ^ ^ ^yv<.^-\\U)-'^0^ 5 v *35 v, ^v^^^. To close the interests of all. i ' V- rV. j(^r<^^* K^t^r- Pqp Nature also, cold and warm ••th. /' \ I^Va. And moist and dry, devising long, Thro' many agents making strong, f Matures the individual form. " 40 ^'^c^ 60 TENNYSON. ii»v^ttH> Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. "We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul. \$ ui>-t'-< ^i€ '7T^M ^k^^d So let ti^e chan-g which comes be fr'>e ^U ^^b^otu^^ j^-^t.4' .^07t,lp -^J^tc To ingroove itself with that whicn flies, u/^>^-^i \X^wOji^ f^cczt, fj Hz o^j{. And work, a joint of state, that plies itaXo "^^^Vs. ^rvcx^i - rpu'. t^^ bt vv-dL Its office, moved with sympathy. aAvd. ^y^oJ^ I «i ur!?^^ '^^wXM'VVfrTA^^^''^ saying, hard to shape in act ; , „j ,. /• •t ^^^ s^cX^ pZ ;vL*~. For all the pact of Time reveals ? ( ^J^^^y ^■' H(lr^' A bridal dawn, of thunder-peals, Ur<^^ « ^ / ^herever Thought hath wedded Fact. ^^V_ 4Vi > t'^^'^4 %,-^/^vr-**^^^'''" Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. A'fi^i 'h — •>- ^ ' Ey^ ao.w we hear with inward strife W /-« ~>-'-^' •L.& A motion toiling in the gloom— ^ "^^^ r^i^^^^t The Spirit of the years to come 65 ^ • himself with Life. G:«.Waf '^<^<^-^'-^ Yearning to mix /^ /riki^^^nC-^'^'^'' A slow-develop'd strength awaits »- t>^^?Jb '\^ ^'-^^^^^^ "' , (f / . J -^ ^ /o Completion in a painful school : ' "^ >Vv>v &■' vca 'Vv^ OJut ,' ',// Phantoms of other forms of rule. /')>^J '"A^'^,/,/? New Majesties of mighty States— ri^^.^..^^ ^4 ^^^^ci/i?^ /■TU -ift D 'f^ljL^V UY^ c^y-c>>v->./ The wacders of the growing hour, u But vague in vapour, hard to m^ k ; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power. Of many changes, aptly join'd, ^ \^^ Is bodied forth the second whole. "^^^ ^ r^ (jMr.- ■i ^.j:rL^ \\ ' ^ .-» V Regard cradation, lest the soul , . ' -f: } i Of Discord race the rising wind ; M^ '^n jn>trri A( ^ ^.c QL<^i2-6y>' -{ ^r^oiA^^^ ■ iKxh v' ,al/ 1. ''' 65 1^ j^.joTVjUjCL'^ yjy- > Lc->^-^.'<-^' ft 'love thou thy land, with love par-brought.' 51 A wind to puff your idol-fires, ^iC^O '•"' r ^^ ^ ^t^V^ ^^^^S)i And heap their ashes on the head ; -^'J^*^ fL \ v 70l vjt^^ T To shame the boast so often made, -^^^ That we are wiser than our sires. Oh yet, if Nature's evil star I ^-^-^*'^''' ^ , Drive men in manhood, as in youth, . , / ^ /j i^.rt^c: To follow flying steps of Truth //l^^-*^ ^ %^ i^^:>, ~>nnJ'L.& If New and Old, disastrous feud, V^ """^ ^"''^''^ Hf"^^ Must ever shock, like armed foes. And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain'd in blood ; 80 "•I J- m Not yet the wise of heart would cease i ^u^Li '-' - 1 \ W^- "^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^® *^'^°' shame and guilt, ^'^J c j .^ i^^tvY^tf ■^''^iS^ ^ould pace the troubled land, like Peace ; ^ t.ajLUr^^J >^' ^ Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay, 85 Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, , That knowledge takes the sword away — ^ :»a "•"^'^'^^^ JJ' -V65 Would love tho gleams of good that broke ^'^ YJ^^^A^^^ From either side, nor veil his eyes : 90 ^ And if some dreadful need should rise 4- -j-^ -^ i" Would strike, a^ad firmly, and one stroke : '^ ^' ' p j w^. To-morrow yet would reap to-day, '*- ^^"^^ i; ' As we bear blossom of the dead ; i M-c , Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed .Aj;^.' 95 ^^ '^ u-at fia..v^ Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay. ^ "^^ "^f"^ '^^ XJL^K^-^ ^> ..- .^ ^^7 >H"^"r U-t'^ "/i'idii> TNi-^-^-*- 7 52 TENNYSON. THE EPIC. At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve, — The game of forfeits done — the girls all kiss'd Beneath the sacred bush and past away — The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, 5 Then half-way ebb'd : and there we held a talk, How all the old honour had from Christmas gone. Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games In some odd nooks like this ; till I, tired out With cutting eights that day upon the pond, 10 Where, three times slipping from the outer edge, I bump'd the ice into three several stars, Fell in a doze ; and half-awake I heard The parson taking wide and wider sweeps, Now harping on the church-commissionerS; 15 Now hawking at Geology and schism ; Until I woke, and found him settled down Upon the general decay of faith Right thro' the world, * at home was little left, And none abroad : there was no anchor, none, 20 To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt his hand On Everard's shoulder, with * I hold by him.' * And I,' quoth Everard, *by the wassail-bowl.' ' Why yes,' I said, ' we knew your gift that way At college : but another which you had, 25 I mean of verse (for so we held it then), W^tiat came of that?' 'You know,' said Frank, 'he burnt His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books ' — And then to me demanding why ? ' Oh, sir. He thought that nothing new was said, or else 30 Something so said 'twas nothing — that a truth \ MORTE d'aRTHUR. 53 Looks freshest in the fashion of the day : God knows : he has a mint of reasons : ask. It pleased me well enough.' * Nay, nay,' said Hall, * Why take the style of those heroic times ] 35 For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times ; and why should any man Remodel models ? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing- worth. Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' ' But I,' 40 Said Francis, * pick'd the eleventh from this hearth And have it : keep a thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears ; 45 For I remember'd Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen : then at my request He brought it ; and the poet little urged, But with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, 60 Deep-chested music, and to this result. MORTE D'ARTHUR. So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea ; Until King Arthur's table, man by man. Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights. And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, 54 TENNYSON. That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 10 On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : ' The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 15 Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls 20 Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made, — Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more — but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm 25 That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride : for tbou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, 30 Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. Holding the sword — and how I row'd across And took it, and have worn it, like a king : And, wheresoever I am sung or told In af V/ertime, this also shall be known : 35 But now delay not : take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle mere : Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word.' To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere : * It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, 40 Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, MOBTE D ARTHUR. 55 10 16 20 25 30 35 40 Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word.* So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept 45 And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones cf ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock, 50 Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon. Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt : 55 For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks. Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth- work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, This way and that dividing the swift mind, 60 In act to throw : but at the last it seem'd Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many-knotted waterflags. That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. 65 Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : * Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave ? What is it thou hasb seen 1 or what hast heard 1 And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : * I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, 70 And the wild water lapping on the crag.' To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale : * Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name. Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight : 75 For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. i 56 TENNYSON, ^1. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing 80 I bad thee, watch, and lightly bring me word/ Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere. Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought ; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, 85 How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud, * And if indeed 1 cast the brand away. Surely a precious thing, one worthy note. Should thus be lost for ever from the earth, 90 Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done 1 What harm, undone ? deep harm to disobey. Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand 95 An act unprofitable, against himself 1 The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept, 100 Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings. Some one might show it at a joust of arms. Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps 105 Upon the hidden bases of the hills." So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost.' So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, 110 And hid Excalibur the second time. !■ ( MORTE D ARTHUR. 57 And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : * What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard V And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : 115 * I heai-d the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : * Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! 120 Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widow 'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art. For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all, 125 Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt ; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice. And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : 130 But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran. And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword, 1 35 And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch. Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 140 By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur : But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 145 68 TENNYSON. 1 K 1 i !!' '■ 1 i Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath : ' Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out : what is it thou hast heard, or seen?' 150 And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : ' Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw. Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, 155 So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; But when I look'd again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 160 Three times, and drew him under in the mcTe.' And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard : ' My end draws nigh ; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight. And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear 165 My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm. And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere 170 Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words, Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee. O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. 175 But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, * Quick, quick I MOHTB D ARTHUR. 59 th: 150 165 160 165 170 175 I fear it is too late, and I shall die.* 180 But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, Lai ger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him, like a goad. 185 Dry clash'd 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 based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — 190 And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake. And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern. Beneath them; and descending they were ware 195 That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice an agony 200 Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, * Place me in the barge,' And to the barge they came. There those three Queens 205 Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap. And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands. And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, 210 And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white And colourless, and like the wither'd moon ■ il I ■I 60 TENNYSON. Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops 215 Of onset ; and the light and lustrous curls — That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne — were parch'd with dust ; Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. 220 So like a shatter'd column lay the King ; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. 225 Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, * Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes 1 For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, 230 And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole round table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world ; 235 And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years. Among new men, strange faces, other minds.' And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : ' The old order change th, yielding place to new, 240 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me 1 I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure ! but thou, 245 If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer I ■t f )s 215 iust ; ilips. 220 225 230 235 MORTE D ARTHUR. 61 Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like p. fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats 250 That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themaclves and those who call them friend 1 For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 256 But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest — if indeed I go — (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 260 Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea. Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.' So said he, and the barge with oar and sail 265 Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull 270 Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away. 240 245 )rayer ♦ Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long Had wink'd and threaten'd darkness, flared and fell : At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound, And waked with silence, grunted * Good ! ' but we Sat rapt : it was the tone with which he read — Perhaps some modern touches here and there Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness — 275 62 TENNYSON. 280 285 290 296 ^.^ ,-^'-9"'h^ -'/'ntr*''' 300 I Hh.. At / - N' Or else we loved the man, and prized his work ; I know not : but we sitting, as I said, The cock crew loud ; as at that time of year The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn : Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-used, * There now — that's nothing!' drew a little back. And drove his heel into the smoulder'd log. That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue ; And so to bed ; where yet in sleep I seem'd To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point ; till on to dawn, when dreams Begin to feel the truth and stir of day, To me, methought, who waited with a crowd. There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port ; and all the people cried, ' Arthur is come again : he cannot die.' Then those that stood upon the hills behind , Repeated — * Come again, and thrice as fair;* And, further inland, voices echo'd — ' Come With all good things, and war shall be no more.' At this a hundred bells began to peal, That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn, A^>^,0 1- X ■^ K ^ J' or u 'P^f^ That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not ma ^M "v /. ' ^n. i ■J ULTSSBS. 68 I cannot rest from travel : I will drink Life to the lees : all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone ; on shore, and when ^^ (' Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades ( 10 i ^ -vi Vext the dim sea : I am become a name : ^ ^ ' For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known ; cities of men v. - And manners, climates, councils, governments, -. Myself not least, but honour'd of them all ; 16 ^^ ^ N> And drunk delight of battle with my peers, ^ \^ ' Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met ; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 20 For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me 26 Little remains : but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things ; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire 30 To follow knowledge like a sinking star. Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle — Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil 85 This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere ^1 64 TEMIJYSON,' f. M N M \ $ !*.• ^' ■JJ- :danx.<^-^>i^^ 'Mx'f^ \i ( Of common duties, decent not to fail 40 In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port ; the vessel puffs her sail : There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, 45 Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me — That ever with a frolic welcome took The tlvunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old ; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil ; 50 Death closes all : but something ere the end. Some work of noble note, may yet be done. Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks : The long day wanes : the slow moon climbs : the deep 55 Moans round with many voices. / Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smit^ h c^Ux6 The sounding fui rows ; for my purpose holds r , To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths <>tiA>r - ntxcg^^ Of all the western stars, until I die. ^ l^^^■X'.■ ^I.av^ It may be that the gulfs will wash us down : '^* . ^d-rusy^ It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, \ry\Mt^f\\s>-c T rxVM-ovAnd see the great Achilles, whorj we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides ; and tho* 66 We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, we are ; ru. (?->?«. >^*.^C)ne equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. r/ :4^;1x.K/vVU''vv:iX<- ^f\ 1U ^/a \i.H>f\.. I lA X dLi^t 70 n ii 4^a.oa)(^ 6/> ■I ^ 3^/^'/ ^iiri>t^.£^'\-<^ 7 -'^ Z .!i^c.t'^-^AyZ'L^--i» -fr/' ''yA.L4t.'^ 't*.A^-^ ^/'^.^'■*--\..iC^ >->?. y^-*'^^ j!^i 60 65 70 75 \ V V,.. . 80 w v./ J ' 'sweet and low, sweet and low.' *AS THRO' THE LAND AT EVE WE WENT.' 69 60 65 70 As thro' the land at eye we went, And pluck'd the ripen'd ears. We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why, .Ajid kiss'd again with tears. And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with te; a ! For when we came where lies .he child We lost in other years, There above the little gra'*'^, O there above the littJ - grave. We kiss'd again witi. tears. /> 76 ^^¥' V V V ^^ 80 r&' to v;y SWEET AND LOW, SWEET AND LOW/ ■^^ y Sweet and low, sweet and low. Wind of the western sea. Low, low, breathe and blow. Wind of the western sea ! Over the rolling waters go, .. Come from the dying moon, and blow, isJ-'^^'^j Blow him again to me ; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest. Father will come to thee soon ; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon ; Father will come to his babe in the nest. Silver sails all out of thr west Under the silver moon : Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 10 10 15 70 TENNYSON. 'THE SPLENDOUR FALLS ON CASTLE WALLS.' •^c^-^aXhJi-^ i^The splendoui;^ falls on^stle walls rtrC'-^ ,irvci And snowy summits old in story :''''f^'*^'*f .- ^r,P y^J^t^''^' The long light shakes across the lakes^ f^q*^-^^ • -^ - ;//5*A. ^ And the wild cataract leaps in fflory. / I- Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes' flying, Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. ^;^'jL> u>Q [ 1 h II f 1 •i-s jt^'- iCfjy^ ^' O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, ^ / And thinner, clearer, farther going ! ^^ ^L^jiryL 'i^^'^'-^ \ O sweet and f^r from cliff and scar (^ t'^^^^ /^^'. ^^'*' <^' a-". Lh^ h^ d> Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge ; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and auiange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remember'd kisses after death. And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others ; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; O Death in Life, the days that are no more. / ''t?.^' 10 15 20 15 HEY ^'A' p^<^ u. \\ 'THY VOICE IS HEARD THRO' ROLLING DRUMS.' ^=fVft. Si^v^^-^'"* Thj voice is heard thro' rolling drums, vv-^A- That beat to battle where he stands ; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands : A moment, while the trumpets blow, 6 He sees his brood about thy knee ; The next, like fire he meets the foe. And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 'HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD.' Home they brought her warrior dead : She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry : All her maidens, watching, said, * She must weep or she will die.' 72 TENNYSON. Then they praised him, soft and low, Caird him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe ; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stept. Took the face-cloth from the face ; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee — Like summer tempest came her tears- ' Sweet my child, I live for thee.' 10 15 / «ASK ME NO MORE : THE MOON MAY DRAW THE SEA.' Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea ; ■ -Vu-zy '' / / The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape **'/ With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; j . ^ ,p But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee? Al^M'^-^"^ i^Vcttx ^^. ^iL^c"*- / 9 Ask me no more. 5 As-k me no more : what answer should I give %, ^ I love not hoUow cheek or faded eye : C l'^'^"^-*j Yet, O my frf.and, I will not have thee die ! /, !■ r- Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live : -^-^-^'y'-" t ' nj ^£^ Ask me no more. " " Ai /-lO J <--^-ll Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seal'd : '^y I strove against the stream and all in vain :^ Let the great river take me to the main : ' '^''* <~fiv^^ No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; Ask me no more. 15 % ^l/'r.xi"- . I*. / '/ { n LANCELOT AMD BLAINE. 73 10 16 W >:i ^ rr\.' 10 / ^ 15 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, v, A^ Elaine, the lily maid of Astolatj^-^^*^ High in her chamber up a tower to the east Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot ; Which first she placed where morning's earliest ray Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam ; Then fearing rust or soiluro fashion'd for it A case of silk, and braided thereupon . v-.t.A All the devices bla^on'd on the shield ^cV'^ In their own tjnct, and added, of her wit, A border fantasy of branch and flower, And yellow-throated nestling in the nest. Nor rested thus content, but day by day, Leaving hor household and good father, climb'd That eastern tower, and entering barr'd her door, Stript off the case, and read the naked shield, <*-'^ Now guess'd a hidden meaning in his arms, Now made a pretty history to herself Of every dint a sword had beaten in it, And every scratch a lance had made upon it, dj^d- Conjecturing when and where : this cut is fresh ; ..^A^rj^^^^^^hat ten years back ; this dealt him at Caerlyle ; That at Caerleon ; this at Camelot : And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there ! And here a thrust that might have kill'd, but God Broke the strong lance, and roll'd his enemy down, And saved him: so she lived in fantasy. Wi3,?/ «?*^ How came the lily maid by that good shield Of Lancelot, she that knew not ev'n his name 1 He left it with her, when he rode to tilt Ldi^.^A^) c^rn^M^l i i ^' 20 Cu ; 25 I; ; i : I !. 1 74 TENNYSON. For the great diamond in the diamond jousts, Which Arthur had ordain'd, and by that name Had named them, since a diamond was the prize. For Arthur, long before they crown'd him King, Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, Had found a gleU; gray boulder and black tarn. A horror lived about the tarn, and clave - iuy>^^ Like its own mists to all the mountain side : ^ For here two brothers, one a king, had met And fought together ; but their names were lost ; And each had slain his brother at a blow ; And down they fell and made the glen abhorr'd : And thore they lay till all their bones were bleach'd. And lichen'd into colour with the crags : 35 40 l»i OA. 45 And he, that once was king, had on a crown Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside. And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, All in a misty moonshine, unawares Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and the skull —y\^ n-k. Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown Roll'd into light, and turning on its rims Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn : , And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, 5'c^ V^ ^^ And set it on his head, and in his heart Heard murmurs, ' Lo, thou likewise shalt be King 50 ■■/ ^•^W- ■Y !-Ji. IT?. ,-^ '' Thereafter, when a King, he had the gems Pluck'd from the crown, and show'd them to hia knights, Saying, 'These jewels, whereupon I chanced /t-*-^/^^rKJ»-' Divinely, are the kingdom's, not the King's — For public use : henceforward let there be, 60 Once every year, a joust for one of these : For so by nine years' proof we needs must learn / / >>i A. ..h^u ,*.(i v.-'^ f /^// >/i m.'.'^i >'^ 35 40 I'd, LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 75 Which is our mightiest, and ourselves shall grow In use of arms and manhood, till we drive The heathen, who, some say, shall rule the land 65 Hereafter, which God hinder.' Thus he spoke : And eight years past, eight jousts had been, and still ;^^^ ^ f Had Lancelot won the diamond of the year, With purpose to present them to the Queen, When all were won ; but meaning all at once 70 To snare her royal fancy with a boon Worth half her realm, had never spoken word. y«- i 45 [1 50 it, ^-i\i "■'-■ Lights, 60 ^^- ■y. *-t» (n: OA. Now for the central diamond and the last And largest, Arthur, holding then his court Hard on the river nigh the place which now I#>^^:Is this world's hugest,jlet proclaim a joust 75 At Camelot, and when the time drew nigh Spake (for she had been sick) to Guinevere, * Are you so sick, my Queen, you carm.ot move To these fair jousts?' * Yea, lord,' she said, *ye know it.' 80 * Then will ye miss,' he answer'd, 'the great deeds r Of Lancelot, and his prowess in the lists, '^ -^'*''j A sight ye love to look on.' And the Queen ^ Lifted her eyes, and they dwelt languidly On Lancelot, where he stood beside the King. 85 He thinking that ho read her meaning there, ' Stay with me, I am sick ; my love is more i /7ai e^cc<^ '^*- Than many diu,mond3,' yielded ; and a heart Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen 'I (However much he yearn'd to make complete /tiuy7lZ>^,^ The tale of diamonds for his destined boon) vt-^e :Z^ V Urged him to speak against the truth, and say, * Sir King, mine ancient wound is hardly whole, t^fi. diC/v*^ And lets me from the saddle ;' and the King Glanced first at him, then h(;r, and went his way. 95 No sooner gone than suddenly she began : 1 / \\\\ 76 TENNYSON. A I 1- ' To blame, my lord Sir Lancelot, much to blame ! Why go ye not to these fair jousts % the knights Are half of them our enemies, and the crowd Will murmur, " Lo the shameless ones, who take Their pastime now the trustful King is gone ! " ' Then Lancelot vext at having lied in vain : ^ •¥ vf^ S!^ "* * ^^re ye so wise % ye were not once so wise, ./ x^f<*-'^ '*My Queen, that summer, when ye loved me first, "^^jf Then of the crowd ye took no more account Than of the myriad cricket of the mead, When its own voice clings to each blade of grass. And every voice is nothing. As to knights, Them surely can I silence with all ease. But now my loyal worship is allow'd Of all men : many a bard, without oflfenco, / Has link'd our names together in his lay, .UAf.-^:^hrtm r?f* J' Lancelot, the flower of bravery, Guinevere, / ^ / /if ^^^^ pearl of beauty : and our knights at feast ' Have pledged us in this union, while the King Would listen smiling. How then 1 is there more 1 Has Arthur spoken aught 1 or would yourself. Now weary of my service and devpir, c/ ' i-t-t^ Henceforth be truer to your faultless lord V 100 110 ,eyu e . 115 \ „^^ She broke into a little scornful laugh : * Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, That passionate perfection, my good lord — But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven 1 He never spake word of reproach to me, He nsver had a glimpse of mine untruth, He cares not for me : only here to-day There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his eyes : Some meddling rogue has tamperM with him — else Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, 'Arte -?7llHd ^*' J'^m^L, ^-^^'<^^^'^ Full often lost in fancy, lost his way ; Till as he traced a faintly-shadow'd track, That all in loops and links among the dales Ran to the castle of Astolat, he saw Fired from the west, far on a hill, the towers. Thither he made, and blew the gateway horn. Then came an old, dumb, myriad-wrinkled man. Who let him into lodging and disarra'd. And Lancelot marveil'd at the wordless man ; And issuing found the lord of Astolat With two strong sons. Sir Torre and Sir Lavaine, Moving to meet him in the castle court ; And close behind them stept the lily maid Elaine, his daughter : mother of the house There was not : some light jest among them rose With laughter dying down as the great knight Approach'd them : then the Lord of Astolat : ' Whence comest thou, my guest, and by what name Livest between the lipp " t^v by thy state ~ J JJ I / And presence 1 might gTu ■••. thee chief of those, h/xjie^t'fi ^^ After the King, who eat in Arthur's halls. Him have I seen : the rest, his Table Round, Known as they are, to me they are unknown,' 175 180 185 Then answer'd Lancelot, the chief of knights : ' Known am I, and of Arthur's hall, and known, What I by mere mischance have brought, my shield. But since I go to joust as one unknown 190 At Camelot for the diamond, ask me not. Hereafter y^ shall know me — and the shield — I p: ay you lend me one, if such you have. Blank, 01 at least with some device not mine.' / i3 (^;ljirUmiL ^ 165 i 170 e, 175 180 lame 185 lield. 190 LANCELOT AND ELAINF, Then said the Lore' of Astolat, * Here is Torre's : Hurt in his first tilt was my son, Sir Torre. And so^'God wot, his shield is blank enough. His ye can have.' Then added plain Sir Torre, ' Yea, since I cannot use it, ye may have it.' Here laugh'd the father saying, ' Fie, Sir Churl, Is that aix answer foi a noble knight % Allow him ! but Lavaine, my younger here, He is so full of lustihood, he will ride, -" > ^^^ ^'^ C Joust for it, and win, and bring it in an hour, And set it in this damsel's golden hair, To make her thrice as wilful as before.' 79 i05 200 aytf'^ M 't^crr ■t-» 205 ' Nay, father, nay good father, shame me not Before this noble knight,' said young Lavaine, ' For nothing. Surely I but plajT-'d on Torre : '7^ He seem'd so sullen, vext he could not go : A jest, no more ! for, knight, the maiden dreamt That some one put this diamond in her hand, And that it was too slippery to be held, And slipt and fell into some pool or stream, .to The castle- well, belike ; and then I said ^ That if I went and if I fought and won it (But all was jest and joke among o rselves) Then must she keep it safelier. All was jest. But, father, give me leave, (an if; he will, -<-; To ride to Camelot with this noble kniglit : '^ Win shall I not, but do my be.si to win : Young as I am, yet would I do my best.' 'So ye will grace me,' answer'd Lancelot, Smiling a moment, 'with your fellowship '<'•"''■ O'er these waste downs whereon 1 'ost myself, Then were I glad of you as guide and friend : 'Ay^. 210 215 /-■' 220 ur i>€i' 225 ^.9*.{ t/>r^ *•!] 80 TENNYSON. il 4i.. Wo And you shall win this diamond, — as I hear It is a fair large diamond, — if ye may, And yield it to this maiden, if ye will.' ' A fair large diamond,' added plain Sir Torre, * Such be for queens, and not for simple maids.' Then she, who held her eyes upon the ground, / Elaine, and heard her name so tost about, ■'it4 C^c^^^'^^-^ Flush'd slightly at the slight disparagement Before the stranger knight, who, looking at her. Full courtly, yet not falsely, thus return'd : '* If what is fair be but for what is fair, ^ And only queens are to be counted so, Rash were my judgment then, who deem this maid Might wear as fair a jewel as is on earth, Not violating the boftd of like to like.' 235 .-^. o 240/ 245 j., yuoct-i*. He spoke and ceased : the lily maid Elaine, Wen by the mellow voice before she look'd, Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments. -*- *^^'^/T^.ry^ The great and guilty love he bare the Queen, In battle with the love he bare his lord. Had rr.arr'd his face, and mark'd it ere his time. Another sinning on such heights with one. The flower of all the west and all the world, ^,4AV^^'^''^Hnd been the sleeker for it : but in him His mood was often like a fiend, and rose ^jad drove him into wastes and solitudes Foi agon ',^who was yet a living soul.'^''^'^^'- Mart'd a.-> he was, he seem'd the good^est man , That ever among ladies ate in \\Q:}^^{^LtxL^ yZ-^ ^iUf^y-^ And loblest, when she lifted up her eyes. However marr*d, of more than twice her years, Seam'd witli an ancient swordcut on the cheek, And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes And ioved him, with that love which was her doom. 260 i/^ cnt^ '^%<^7'^ V (■ 250 ^Jt4' n< /■ act-^'^^ 235 d id ;► 1. a 6X< 240/ u^\ 245 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 81 n<^^' -^ X^^ I ■-v^ While he utter'd this. Low to her own heart said the lily maid, ' Save your great self, fair lord ;' and when he fell 320 From talk of war to traits of pleasantry — Being mirthful he, but in a stately kind — She still took note that when the living smile Died from his lips, across him came a cloud Of melancholy severe, from which again, 325 Whenever in her hovering to and fro r-^e^/ .f , LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 88 295 rse i_ ' 300 t, 305 r>i ing, 310 .- ■ /^/iil"- ^'^ / 31" j11 320 325 The lily maid had striven to make him cheer, There brake a sudden-beaming tenderness Of manners and of nature : and she thought That all was nature, all, perchance, for her. 330 And all night long his face before her lived, As when a painter, poring on a face, Divinely thro' all hindrance finds the man Behind it, and so paints hira that his face. The shape and colour of a mind and life, 335 Lives for his children, evor at its best And fullest ; so the face before her lived. Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full Of noble things, and held her from her sleep. ^ rrx^ Till rathe she rose, half-cheated in the thought 340 She needs must bid farewell to sweet Lavaine. First as in fear, step after step, she stole Down the long tower-stairs, hesitating : Anon, she heard Sir Lancelot cry in the court, 'This shield, my friend, where is it]' and Lavaine 345 Past inward, as she came from out the tower. There to his proud horse Lancelot turn'd, and smooth'd The glossy shoulder, humming to himself. Half-envious of the flattering hand, she drew Nearer and stood. He look'd, and more amazed 350 Than if seven men had set upon him, saw The maiden standing in the dewy light. He had not dream'd she was so beautiful. Then came on him a sort of sacred fear. For silent, tho* he greeted her, she stood 355 Rapt on his face as if it were a God's. Suddenly flash'd on her a wild desire, That he should wear her favour at the tilt. She braved a riotous heart in asking for it. ' Fair lord, whose name I know not — noble it is, 360 I an#wWBa •i i i\ if I ! i : 1 H ■ M ! •• -1 H 1' Li 84 TENNYSON. I well believe, the noblest — will you wear My favour at this tourney V ' Nay/ said he, * Fair lady, since I never yet have worn Favour of any lady in the lists. Such is my wont, as those, who know me, know.' 365 ' Yea, so,' she answer'd ; ' then in wearing mine Needs must be lesser likelihood, noble lord. That those who know should know you.' And he turn'd Her counsel up and down within his mind, And found it true, and answer'd, ' True, my child. 370 Well, I will wear it : fetch it out to me : What is it ?' and she told him ' A red sleeve Broider'd with pearls,' and brought it : then he bound Her token on his helmet, with a smile Saying, ' I never yet have done so much 375 For any maiden living,' and the blood Sprang to her face and fill'd her with delight ; But left her all the paler, when Lavaine Returning brought the yet-unblazon'd shield, His brother's ; which he gave to Lancelot, 380 Who parted with his own to fair Elaine : * Do me this grace, my child, to have my shield In keeping till I come.' ' A grace to me,' She answer'd, ' twice to-day. I am your squire ! ' Whereat Lavaine said, laughing, ' Lily maid, 385 For fear our people call you lily maid In earnest, let me bring your colour back ; Once, twice, and thrice : now get you hence to bed :' So kiss'd her, and Sir Lancelot his own hand. And thus they moved away : she stay'd a minute, 390 Then made a sudden step to the gate, and there — ■ Her bright hair blown about the serious face Yet rosy-kindled with her brother's kiss — Paused by the gateway, standing near the shield LANCRLOT AND ELAINE. 85 365 le turn'd d. 370 bound 375 380 385 ed:' 390 In silence, while she watch'd their arms far-off 395 Sparkle, until they dipt below the downs. Then to her tower she climb'd, and took the shield, There kept it, and so lived in fantasy. Meanwhile the new companions past away Far o'er the long backs of the bushless downs, 400 To where Sir Lancelot knew there lived a knight Not far from Camelot, now for forty years A hermit, who had pray'd, labour'd and pray'd, And ever labouring had scoop'd himself In the white rock a chapel and a hall 405 On massive columns, like a shoreclifF cave, And cells and chambers : all were fair and diy ; The green light from the meadows underneath Struck up and lived along the milky roofs ; And in the meadows tremulous aspen-trees 410 And poplars made a noise of falling showers. And thither wending there that night they bode. But when the next day broke from underground, And shot red fire and shadows thro' the cave, They rose, heard mass, broke fast, and rode away : 415 Then Lancelot saying, * Hear, but hold my name Hidden, you ride with Lancelot of the Lake,' / ^ Abasli'd Lavaine, whose instant reverence, ^ Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise. But left him leave to stammer, 'Is it indeed V 420 And after muttering ' The great Lancelot,' At last he got his breath and answer'd, ' One, One have I seen — that other, our liege lord, The dread Pendragon, Britain's King of kings, Of whom the people talk mysteriously, 425 iv.ci'W-'-'-'' He will be there — then were I stricken blind That minute, I might say that I had seen.' .ft- IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) k A /. L/J 2e 1.0 I.I ■ 50 u US 1^ |22 2,0 IL25 i 1.4 im V '*> '> ^V>^^^>^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WIST MAIN STRHT WHSTIR.N.Y. MStO (716) 173-4303 4? f\ iV \\ [v ■^'I^T^ \ '^ 'v- V. 1 /. %^ % p / ^« ^( at. 86 TBNNT80N. So Spake Lavaine, and when they reach'd the lists By Camelot in the meadow, let his eyes Run thro' the peopled galleiy which half round 430 Lay like a rainbow fall'n upon the grass, Until they found the clear-faced King, who sat Robed in red samite, easily to be known, ^^ ^ Since to his crown the golden dragon clung, And down his robe the dragon writhed in gold, 436 And from the carven-work behind him crept Two dragons gilded, sloping down to make Arms for his chair, while all the rest of them Thro' knots and loops and folds inniunerable Fled ever thro' the woodwork, till they found 440 The new design wherein they lost themselves, Yet with all ease, so tender was the work : And, in the costly canopy o'er him set. Blazed the last diamond of the nameless king. Then Lancelot answer'd young Lavaine and said, 445 * Me you call great : mine is the firmer seat, The truer lance : but there is many a youth Now crescent, who vill come to all I am And overcome it ; and in me there dwells No greatness, save it be some far-ofi" touch 460 Of greatness to know well I am not great : There is the man.' And Lavaine gaped upon him As on a thing miraculous, and anon The trumpets blew ; and then did either side, They that assail'd, and they that held the lists, 455 Set lance in rest, strike spur, suddenly move. Meet in the midst, and there so furiously Shock, that a man far-off might well perceive, ( If any man that day were left afield, ) The hard earth shake, and a low thunder of arms. 460 4^ryl C£ .^t>^ Favour of any lady in the lists 1 .,^y_, (-^y „ '^JCa,'> u«^ \ Not such his wont, as we, that know him, know.' 475 ' How then ? who then V a fury seized them all, A fiery family passion for the name Of Lancelot, and a glory one with theirs. [uuO^'^ They couch'd their spears, and prick'd their steeds, and Their plumes driv'n backward by the wind they made 480 In moving, all together down upon him Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea, Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, Down on a bark, and overbears the bark, 485 And him that helms it, so they overbore Sir Lancelot and his charger, and a spear Down-glancing lamed the charger, and a spear Prick'd sharply his own cuirass, and the head Pierced thro' his side, and there snapt, and remain'd. 490 Then Sir Lavaine did well and worshipfuUy ; He bore a knight of old repute to the earth. i 8$ TENNYSON. And brought his horse to Lancelot where he lay. He up the side, sweating with agony, got, But thought to do while he might yet endure, 495 And being lustily holpen by the rest, His party, — tho' it seem'd half-miracle To those he fought with, — drave his kith and kin, And all the Table Round that held the lists, Back to the barrier ; then the trumpets blew 500 Proclaiming his the prize, who wore the sleeve Of scarlet, and the pearls ; and all the knights. His party, cried ' Advance and take thy prize The diamond '/ but he answer'd, * Diamond me No diamonds ! for God's love, a little air ! 505 Prize me no prizes, for my prize is death ! Hence will I, and I charge you, follow me. not.' He spoke, and vanish'd suddenly from the field With young Lavaine into the poplar grove. There from his charger down he slid, and sat, 510 Gasping to Sir Lavaine, * Draw the lance-head :' ' Ah my sweet lord Sir Lancelot,' said Lavaine, * I dread me, if I draw it, you will die.' But he, * I die already with it : draw — Draw,' — and Lavaine drew, and Sir Lancelot gave 515 A marvellous great shriek and ghastly groan. And half his blood burst forth> and down he sank For the pure pain, and wholly swoon'd away. Then came the hermit out and bare him in. There stanch'd his wound ; and there, in daily doubt 520 Whether to live or die, for many a week Hid from the wide world's rumour by the grove Oi poplars with their noise of falling showers, And ever- tremulous aspen-trees, he lay. But on that day when Lancelot fled the lists, 525 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 89 495 m, 500 505 )ld 510 ve 615 ik loubt 520 535 525 His party, knights of utmost North and West, Lords of waste marches, kings of desolate isles, Cam* round their great Pendfagon, saying to him, * Lo, Sire, our knight, thro' whom we won the day, Hath gone sore wounded, and hath left his prize Untaken, crying that his prize is death/ * Heaven hinder,* said the King, * that such an one, So great a knight as we have seen to-day — He seem'd to me another Lancelot — Yea, twenty times I thought him Lancelot — He must not pass uncared for. Wherefore, rise, Gawain, and ride forth and find the knight. Wounded and wearied needs must he be near. 1 charge you that you get at once to horse. And, knights and kings, there breathes not one of you 540 Will deem this prize of ours is rashly given : His prowess was too wondrous. We will do him No customary honour : since the knight Came not to us, of us to claim the prize. Ourselves will send it after. Rise and take 545 This diamond, and deliver it, and return. And bring us where he is, and how he fares, And cease not from your quest until ye find.' (j So saying, from the carven flower above. To which it made a restless heart, he took, 650 And gave, the diamond : then from where he sat At Arthur's right, with smiling face arose. With smiling face and frowni In the mid might and flourish Gawain, surnamed The Courteous, fair and fetrong, 555 And after Lancelot, Tristram, and Geraint And Gareth, a good knight, bu"^ therewithal Sir Modred's brother, and the child of Lot, i'tyh^Ud/^ 530 tiling face arose, ^/^ vvning heart, a Prince / ^' t'^.^iJ^ •ish of his May, -/o-u^"^ J '^ 90 TBNNTSON. Nor often loyal to his word, and now Wroth that the King's command to sally forth In quest of whom he knew not, made him leave The banquet, and concourse of knights and kings. So all in wrath he got to horse and went ; While Arthur to the banquet, dark in mood, Fast, thinking * Is it Lancelot who hath come Despite the wound he spake of, all for gain Of glory, and hath added wound to wound, And ridd'n away to die V So fear'd the King, And, after two days* tarriance there, return'd. Then when he saw the Queen, embracing ask'd, * Love, are you yet so sick V * Nay, lord,' she said. * And where is Lancelot V Then the Queen amazed, * Was he not with you 1 won he not your prize V * Nay, but one like him.' * Why that like was he.' And when the King demanded how she knew, Said, * Lord, no sooner had ye parted from us. Than Lancelot told me of a common talk That men went down before his spear at a touch, But knowing he was Lancelot ; his great name Conquer'd ; and therefore would he hide his name From all men, ev'n the King, and to this end Had made the pretext of a hindering wound, That he might joust unknown of all, and learn If his old prowess were in aught decay'd ; And added, " Our true Arthur, when he learns, Will well allow my pretext, as for gain Of purer glory.' 560 565 570 ))} Then replied the King : * Far lovelier in our Lancelot had it been, y _ • In lieu of idly dallying with the truth, ^xa^^^ ii To have trusted me as he hath trusted thee. v 576 580 585 690 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 91 i^ Surely his King and most familiar friend , Might well have kept his secret. True, indeed, '^.fUrfA Albeit I know my knights fantastical, '^- / So fine a fear in our large Lancelot ^-^-r'f^'^^ 595 Must needs have moved my laughter : now remains But little cause for laughter : his own kin — 111 news, my Queen, for all who love him, this : — His kith and kin, not knowing, set upon him ; So that he went sore wounded from the field : 600 Yet good news too : for goodly hopes are mine That Lancelot is no more a lonely heart. He wore, against his wont, upon his helm A sleeve of scarlet, broider'd with great pearls, Some gentle maiden's gift.' 605 * Yea, lord,* she said, ' Thy hopes are mine,' and saying that, she choked. And sharply turned about to hide her face. Fast to her chamber, and there flung herself Down on the great King's couch, and writhed upon it, And clench'd her fingers till they bit the palm, And shriek'd ouc * Traitor,' to the unhearing wall, Then flash'd into wild tears, and rose again, And moved about her palace, proud and pale. 610 Gawain the while thro' all the region round 616 Bode with his diamond, wearied of the quest, Touch'd at all points, except the poplar grove. And came at last, tho' late, to Astolat : Whom glittering in enamell'd arms the maid Glanced at, and cried, * What news from Camelot, lord ? 620 What of the knight with the red sleeve V ' He won.' * I knew it,' she said. • But parted from the jousts ,'-jBSar 92 TENNYSON. I Hurt in the side/ whereat she caught her breath ; Thro* her own side she felt the sharp lance go ; Thereon she smote her hand : wellnigh she swoon'd : 625 And, while he gazed wonderingly at her, came The Lord of Astolat out, to whom the Prince Reported who he was, and on what quest Sent, that he bore the prize and could not find The victor, but had ridd'n a random round 630 To seek him, and had wearied of the search. To whom the Lord of Astolat, * Bide with us. And ride no more at random, noble "^rince ! Here was the knight, and here he left a shield ; Tiiis will he send or come for : furthermore 635 Our son is with him ; we shall hear anon, Needs must we hear.' To this the courteous Prince Accorded with his wonted courtesy. Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it, And stay' ^ ; and cast his eyc^s on fair Elaine : 640 Where could be found face daintiv^r ? then her shape From forehead down to foot, perfect — again From foot to forehead exquisitely turn'd : * Well — if I bide, lo ! this wild flower for me ! * And oft they met among the garden yews, 645 And there he set himself to play upon her With sallying wit, free flashes from a height Above her, graces of the court, and songs. Sighs, and slow smiles, and golden eloquence And amorous adulation, till the maid 650 Rebeird against it, saying to him, * Prince, O loyal nephew of our noble King, Why ask you not to see the shield he left, Whence you might learn his name? Why slight your King, And lose the quest he sent you on, and prove 655 (I LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 93 kes- er-^i^ No surer than our falcon yesterday, Who lost the hem wo slipt her at, and went To all the winds %* * Nay, by mine head,' said he, * I lose it, as we lose the lark in heaven, damsel, in the light of your blue eyes ; But an ye will it let me see the shield.' And when the shield was brought, and Gawain saw ,, Sir Lancelot's azure lions, crown'd with gold, 'fh^ S' Ramp in the field, he smote his thigh, and mock'd : vn[pV^ 'Right was the King! our Lancelot! that true man!' '^"^ 'And right was I,' she answer'd merrily, * I, "Who dream'd my knight the greatest knight of all.' * .Ajid if / dream'd,* said Gawain, * that you love This greatest knight, your pardon ! lo, ye know it ! Speak therefore : shall I waste myself in vain 1* Full simple was her ans.ver, 'What know I ? My brethren have been all my fellowship ; And I, when often they have talk'd of love, Wish'd it had been my mother, for they talk'd Meseem'd, of what they knew not ; so myself — 1 know not if I know what true love is, But if I know, then, if I love not him, I know there is none other I can love.' * Yea, by God's death,' said he, * ye love him well, But would not, knew ye what all others know. And whom he loves.* * So be it,* cried Elaine, And lifted her fair face and moved away : But he pursued her, calling, * Stay a little ! One golden minute's grace ! he wore your sleeve : Would he break faith with one I may not name 1 Must our true man change like a leaf at last ? Nay — like enow : why then, far be it from me To cross our mighty Lancelot in his loves ! And, damsel, for I deem you know full well 660 665 670 675 680 685 94 TENNYSON. Where your great knight is hidden, let me leave 690 My quest with you ; the diamond also : here ! For if you love, it will be sweet to give it ; And if he love, it will be sweet to have it From your own hand ; and whether he love or not, A diamond is a diamond. Fare you well A thousand times ! — a thousand times farewell ! Yet, if he love, and his love hold, we two May meet at court hereafter : there, I think, So )^e will learn the courtesies of the court. We two shall know each other.' 700 695 Then he gave. And slightly kiss'd the hand to which he gave, - ^ The diamond, and all wearied of the quest Leapt on his horse, and carolling as he went A true-love ballad, lightly rode away. 705 Thence to the court he past ; there told the King What the King knew, * Sir Lancelot is the knight.' And added, * Sire, my liege, so much I learnt ; But fail'd to find him, tho' I rode all round The region : but I lighted on the maid 710 Whose sleeve he wore ; she loves him ; and to her. Deeming our courtesy is the truest law, I gave the diamond : she will render it ; For by my head she knows his hiding-place.' The seldom-frowning King frown'd, and replied, 715 ' Too courteous truly ! ye shall go no more On quest of mine, seeing that ye forget Obedience is the courtesy due to kings.' He spake and parted. Wroth, but all in awe. For twenty strokes of the blood, without a word, 720 LAMCKLOT AND KLAINB. 96 /. i:M Linger'd that other, staring after him ; Then shook his hair, strxle off, and bjLzz'd abroad About the maid of Astolat, and her love. All ears were prick'd at once, all tongues were loosed : * The maid of Astolat loves Sir Lancelot, 726 Sir Lancelot loves the maid of Astolat.' Some read the King's face, some the Queen's, and all Had marvel what the maid might be, but most Predoom'd her as unworthy. One old dame Came suddenly on the Queen with the sharp news. 730 She, that had heard the noise of it before, But sorrowing Lancelot should have stoop'd so low, Marr'd her friend's aim with pale tranquillity. So ran the tale like fire about the court, Fire in dry stubble a nine-days' wonder flared ; Till ev'n the knights at banquet twice or thrice Forgot to drink to Lancelot and the Queen, And pledg ng Lancelot and the lily maid Smiled at e^ other, while the Queen, who sat With lips fily placid, felt the knot Climb in her tiiroat, and with her feet unseen Crush'd the wild passion out against the floor Beneath the banquet, where the meats became As wormwood, and she hated all who pledged. 735 740 ^ But far away the maid in Astolat, 745 Her guiltless rival, she that ever kept The one-day-seen Sir Lancelot in her heart, Crept to her father, while he mused alone. Sat on his knee, stroked his gray face and said, * Father, you call me wilful, and the fault 750 Is yours who let me have my will, and now. Sweet father, will you let me lose my wits V * Nay,' said he, * surely.' * Wherefore, let me hence,' 96 TENNYSON. She answer'd, ' and find out our dear Lavaine.' * Ye will not lose your wits for dear Lavaine : 766 Bide,' answer'd he : 'we needs must hear anon Of him and of that other.* * Ay,' she said, * And of that other, for I needs must hence And find that other, wheresoe'er he be, And with mine own hand give his diamond to him, 760 Lest I be found as faithless in the quest As yon proud Prince who left the quest to me. Sweet father, I behold him in my dreams Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself, Death-pale, for lack of gentle maiden's aid. 766 The gentler-born the maiden, the more bound, My father, to be sweet and serviceable To noble knights in sickness, as ye know When these have worn their tokens : let me hence I pray you.' Then heriather nodding said, 770 * Ay, ay, the diamond : wit ye well, my child, Right fain were I to learn this knight were whole. Being our greatest ; yea, and you must give it — And sure I think this fruit is hung too high For any mouth to gape for save a queen's — 776 Nay, I mean nothing : so then, get you gone, Being so very wilful you must go.' Lightly, her suit allow'd, she slipt away, And while she made her ready for her ride, Her father's latest word humm'd in her ear, * Being so very wilful you must go.' And changed itself and echo'd in her heart, ' Being so very wilful you must die.' But she was happy enough and shook it oflf. As we shake off ^he bee that buzzes at us ; And in her heart she answer'd it and said, 780 786 LANCELOT AND ELAINB. VI * What matter, so I help him back to life t Then far away with good Sir Torre for guide Rode o'er the long backs of the bushless downs To Camelot, and before the city gates 790 Came on her brother with a happy face Making a roan horse caper and curvet For pleasure all about a field of flowers : Whom when she saw, * Lavaine,' she cried, ' Lavaine, How fares my lord Sir Lancelot)' He amazed, 795 * Torre and Elaine ! why here ? Sir Lancelot 1 How know ye my lord's name is Lancelot V But when the maid had told him all her tale, Then tum'd Sir Torre, and being in his moods Left them, and under the strange-statued gate, 800 Where Arthur's wars were render'd mystically. Past up the still rich city to his kin. His own far blood, which dwelt at Camelot ; And her, Lavaine across the poplar grove / ^ ^^^ Led to the caves : there first she saw the ccygque^ ^' 805 ^^^1^-*^ Of Lancelot on the wall : her scarlet sleeve, \ ' '^ \ a^jCa^'Ws, Tho* carved and cut, and half the pearls away, '- ^^ • Stream'd from it still : and in her heart she laugh'd. Because he had not loosed it from his helm. But meant once more perchance to tourney in it. 810 And when they gain'd the cell wherein he slept, His(battle-writhen arms^and mighty hands Lay naked on the wolfskin, and a dream Of dragging down his enemy made them move. Then she that saw him lying unsleek, unshorn, 815 Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself, XJtter'd a little tender dolorous cry. The sound not wonted in a place so still Woke the sick knight, and while he roll'd his eyes Yet blank from sleep, she started to him, sa3dng, 820 1^ 98 TENNYSON. I * Your prize the diamond sent you by the King :* His eyes glisten'd : she fancied ' Is it for me V And when the maid had told him all the tale Of King and Prince, the diamond sent, the quest Assign'd to her not worthy of it, she knelt 825 Full lowly by the comers of his bed, And laid the diamond in Lis open hand. Her face was near, and as we kiss the child That does the task assign'd, he kiss'd her face. At once she slipt like water to the floor. 830 ' *las,' he said, ' your ride hath wearied you. .i?b must you have.' * No rest for me,' she said ; ' ¥' /, for near you, fair lord, I am at rest.' J-' kt might she mean by that 1 his large black eyes Yet larger thro' his leanness, dwelt upon her, 835 Till all her heart's sad secret blazed itself In the heart's colours on her simple face ; And Lancelot look'd and was perplext in mind. And being weak in body said no more ; But did not love the colour ; woman's love, 840 Save one, he not regarded, and so tum'd "/-iAA. cc/r> «^^ '^ Sighing, and f eign'd a sleep until he slept. -^•^u^s^h-^ m ■ Then rose Elaine and glided thro' the fields. And past beneath the weirdly-sculptured gates Far up the dim rich city to her kin ; 845 There bode the night : but woke with dawn, and past Down thro' the dim rich city to the fields, Thence to the cave : so day by day she past . In either twilight ghost-like to and fro Gliding, and every day she tended him, 850 And likewise many a night : and Lancelot Would, tho' he call'd his wound a little hurt Whereof he should be quickly whole, at times LANCELOT AND BLAINE. 99 Brain-feverous in his heat and agony, seem TTncourteous, even he : but the meek maid oweetly forbore him ever, being to him Meeker than any child to a rough nurse, Milder than any mother to a sick child, And never woman yet, since man's first fall. Did kindlier unto man, but her deep love Upbore her ; till the hermit, skill'd in all The simples and the science of that time. Told him that her fine care had saved his life. And the sick man forgot hfer simple blush, Would call her friend and sister, sweet Elaine, Would listen for her coming and regret Her parting step, and held her tenderly, And loved her with all love except the love Of man and woman when they love their best, Closest and sweetest, and had died the death In any knightly fashion for her sake. And peradventure had he seen her first She might have made this and that other world Another world for the sick man ; but now /, 855 860 865 870 /<> yYXt' '^.MjtM^ The shackles of an old love straiten'd him, ^-^^-^'^ 875 His honour rooted in dishonour stood, V ^■V^^i^^'^^ And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. \ Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made Full many a holy vow and pure resolve. These, as but born of sickness, could not live : 880 For when the blood ran lustier in him again, ^ Full often the bright image of one face, g . Jc f^^rHMynie^nk Making a tre^dhierous quiet in his heart, iH^' * y i/ '' Dispersed his resolution like a cloud. ^ Then if the maiden, while that ghostly grace 885 Beam'd on his fancy, spoke, he answer'd not, * 100 TBNNT80N. Or short and coldly, and she knew right well What the rough sickness meant, but what this meant She knew not, and the sorrow dimm'd her sight. And drave her ere her time across the fields 890 Far into the rich city, where alone She murmur'd, * Vain, in vain : it cannot be. He will not love me : how then 1 must I die V Then as a little helpless innocent bird. That has but one plain passage of few notes, 895 Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er For all an April morning, till the ear Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid Went half the night repeating, * Must I die V And now to right she tum'd, and now to left, 900 And found no ease in turning or in rest ; And *Him or death,' she mutter'd, 'death or him,' Again and like a burthen, ' him or death.' But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole. To Astolat returning rode the three. 906 There mom by morn, arraying her sweet self In that wherein she deem'd she look'd her best, She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought * If I be loved, these are my festal robes, If not, the victim's flowers before he fall.' 910 And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid That she should ask some goodly gift of him For her own self or hers ; * and do not shun To speak the wish most near to your true heart ; Such service have ye done me, that I make 915 My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I In mine own land, and what I will I can.' Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, But like a ghost without the power to speak. ti. LANCELOT AND ELAIN;A. 101 And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish, 920 And bode among them yet a little space Till he should learn it ; and one mom it chanced He found her in among the garden yews, And said, * Delay no longer, speak your wish. Seeing I go to-day :' then out she brake : 925 * Going 1 and we shall never see you more. And I must die for want of one bold word.' * Speak : that I live to hear,' he said, * is yours.' Then suddenly and passionately she spoke : * I have gone mad. I love you : let me die.' 930 * Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, * what is this V And innocently extending her white arms, * Your love,' she said, * your love — to be your wife.' And Lancelot answer'd, * Had I chosen to wed, I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine : 935 But now there never will be wife of mine.' * No, no,* she cried, * I care not to be wife, But to be with you still, to see your face. To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.' And Lancelot answer'd, * Nay, the world, the world, 940 All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart , .To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongii^ J? ^ J ■ ■'u4.,^i/^ JTo blare its own interpretation— nay, "^ '^* ^ ^/-t A^*- Full ill then should I quit your brother's lov^. And your good father's kindness.' And sh€« said, 945 * Not to be with you, not to see your face — Alas for me then, my good days are done.' * Nay, noble maid,' he answer'd, * ten times nay ! This is not love : but love's first flash in youth. Most common : yea, I know it of mine own self : 950 And you yourself will smile at your own self Hereafter, when you yield your flower u' life To one more fitly yours, not thrice your age : 102 TENNYSON. f i And then will I, for true you are and sweet Beyond mine old belief in womanhood, 956 More specially should your good knight be poor, Endow you with broad land and territory Even to the half my realm beyond the seas, So that would make you happy : furthermore, Ev'n to the death, as tho' ye were my blood, 960 In all your quarrels will I be your knight. This will I do, dear damsel, for your sake, And more than this I cannot.' While he spoke She neither blush'd nor shook, but deathly-pale 965 Stood grasping what was nearest, then replied : ' Of all this will I nothing ;* and so fell. And thus they bore her swooning to her tower. Then spake, to whom thro' those black walls of yew Their talk had pieiVced, her father : * Ay, a flash, 970 I fear me, that will, strike my blossom dead. Too courteous are ye, fair Lord Lancelot. I pray you, use some rough discourtesy To blunt or break her passion.' Lancelot said, 975 * That were against me : what I can I will ;* And there that day remain'd, and toward even Sent for his shield : full meekly rose the maid, Stript off the case, and gave the naked shield ; Then, when she heard his horse upon the stones, 980 Unclasping flung the casement back, and look'd Down on his helm, from which her sleeve had gone. And Lancelot knew the little clinking sound ; And she by tact of love was well aware That Lancelot knew that she was looking at him. 985 956 960 965 ew 970 isu..^av 976 980 985 LANCELOT AND ELAINB. 103 And yet he glanced not up, nor waved his hand, Nor bad farewell, but sadly rode away. This was the one discourtesy that he used. So in her tower alone the maiden sat : His very shield was gone ; only the case, 990 Her own poor work, her empty labour, left. But still she heard him, still his picture form'd And grew between her and the pictured wall. Then came her father, saying in low tones, * Have comfort,' whom she greeted quietly. 995 Then came her brethren saying, * Peace to thee. Sweet sister,' whom she answer'd with all calm. , » But when they left her to herself again, ^aJCXv "^ '^ "^^T" Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field x 'K 'iA^xhX,'' ^<^^'^^''^ y^ Approaching thro' the darkness, call'd ; the owls ^^/^lOfiP ck^O--^^^^'^- "Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt Jl „, ^r{u.^-h\ Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms ^-^■xtiXxM^. Of evening, and the moanings of the wind. And in those days she made a little song. And call'd her song 'The Song of Love and Death,' 1005 And sang it : sweetly could she make and sing. * Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain ; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain : I know not which is sweeter, no, not I. *Love, art thou sweet 1 then bitter death must be : 1010 Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me. Love, if death be sweeter, let me die. * Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away. Sweet death, that seems to make us loveless clay, 1 know not which is sweeter, no, not I. 1015 104 TENNYSON. * I fain would follow love, if that could be ; I needs must follow death, who calls for me ; Call and I follow, I follow ! let me die.' High with the last line scaled l j voice, and this. All in a fiery dawning wild with wind 1020 That shook her tower, the brothers heard, and thought "With shuddering, * Hark the Phantom of the house That ever shrieks before a death,' and call'd The father, and all three in hurry and fear Ran to her, and io ! the blood-red light of dawn 1025 Flared on her face, she shrilling- * Let me die I' As when we dwell upon a word we know, Bepeating, till the word we know so well Becomes a wonder, and we know not why, So dwelt the fathtr on her face, and thought , 1030 ' Is this Elaine V till back the maiden fell. Then gave a. languid hand to each, and lay. Speaking v, still good-morrow with her eyes. o>[v^ At last she said, * Sweet brothers, yester-night ^ I seem'd a curious little maid again, 1035 As happy as when we dwelt among the woods. And when ye used to take me with the flood Up the great river in the boatman's boat. Only ye would not pass beyond the cape That has the poplar on it : there ye fixt 1040 Your limit, oft returning with the tide. And yet I cried because ye would not pass Beyond it, and far up the shining flood Until we found the palace of the King. And yet ye would not ; but this night I dream'd 1046 That I was all alone upon the flood And then I said, " Now shall I have my will :" And there I woke, but still the wish remain'd. Saavi r,%^^ r \ LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 105 So let me hence that I may pass at last Beyond the poplar and far up the flood, 1050 Until I find the palace of the King. There will I enter in among them all, And no man there will dare to mock at me ; But there the fine Gawain will wonder at me. And there the great Sir Lancelot muse at me ; 1055 Gawain, who bad a thousand farewells to me, Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bad me one : And there the King will know me and my love. And there the Queen herself will pity me, And all the gentle court will welcome me, 1060 And after my long voyage I shall rest !' * Peace,' said her father, * O my child, ye seem Light-headed, for what force is yours to go So far, being sick 1 and wherefore would ye look On this proud fellow again, who scorns us all V ^^.r' 1065 Then the rough Torre began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, * I never loved him : an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath done the house/ 1070 To whom the gentle sister made reply, * Fret not yourself, dear brother, nor be wroth, Seeing it is nc more Sir Lancelot's fault 1075 Not to love me, than it is mine to love Him of all men who seems to me the highest.' * Highest?' the father answer'd, echoing 'highest?' (He meant to break the passion in her) ' nay, 106 \ TENNYSON. Daughter, I know not what you call the highest ; 1080 But this I know, for all the people know it, He loves the Queen, and in an open shame : And she returns his love in open shame ; If this be high, what is it to be low V Then spake the lily maid of Astolat : 1086 * Sweet father, all too faint and sick am i For anger : these are slanders : never yet Was noble man but made ignoble talk. He makes no friend who never made a foe. But now it is my glory to have loved 1090 One peerless, without stain : so let me pass, My father, howsoe'er I seem to you, Not all unhappy, having loved God's best And greatest, tho' my love had no return : Yet, seeing you desire your child to live, 1095 Thanks, but you work against your own desire ; For if I could believe the things you say I should but die the sooner ; wherefore cease, ' / Sweet father, and bid call the ghostjy man y^''^^^'^ ' Hither, and let me shrive me clean, and die.* 1100 So when the ghostly man had come and gone. She with a face, bright as for sin forgiven. Besought Lavaine to write as she devised A letter, word for word ; and when he ask'd * Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord ? 1105 Then will I bear it gladly ;' she replied, * For Lancelot and the Queen and all the world. But T myself must bear it.' Then he wrote The letter she devised ; which being writ And folded, *0 sweet father, tender and true, 1110 Deny me not,' she said — *ye never yet Denied my fancies — this, however strange. j 1080 1086 1090 1095 ^i^h 1100 1105 1110 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 107 My latest : lay the letter in my hand A little ere I die, and close the hand Upon it ; I shall guard it even in death. 1115 And when the heat is gone from out my heart, Then take the little bed on which I died For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's For richness, and me also like the Queen In all I have of rich, and lay me on it. 1 1 20 And let there be prepared a chariot-bier To take me to the river, an< a barge Be ready on the river, clothed in black. I go in state to court, to meet the Queen. There surely I shall speak for mine own self, 1125 And none of you can speak for me so well. And therefore let our dumb old man alone Go with me, he can steer and row, and he Will guide me to that palace, to the doors.' She ceased : her father promised ; whereupon 1130 She grew so cheerful that they deem'd her death Was rather in the fantasy than the blood. But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh Her father laid the letter in her hand. And closed the hand upon it, and she died. 1135 So that day there was dole in Astolat. But when the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone 1140 Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge, r I Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay. (Itmzji2^ There sat the lifelong creature of the house, ^^*-*-^'*^ * -' / Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck. Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. 1145 -r > K 108 TENNYSON. I ^ So those two brethren from the chariot took And on the black decks laid her in her bed, Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung The sill .e with braided blazonings, And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her 1150 ' Sister, farewell for ever,' and again * Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears. Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oar'd by the dumb, went upward with the flood — In her right hand the lily, in her left 1155 The letter — all her bright hair streaming down — And all the coverlid was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, 1160 But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled. That day Sir Lancelot at the palace craved Audience of Guinevere, to give at last The price of half a realm, his costly gift. Hard-won and hardly won with bruise and blow, 1165 With deaths of others, and almost his own, The nine-years-fought-for diamonds : for he saw One of her house, and sent him to the Queen Bearing his wish, whereto the Queen agreed With such and so unmoved a majesty 1170 She might have seem'd her statue, but that he, Low-drooping till he wellnigh kiss'd her feet For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye The shadow of some piece of pointed lace, In the Queen's shadow, vibrate on the walls, 1 1 75 And parted, laughing in his courtly heart. ^' . . All in an oriel on the summer side. Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream, LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 109 1150 1155 1160 1165 f 'i 1170 1175 They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd, * Queen, Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy, 1180 Take, what I had not won except for you. These jewels, and make me happy, making them An armlet for the roundest arm on earth. Or necklace for a neck to which the swan'p Is tawnier than her cygnet's : these are words : 1185 Your beauty is your beajity, and I sin In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words Perchance, we both can pardon : but, my Queen, I hear of rumours flying thro' your court. 1190 Our bond, as not the(^bond of man and wife,) Should have in it an absoluter trust To make up that defgct : let rumours be : When did not rumours fly 1 these, as I trust That you trust me in your own nobleness, 1195 I may not well believe that you believe.' While thus he spoke, half tum'd away, the Queen Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off. Till all the place whereon she stood was green ; 1200 Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand Received at once and laid aside the gems There on a table near her, and replied : * It may be, I am quicker of belief Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake. 1205 Our bond is not the bond of man and wife. This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, It can be broken easier. I for you This many a year have done despite and wrong To one whom ever in my heart of hearts 1210 ' I did acknowledge nobler. What are these 1 no TEMMTSON. n Diamonds for me ! they had been thrice their worth Being your gift, had you not lost your own. To loyal hearts the value of all gifts Must vary as the giver's. Not for me ! 1216 For her ! for your new fancy. Only this Grant me, I pray you : have your joys apart. I doubt not that however changed, you keep So much of wha't is graceful : and myself Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy 1220 In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule : So cannot speak my mind. An end to this ! A strange one ! yet I take it with Amen. So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls ; Deck her with these ; tell her, she shines me down: 1225 An armlet for an arm to which the Queen's Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck O as much fairer — as a faith once fair Was richer than these diamonds — hers not mine — ^ Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself, 1230 Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will — She shall not have them.' Saying which she seized, And, thro' the casement standing wide for heat, Flung them, and down they fiiash'd, and smote the stream. 1235 Then from the smitten surface flash'd, as it were. Diamonds to meet them, and they past away. Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain At love, life, all things, on the window ledge. Close underneath his eyes, and right across 1 240 Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge Whereon the lily maid of Astolat Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night. I ^f" ll LANOBLOT AMD ILAINE. Ill >rth 1215 1220 rn: 1226 1230 ote the 1235 1240 But the wild Queen, who saw not, burst away To weep and wail in secret ; and the barge, 1245 On to the palace-doorway sliding, paused. There two stood arm'd, and kept the door ; to whom, All up the marble stair, tier over tier. Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes that ask'd 'What is iti' but that oarsman's haggard fdce^ 1250 As hard and still as is the face that men Shape to their fancy's eye from broken rocks On some clifif-side, appall'd them, and they said, * He is enchanted, cannot speak — and she. Look how she sleeps — the Fairy Queen, so fair ! 1255 Yea, but how pale ! what are they 1 flesh and blood 1 Or come to take the King to Fairyland ? p For some do hold our Arthur cannot die, LBut that he passes into Fairyland.' ' f) n^^qhAh While thus they bal^bled of the King, the King 1260 t ^^^-^^n/ Came girt with knight^: tl^en turn'd the tongueless man From the naif-face to"tlie luUeye, and rose And pointed to the damsel, and the doors. So Arthur bad the meek Sir Percivale And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid ; 1265 , , And reverently they bore her into hall. ^ ^'^'^^Then came the fine Gawain and wonder'd at her. And Lancelot later came and mused at her. And last the Queen herself, and pitied her : But Arthur spied the letter in her hand, 1270 Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it ; this was all : *■ Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake : I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, Come, for you left me taking no farewell. Hither, to take my last farewell of you. 1275 I loved you, and my love had no return. 112 TENNYSON. 1280 1285 1290 And therefore my true love has been my death. And therefore to our Lady Guinevere, And to all other ladies, I make moan : Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot, As thou art a knight peerless.' Thus he read ; And ever in the reading, lords and dames Wept, looking often from his face who read To hers which lay so silent, and at times, So touch'd were they, half -thinking that her lips, Who had devised the letter, moved again. Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all : * My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear, Know that for this most gentle maiden's death Right heavy am I ; for good she was and true, But loved me with a love beyond all love In women, whomsoever I ha\e known. Yet to be loved makes not to love again ; Not at my years, however it hold in youth. I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave No cause, not willingly, for such a love : To this I call my friends in testimony, Her brethren, and her father, who himself Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use. To break her passion, some discourtesy Against my nature : what I could, I did. I left her and I bad her no farewell ; Tho', had I dreamt the damsel would have died, I might have put my wits to some rough use, And help'd her from herself.' ydo/lxU ^>^Y y^'^^/ ''• Then said the Queen 7 ^'^^n.^tZdJ'i (Sea was her wrath, vet working after storm) 1295 1300 1305 1280 1285 1290 1296 1300 1306 >-}-7f'^-C9 f t ~ LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 113 * Ye might at least have done her so much grace, 1310 Fair lord, as would have help'd her from her death.' He raised his head, their eyes met and hers fell. He adding, * Queen, she would not be content Save that I wedded her, which could not be. 1315 Then might she follow me thro* the world, she ask'd; It could not be. I told her that her love Was but the flash of youth, would darken down To rise hereafter in a stiller flame Toward one more worthy of her — then would I, More specially were he, she wedded, poor. Estate them with large land and territory In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas, To keep them in all joyance : more than this I could not ; this she would not, and she died.' 1320 1325 He pausing, Arthur answered, ' my knight. It will be to thy worship, as my knight, And mine, as head of all our Table Round, To see that she be buried worshipfuUy.' So toward that shrine which then in all the realm Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went The marshall'd Order of their Table Round, And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see The maiden buried, not as one unknown, . Nor meanly, but with(gorgeous obsequies^ spt-^i.^ ■■ And mass, and rolling music, like a queen. And when the knights had laid her comely head Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings. Then Arthur spake among them, * Let her tomb Be costly, and her image thereupon. And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet Be carven, and her lily in her hand. 1330 (ItX. 1335 1340 114 l^ENNYSOlf. And let the story of her dolorous voyage For all true hearts be blazon'd on her tomb In letters gold and azure !' which was wrought 1345 Thereafter ; but when now the lords and dames And people, from the high door streaming, brake Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen, Who mark'd Sir Lancelot where he moved apart, Drew near, and sigh'd in passing, 'Lancelot, 1350 Forgive me ; mine was jealousy in love.' He answer'd with his eyes upon the ground, * That is love's curse ; pass on, my Queen, forgiven.* But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows, Approacb'd him, and with full affection said, 1355 * Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have Most joy and most affiance, for I know What thou hast been in battle by my side, And many a time have watch'd thee at the tilt Strike down the lusty and long practised knight, 1360 And let the younger and unskill'd go by To win his honour and to make his name, And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man • Made to be loved ; but now I would to God, Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes, 1365 Thou couldst have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems. By God for thee alone, and from her face, If one may judge the living by the dead. Delicately pure and marvellously fair. Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man 1370 Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons Born to the glory of thy name and fame, My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake.' Then answer'd Lancelot, * Fair she was, my King, Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be> 1375 I LANCELOT AND BLAINE. 115 1345 1350 1355 1360 1365 us. To doubt her fairness were to want an eye, To doubt her pureness were to want a heart — Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love Could bind him, but free love will not be bound.' CN 1370 1375 'Free love, so bound, were freest,' said the King. 1380 -^ * Let love be free ; free love is for the best : [^'^v-i i^'^ -^^-z'- T "J \ - And, after heaven, on our dull side of death, l>^ W-vi. iii' 'o^y^^^ ^^ What should be best, if not so pure a love ~"at >-^n\-V\,' r>^- •> '- Clothed in so pure a loveliness 1 yet thee S^^J^ ^-'^ She fail'd to bind, tho' being, as I think, 1385 Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.' And Lancelot answer'd nothing, but he went. And at the inrunning of a little brook Sat by the river in a cove, and watch'd The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes 1 390 And saw the barge that brought her moving down. Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said Low in himself, * Ah simple heart and sweet. Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love Far tenderer than my Queen's. Pray for thy soul 1 1395 Ay, that will I. Farewell too — now at last — Farewell, fair lily. " Jealousy in love ! " (Not rather dead love's harsh heir, jealous pride ? "Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of love, la^ Jcaci May not your crescent fear for name and fame 1400 Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes 1 Why did the King dwell on my name to me 1 p Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach, y f.aL ci .M.J^% Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake') i ^^)"'- *-" Caught from his mother's arms — the wondrous one 1405 Who passes thro' the vision of the night — She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns Heard on the winding waters, eve and morn 116 TENNYSON. She kiss'd me saying, " Thou art fair, my child, As a king's son," and often in her arms 1410 She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere. Would she had drown'd me in it, where'er it be ! For what am I ? what profits me my name Of greatest knight ? I fought for it, and have it : Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain ; 1415 Now grown a part of me : but what use in it ? To make men worse by making my sin known 1 Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great ? Alas for Arthur's greatest knight, a man Not after Arthur's heart ! I needs must break 1420 These bonds that so defame me : not without She wills it : would I, if she will'd it ! nay. Who knows ? but if I would not, then may God, I pray him, send a sudden Angel down To seize me by the hair and bear me far, 1425 And fling me deep in that forgotten mere, Among the tumbled fragments of the hills/ So groan'd Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain, Not knowing he should die a holy man. lii TO VIRGIL. Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death. 'I Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre ; Tu VIRGIL. 117 1410 1415 II. Landscape-lover, lord of language 5 more than he that sang the "Works and Days, All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase ; 1420 III. Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; 10 All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonelj vord ; 1425 neteenth IV. Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers ; Poet of the poet-satyr 15 whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; V. Chanter of the PoUio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless soa ; 20 VI. Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind ; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind ; I 118 TENNYSON. VII. Light among the vanish'd ages ; star that gildest yet this phantom shore ; Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more ; VIII. Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Caesar's dome — Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound for ever of Imperial Rome — IX. Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human race, I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. - / ■ / • EARLY SPRING. I. Once more the Heavenly Power 25 30 35 40 ^^^^^ ,)^alax- .(J^*^- Makes all things new, a^ j^*-*^^- '^ I .And domes the red-plow'd hills i c^ / — w- . ^^^jy.j>^^ \ With loving blue ; 'V - 0^^^^ "^ "V ^W ^ K ® ' ^; • v., vat ^ The blackbirds have their wills, 5 The throstles too. ,^. li^rii^ EARLY SPRING. 119 25 30 35 ^(/ II. Opens a door in heaven : , .jr From skies of glass -^'-^ '^7 , sT/cc A -^"'^ A Jacob's ladder falls i-^ // ^ f On greening grass, ( ^^^-o^-^^ T^"^ ^ J J^?^ -facK^^v] And o'er the mountain-walls , , i c,t,cj^if-q ' / Young angels pass. }^ *~'^^ ^' j) III. /^^Tlr Before them fleets the shower, '^-^^^^ T'a^c • ^/ '1 i ' y^.lU'' \ I And burst the buds, And shine the level lands. And flash the floods ; The stars are from their hands - ) ^ Flung thro' the woods, 40 IV. The woods with living airs How softly fann'd. Light airs from where the deep, All down the sand, -' Is breathing in his sleep, ^-^ Heard by the land. ^^20 'K dtoJ>^ 5)% b 5 V. Jlx^^"^' S'^to ryA,* c\ O follow, leaping blood, . ,. . , . . -^ Th« season's lure ! >'^ ^.^.^<^ ^ O heart, look down and up Serene, secure. Warm as the crocus cup, Like snowdrops, pure 1 30 25 .^^,f<^ 120 TENNTSON. -T Past, Future glimpse and fade '^' V '<^vft> '-^Cu^ Thro' some slight spell, /■ \ • '-ti H..-o^>'^ O^ -^r-*- -" h.*^< tA-' n >vV^^ ^ \ - ^ gl6*°^ *^<^°^ yonder vale,,, ^ j^ ^"^ 'rT. ^V^^'^ ■ Some far blue fdl, W^*^^ > Tj P-^^ KJVfiaio i«i i^iuc iuii, n-»^- .r ■ / ) iicoM'^j] And sympathies, how frail, cOihcC i^^ , ' n . /•;„ In sound and smell ! y 35 .i VII. Till at thy chuckled note. Thou twinkling bird, . ^ [ The fairy fancies range, '^^ ^J' ,la^ \ And, lightly stirr'd, \ Ring little bells of change (^ From word to word. 40. Ti'^^ io ,^.Q'<^ra^-^ L?-- t--^") \{,l-^<^<2^ VIII. For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new. And thaws the cold, and fills The flower with dew ; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too. 45 FREEDOM. 121 FREEDOM. I. O thou so fair in summers gone, While yet thy fresh and virgin soul Inform'd the pillar'd Parthenon, The glittering Capitol ; II. So fair in southern sunshine bathed, But scarce of such majestic mien As here with forehead vapour-swathed In meadows ever green ; III. For thou — when Athens re^'gn'd and Rome Thy glorious eyes were dimm'd with pain To mark in many a freeman's home The slave, the scourge, the chain 3 10 IV. O follower of the Vision, still - In motion to the distant gleam, Howe'er blind force and brainless will May jar thy golden dream 15 V. Of Knowledge fusing class with class, Of civic Hate no more to be, Of Love to leaven all the mass, Till every Soul be free ; 20 r 122 TENNYSON. VI. Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar By changes all too fierce and fast This order of Her Human Star, This heritage of the past ; ♦ VII. scorner of the party cry That wanders from the public good, Thou — when the nations rear on high Their idol smear'd with blood. . 26 VIII. And when they roll their idol down — Of saner worship sanely proud ; Thou loather of the lawless crown 80 1 I As of the lawless crowd ; IX. How long thine ever-growing mind Hath stiird the blast and strown the wave, Tho' some of late would raise a wind To sing thee to thy grave, 35 X. Men loud against all forms of power — TJnfumish'd brows, tempestuous tonguec — Expecting all things in an hour — Brass mouths and iron lungs ! 40 i>,,V^ CROSSING THE BAR. CROSSING THE BAR. 123 (^ ,tt rrW- •t.-A J doJl^c? •kcrff', it. 5 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep - 't*. i^ - Turns again home. . . ^ j. ' 'A'V^'^I .^^,uCajYl-r ,4 v^- s-^'- .!*-' Twilight and evening bell, A^'^^-'t ^ -^ '^^^^jLjA^ i And after that the dark !. - '^ '•>^:jX'"K,-X>-iAa^:^ ^'"^^2^' And may there be no sadness of farewell, ^x^r, A^i-' ^^^^j-.V^*" When I embark ; " '"^ ' v /- For tho' from out cur bourne of Time and Place ^-<^y^^., ' Jt^"^ The flood may bear me far, ' ''* I hope to see my Pilot(f ace to face ) When I have crost the bar. 15 NOTES ON TENNYSON. Alfrkd Tennyson was the third son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Soraersby, a small village in Lincolnshire not fur from the sea-coast. Though in the neighbourhood of the fen country, Somersby itself lies "in a pretty pastoral district of sloping hills and large ash trees." "To the north rises the long peak of the wold, with its steep white road that climbs the hill above Thetford ; to the south, the land slopes gently to a small deep-channelled brook, which rises not far from Somersby and flows just below the parsonage garden." The scenery of his native village and its neighbourhood, where he spent his youth and early manhood, — the scenery of wold, and fen, and sandy coast — made a deep impress on the poet's mind, and is reflected again and again in his earlier writings. In the parsonage of Somersby, which was then the only considerable house in the little hamlet, Alfred was born August 6th, 1809. His father was a man of ability, with intellectual and artistic interests ; books were at hand, and the three elder boys not only became great readers, but from childhood were accustomed to write original verses. The life of the Tennysons was a somewhat secluded one j Alfred was naturally shy, with a bent towards solitary and imaginative pursuits. These tendencies may have been fostered by the character of his early education. He was not sent to a great public school, like most English boys of his class, but attended the village school at Somersby, then the grammar school at the neigh> bouring town of Louth, and was finally prepared for entering college by home tuition. Already before he had become an undergraduate, he was an author, having, along with his elder brother Charles, written a volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers, which was published at Louth in 1827 by a local bookseller. The work is creditable to such youthful poets (the poems contributed by Alfred were composed between his fifteenth and his seventeenth year), but more remarkable for the absence of marked immaturity than for the presence of positive merits. The breadth of the authors' reading is attested by quotations prefixed to the various pieces : Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Lucretius, Sallust, Taci- tus, Byron, Cowper, Gray, Hume, Moore, Scott, Beattie and Addison being all put under contribution. In 1828 Charles and Alfred entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where the eldest brother, Frederick, was already a student. There the Tenny- 125 126 NOTES ON TENNYSON. sons were associated with some of the most brilliant and promising of their contemporaries. Alfred formed an especially warm friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, a young man of extraordinary endow- ments, whose premature death he subsequently commemorated in In Memoriam. In 1829 Tennyson won the Chancellor's prize for English verse by a poem on " Timbuctoo," where for the first time in his work, there is some promise of future excellence, and some faint touches of his later style. Next year his poetic career may be said really to have be- gun with a small volume entitled Poems Chiefly Lyrical, which in such poems as Clarihel, The Dying Swan, Mariana, and The Poet, clearly exhibits some of his characteristic qualities. The volume was favourably reviewed by Leigh Hunt and Hallam, but severely criticized by ** Chris- topher North" in Blackwood. In the same year the author embarked on a very diflferent undertaking, going with Hallam to Spain in order to carry, to the revolutionists there, money and letters from English sym- pathizers. In 1831 his college career was brought to a close by the death of his father, and he returned to Somersby. Here he completed a second volume of poems, published in 1832. This marks another advance in poetic art, and contains some of his most characteristic pieces : The Lady of Shalott, Oenone, The Palace of Art, The Miller's Daughter, The Lotos-Eaters, The Two Voices. It should be remembered, however, that several of these do not now appear in their original form, and that much of their perfection is due to revisions later than 1832. This volume, as well as its predecessor, was severely criticized, especially by the Quarterly. But although in this article justice was not done to the merits of the volume, the strictures upon defects were in the main well grounded, as the poet himself tacitly acknowledged by omitting or amending in subsequent editions the objectionable passages. Another result of the hostility of the critics was that Tennyson, who was always morbidly sensitive to criticism even from the most friendly source, ceased publishing for almost ten years, except that verses from his pen occasionally appeared in the pages of Literary Annuals. This ten-years silence is characteristic of the man, of his self-restraint and power of patient application — potent factors in the ultimate perfection of his work. The sudden death of his friend Hallam, in September 1833, plunged Tennyson for a time in profound sorrow, but was doubtless eflfective in maturing and deepening his emotional and intellectual life. The poet's sister had been betrothed to Hallam ; over the household at Somersby, of which Alfred, in the absence of his elder brothers, I! LIFE. 127 was now the head, there gathered a deep gloom. The feelings and ideas which centred about this great sorrow of his youthful days, the poet soon began to embody in short lyrics ; these through successive years grew in number and variety, and finally took shape in what by many is considered Tennyson's greatest work, In Memoriam. It was in 1836, when Charles Tennyson was married to Louisa Sellwood, that in all probability Alfred fell in love with the bride's sister, to whom, in course of time he became engaged. The small fortune which he had inherited was insufficient to provide a mainten- ance for a married pair ; poetry, to which he had devoted his life, seemed unlikely ever to yield him a sufficient income. Yet, characteristically enough, Tennyson neither attempted to find a more lucrative profession, nor even departed from his resolve to refrain from again seeking public notice until his genius and hi. work had become fully matured. In consequence, the friends of his betrothed put an end to the correspond- ence of the lovers ; and a long period of trial began for the poet, when his prospects in love, in worldly fortune, in poetic success, seemed almost hopelessly overcast. In 1837 the family removed from Somersby to High Beech in Epping Forest, then to Tunbridge Wells, and then to the neighbourhood of Maidstone. The change of residence brought Tennyson into closer proximity with the capital, and henceforward, he frequently resorted thither to visit old friends like Spedding, and gradually became personally known in the literary circles of London. Among other notable men he met with Garlyle, found pleasure in the company of this uncouth genius and his clever wife, and, in turn, was regarded with unusual favour by a keen-eyed and censorious pair of critics. Tennyson was one of the very few distinguished men whose personality impressed Carlyle favourably. The account which the latter gives of Tennyson in a letter to Emerson, dated August 1844, is worth quoting at length : — " Moxon informs me that Tennyson is now in Town, and means to come and see me. Of this latter result I shall be very glpd. Alfred is one of the few British and Foreign Figures (a not increasing number, I think 1) who are and remain beautiful to me— a true human soui, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say. Brother ! However, I doubt he will not come ; ho often skips me in these brief visits to Town ; skips everybody, indeed ; being a man solitary and sad, aa certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,— carrying a bit of chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos. Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think ; indeed you see in his verses that he Is a native of 'moated granges,' and green flat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambrid>,'e, as for the liaw or Church ; being master of a small annuity oti his Father's decease, he preferred clubbing with his Mother and some 128 NOTES ON TENNYSON. Sisters, to live unpromoted and write poems. In this way he lives still, now here, now there ; the family always within reach of London, never in it ; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging: in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty— not much under it. One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate ; of sallow- brown complexion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy ; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic — fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and speculation free and plenteous : I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe ! We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell ; very chaotic — his way is through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless ; not handy for making out many miles upon." Meanwhile, in 1842, two years before this letter was written, Tennyson gave conclusive evidence of the power that was in him, by the publication of two volumes containing, in the first place, a selection from the poems of 1830 and of 1832, and, secondly, a large number of new pieces. Among the latter are Morte d^ Arthur y Ulysses, The Gardener's Daughter, The Talking Oak, Locksley Hall, Dora, St. Simeon Stylites, St. Agnes* Eve, *' Break, break, break," and the three poems "You ask me why," "Of old sat Freedom," **Love thou thy land." Such pieces as these represent the mature art of their author, and some of them he never surpassed. It was about the time of the publication of these volumes that the fortunes of their author reached their lowest point. The failure of a manufacturing scheme in which he had invested all his means left him penniless. "Then followed," says his son and biographer, "a season of real hardship, and many trials for my father and mother, since marriage seemed to be further off than ever. So severe a hypochondria set in upon him that his friends despaired of his life. * I have,* he writes, * drunk one of those most bitter draughts out of the cup of life, which go near to make men hate the world they live in.'" But, at length, the fates became propitious. In the first place the excellence of the collected poems of 1842 rapidly won general recognition ; during his ten years of silence Tennyson's reputation had been steadily growing, the two volumes of 1842 set it upon a firm basis. From that day to this, he has held the first place in general estimation among contemporary poets. In 1845 Wordsworth pronounced him "decidedly the first of our living poets " ; in the same year the fourth edition of the Poems of 1842 was called for, and the publisher, Moxon, said that Tennyson was the only poet by the publication of whose works he had not been a loser. Further, in 1845, the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, through the fntervention of Tennyson's old college friend Milnes (Lord Houghton), conferred upon him a pension of £200 LIFE. 129 a year. This was a timely relief to pecuniary difficulties which were at this date very embarrassing. The Princess^ his first long work, was published in 1847. Through a fanciful story of a Princess who founds a university for women, it gave a poetical presentation and solution of the ' woman question ' ; but rather disappointed, at the time, the high expectations excited by the earlier writings. On the other hand, In Memoriamy which appeared in 1850, has from the beginning been considered one of the finest products of his genius. It consists of a series of lyrics giving utterance to various moods and thoughts to which the great sorrow of his youth had given birth. These had been carefully elaborated during a long period, are extraordinarily finished in their expression and are fuller of substance than any other of the more ambitious woiks of their author. No other poem so adequately repre- sents the current thought and average attitude of Tennyson's generation in regard to many of the great problems of the time. In the year of the publication of In Memoriam, the laureateship, rendered vacant by the death of Wordsworth, was bestowed upon its author. In the same year his marriage with Emily Sellwood took place. They had been separated from one another for ten years ; Tennyson's age was forty- one, the bride's thirty-seven. But tneir fidelity was rewarded. " The peace of God," Tennyson said, **came into my life before the altar when I married her "; and indeed the remainder of the poet's long life, apart from the death in the first years of manhood of his second son, is a record of happiness and success such as does not fall to the lot of many men. After a tour in Italy the Tennysons in 1853 took up their residence at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, which was henceforth their home, and the poet entered upon a period of sure and increasing popularity and growing worldly prosperity. He never relaxed , however, even in advanced old age, his strenuous poetic industry ; hence a long series of works of a high order of merit, of which we will mention only the more important. In 1855, Maud, a lyrical monodrama, was published, about which critical opinion was then and still remains greatly divided, though the poet himself regarded it with special favour. In 1857, Bayard Taylor visited Tennyson at his home and records his impressions: *' He is tall and broad-shouldered as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of Southern darkness. Something in the lofty brow and aquiline nose suggests Dante, but such a deep, mellow chest-voice never could have come from Italian lungs. He proposed a walk, as the day was wonderfully clear and beautiful. \\'e climbed the steep comb I i 1 ' 130 NOTES ON TENNYSON. of the chalk cliflf, and slowly wandered westward until we reached the Needles, at the extremity of the Island, and some three or four miles distant from his residence. During the conversation with which we beguiled the way, I was struck with the variety of his knowledge. Not a little flower on the downs, which the sheep had spared, escaped his notice, and the geology of the coast, both terrestrial and sub- marine, were perfectly familiar to him. I thought of a remark that I had once heard from the lips of a distinguished English author [Thackeray] that Tennyson was the wisest man he knew." Tennyson, as such poems as The Lady of Shalott and Morte d^ Arthur show, had been early attracted by the legendary tales of King Arthur, which to several poets had seemed a rich storehouse of poetical material. About the year 1857 he began to occupy himself specially with these legends ; and from this time oh until the middle seventies his chief energy was given to the composition of a series of poems from these sources, which were ultimately arranged to form a composite whole, entitled the Idylls of the King, These poems proved very acceptable to the general taste, and the poet began to reap a fortune from the sale of his works. Of the volume published in 1862, entitled Enoch Arden, which mainly consisted of English Idyls, sixty thousand copies were rapidly sold. This, perhaps, marks the height of his popularity. In 1875 he entered on a new field with the publication of an historical drama, Queen Mary, followed in 1876 by a similar work, Harold, and by other dramatic pieces in later years. In the drama Tennyson was, less successful than in any other department which he attempted, and this lack of success gave rise to a widespread feeling that his powers were now in decline. Such a conclusion was most decisively negatived by the appearance of Ballads and Other Poems in 1880, where he returned to less ambitious and lengthy but more congenial forms — a collection which Mr. Theodore Watts terms "the iJiost richly various volume of English verse that has appeared in [Tennyson's] century." At intervals until the very close of his long life, he produced similar miscellaneous collections of poems : Tiresias and Other Poems, 1885, Demeter and Other Poems,'' 1889, The Death of Oenone and Other ^oems, 1892. Some of the pieces contained in these miscellanies were doubtless the gleanings of earlier years ; but in others there were qualities which clearly showed them to be the * Twenty thousand copies of this book were sold within a week.. LIFB. 131 products of a new epoch in a genius that went on changing and develop- ing even in advanced old age. In the most characteristic pieces, The Revenge, The Relief of Luchiow, Rizpah, Vastness, etc., there is a vigour and dramatic force absent in his earlier work, with less of that minute finish and elaborate perfection of phrase which is so often his chief merit. On the other hand, in Freedom, To Virgil, and Crossing the Bar, we have poems in the more familiar Tennysonian style, not a whit inferior to similar compositions in the volumes of his prime. In 1884 Tennyson was raised to the peerage as Baron of Aldworth and Farring- ford. The first part of his title was derived from a second residence which he had built for himself in Surrey, choosing a very retired situation in order that he might escape the idle curiosity of tourists. In 1886, the second great sorrow of his life befell Tennyson; his younger son, Lionel, died on the return voyage from India, where he had con- tracted a fever. To Tennyson's continued mental vigour in advanced old age, his works bear testimony ; his bodily strength was also little abated. "At eighty- two," his son reports, "my father preserved the high spirits of youth. He would defy his friends to get up twenty times quickly from a low chair without touching it with their hands while he was performing this feat himself, and one afternoon he had a long waltz with M in the ball room." This vigour was maintained almost to the very close of his long life. It was the sixth of October, 1892, when the great poet breathed his last. "Nothing could have been more striking than the scene during the last few hours," writes his medical attendant. "On the bed a figure of breathing marble, flooded and bathed in the light of the full moon streaming through the oriel window ; his hand clasping the Shakespeare which he had asked for but recently, and which he had kept by him to the end ; the moonlight, the majestic figure as he lay there, 'drawing thicker breath,' irresistibly brought to our minds his own 'Passing of Arthur.'" "Some friends and servants came to see him. He looked very grand and peaceful with the deep furrows of thought almost smoothed away, and the old clergyman of Lurgashall stood by the bed with his hands raised, and said, * Lord Tennyson, God has taken you, who made you a prince of men. Farewell ! ' " Some personal peculiarities may be added. Although so accurate an observer of nature, Tennyson was very short-sighted. He was subject to fits of intense abstrr-otion similar to those recorded of Socrates, ile ■aid to Mr. Knowles: ''Sometimes as I sit here alone in this great I ' ; i ■ t 1 ' 132 NOTES ON TENNYSON. I M room 1 get carried away out of sense and body, and rapt into mere existence, till the accidental touch or movement of one of my own fingers is like a great shock and blow and brings the body back with a terrible start."* He was accustomed to compose single lines or isolated passages, and to note down images and natural details which he preserved and would subsequently incorporate in his poems. At page 465 of the first volume of the Life, his biographer gives a number of these which had been gathered during various tours, e.g., " As those that lie on happy shores and see Thro' the near blossom slip the distant sail." •' Ledges of battling water." " A cow drinking from a trough on the hill-side. The netted beams of light played on the wrinkles of her throat." "His reading was always in a grand, deep, measured voice, and was rather ' itoning in a few notes than speaking. It was like a sort of musical thunder, far off or near — loud rolling or 'sweet and low* — according to the subject, and once heard could never be forgotten " (Knowles). Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie) confirms this, describing it as "a sort of mystical incantation, a chant in which every note rises and falk and reverberates again." But some who heard him complain that his reading was so inarticulate as to be scarcely intelligible. "His acquaintance with all previous poetry was unlimited and his memory amazing " (Knowles). Mrs. Oliphant, in her Autobiography, giving an account of a visit, says : *'I have always thought that Tennyson's appearance was too em- phatically that of a poet, especially in his photographs : the fine frenzy, the careless picturesqueness were almost too much. He looked the part too well: but in reality there was a roughness and acrid gloom about the man which saved him from his over-romantic appearance. The conversation turned somehow upon hh little play of 'The Falcon.' ... I said something about its beauty, and that I thought it just the kind of entertainment which a gracious prince might offer to his guests ; and he replied with a sort of indignant sense of grievance, * And they tell me people won't go to see it.' " His ideas in regard to ' the great problems ' seem to have varied from time to time. The Rev. Doctor Gatty records: "Many years ago I * Compare In Memoriam, xcv, and the trances of the Prince in The Princest. In reference to the former passage he said: " I've often a strange feeling of being wound and wrapped in the Qrcat Soul." GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 133 light played on had a conversation with tho poet in his attic study at Farringford, that lasted till nearly day-break. Ho discoursed on many subjects, and when we touched on religion, he said, * I am not very fond of creeds : it is enough for me to know that God Himself came down from heaven in the form of man.' " * "This is a terrible age of unfaith," he would say. "I hate utter unfaith, I cannot endure that men should sacrifice everything at the cold altar of what with their imperfect knowledge they choose to call truth and reason. One can easily lose all belief, through giving up the continual thought and care for spiritual things." He was always greatly interested in the question of a future life and clung passionately to the belief in a personal immortality. "Yes, it is true," he said in January, 1869, "that there are moments when the flesh is nothing to me, when I feel and know the flesh to be the vision, God and the spiritual the only real and true. Depend upon it, the Spiritual is the real : it belongs to me more than the hand and the foot." Mr. Knowles reports that, in conversation with him, Tennyson formu- lated his creed thus : " There's a Something that watches over us ; and our individuality endures: that's my faith, and that's ell my faith." *' My greatest wish," he once said, "is to have a clearer vision of God." General Characteristics. Tennyson's Success. — Tennyson's poetic career was an unusually long one, extending as it did over more than sixty years, and during all that time there was no marked decadence of power such as has been so often manifest in the later work of imaginative writers. Very early in that career he was successful in winning the highest position in popular estiumtion, and may be said to have maintained it steadily until the end. The partial eclipse of his fame during the seventies was due rather to his employing his powers in the uncongenial sphere of the drama, than to any actual decay of force. It must be further noted that Tennyson's work was not merely esteemed, it was read — and that not by a clique of admirers merely, or by a select number of cultivated people, or by the uncritical public alone ; it was widely read and really enjoyed by all classes that are at all interested in poetry. Like Pope he was speedily and generally accepted as adequately voicing the thoughts and feelings of his contemporaries. Such success always *Ooiupare the prologue to In Memoriam. I ; 134 NOTES ON TENNYSON. implies some specially happy adaptation of the genius of the writer to the conditions of his era, — an adaptation which spares him from the conflict and dissipation of force arising from attempts to embody themes and to adopt methods to which the ago is little favourable ; the inborn aptitudes of such a poet must be in harmony with existing tendencies and the tastes of his contemporaries. Poetic conditions in his time. — Tennyson himself indicates the prime conditions, positive and negative, to which the successful poet of his own time had to accommodate himself. ** I soon found," he once said in conversation with his friend, Mr. James Knowles, ' * that if I meant to make any mark at all it must be by shortness, for all the men before me had been so diffuse and all the big things had been done. To get the workmanship as nearly perfect as possible is the best chance for going down the stream of time. A small vessel on fine lines is likely to float further than a great raft."* Tennyson here emphasizes two points, (1) the very obvious fact that he is a late poet, and (2), in consequence of that fact, that he could hope to excel only by perfection in detail and finish in tech- nique. He is not merely a late poet in the midst of a vast accumula- tion of the work of predecessors in his own and other languages; the natural effect of such lateness is intensified by the fact that he comes at the close of one of those eras of marked fertility which are conspicuous at intervals in the history of poetic litera- ture, and are separated by other eras of comparative barrenness and mediocrity. The great movement which had its beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and reached its brilliant culmination in the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley and Keats, was, when Tennyson reached maturity (as is abundantly clear to us now), passing into its latest phase. He is a poet, if not of the decline, at least of the close, when the first enthusiasm has spent itself, when the new fields have been traversed, when the new forms have lost their novelty. Such a writer is under serious disad- vantages ; the most obvious or suitable themes have been treated, the early freshness has vanished. But first enthusiasm, new methods, and new themes are not favourable to perfection in detail. That comes from experience, from calm judgment, and laborious care. And here the later poet has advantages which the earlier does not enjoy. Great- ness of conception may be supposed to be dependent on the individual mind, but the history of all arts shows that supreme technical skill can * See the interesting article entitled Aspects of Tennyson in Nineteenth Century for January, 1893. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 135 mth Century for only be attained through the experiments, successes, and failures of generations of artists ; primitive art is always awkward, new attempts inevitably suffer under defects of form. The oppor- tunity for the poet in Tennyson's day, as he himself thought, lay in techn- ^ue, in finish, in detail j and his own endow- ments and circumstances were such as to fit him for success in these respects. The conditions of his personal life were favourable to culture. Beyond preceding eras, the Nineteenth Century possessed the historic sense, rendered accessible, and was capable of appreciating, the literary stores of the past. Tennyson himself was endowed with openness of mind, catholic tastes, great powers of assimilation, and scholarly aptitudes. He became early familiar with the best that had been done ; he was well read not only in his mother tongue, but in Greek, Latin and Italian literatures. If, then, he felt (as he himself confesses) hampered by the existence of all this splendid poetry of his predecessors, he at least succeeded in making the best of the circum- stance, — studied their art, borrowed multitudinous hints, phrases, images from their works. So the reader of his works is struck by his eclecticism, the power of learning from writers of diverse genius, ages, and nations, and of welding varied materials into new and perfect wholes. Especially do we note this breadth and catholicity of Tenny- son's genius, when we compare his work with that of his immediate fore- runners, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Scott, each somewhat narrow in his poetic tastes, and excelling within a somewhat limited province. Tennyson profits by the example of writers as different as Wordsworth and Keats j he attempts varied subj". tn and diflferent manners : classic, romantic, domestic themes ; the simple and the ornate style ; lyric, dramatic, narrative poetry ; song, monologue, idyll. His success is, upon the whole, extraordinary ; and this versatility makes it difficult to characterize his work in general terms. At the same time, it is abundantly manifest that only certain of these attempts are wholly congenial to his mind and manner, that others, however excellent, are tours deforce — the results of great general poetic power patiently and judiciously employed in using what he has learnt from others. Perfection of his work in detail. — To this breadth of tswte and of reading, this power of profiting by example, Tennyson added a natural aptitude for detail, for careful and finished work. His poetic character is here in harmony with the general tendency of his age, especially manifest in the minuteness and accuracy of modern science. The same spirit is present in his delineations of nature, which surpass those of 136 NOTES ON TENNYSON. earlier poets in the minuteness and accuracy of the features noted. His earliest publications seem to show that what impelled him to poetry was not the need of embodying some pressing thought or feeling, but the delight in heaping together beautiful details, the pleasure in musical phrases, exquisite imagery, in the skill of the artist. Whatever charm exists in such characteristic poems as Claribel, or the Recollections of the Arabian Nights, lies in the details ; the meaning and purport of the whole is vague. Tennyson's earliest efforts are marked by paucity of thought, absence of intense feeling, but by exuberant richness of expression. This richness was, at the beginning, excessive and un- formed ; but presently the poet showed that he had unusual capacity for laboi'ious revision and self-criticism. He rapidly developed critical judgment and self-restraint. He could learn eveu from the galling article in The Quarterly for 1833.* We hear of the endless pains with which he polished line after line before publication ; and, even after that, the successive texts of many passages t exhibit emendations extraordinarily numerous, minute, and effective. One is particularly surprised by the extent to which in many cases the final beauty and power of a passage are the creation of these changes, and are absent from the original text. Even the limitations of Tennyson's genius helped him to excel in his own particular sphere. He lacked the impetuous temperament which we are wont to associate with the highest poetic endowment, ardour which springs from intense feeling or the consciousness of abundant material pressing for utterance, or of great thoughts to be revealed. There are, indeed, two kinds of artistic workers. Some are so domin- ated by the feeling, or thought, that it seems to take form without the conscious intervention of the artist himself. Or, at least, his thoughts and feelings are primarily busied with the whole conception — the mood, character, situation, or whatever else it may be — and all details are suggested from, and considered in relation to, this central idea. In others, there is no such dominating inspiration ; the primary interest is in the beauty of detail ; the whole is of secondary interest sought out as a centre and support for the parts. To Wordsworth, his own message seemed of such weight, that its form must have always had but a second place ; the emotional temperament of Shelley would not permit * See Dixon's Primer of Tennyson, pp. 40, f ol. • ' Some of the pieces which drew forth [the reviewer's] sarcaatic comments were omitted from future editions, and almost all were altered or re-written in respect of the censured passages." t In The Lady qf Shdlott, Oenone, The Lotos-Eaters, striking examples are to be found. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 137 noted. His poetry was ling, but the e in musical itever charm icollectiom of d purport of d by paucity t richness of aive and un- sual capacity loped critical 1 the galling endless pains cation ; and, .ges t exhibit Btive. One is ases the final i changes, and to excel in his rament which ment, ardour of abundant be revealed, are so domin- Q without the his thoughts n — the mood, 1,11 details are ;ral idea. In try interest is sought out as own message s had but a lid not permit Eces which drew l-e editions, and Is. him coldly to reshape what had been moulded in the white heat of inspiration. These two poets belong to the first-mentioned kind. But if the relative importance of the impressions made upon the reader by successive passages and by the whole outcome, be a criterion, Tennyson, unlike them, is an artist of the other class. Of this there is a quaint illustration in a letter* of his friend Spedding, written shortly before the composition of Enoch Arden: "Alfred," he says, "wants a story to treat, being full of poetry with nothing to put it in. " We get a hint of this tendency to work up details, apart from the theme which they were to unfold, in the poet's letter to Mr. S. E. Dawson prefixed to the latter's edition of The Princess: "There was a period in my life," writes Tennyson, "when, as an artist — Turner, for instance, — takes rough sketches o^ landscape, etc. , in order to work them eventually into some great picture ; so 1 was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five words or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in nature." We note, too, how he uses over again, in new connectiond, lines and phrases employed in pieces which he suppressed. Metrical and musical effects. — The most universal and character- istic quality of Tennyson's work, then, is its perfection ' detail — its finished technique, the beauty which pertains to each line and phrase. We may next inquire by what devices he attains this beauty of detail, and in what special peculiarities of technique does this mastery exhibit itself. If we turn for a clue to his earlier poems, where his natural bent is most likely to exhibit itself clearly, the first quality which gives them distinction is the subtle adaptation of sound to sense, — the at- tempt, by varying of lines and stanzas, by the adjustment of verse pauses, of metrical feet, of vowel and consonantal sounds, to reflect and suggest the meaning and emotional accompaniments of the thought expressed. The poet, in fact, seeks to approximate through the articu- late sounds of verse to the eflfects produced by music. The poem to which he gave the first place in the volume of 1830, significantly entitled " C'aribei, a Melody " exhibits this musical quality almost to the ex- clusion of any other ; and the prevalence of this quality throughout the volume is the most novel and striking characteristic of the new poet's work. An attempt of this kind naturally leads to the taking of great liberties wiiu the regular norm of verse in order to attain suitably varied eflfects ; hence one is struck by the apparent capriciousness of lines and stanzas ; and Coleridge was led to say after examining these pieces that the author " had begun to write poetry without aples are to be ^Quoted in Dixon's Primer, p. 107. 138 NOTES ON TENNYSON. » ' very well understanding what metre was." In time, however, Tennyson learned to combine musical with properly metrical effects, and such a piece as The Lotos-Eaters is an example of his triumphant success. But everywhere in his poetry, this imitative rhythm is present, most effective, perhaps, when least obtrusive — when it is felt, but is scarcely capable of being exactly indicated and analysed. The influence of this tendency on his blank verse is to give it great variety, and to produce a large number of lines in which wide departures are made from the regular metrical norm. For example, in the following cases there ie a multiplication of unaccented syllables : Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn. —The Princess. Of some precipitous rivulet to the sea. — Oareth and Lynette. Melody on branch and melody in mid air. I saw the flaring atom-streams Ruining along the illimitable inane. -Ibid. —Lucretius. Again, by the arrangement of the main pauses, a sudden break is made in the flow of the verse in keeping with the meaning conveyed : his arms Clash'd ; and the sound was good to Gareth's ear. —Oareth and Lynette. Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave Drops flat, — The Last Tournament. made his horse Caracole ; then bow'd his homage, bluntly saying, etc. Flash'd, started, met him at the door, suid these, etc. — Ibid. —Ibid. These are two of the commonest devices of this character, but a little careful examination will reveal a great many of a more subtle or com- . posite kind, for example : Down the long stairs, nesitating. So strode he back slow to the wounded king, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Lancelot and Elaine. -Morte d' Arthur. —Ulysses. The long day wanes : the slow moon climbs : the deep Moans round with many voices. —Ibid. GENERAL CHARA0TBBISTIC8. 139 'Lucretius, Again, we are often conscious of a subtle appropriateness in the choice of the vowel or consonantal sounds : The moan of doves in immemorial elms And murmuring of innumerable bees. —Tht JhrincMt. The long low dune and lazy-plunginy tea. —The Latt Tournament. Shoc'iLS, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn, Shield breatcings, and the clash of brands, the crash, etc. —The Passing of Arthur. The league-long roller thundering on the reef. —Enoch Ard.e/n.'^ untament. Kindred but brcador etfects are produced by the poet's happy selec- tion and management of stanza-forms, of which his works afford a great vanity. Compare, for example, the four-line stanzas of hi Memoriam, of the song in The Brook, of The Palace of Art^ and note how each one admirably suits the theme for which it is employed. Many different elements are combined in the appropriate and subtly varied musio of the following exquisite lines : — I. O that 'twere possible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true lovt Round me onoe again I II. When I was wont to meet her In the silent woody places By the home that gave me birth. We stood tranced in long embraces Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter Than anything on earth. *Al80 contrast the vowel effects in On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full with And fling him far into the middle mere : Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word. For further examples, see the Introduction to the Tennyson volumes in English elastics edited by Mr. B0W9, < 1 ! Ill ' '9 I iif ! 140 NOTES ON TENNYSON. m. A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee : Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be. Etc. —Maud, Pt. ii. Fictorial details used to sugg^est a thought, feeling, or situation.— In the last paragraph attention has been drawn to the way in which the poet, through sound and metrical eflfects, indirectly suggests and in- stils the fitting tone of mind a,nd feeling. Another peculiarity of his technique, conspicuous in his earliest volumes and pervading all his work, is a similar indirect method of suggesting or presenting a situation through the details of landscape and other material surroundings. The genius of Tennyson is eminently pictorial ; he delights and excels in pictures of external objects ; The uMollections of the Arabian Nights is nothing but a series of these, and the whole of the volume which contained this poem, bore evidence of this tendency. Such a preference does the poet's genius have for these picturesque eflfects that, instead of directly describing some inner condition of mind or feeling, or in addition to directly describing it, he reflects it through the external surround- ings. For example, he wishes us to understand and feel the desolation and loneliness of Mariana in the poem so named ; yet he does not describe the mood directly. The whole poem is a picture of the moated grange and its surroundings, from which he selects every sight and sound that may suggest loneliness and ong neglect. "There is not, throughout the poem, a single epithet which belongs to the objects irrespective of the story with which the scene is associated, or a single detail introduced which does not aid the general expression of the poem. They mark either the pain with which Mariana looks at things, or the long neglect to which she has been abandoned, or some peculiarity of time and place which marks the morbid minuteness of her attention to objects."* The landscape of The Lotos-Eaters affords a masterly illustration of the same artifice. In The Lady of Shalott the scene changes to harmonize with the situation of the heroine ; in the Idylls of the King we find this device systematically followed ; the season of the year during which the action of each idyll is represented as taking place reflects and reinforces the pervading tone of that particular incident. ^See Brimley's Esaay, pp. 8 fol., from whioh the above sentences are quoted. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. Ul Vocabulary and Phraseology. — Passing on to an examination of more minute elements of his style, his vocabulary and phraseology, we find them characterized by the same care and discrimination, by the same seeking after picturesque eflfects and beauty ; we feel also the same sense of conscious artifice ; we note a constant indebtedness to the works of his predecessors, and a masterly skill in adapting for his own pur- poses the happy phrases and images which he has met in his reading.* Tennyson, as has already been noted, is a versatile poet, and great variety of styles may be found in his collected works, — sometimes he is simple, sometimes realistic, but the manner most natural to him, which is most pervading, and most characteristic in his work, is a highly ornate one. It exhibits a richness and fulness of colour and imagery that is apt to withdraw the mind from the whole theme and outcome of a piece, to admiration and enjoyment of each passing phrase and image. The poet seems instinctively to select his theme so as to give scope for the exhibition of this quality, rather than for bringing home to the heart and imagination of the reader some profoundly human situation. The anguish of despised and deserted love is a subject for the highest poetry ; but it is not the anguish and sadness of the woman Oenone for which we chiefly care when we read Tennyson's poem, but the idyllic and classic surroundings of the mountain -nymph, the beauty of successive lines, pictures, and passages. Morte d' Arthur (masterpiece although it is) and all the Idylls win their power in a large measure from the same sources. For such purposes the simple and direct style is little suitable — the style where the words seem to come to the poet's pen unbidden, where the expression is so naturally the outcome of the idea as to be transparent, where the thought is so completely brought home to the imagination and heart that the manner is unnoted, t In Tennyson's expression the artist is always felt ; the conscious perception of his skill is a large part of the pleasure. So in his diction, while he does not avoid the vocabulary of ordinary life which Wordsworth pre- ferred, he on the whole prefers a word or phrase with distinctly poetic *Mr. Ohurton Collins devotes a volume (Illustrations of Tennyson) to tracing such adaptations. Many coses are pointed out in the notes to this volume. t" Tennyson's decorative art, his love of colour for its own sake, of music for its own sake, lead him at times into what must always seem to the highly cultivated sense extravagances of colour, an over-profusion, a lush luxuriance, and into similar ex- travagances of sound. To put it briefly, he rarely trusts his thought, as Wordsworl h trusted it, to build for itself a natural home of expression. So much an artist was he that Nature could not speak his language, and hence the inevitable word is rarely beard in his poetry." (Dixon, Friiner (\f Tennyson, pp. 83-4.) i M m aim 'I 142 NOTES ON TENNYSON. associations. He employs the language of earlier poetry, obsolete and rare words, antiquated preterits and past participles, novel compounds, double-epithets.* He thus wins a charm for his style, but it is not the charm of simplicity and directness, but of florid and elaborate beauty. Ingenious and picturesque periphrases supply the place of commonplace terms: so we find "the knightly growth that fringed [Arthur's] lips," "the azure pillars of the hearth" (smoke from chimneys), "moving isles of winter" (icebergs), "took a word and played upon it and made it two colours" (punned), " unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt," " nor fail in child ward care " (care of children), etc. In this matter he is a follower of Keats, to whom of all English poets he owes most and whom he most resembles ; but Tennyson manifests, after his earliest attempts at least, a moderation and good judgment which are his own. The pictorial character of his style is observable in the success with which he suggests the proper image by even a single word : " the ripple wasJdng in the reeds," "the wild water lapping on creawiy spray," "little breezes —Tithonua, the crag," " she shrilling, let me die," dmk and shiver. " The ever-silent spaces of the East Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn. Fiercely flies The blast of North and East, and ice Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves, And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Above the wood which grides and clangs Its leafless ribs and iron horns. —In Memoriam, cvii. Similarly we note the exquisite finish and picturesqueness of phrase : " the lucid interspace of world and world." So dark a forethought rolled about his brain As on a dall day in an ocean cave The blind wave feeling round his long sea hall In silence. * Such as hest, marish, hooves, enow, adown, anear, boscage, brewis, boughts, cate, to oar, rathe, lurdan, tarriance, tinct, brajid, Paynim, scud ; clomb, sware, spake, brake, foughten; brain-feverous, green-glimmering, sallow-rifted, strange-statued, crag-earven, ruby-budded. Of course such words form only a very small percentage, but it should be noted that a few scattered words of this character suffice to give the predominant effect to a passage. Just as a few dialectic terms and forms suflloe, in the best writers, to give the desired local or conversational colour. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 143 —Tithonus. Akin to this felicity of phrasing and this success in appropriating pic- turesque words, in his power of seizing on the minuter features of nature, and his skill in flashing them upon the inward eye. It is par- ticularly in the minuteness and accuracy of his observation of nature, that his descriptions are differentiated from those of his predecessors : hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides three-fold to show the fruit within. With blasts that blow the poplar white. And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold. When rosy plumelets tuft the larch. And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March. —The Brook. -In Mtmoriam, Ixii. —Ibid, xi. (See also preceding stanzas). —Ibid, xoi. Till now the doubtful dark reveal'd The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. -Ibid, xcv. The steer forgot to graze And, where the hedgerow cuts the pathway, stood Leaning his horns into the neighbour field, And lowing to his fellows. —The Gardener's Daughter. Nigh upon the hour When the lone hern forgets his melancholy. Lets down his other leg, and stretching, dreairp Of goodly supper in a distant pool. —Gareth and Lynette. Lyrical expression of thought and feeling.— This skill in tech- nique which we have been emphasizing, and the patient laboriousness and good judgment of Tennyson are qualities of wide application, and likely to give a measure of success in almost any sort of poetry which he might attempt. And indeed this success has in some measure followed the poet everywhere. In his dramas, for example, a species of art to which by universal admission, neither the poet's genius, nor the circumstances of his life, nor the conditions of his age were suited, the critics are disposed to wonder less at the defects exhibited than at 144 NOTES ON TENNYSON. the excellence attained. Accordingly, to assertions which are true of Tennyson's work in general, it may often be possible to adduce striking exceptions. If we deny him the power of representing commonplace, contemporary men, or humour, we are confronted with The Northern Farmer; if playfulness, with The Talking Oak; if realistic tragic power, with Rizpah. Yet, while not denying the many shapes in which the poet's geuius has shown itself, there are certain forms in which he mani- festly is most completely at his ease, and certain kinds of poetry which ,Q associate especially vith him. In the first place, Tennyson excels in the lyric delineation cf his own moods and feelings ; of this power, In Memoriam gives the fullest exemplar. Among these moods he has a unique gift for rendering vague, evanescent, subtle shades of feeling, so delicate as scarcely to be capable of direct expression in language ; but which may be adumbrated — by a method which we have already noted to be specially Tennyson's own — through the rhythm and music of the verse and through the use of external details. So the familiar song ''Break, break, break" finds expression for dumb, wistful grief in the grey, dull scenery of the coast.* "Tears, idle tears," "Far, far away," Crossing the Bar, **The splendour falls," etc., furnish other masterly examples of the same power. Expression of feelingf and thought through concrete pictures. — In the second place, the poet excels in the indirect presentation of similar moods, feelings and thoughts through an objective situation or character. We have already called attention to this species of poetry in Mariana, but higher manifestations of this faculty are aflf^/rded by Ulysses, Tithonus, The Lotos- Eaters, Morte d' Arthur, Merlin and the Gleam. Here the traits of character, the details of scene or situation are selected not merely in order to produce an effective picture, although that is ( ae object, but to body forth an inner experience. The poet himself has told us that this is true of the finest of these poems, Ulysses. He says, after speaking about In Memoriam : " There is more of my- self in ** Ulysses," w^ich was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that stiU life must be fought out to the end" * See Button's Literary Essaya, p. 372, f ol. : " Observe how the wash of the sea on the cold gray stones is used to prepare the mind for the feeling of helplessness with which the deeper emotions break against the hard and rigid element of human speech ; how the picture is then widened out till you see the bay with children laugh- ing on its shore, and the sailor-boy singing on its surface, and the stately ships pass- ing on in the offing to their unseen haven, all with the view of helping us to feel the contrast between the satisfied and unsatisfied yearnings of the human heart." lit 1 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. U5 (See article by Mr. Knowles, Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1893). Such a poem gives scope to the poet's pictorial faculty, yet it is imbued with a deeper meaning and intenser feeling which elevates it above mere description. * His Idylls. — In the third place, Tennyson's qualities lend themselves especially to, and have been repeatedly employed upon, still another poetic form, the Idyll. The name, which, like tlie thing, is derived from the Greeks, means ' a little picture, 'f It was one of the latest literary forms to arise in Greek literature, and was de\ eloped in an era resembling our own, when to use Tennyson's language, all the great things had been done, and the poet's chance for going down the stream of time lay in brevity and finish. The word 'idyll,' therefore, (though like moat poetic terms, it can only be vaguely defined) is applied to short poems of a pic- torial character, couched in an elaborate and finished style, where the aim of the poet is rather to charm the aesthetic feelings by the beauty of the pictures suggested, and by the exquisite skill of the workmanship, than to move the heart by the greatness of the theme, or the truth and intensity of the delineation. In the development of poetry, grand and obvious subjects are IL Ay to be treated first ; and since these are themselves moving and beautiful, the poet cannot do better than bring them home, with the utmost vividness and truth, to the imagination of his readers ; this he will best succeed in doing by the use of the simple, transparent, direct style. But when ihe great themes are exhausted, and the poets, in search of fresh matter, turn to trivial subjects, or subjects not wholly beautiful, or not intensely interesting and touching, they strive to make amends, for these deficiencies, by a style which gives pleasure in itself, by ornamentation which is beautiful and appropriate, but not absolutely needful for the presentation of the theme, and by ideal- izing with a view to aesthetic charm, rather than with a view to profound emotional efi'ects. I.i Oenone, for example, Tennyson presents a subject *See Hutton, Literary Essays, p. 364, fol.: "Even when Tennyson's poems are uniformly moulded by an 'infused' soul, one not infrequently notices the excess of the faculty of vision over the governing conception which moulds the vision, so that I think he is almost always most successful when his poem begins in a thought or a feeling rather than from a picture or narrative, for then the thought or feeling dominates and controls his otherwise too lavish fancy. ' Ulysses' and ' Tithonus ' are far superior to ' Oenone,' exquisite as the pictorial workmanship of ' Oenone ' is. . . . . Whenever Tennyson's pictorial fancy has had it in any degree in its power to run away with the guiding and controlling mind, the richness of the workmanship has to some extent overgrown the spiritual principle of his poema." tSee Stedman's Victorian Poets, ohap. vL ii 146 KOTES ON TfiNNYSON. !i i I 'M from Greek legend, unreal and remote to us, and therefore, however pathetic the situation represented, incapable of kindling our deepest sym- patLy. On the other hand, it is a subject full of aesthetic situations, affording ample scope for the display of sensuous beauty, and free from the commonplaceness and ugliness which must always uling to what is derived from our actual world. In other idylls, the poet does not go so far afield for a theme ; in The Gardener's Daughter, he takes contem- porary life ; but again, he selects on the ground of beauty and charm, and excludes every trait which might interfere with these ; as a conse- quence, we may say, the picture is so idyllic, that we scarcely feel it to be actual and real. It does not stir the deeper feelings connected with love, as Romeo and Juliet does ; the poet makes no such attempt. Again, in Enoch Arden we have a theme intensely pathetic, taken from homely, actual English life j yet the author does not depend mainly upon the genuine poetic power of his matter, does not treat it dimply, as Wordsworth has treated a similar theme in Michael ; Tennyson's treatment is idyllic, and the actual characteristics of the story are lost in the gorgeous and alien ornament.* Again the Idylls of the King, though in their final shape aiming at something beyond mere idyllic beauty, and bound into a larger unity, are yet on the basis of their general style and character, properly termed idylls. Their chief interest does not depend upon the loftiest elements that can enter into a work of art, the truthful and powerful presentation of human life and character ; they do not stir our sympathies and interest as these are stirred by the spectacle of actual existence. For notwithstanding the pathos and tragic force of occasional passages, we are, on the whole, drawn to the Idylls of the King, not by our sympathy with the personages, their suflferings and their destiny, but by enjoyment of the verse, by diction and imagery, by the charm of a picture more *See Bagehot's Essay on Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning. Mr. Bagehot happily cites, as an exaggerated example of this ornate style, the following passage, where the poet intentionally obscures and hides the real subject, viz., the peddling of tah (which is certainly not poetical) by quite extraneous details : Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face. Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales. Not only to the market-cross were known But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp And peacock yew-tree of the lonely hall. Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 147 romantic and sensuously beautiful than that aflforded by the real world, Tennyson showed a certain shyness of the task of representing actual life as it is. The condition of society, manners, and thought in the Idylls of the King plainly did not exist at any period of the world's history. In The Princess, where the theme and central situation belongs essen- tially to the present day, where the character, thoughts, aims, pursuits of the heroine bear unmistakably the impress of the nineteenth century, the poet does not venture to give these a realistic setting ; but with the aid of reminiscences from chivalry and the Middle Ages, constructs a wholly fanciful but very beautiful background for his picture. Some poets reveal the great and beautiful by penetrating beneath the super- ficial husk of the commonplace and ugly in life about us ; others, like Keats and Tennyson, by casting about it an atmosphere of charm, a glamour of fancy. " It is the distance," said Tennyson, '* that charms me in the landscape, the picture and the past, and not the immediate to-day in which I move. " * In pointing out the fact that idyllic poetry is not of the highest order, we are neither contemning it nor disparaging Tennyson. In the domain of poetic art there are many mansions ; the idyll has its place and functions. We do not always desire the grander, more pro- found, and therefore more exacting, art of Othello and Lear. At times we are glad to escape to the charm and beauty of a fanciful world, remote from this of our real experience. In the sort of poetry which soothes and charms, yields calm pleasure, and pure, yet sensuous, delight, Tenny- son is a master ; and, in particular, he has almost identified the idyll in English literature with his own name. His longer works. — One point in Tennyson's deliverance (see p. 134) on the conditions of poetry in his day, remains to be noted. Whether it is true or not that "all the big things had been done," it is unquestion- ably true in Tennyson's own case that he makes his mark "by short- ness." Grandeur and grasp of conception, the ability to conceive a great whole which should be an eflFective artistic unit, was not his. That mental peculiarity which, as we have seen, inclined him to work from details upwards, rather than from the general conception down- wards, is still more evident when we examine the structure of his more ambitious attempts. His longer poems are made by joining together smaller wholes ; their unity is a second and added idea. In In Memo- riam, there is, doubtless, a line of development, a connection in the * Aspects of Tennyton, in Nineteenth Century for January, 1893. 148 NOTES ON TENNYSON. fi M thoughts, and a unity of tone among the several lyrics ; they arise from a common germinal experience, they follow in natural sequence ; but they are not manifestly members of an organized body to whose beauty and completeness they contribute, and which would be maimed by their absence. They are scarcely more a whole, than the series of Shakespeare's Sonnets; they are not a unit in the sense in which Macbeth, or Othello, or Romeo and Juliet, or Paradise Lost is a unit. Tennyson's remark as to the way in which In Memoriam was con- structed is significant in this connection : "The general way of its being written was so queer that if there were a blank space, I would put in a poem,"* and might, apparently, be applied also to the Idylls of the King and to Maud. It is noteworthy with regard to the former — the most ambitious of his "big things " — that several of the parts were pub- lished before the whole was clearly conceived, if conceived at all (See notes on Lancelot arid Elaine, p. 206); and that several other parts were added after the whole had been apparently completed. The unity is of the loosest kind ; there is no steady development of plot interest. Each idyll does not win its complete and deepest interest from its relation to the whole, as in the case with each scene of Shakespeare's plays, and each book of Paradise Lost. Again in Maud, the central and finest lyric *'0 that 'twere possible" was published long before Maud was written or dreamed of. It was a second thought to build around this a series of songs which should unfold a character and a story ; the poem affords no stringent standard by which we can say that each of these songs is, or is not necessary; they might have been either more or fewer. What is of still greater importance : several of these songs — the one just refc red to, for example — do not lose, but actually gain by being considered apart from the context, by being separated from the hysterical hero and his story. There remains (apart from the dramas) one other long work The Princess ; this does possess more of unity ; yet the poet himself is sensible of some incongruity in the structure ; and in order that his work may not be tried by the strictest standard of art, he imaginatively accounts for this defect by adding a prologue and epilogue which ex- plain that The Princess is not to be treated as the conception of one mind, but as a story told by seven different narrators, and, in con- sequence, it 'moves in a strange diagonal. '+ This apology for a lack of consistency is thrust into the foreground by the second title of the piece, "The Princess; a Medley." To sum up, Tennyson's highest * Aspects of Tennyson, by Enowles, in Nineteenth Century for Jan, 1893. tSee 11. 27-28 ot the Coiuslusion to The Princess. ^ QBNERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 149 excellences do not arise from qualities which can be exhibited only in extensive poems upon great and broad themes, but from qualities which may also belong to short unambitious pieces. He requires neither the grandest sort of theme, nor a very extensive canvas to reveal the full power of his art. General character of Tennyson's thought.— We have emphasized the adaptation of the peculiar endowments of Tennyson to the conditions and opportunities of poetic art in hi a day. These endowments have given him extraordinary excellence in technique ; Tennyson is one of the most versatile and perfect artists among English poets. Turning now from form to thought and matter, such rank can no longer be maintained for him. In those earliest pieces where we find the main characteristics of his technique (though as yet somewhat crude) abundantly present, we also observe, on the whole, comparative +/i'nness of matter. Undoubt- edly, as he grew older, and experience and knowledge increased, his work became much less purely pictorial and fanciful j he infused more of human nature into his poems, dwelt less aloof in a world of fancy * ; his sym- pathies widened, his heart was touched to deeper issues, and there was more of thought, of what Matthew Arnold calls * the criticism of life'. A growing realism in the characters, and scenes depicted, and in the style employed, is especially noticeable in his later miscellaneous pieces beginning with the Poems and Ballads of 1880. But, after all, what gives Tennyson his high and unique place among the poets is, not power of thought, but power of form. He has no specially profound insight into character, or broad experience of life. His sensitive, shy, and, apparently, little genial nature, and the seclusion of his habits were not favourable to acquiring these. Nor is there any special originality in his ideas or in his attitude toward the facts of life. On the other hand, his receptive and active intelligence readily assimilated conceptions which were in the air ; his calm and sane judgment enabled him to seize tnem in their truer and more permanent aspects ; so that, while he makes no bold and original contributions to our store of ideas, no poet probably in the whole range of English literature has more fully and adequately voiced the thought and spirit of his own generation. This is another cause of his popularity. The ordinary reader is not repelled by ideas, or ways of viewing them, to which he is unaccustomed ; he finds the questions in which he is interested, and the current opinions in ^Compare for example the fanciful and unreal, though exquisitely beautiful Lady (^ Shalott, Mrith the more human story, made out of the same material, in Lancelot and Elaine. \]i\\ \\'l\\ !!"|! '^i|' !h I • < 150 NOTES ON TENNYSON. regard to them. Fortunately for the poet, the age was fertile in novel aiul genniiual conceptions, and he liad rare skill in embodying these in poetic form without giving any sense of incongruity. His entrance upon his literary career was contemporaneous with the beginning of a marked epoch in intellectual and national progress.* In politics, the years of repression and stagnation which had originated in the dread of the French Revolution, and been prolonged by the struggle against Napoleon for national existence, began, about 1820, to yield before new forces in the political and intellectual world ; it was fully ushered in by the realiza- tion of Parliamentary Reform in 1832. It was an age of rapid change, of great national development, of extraordinary commercial and scien- tific progress, of political theories and reforms, of new movements in philosophy and religion, and, in its earlier part, of great Iiopefulness. The chief characteristics of this age are faithfully re- flected in Tennyson's verse — its optimism, its enthusiasm for science its belief in the steady and rapid progress of social institutions towards perfection, its religious unrest, its new scientific ideas. But Tennyson outlived this epoch, as he outlived the greater number of his own con- temporaries. In his old age he found many of the anticipations of his youth disappointed, he found himself amidst a generation exhibiting ultra-democratic and radical tendencies with which he could not sympa- thize, — he found the class to which he belonged by association and with "* " The very year of Tennyson's first volume [1830] was the year of the second French Revolution, and the second English revolution ; the year of the * Three Days ' in Paris, and of the appearance of Lord Gray as Prime Minister in England and champion of the Reform Bill. It was the year of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway. Mr. Huskisson, who met his death on that occasion, had recently brought forward the first notions of Free Trade, which the beginnings of steam navigation were soon to do much to develop. It was the year of Lyell's ' Principles of Geology,' and of Comte's • Cours de Philosophic Positive.' Keble's 'Christian Year' had been printed in 1827 ; and in 1829 Catholic Emancipation had become law ; and forthwith O'Connell began to agitate for Repeal of the Union. The position of the Irish Church was called in ques- tion in 1831 ; and in the same year the Com Law Rhymes of Ebenezar Elliott preached more powerfully than from any pulpit a new doctrine for the poor : ' It is the deadly Power that makes Bread dear and labour cheap.' At this time rick-buming was rife (To ' Mary Boyle,' viii, ix, x. Also • The Princess,' iv, S63-367), and Hunt and Cobbett were filling the new-forming mind of the masses with ideas of social equality, while the most autocratic of European nations, ' that o'ergrown Barbarian in the East' was absorbing Poland. The year of Tennyson's second volume paused the Reform Bill, brought out ' Tracts for the Times,' proposed to emancipate slaves, saw Faraday's Experiments in Electricity, and heard George Coombe'D lecture on popular education." (Luce's Handbook to Tennyson, pp. 12-18.) • ^•*,:.-^ liiHi GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 151 which he sympathized iu vivtue of its ideals and the beauty of its actual life — the landed gentry — losing political influence, suflfering from material loss, possibly destined to be crushed out of existence in the struggle of modern life. The consequence of this, and of the natural effects of old age, is a marked change in the tone of his writings ; a loss of hopeful- ness; a growing bitterness with the existing condition of things/ Tennyson's preference for middle positions. — Tennybon was, however, not the mere creature of his age — a mirror to reflect indififer- ently each passing phase of thought. He had a pronounced personality of his own, which led him to find interest in some tendencies and to be unresponsive to others ; to embody certain ideas with enthusiasm, and touch upon others only that he may testify his repugnance. We have already had occasion to mention a certain lack of ardour and impetuosity in the poet, calmness of temperament and self-control, sane judgment and good taste. Such qualities beget a constitutional preference for middle courses, a dislike of excess and extremes. We find, accordingly, Tennyson's sympathies are everywhere with moderate views : in politics, in religion, in the * woman question,' etc. So, the slow and orderly devel- opment of the English nation, the self-restraint and spirit of compromise manifested in her history, the character of her existing institutions, the spirit in which the reforms of his own day were being carried out, were in harmony with the poet's nature, and inspired not a little of the fervour of the patriotic passages in his works. Even his aesthetic sense was satisfied with the venerable and orderly beauty of English institu- tions ; just as he delighted to depict the embodiment of the same spirit and forces in the prevailing features of English landscape : An English home-gray twilight pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep— all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace. Crudity, excess, violence, o£fended both his aesthetic and his intellectual nature. He believed in progress, but it must be gradual. He was, as the three political poems included in this volume show, a liberal conser- vative, in the natural sense of the words. He had no sympathy with the radicalism of his times, with root-and-branch theories that demanded sudden and violent changes in institutions and conditions to which his heart was attached. He had the historic sense of his age ; it was not ♦Compare the poem on Freedom with the political poems of 1833 : "Love Thou Thy Land," etc. ; and Lockiley Hall, with Locksley Hall Sixty Years A^ter, » .' kII 152 NOTES ON TENNYSON. f I;:: » merely England as it existed, that he saw and loved ; it was England the embodiment of a long and unbroken development through the wise and heroic efforts of generations of Englishmen — England teeming with as80< ciations from a splendid past. But of the suffering and misery out of which came the radical theories that he disliked, he seems to have had no adequate sense, through limitations either of his sympathies or of his ex. perjence. He saw things too exclusively from the point of view of the country-gentleman — the olass to which he was most closely bound, both by personal association, and by the beauty and charm of their life and its surroundings. But it was his good fortune, as far as immediate popu- larity was concerned, to be in thoiigbt and feeling the average educated Englishman ; though this also implied a narrowness, a lack of under- standing of non-English conditions, of the point of view of other classes than his own, a want of sympathy with new social movements that, in turn, result in limitation and conventionality in his work. His ideals of character and conduct. — As Tennyson's work is marked by good taste and moderation, as his character and life were exempt from marked eccentricities and departures from social conven- tions, and as his views were marked by a preference for middle courses ; 80 the ideals of character and conduct displayed in his poetry, exhibit kindred peculiarities. His King Arthur, the type of the highest manhood, is distinguished by his self-control, his good sense, his prac- tical activity. When, in the Holy Orail, his knights ride away in pursuit of the Heavenly vision, the King remains at his post faithful to the more homely calls of life : Seeing the King muei; guard That which he rules, and is but as tho hind To whom a space of land is given to plow, Who may not wander from the allotted field Before his work be done. The evils and disorder which are represented as the consequences of the quest of the Grail, show that the poet's sympathies are not with the mystical enthusiasm of Galahad, but with the more prosaic and practical aims of Arthur — the redressing of wrong, the improvement of the condition of the race.* All that partakes of extravagance is *" With Mr. Tennyson the mystic is always the visionary who suffers from an over- excitable fancy. The nobler aspects of the mystical religious spirit are unrepresented in his poetry. We find nowhere among the persons of his imagination a Teresa, uniting as she did in so eminent a degree an administrative genius, a genius for action with the genius of exalted piety." (Dowden's Mr. Tennyson and Mr, Browning.) GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 153 foreign to his nature. Self-restrained characters are more to his taste than passionate ones. He does not succeed in depicting the latter class ; the hero of Maud is morbid and excitable, not strong ; does not exhibit the grand and imposing aspect of intense emotion. Tennyson's sympa- thies are M'ith that thoroughly English ideal ' the gentleman ' — an ideal where the controlling forces count for more than the impelling. The average Englishman admires the man who is strong to endure external shocks, who has his own nature well in hand, who severely restrains the exhibition even of perfectly innocent and laudablo feelings j the demon- strativeness of the Frenchman and German, the ])as8iouate and effusive nature in general, have for him something efife/ninate. Here Tenny- son aid his audience are ag'iin at one. The rapturous and mystical communion with nature, which is the theme of Wordsworth's poetry, or the beauty and saving power of intense passion, of which Shelley and Browning are the apostles, meet no such ready response from English- men as the praise of self-restraint, of obedience to duty, of beneficent practical activity which are enshrined in Tennyson's writings. A dis- ciplined nature wisely devoted to the practical work of improving society is Tennyson's highest ideal of life, the ideal he puts into the mouth of Athene — herself the incarnation of the wisdom and virtue which the Greek mind found in the mean : "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear ; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. Oh 1 rest thee sure That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee, So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood, ^ Shall strike within thy pulses, like a god's. To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks. Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, Circled thro' all experiences, pure law, Commeasure perfect freedom." His attitude towards the great questions.— Closely akin to these pervading tendencies of Tennyson's nature is his admiration and rever- ence for law.* This predominant trait of the poet's mind is revealed ^See Dowden's Mr. Tennjfson and Mr. Brotoning in Studiei in Literature, , 41 i I 154 NOTES ON TENNYSON. not only in the political sphere upon which we have already lightly touched, but comes out in the way in which he regards the whole uni^ verse. Here, again, Tennyson is fortunate in his sensitive appreciation for an aspect of nature which has been revealed with unprecedented clearness and force by the modern science. He shares here to the full the enthusiasm of the scientific investigator. Further, the scientific conception that the whole universe is the manifestation, not only of law, but also of orderly, slow, and regular development, was in harmony with the poet's mind and feeling. He early accepted the idea of development ; it is to be found in In Memoriam. But while entering heartily into the scientific enthusiasm of his time, both becau««e science improved the condition of man's life and because scientific conceptions comniended themselves to his own intellect and feeling, he was always strenuously opposed to the purely materialistic and non-spiritual views of the universe to which science was sup- posed by some to lead. The arguments from external nature adduced against theistic and spiritual ideas, he always met, as in In Memoriam, by arguments from the inner consciousness.* Akin to his rejection of materialism, is that strenuous adherence to the belief in immortality which comes out again and again in his poetry. It is interesting that the two greatest poets of the generation, Tennyson and Browning, should give such marked prominence to this matter in their works. But, apart from his conviction of spiritual and personal force in the universe, and of a per- sonal immortality, Tennyson manifests the vagueness and doubt of his generation in regard to the great problems ; and even the beliefs that he did maintain, he clings to rather than confidently maintains, '^his lack of strong convictions, of a message to convey, of ardent passion, of inspiration, his somewhat conventional and narrow range of sympathy, the elaboration of his style, — all contribute towards the sense that pos- sesses the reader (notwithstanding all his admiratioa for the poet's work) that there is a something lacking, a want of force and of originality needful to put him in the very highest rank of poets. He soothes and charms rather than braces and inspires. He reflects our own thoughts rather than quickens us. He is a poet of beauty rather than of power. Selkct Bibliography. —-4 Z/r^rf, Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his son (Macmillan & Co.). The Poeticiil Works are published in various forms by Macmillan, the most convenient being that in one vol., of which only the editions issued Sept. 1894 and later are complete, *See for example In Memoriam, cxxiv. See also on these points Tennyson as the Poet o/ Evolution, by Theodore Watts, in Nineteenth Century, vol. xxxiv, GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 155 Annotated editions of a large number of the poems are to be found in various volumes of Macmillan's English Classics ; also of the Idylls of the King and .a number of other poems in volumes ed. by Rolfe (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ) ; also miscellaneous selections of the poems edited for Canadian schools by Messrs. Wetherell, Burt, Sykes, and Libby ; to these editions the present editor is indebted, especially to Eolfe's for variant readings. A large Tennyson literature is novir in existence, of which a useful bibliography will be found in Dixon's Primer of Tennyson (Methuen, London, 18C6) — not only essays but volumes dealing either with his work in general or with special poems, particularly with the Idylls of the King and In Memoriam. Among these, one of the best is Gwynn's Tennyson (Blackie, 1899) ; Dixon's Primer^ already mentioned, contains useful information and a judicious view of the poet's genius ; Luce's Handbook to the Works of Alfred Tennyson (Bell, London, 1895), besides a general survey of Tennyson's work, takes up each poem individually ; Stopford Brooke's Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life (Isbister, London, 1894) contains a very full critical examination of Tennyson's work ; of treatises on individual poems, we have MacCallum's Tennyson^ s Idylls and Arthurian Story (Glasgow, Maclehose, 1894) mainly occupied by the history of these legends in literature, while Elsdale's Studies in the Idylls (Macmillan) and Littledale's Essays on Tennyson's Idylls are chiefly devoted with an oxamination and interpretation of the Idylls themselves ; the articles on the Idylls in the Contemporary Review for Jan. 1870, and for May 1873, are based on the poet's own explanations ; Dawson's Study of the Prin- cess (Montreal, 1882), Genung's In il/emoriam (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), Gatty's Key to In Memoriam (Bell, London, 3rd ed. 1886), Rolfe's text of In Memoriam, with notes, King's In Memoriam (Morang, Toronto). For various readings and development of the text, Nicoll's Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II (Hodder and Stoughton), and Jones' Growth of the Idylls of the King (Lippincott, Phila., 1895) ; Churton Collins' Illustrations of Tennyson (Chatto and Windus, 1891) gathers illustrations and originals from Greek, etc. Critical essays : in Stedman's Victorian Poets (Houghton, Mifflin), in Brimley's Essays (Macmillan), Button's Literary Essays (Macmillan), Bagehot's Literary Studies (Longmans), Dowden's Studies in Literature (Kegan Paul), Ward's English Poets by Jebb, articles in the Nineteenth Century for 1893, etc. 'A I >{ 156 NOTES ON TENNYSON. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. This poem first appeared in the volume of 1830, and has undergone only slight alterations in text. It h a good example of the poet's earliest work, — of its musical charm and pictorial character, of richness and elaborateness of diction and imagery carried even to excess. It paints a series of pictures, charming from their sensuous beauty, which are suggested to Tennyson's imagination by reminiscences of the Arabian Nights, more particularly of one of the stories, that of Kur Al-Din Ali and the Damsel Anis al J alls, especially of that part of the story narrated on the Thirty-sixth Night. The varying arrangement of the rhymes in the several stanzas should be noted. Arabian Nig^hts. The famous collection of Arabian stories known as The Thousand and One Nights, which, in abbreviated selections, is familiar to most children, especially through the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. 7. Bagdat. A city situated on both banks of the Tigris, some 500 miles from its mouth. " It has an extremely picturesque appearance from the outside, being encircled and interspersed with groves of date trees, through which one may catch the gleams of domes and minarets." In the 9th century it was greatly enlarged by Haroun al Raschid. fretted. Ornamented with bands arranged at right angles. 9. sworn. 'Close' or 'firm'; cf. the expression "sworn friends." 10. golden prime. The epithet is not used in its literal sense, but as suggesting the Age of Gold — the period when, according to ancient myth, the world was in its perfection. Prime is the season of highest vigour and splendour. 11. Haroun, surnamed Al-Raschid ('the orthodox'), flourished 786- 809 A.D. (i.e., about the time of Charlemagne), caliph of Bagdat, famed for his bravery and magnificence, and for his patronage of literature and art. 12. Anight. ' By night' ; cf. As You Like It, ii., 4 : " Coming anight to Jane Smile. " 16. citron-shadows. 'Shadows of the citron trees'; 'citron' is applied to lemon-trees and allied species. RECOLLECTIONS OP THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 157 indergone she poet's f richness xcess. It ty, which e Arabian [I- Din Ali the story ent of the ies known lections, is laddin and 3, some 500 appearance res of date minarets." hid. friends." sense, but to ancient of highest rished 786- Idat, famed Irature and ling anight r citron' is 23. clear-stemm'd platans. Oriental plane-trees which run up smoothly for some height before sending out their wide-spreading branches. 24. The outlet of the river into the canal. 26. sluiced. Led out by a sluice, which, in its narrow sense, is an artificial passage for water fitted with a gate. Cf. Par. Lost, i., 701 : " veins of liquid fire Sluic'd from the lake." 28-29. The green sward with its flowers resembled •' damask- work " (raised patterns in a woven fabric) or "deep inlay " (ornamental work when pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc. , are let into a background of some diflferent, or diflferently coloured, material). 36. star-strown calm. The smooth water in which the stars were reflected. 37. night in night. The still greater darkness caused by the close shadows of the trees. 40. clomb. Such antiquated verbal forms are very frequently em- ployed by Tennyson ; see p. 142. 47. rivage. Bank ; Rolfe compares Spenser, Faerie Queene, iv., 6, 20 : The which Pactolus with his waters shere Throws forth upon the rivage round about him near. An example of the sort of diction referred to on p. 142. 48-49. Note the abundance of epithets here, and throughout the poem. 52. sparkling flints. ' The gravel at the boHom of the stream ' ; it seems scarcely probable that these would be visible in the circumstances. 58. engrain'd. Properly * dyed in fast colours ' ; the poet seeixis still to have the idea of a woven fabric in his mind, as at line 28. 59. marge. A common poetical form for " margin." 60. fluted. 'With longitudinal grooves' ; as, e.g., in Greek pillars. 63. studded wide. 'Embossed at intervals.' The word "studded" keeps up the idea of an ornamented surface (cf. 11. 25 58). 64. With disks and tiars. "Disks" suggests round, flattieh blossoms, "tiars" more elongated and convex forms. "Tiara" is 158 NOTES ON TENNYSON. properly an eastern hat, and is naturally suggested by the locality of the poem. For the poetical form "tiar," cf. Par. Lost^ iii., 625. 68. In closest coverture. 'So as to afford a close coverture' ; Eolfe cites Mtich Ado, iii., 1 : "in clcjest coverture." 70. bulbul. The Persian name for the nightingale. 71. Not he, etc. The song of the nightingale seems to express too much to be the voice of a bird merely ; cf. Shelley's To a Skylark : Hail to thee, blithe Spirit ! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart. which possessed. 'Held and interpenetrated.' 72-73. delight, etc., are not governed by "possessed," but in apposi- tion to "something." 74-75. *A something which is eternal, of complex nature, irrepressible, above conditions of time and space.' With the whole passage cf. Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. 76. flattering. 'Lending a lustre to'; cf. Aylmer's Field: "A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs," and Shakespeare, Sonnet, 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eyo. 78. Black. The original reading was " black-green"; the change gives emphasis to "black," inasmuch as its one syllable does duty for the two syllables of the regular foot. 81. A sudden rplendour. The light from the Pavilion of the Caliphat (seel. 114). 84. counterchanged. * Interchanged ; ' cf. In Memoriam, Ixxxix : Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright. 95. as in sleep. ' As if I were asleep. ' 100. drawn. " Borne " was the original reading. 101. pleasance. Archaic and poetical for ' pleasure '. Cf. the follow- ing passage from the original story in the Arabian Nights : " Now this RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 159 ■ n ■$1 garden was named the Garden of Gladness and therein stood a belvedere hight the Palace of Pleasure," 106. rosaries. In the sense of the Latin original {rosarium), ' gar- dens, or beds, of roses. ' 108. Symbols that belonged to, or recalled, the time. 112. the long alley's latticed shade. The original speaks of a walk with " a covering of trellis work of canes extending along the whole length." 114. Caliphat (usually " Caliphate ") the dominion of the Caliphs, or successors of Mahomet. 122. In the original we are told that the palace was illuminated with "eighty latticed windows, and eighty lamps suspended, and in the midst a great candlestick of gold. " 123. quintessence. The stress is usually upon the second syllable, but the pronunciation which the metre here requires, is k* jo admissible. 125. silvers. A bold use of the plural, meaning, of course, ' silver candlesticks.' 127. mooned. * Ornamented with crescents ' — the symbol of Turkish dominion, hence an anachronism here. domes aloof In inmost Bagdat. The domes in the centre of the city, which stood out in the distance. 130. time is the object of " celebrate " (1. 131). 135. argent-lidded. "Argent" refers to the colour; so in Dream of Fair Women, 1. 158 : " the polish'd argent of her breast." 148. diaper'd. The word is applied to material covered with a regularly repeated pattern produced in the weaving without use of colour. 148-9. The lines seem to suggest that the cloth of gold had inwrought upon it garlands of flowers (as a border probably) and, besides that, a regularly repeated pattern (presumably in the main body of the cloth). 5P N> : i^' :l I: 1; i^ !■; i 160 NOTES ON TENNYSON. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. First published in 1S32, but, as the notes show, the poem has been greatly improved by later revision. It is the first work which Tennyson based upon Arthurian legends ; in this case contained, according to Pal- grave, in an Italian novel (see note on 1. 9). Lancelot and Elaine is a very diflferent treatment of the same story where the interest is more human and the motives and characters perfectly comprehensible. Here we have a beautiful series of pictures presenting part of the history of a mysterious being, involved in a strange fate. This mystery of the poem suggests symbolism, to which the poet was inclined, as, for example, in The Palace of Art and the Idylls of the King ; so Mr. Hutton seems to think that the history of the poet's own genius is shadowed forth, which "was sick of the magic of fancy and its picture-shadows, and was turn- ing away from them to the poetry of human life." While Mr. Alfred Ainger (as quoted by Mr. Sykes) says : * ' The key to this wonderful tale of magic, and yet of deep human significance, is to be found, perhaps, in the lines : Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed ; ' I am half sick of shadows ' said The Lady of Shalott. The new-born love of something, for some one, in the wide world from which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities. The curse is the anguish of unrequited love. The shock of her disappointment kills her." Mr. Ainger's interpretation was derived from the poet himself ; but it was doubtless the picturesque aspects of the subject, rather than any deep human significance that attracted and occupied the poet. 3. wold. • Open country. ' The landscape the poet was most familiar with at this time was the landscape of Lincolnshire. According to the Century Dictionary "The wolds of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are high rolling districts, bare of trees and exactly similar to the downs of the southern part of England." The word appears in Lear, iii, 4, in the form *'old." meet the sky. Note how suggestive is the phrase of the wide unin- terrupted prospect. 6. many-tower'd Camelot. Camelot is the capital of Arthur's domain, identified with Winchester by Malory (Bk. II, chap, xix) ; but THE LADY OP SHALOTT. 161 in Tennyson's treatment of the Arthurian legends, the scenes and geO' graphy are wholly imaginary, and the poet seems purposely to shun any touch which might serve to connect his scenes with actual localities. In Oareth and Lynette we have a description of Camelot : Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces And stately, rich in emblem and the work Of ancient kings who did their days in stone ; Which Merlin's hand, the mage at Arthur's court, Knowing all arts, had touch'd, and everywhere At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven. 6-9. In the edition of 1832, these lines read — The yellow-leaved waterlily, The green-sheathfed daffodilly. Tremble in the water chilly, Round about Shalott. 9. Shalott. This form of the name is probably suggested by Italian original Donna di Scalotta, In the Idylls of the King, ' Astolat,' the form used by Malory, is employed. 10-12. In 1832 the reading was— Willows whiten, aspens shiver, The sunbeam-showers break and quiver In the stream that runneth ever. 10. Willows whiten through the breeze exposing the lower and lighter side of the willow leaves. 11. dusk and shiver. The darkening is due to the breakirgupof the smooth surface of the water so that it no longer reflects the light. 19. The following two stanzas stood in the ed. of 183? . — Underneath the bearded barley. The reaper, reaping late and early, Hears her ever chanting cheerly. Like an angel, singing clearly. O'er the stream of Camelot. Piling the sheaves in furrows airy, Beneath the moon, the reaper weary Listening whispers, • 'tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.' The little isle is all inrailed With a rose fence, and overtrailed ■5 I 162 NOTES ON TENNYSON. With roses : by the marge unhailed The shallop flitteth silkensailed, Skimming down to Camelot. A pearl garland winds her head : She leaneth on a velvet bed, Full royally apparelled The Lady of Shalott. It v^ill be noted that, in his second version, the poet gains the great advantage of indicating the aloofness of the mysterious heroine, — a prime point in the story — of which, as it originally stood, there was no mdication in Pt. I. ; the picture of the barges, etc., serves to intensify >is by contrast. The vague echoes of song are in much better keeping wu' all the traits of the Lady of Shalott than the phrase, 'like an angel, singing clearly.' 37. In the ed. of 1832 :— No time hath she to sport and play : A charmfed web she weaves alway. A curse is on her if she stay Her weaving, either night or day, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what that curse may be ; Therefore she weaveth steadily, Therefore no other care has she. The Lady of Shalott. She lives with little joy or fear. Over the water, running near. The sheepbcU tinkles in her ear, Before her hangs a mirror clear. Reflecting towered Camelot. And as the mazy web she whirls, She sees the surly village churls, etc. 66. pad. ' An easy paced horse ' (etymologically connected with path). 64. still. 'Always,' 'ever.' 76. gfreaves. 'Armor to protect the shins.* 82. free. The bridle was held with a slack hand. 84. Galaxy. The Milky Way (from Gk. y&'ka yakaKTOQ, milk). 86. to. In ed. of 1832 "from " j so also 1. 104. 87. blazon'd. 'Ornamented with heraldic devices.' baldric. 'A belt worn over one shoulder and crossing the breast.' THB LADY OF SHALOTT. 16t the great sroine, — a e wa8 no intensify : keeping Mike an Lbh path). 0. 'east.' 91. All. Cf. Coleridge, Ancient Mariner : All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon, Right up above the mast did stan ", eta 98. bearded meteor. The beard is, of course, what could be more prosaically described as the * tail.' 99. still. Ined. of 1832, "green." 101. hooves. Archaic plural. 107. by the river. In ed. of 1832, " tirra lirra." 111. water-lily. Ined. of 1832, *' water flower." 115. The mirror refle ts th Lancelot on the bank, and his image in the water. 119. Note how throughout the poem, the season of the year and the weather are made to h x-monize with the events of the story; the same device is adopted i^ the Idylls of the King ; see p. 140 of this volume. 123-126. In the ed. of 1832— Outside the isle a shallow boat Beneath the willow lay afloat. Below the oarven stern she wrote The Lady of Shalott. Then followed a stanza which has been omitted — A cloud white crown of pearl she dight All raimented in snowy white That loosely flew (her zone in sight, Clasped with one blinding diamond bright) Her wide eyes flxed on Camelot. Though the squally east wind keenly Blew, with folded arms serenely By the water stood she queenly Lady of Shalott. 127. In the ed. of 1832— With a steady stony glance — Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance. Mute, with glassy countenance — She looked down to Camelot. It was the closing, eto. ft »V' ,-i 164 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 136. In the ed. of 1832— 145. In 1832— As when to sailors while they roam, By creeks and outfalls far from home, Bisin(( and dropping with the foam. From dying swans wild warblings come. Blown shoreward ; so to Camelot Still as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her chanting her death song, The Lady of Shalott. A long drawn carol, mournful, holy, She chanted loudly, chanted lowly. Till her eyes were darkened wholly. And her smooth face sharpened slowly, etc. 156. In 1832— A pale, pale corpse she floated by. Dead cold, between the houses high, Dead into towered Camelot. Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the plankM wharfage came : Below the stem they read her name, •The Lady of Shalott.' They crossed themselves, their stars they blest. Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest. The well fed wits of Camelot. ' The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly. Draw near and fear not — this is I The Lady of Shalott. It will be noted how great ia the improvement made by the changes in the original version ; particularly the poem gains in unity by the omission of needless details, or of details not in perfect keeping with the general effect, e.g.: the stanza beginning 'As when to sailors,' etc.; the dwelling on unpleasing aspects of death (stanza next to the last), which mars the simple beauty and impreosiveness of the ap- pearance of the dead Lady; above all, the introduction of Lancelot in the closing lines affords a wholly new and effective picture. 165. royal cheer. The gaiety at the banquet in the palace. a f< a S T T h 86 ai is e: bi si OENONB. 165 le changes ty by the 3ping with ;o sailors,' next to of the ap- Lancelot OENONE. First printed in the volume of 1832 ; but, in parts, greatly altered and improved since. It is the first of the Teunysonian Idylla proper — a form imitating in general character and in style the works of Theocritus, a Greek poet of the Alexandrian period (see p. 145 of this volume and Stedman's Victorian Poets, chap. vi.). Further, it is an example of Tennyson's practice of infusing a modem spirit into « olaasical theme. The ittttor affords a picturesque framework with opportunities for beautiful details to charm the imaginative vision and gratify the eesthetic taste ; the former gives elevation, and profounder interest and significance to the subject. In the present poem the combinatiou is not so complete and successful as in some other poems ( Ulysses, foi example) being chiefly found in Athene's speech, but the theme i» brought closer to the reader's sympathies by the pathetic mterest of the situation. 1-29. In the ed. of 1832, the following is the reading : There is a dale in Ida, lovelier Than any in old Ionia, beautiful With emerald slopes of sunny sward, that lean Above the loud glenrivor, which hath worn A path thro' steepdown granite walls below Mantled with flowering tendriltwine. In front The cedar shadowy valleys open wide. Far seen, high over all the Godbuilt wall And many a snowycolumned range divine. Mounted with awful sculptures — men and Qods, The work of Gods— bright on a darkblue sky The windy citadel of Ilion Shone, like the crown of Troas. Hither came Mournful Oenone, wandering forlorn Of Paris, once her playmate. Bound her neck, Her neck all marblewhite and marblecold, Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest. She, leaning on a vine-entwin6d stone, Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shadow Sloped downward to her seat from the upper clif^ mother Ida, manyfountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. The grasshopper is silent in the grass. The lizard with his shadow on the stone. Sleeps like a shadow, and the scarletwinged Gieala in the noonday leapeth not. Along the water-rounded granite-rof^k The purple flower droops : the golden bee, eta M 166 NOTES ON TENNYSON. ■t: Mr. Stopford Brooke says (p. 87) : " To compare the first draft of Oenone with the second, is not only to receive a useful lesson in the art of poetry — it is also to understand, far better than by any analysis of his life, a great part of Tennyson's character ; his impatience for per- fection, his steadiness in pursuit of it, his power of taking pains, the long intellectual consideration he gave to matters which originated in the emotions, his love of balancing this and that form of his thought against one another ; and finally, correlative with these qualities, his want of impulse and rush in song, as in life." Mr. Brooke quotes (p. 113) the first thirteen lines of the 1832 version given above and re- marks : "The blank verse halts ; a hurly-burly of vowels like 'Than any in old Ionia ' is a sorrowful thing ; there is no careful composition of the picture ; the things described have not that vital connection one with the other which should enable the imaginative eye to follow them step by step down the valley till it opens on the plain where Troy stands white, below its citadel.'" He then quotes the passage as it stands in the later editions, aud comments: "The verse is now weighty and poised, and nobly paused — yet it moves swiftly enough. The land- scape is now absolutely clear, and it is partly done by cautious additions to the original sketch. . . . Nothing can image better the actual thing than that phrase concerning a lonely peak at dawn, that ' it takes the morning ' j nor the lifting and slow absorption of the mists of night when the sun slants warm into the pines of the glen, than those slow- wrought, concentrated lines about the mountain vapour." I. This opening description is said to have been suggested by what the poet saw in the Pyrenees, which he visited in the autumn of 1831. Ida. The mountain chain to the south of the district of Troas. Ionian. Ionia was the name applied to a narrow strip of the coast of Asia Minor from the river Hermus, on the north, to the Meander, on the south. 3-5. Those who have seen the movements of mist on the mountains will appreciate the felicity of this description. 10. topmost Gargarus. The summit of Gargarus ; a Latin idiom, cf. "summus mons." Oargarus is one of the highest peaks in Ida, some 5,000 feet above the sea. II. takes the morning. ' Catches the first rays of the rising sun.' 13. Ilion. Troy. 15-16. forlorn Of Paris. Bereft of Paris; cf. Par. Lost, x., 921: "Forlorn of thee." ■st draft of 1 iu the art analysis of nee for per- g pains, the i originated his thought ualities, his ooke quotes )ove and re- like 'Than composition anection one follow them where Troy )assage as it Qow weighty . The land- )us additions actual thing ' it takes the ists of night 1 those slow- ed by what nn of 1831. Troas. the coast of i^eander, on e mountains latin idiom, 3aks in Ida, ising sun.' ost, X., 921: OBNONE. 167 20. fragftnent of rock (see the corresponding line in the version of 1832). 21-22. Until the sun had sunk so low that the shadow of the moun- tain reached the place where Oenone was sitting. 23-24. A refrain repeated at intervals through the poom, is a frequent peculiarity of Greek idylls ; cf . Theocritus, i. and ii. , Moschus, Epitaph; the same device is found in Spenser, Prothalamiurn, and Pope, Pa»- torals, iii., etc. 24. many-fountain'd Ida^ an exact translation of Homer, Iliad^ viii., 47 : 'l^W 7ro?iVTTi6aKa. 25. Tennyson is indebted for many hints to the Greek Idyllic poets (see Stedman's Victorian Poets). Line 25, translation of OaUimachus' Lavacrum Palladia : peaafi^ptva iVdx' opog davx'^a. (Collins' Illuatratiom of Tennyson.) 27. Of. Theocritus, Idyll vii. , 22 : avina 6i} kuI aavpoq eder yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Ts an ingoing grotto, strown with spar And ivymatted at the mouth, wherein Thou unbeholden mays't behold, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of Gods." " ' Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney hills. They came — all three — the Olympian Goddesses : Naked they came to the smoothswarded bower, Lustrous with lilyflower, violeteyed Both white and blue, with lotetree-fruit thickset Shadowed with singing pine ; and all the while, Above, the overwandering ivy and vine. This way and that in many a wild festoon Ban riot, garlanding the gnarlki boughs OENONB. 169 With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro*. On the treetops a golden glorious cloud Leaned, slowly droppinsf down ambrosial dew. How beautiful they were, too beautiful To look upon ! but Paris was to me More lovelier than all the world beside. " ' O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. First spake the imperial Olympian With arch6d eyebrow smiling sovranly, Fulleyfed Here. She to Paris made Proflter of royal power, ample rule Unquestioned, overflowing revenue Wherewith to embellish stote " from many a vale And riversundered champaign clothed with corn. Or upland glebe wealthy in oil and wine — Honour and homage, tribute, tax and toll, From many an inland town and haven large, Mast-thronged below her shadowing citadel In glassy bays among her tallest towers." " ' O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. Still she spake on and still she spake of power " Which in all action Is the end of all. Power fitted to the season, measured by The height of the general feeling, wisdomborn And throned of wisdom— from all neighbour crowns Alliance and allegiance evermore. Such boon from me Heaven's Queen to thee kingbom," etc. 48. lawn. Originally meant a clearing in a wood, then a meadow ; cf. Lycidas, 1. 25. 55. solitary morning^. Refers to the remoteness and aloofness of the first rays of direct light from the sun. 57. The light of a star becomes pale and white in the dawn. Cf. The Princ€i*s, iii., 1 : "morn in the white wake of the morning star," and ^larHage of Geraint, 734 : "the white and glittering star of morn." 61-62. The wind carries the spray into the air, and the increased number of watery particles which break up the rays of light, intensify the colour. To such rainbows, Tennyson refers in Sea-Fairies, and in Princess, v. , 308 : This flake of rainbow flying on the highest Foam of men's deeds. 66. In the fabulous gardens of the Hesperides at the western limit of the world v/ere certain famous golden apples, ^vhich it was one of the labours of Hercules to obtain. a. I 170 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 67. Ambrosia was the food of the Grreek gods. 74. whatever Oread haunt. Imitation of a classical conitruction = 'any Oread that haunts.' Oread means * mountain-nymph.' 76. married brows. "Eyebrows that meet," considered a great beauty by the Greeks. Cf. Theocritus, Idyll viii., 72: avvopvg K6pa ('the maid of the meeting eyebrows'). 80, full-faced, according to Rowe and Webb, "'not a face being absent,' or perhaps also in allusion to the majestic brows of the Gods." But the reference seems rather to be to the fact that the apple wa,=* cast full in the face of all the Gods. The picture presented by the words "When all — Peleus" is that of the Olympian gods facing the spectator in a long row. 81. Ranged =* were placed in order, ' Cf, Prmce«s, iii., 101-2: and gained The terrace ranged along the northern front. 84, Delivering. For this us^ of the word compare Richard II. ^ iii., 3 : Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle Into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver, etc. 95-98. Suggested doubtless by Iliad, xiv., 347-9 : TOifft S'uTrb -f^Slsiv hla. (^vei/ veofiijAea ttoi'tjj' TTVKvbv KoX fiaKaKov. ('And beneath them the divine earth caused to spring up fresh new grass, and dewy lotus, and crocus, and hyacinth thick and soft '). Cf. also Par. Lost, iv., 710, fol. 96. Cf. In Memoriam, Ixxxiii.: " Laburnums, dropping wells of i :e." 97. amaracus, and asphodel. Greek names of flowers ; the former identified by some with sweet marjoram, the latter is a species of iily. In Odyssey ii. , 539, the shades of the heroes are represented as haunting an asphodel meadow. 104. The crested peacock was sacred to Here (Juno). 105-106. Cf. Iliad, xiv,, 350-351 :— €Jri fie veA round With his own ever-f ..;anat:n;^ lif,'(;ts) Be flooded o'er with her ov/n euiuenoes, And thereby gfrown to freedom." 144, fol. Cf. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 11. 201, fol. 153. Sequel of gn^erdon. *A reward to follow,' 'the addition of a reward. ' " 164-165. grow Sinew'd with. ' Become strengthened by.' 165-167. 'The mature will, having passed through all kinds of experi- ence, and having come to be identical with law (or duty) is commensu- rate with perfect freedom.' To the truly disciplined will, obedience to law or duty is perfect freedom, because that is all that the perfected will desires ; cf. the phrase in the Collect for Peace in the Book of Common Prayer, "OGod . . . whose service is perfect freedom." 171. There is of course a play on the two senses of "hear," 'to apprehend by the ears' and 'to give heed to.' 172-182. In the edition of 1832 this [jassage read : — •'Idalian Aphrodite ocN,>anborn, Fresh as the foam, ncwbathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers upward drew From her warm brow ;u)'J bosom her dark hair Fragrant and thick, and on her head upbound In a purple band : below hor lucid neck Shone ivorylike, and from the ground her foot Gleamed rosywhite, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vinebunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved." 174. Idalian. So called from Idalium, a mountain city in Cyprus, reputed to be one of her favourite haunts. 175. According to the myth, Aphrodite was born of the foam of the sea. Paphos was a city in Cyprus where she first landed after her birth from the waves. 178. Ambrosial. The epithet is often applied by Homer to the hair of the gods, and to other things belonging to them. It may refer here to the fragrance of the hair. 187. This was Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Lacedaemon. Paris subsequently carried her off, and this was the cause of the Trojan war, and the destruction of Troy itself. '■'-%• \ i\eoifit 7ov iyyvOev rixov aKoveiv a TepTTCt \j/ovith his sound." 95. Mr. Collins compares Aen. i., 381 : conscendi navibus aequor, and Othello, ii., 1 : "And let the labouring barque climb hills of seas." 102. amber light. See 1. 19. 106. crisping ripples. "Wavelets that curl at the edges. Cf. Claribel, * The babblmg runnel crispeth. * Milton has 'crisped brooks' in Par. Lost, iv." (Rowe and Webb). 106-7. These two lines exemplify Tennyson's power of presenting the minuter phenomena of nature, in picturesque phrase. 109. mild-minded melancholy. This phrase had been already em- ployed by Tennyson in a suppressed sonnet of his, printed in the English' man's Magazine for August, 1831. 178 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 114. This stanza was added in the jdition of 1842; note that it introduces one of the most human touches in the poem. 118. inherit us. * Have succeeded to our possessions.' 120. island princes, etc. * The princes of Ithaca and the neighbouring islands, which were their homes.' The state of things represented in 11. 120-123 did, according to the Odyssey, exist in Ithaca. 133. In the ed. of 1832 this line read : " O propt on lavish beds," etc. amaranth. A fabulous flower which (as the etymology indicates) never faded, so Milton speaks of "immortal amaranth," Par. Lost, iii., 353. moly. Another fabulous plant with magic virtues, given by Hermes to Ulysses as a counter-charm to the draught of Circe. Cf. Ody., x., 305, and Milton, Comtis, 636. 134. lowly is used as if the adverbial form from "low," as in The Lady of Shalott, 146. 136. dark and hoiy. *' Shaded with clouds and wrapt in religious calm " (Rowe and Webb). But the suggestion of ' clouds ' seems out of keeping with the context. The darkness is rather that of the "dark- blue sky " (1. 84) contrasted with the brightness of the landscape (1. 137). 139. dewy echoes. The epithet is vague but suggestive, after the manner of Keats ; dewy cannot properly be applied to echoes ; it seems to suggest the sound of waterfalls dashing into spray. 141. watch. Originally "hear." 142. wov'n acanthus-wreath divine. 'Through the masses of acanthus fohage.' Acanthus, a plant with graceful pendant leaves whose form is familiar to us in the capital of Corinthian columns. Divine presumably 'divinely beautiful.' Cf. Madelimt ii., "Light glooming over eyes divine." 145. barren. Originally read "flowery." 148. alley. Milton also uses "alley" of the natural passages in the woods in Comus, 311. 149. the yellow Lotos-dust. * The pollen of the Lotos floweid.' 149. Note the metrical effect produced by beginning the lines with the stressed syllable ; this gives an animation in keeping w ith a change of tone in the singers, who now make up their minds as to their course. THE LOTOS-EATERS. 179 )te that it ighbouring ented in 11. beds," etc. indicates) Par. Lost, by Hermes I. Ody., X., ' as in The n religious ems out of ;lie "dark- ipe (1. 137). !, after the ) ; it seems masses of a>nt leaves columns. , *' Light iges in the )weid.' s with the clxange of course. 150. The whole passage from this line to the end was re- written and greatly improved in 1842. Originally it stood : " We have had enough of motion, Wearinoss and wild alarm, Tossing on the tossing ocean, Where the tusktd seahorse walloweth In a stripe of grassgreen calm, At noon tide beneath the lea ; And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth His foamfountains in the sea, Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry. This is lovelier and sweeter, Men of Ithaca, this is meeter, In the hollow rosy vale to tarry. Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater 1 We will eat the Lotos, sweet As the yellow honeycomb, In the valley sonic, and some On the ancient heights divine ; And no more roam, On the loud hoar foam. To the melancholy home At the limit of the brine, The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline. We'll lift no more the shattered oar. No more unfurl the straining sail ; With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale We will abide in the golden vale Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail ; ' We will not wander more. Hark I how sweet the horned ewes bleat On the solitary steeps. And the merry lizard leaps. And the foamwhite waters pour ; And the dark pine weeps, And the lithe vine creeps. And the heavy melon sleeps On the level of the shore : Oh 1 islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more. Surely, surely slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar. Oh 1 islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more." In regard to this change Mr. Stopf ord Brooke says ( Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life, p. 123) : ** Instead of the jingling, unintellectual, merely fanciful ending of the poem of 1833, every image of which wanders hither and thither without clear purpose and weakens the impression of the previous part, the poem thus closing in a feeble ..*^.. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A 1.0 I.I 12.8 1^ m IL25 iu V] VQ •'c' / V Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. MStO (716) 173-4503 V qv ^^ o 6^ 180 NOTES ON TENNYSON. anti-olimax, we have the weighty, solemn, thoughtful, classic close, embodying the Epicurean conception of the Gods, bringing all Olympus down into harmony with the indifferent dreaming of the Lotos-caters, but leaving in our minds the sense of a dreadful woe tending on those who dream; for what the gods do with impunity, man may not do. Yet, even the Lotos-eating Gods inevitable fate awaits. This is the work of a great artist, and in this steady improvement of his poems Tennyson stands almost alone. Other poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, did not recast their poems in this wholesale fashion, and the additions and changes which they made were by no means always improvements. Tennyson, working with his clear sense of what was artistic, and with the stately steadiness which belonged to his character, not only improved but doubled the value of the poems he altered." 152. the wallowing^ monster, etc. The whale would answer to the description (see 1. 7 of the passage quoted on 1. 150). 153. equal mind. A classic phrase ; cf. Horace, Od., ii., 3, aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem. 154. hollow. 'Consisting of a valley,' or 'full of valleys'; cf. opening description. 155. fol. The calmness and indifference of the Gods was a notion of the Epicureans and is depicted by Lucretius, De Her. Nat., iii., 15 fol. (see note on Morte d^ Arthur, 1. 260) ; another parallel to this passage is citod from Goethe, Iph. auf Tauris, iv. 156. nectar and ambrosia was the proper diet of the Olympian divinities. 158. golden houses. "The epithet 'golden' is often used by Homer of the gods and all their belongings " (Rowe and Webb). 164. So Macbeth (Act v., sc. 1) calls life "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 167. little dues. The small returns which they get from sowing the seed, etc. 168. hell. 'Hades' where Greek story represents Ixiou, Tantalus, etc. , suffering endless torments. 169. Elysian Talleys. Elysium or the Elysian fields is described in ) 'you ask MB WHY, THO* ILL AT EASE.' 181 Homer as the habitation of heroes after death — the Greek heaven (see Ody.,iv.,663). 170. asphodel. See note on Oenone, 1. 95. 'YOU ASK ME WHY, THO' ILL AT EASE.' This and the two following pieces were first published in 1842, but we are told that they were written in 1833. The poem before ua exhibits the poet's pride in his country, and in that steady development of her political institutions — that combined conservatism and progress — which distinguishes her history. Tennyson's satisfaction, upon the whole, with his country may be contrasted with the bitter attacks of Byron and Shelley on the social and political condition of England in their day. The difference in Tennyson's attitude is mainly due to his character and temperament, but partly to the change in the general tone and condition of the country since the close of the era of repression which had existed during tl.e Napoleonic wars, and during the time when the opinions of Byron and Shelley were maturing. 2. this regfion. England. There is a reference to its misty climate in the following line, as compared with the more brilliant atmosphere of "the South." 6. sober-suited Freedom. Not a showy freedom since it docs not exhibit itself in institutions strikingly democratic ; the English consti- tution may not commend itself to those who seek for external forms markedly popular, but it contains the substance of freedom. 11. Originally this line read " broadens slowly." 11-12. English history is full of examples of this, both in politics and law. Compare Maoaulay's famous comments on the Revolution of 1688 towards the close of chap. x. of his History. 19. ' When freedom of opinion in the individual is considered a crime against society.' 23-24. As the first two lines of the stanza refer to increase in power, so these to increase in wealth. 24. The line read originally " should almost choke." 182 NOTES ON TENNYSON. •OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS.' 1«4. Of old, freedom was not actually realized in human society, but existed as an ideal out of the reach of man ; so the poet represents her as dwelling on the heights amidst the unfettered play of the great forces of nature ; cf. the close of Coleridge's Frniice, where the poet finds Liberty, not among men, but in nature, " The guide of homeless winds and playmate of the waves. " 6. 'Self-contained and prepared for that future growth of liberty which she foresees. ' 7-8. 'Earlier men had some partial perception and experience of freedom/ 14. isle-altar. Britain. 15-16. The poet has in mind, perhaps, the common representation of Britannia with the trident in her hand to symbolize the dominion of the sea. The trident is the symbol of Neptune, hence "God-like." Cf. also the common representation of Jove with the triple thunder- bolt in his hands, e.g., Ovid. Metamor., ii., 848 : Ille pater rcctorque deum, cui dextra trisulcis Ignibus arinata est, qui nutu concutit orbem. I'jj •LOVE THOU THY LAND, WITH LOVE FAR-BROUGHT.' This poem is an expansion of the concluding lines immediately pre- ceding. It was written soon after the pasuing of the first Reform Bill — a time of hopefulness, for the extreme tension had l)een relieved by a bloodless revolution — a time of anxiety for moderate thinkers, an initiat- ing, perhaps, a too rapid ti'ansfer of power to the hands of an ignorant democracy. 3-4. but transfused, etc. ' The true patriot will take thought for the possibilities of future development.' Cf. li^es 15 and 16 of "You ask uio why." 14. the ray. "The ray of knowledge' — as indicated by next stanza. 17-20. Cf. the Prologue to In Memoriam : liet knowledge ifrow f roui more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell. i f itanza. 'LOVB THOU TIIT LAND, WITH LOVE PAR-BROUaHT.' 183 And the whole of No. cxiv. in the same poem (which may be found in the Appendix to this volume). 19. sky. ' Climate, ' ' region. ' ' Sky ' is the Rubject of the subjunctive "bear" in the next line. 22-24 * Do not compromise at all with your own prejudices, but in the treatment of what may seem the prejudiccH of others, be more considerate.' 26-27. neither count on praise, etc. The higlioHt work is not wont to win immediate fame ; that comes later when time has tested what ia really praiseworthy : cf. Luke, xi., 48 : " Ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them." 28. watch-words. Phrases which embody some prevalent idea, as "The brotherhood of man," "The unity of the empire." Lines 29 and .30 are an expansion of line 28. The poet means that we should not allow our judgment to be blinded by enthusiasm for some specious and widely accepted generalization. 3.3. That is a relative pronoun referring to "law." A good law will be the result of discussions which will have exposed all its aspects ; it will, in consequence, represent and serve to bind together the interests of various classes ; and, as corresponding to felt needs, will be a living and effective force, not a mere dead letter on the statute-book. 36. dose. ' Include ' ; cf. To the Queen : A thousand claims to reverence closed III her as Mother, Wife, and Queen. 87. cold and warm, etc. There is a reference to the old idea of nature being composed of four elements. Cf. Milton's description of Chaos, Par. Lost, II., 892 : For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions flere* Strive here tor most'ry, and to battle bring Their embryon atoms. 45-48. 'The new must a. wzu w'd walls." 125. *V sul '; perform all the services which belonged to them severally 129. for. * Since ' : a use of /or common in Shakespeare, e.g., Richard lll.y iL, 2, 85 (see Abbot's Shakespearian Grammar, § 151). 139. a streamer of the northern mom. A ray of the Aurora Borealis ( Aurora = dawn, Borealis = northern). Cf. Scott, Lady of the Lake, iv., 9 : Shifting like flashes darted forth By the red streamers of the north. 140. the moving' isles, etc. Icebergs ; the aurora is more conspicuous in northern latitudes. 171. Remorsefully. 'With pity.' ifemorse is employed by Shakes- peare in sense of ' pity*; so Merch. of Ven., iv., 1, 20 : Thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more stranffe Than is thy strange apparent cruelty. and Two Oentlemen of Verona, iv., 3, 13 : O Eglamour thou art a gentleman Valiant, wise, remorseful, well acoomplish'd. 182. His breath, made visible by the frosty air, cluug about him. 183. The effect that mist has in enlarging the apparent size of objects is a matter of common experience, cf. Guinevere, 597 : The moony vapour rolling round the King, Who seem'd the phantom of a Qiantln it, Enwound him fold by fold. ^ IIORTE d'aRTHUR. 193 tbjects 186. Dry dash'd. We speak of liquid soands ; dry as applied to sounds means arsh and abrupt. The metaphor is suggested by classical phrased ; so in Iliad, xiii., 409 : Kapv iSot aiTdvo)Tai (an island round which the infinite sea has made a crown). 267. fluting. 'Singing with flute-like notes.' The notion of the swan singing before death is very ancient ; it is found in Virgil, Pliny, etc. ; cf. Othello, v., 2 : "I will play the swan and die in music," Tenny- son's Dying Swan, etc. 268. Ruffes. Refers to the slight opening out of the wings when the swan swims. 269. swarthy webs. 'The dark webbed feet.' 196 NOTES ON TENNYSON. i I ULYSSES. This poem was first published in 1842, and has remained unaltered. Among the Greeks who fought against Troy, Ulysses was conspicuous, especially for fortitude, wisdom, and craft. On his return voyage to Ithaca, he gave oflFence to Poseidon (Neptune), and was in consequence delayed by numerous misfortunes. These adventures are the subject of the Odyssey, which represents him as finally restored to his kingdom and his faithful wife Penelope. Tennyson, in the poem before us, accepts this character, but represents the hero after his return dominated in his old age by a thoroughly modem feeling — the restless desire of experience and knowledge. The hint for this amplification of Homer, Tennyson found, as is pointed out by Mr. Churton Collins, in Dante: "The germ, the spirit, and the sentiment of this poem are from the twenty-sixth canto of Dante's Inferno. Tennyson has indeed done little but fill in the sketch of the great Florentine. As is usual with him in all cases where he borrows, the details and minuter portions of his work are his own ; he has added grace, elaboration, and symmetry ; he has called in the assistance of other poets. A rough crayon draught has been meta- morphosed into a perfect picture. As the resemblances lie not so much in expression as in general tone, we will in this case substitute for the original a literal version. Ulysses is speaking : Neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged sire, nor the due love which ought to have gladdened Penelope, could conquer in me the ardour which I had to become experienced in the world, and in human vice and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one ship, and with that small company which had not desert«d me I and my companions were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pass where Heroales assigned his landmarks. 'O brothers,' I said, ' who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not to this trief vigil of your senses which remain, experience of the unpeopled world beyond the sun. Consider your origin ; ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.' .... Night already saw the other pole with all its stars, and ours so low that it rose not from the ocean floor (Inferno, xxvi., 94-126)." Mr. Knowles reports Tennyson as saying when speaking of In Memo- riam: "It [In Memoriam] is a very impersonal poem as well as per- sonal. There is more about myself in 'Ulysses,' which was written under the sense of loss, and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought to the end. It was more written with the feel- ing of his loss upon me than many poems in 'In Memoriam.'" The "loss" referred to, is of course the death of his friend Hallam. ULYSSES. 197 lemo- 13 per- Iritten 111 life feel- im.'" We have, then, in the Ulysses, a particularly happy example of the infusion of the poet's own mood and feeling into a character and situa- tion which serve to bring them out and intensify them for the reader. Ulysses, — full of knowledge and experience, but with that inevitable sense of the diminution of power, of hopefulness, and of the possibilities of life, which comes with age, — still feels within his heart that insatiable craving for more light and more life which lies deep in every more finely touched spirit ; and the words put into his mouth by the poet, become for the reader a typical expression of similar yearning for the infinite, and of the similar sense of limitation and loss however occasioned. For the expression of a kindred mood, compare Merlin and the Oleam. The blank verse of the poem is at once characteristic and masterly. In short, as Mr. Stedman ( Victorian Poets) says : *' For visible grandeur and astonishingly compact expression, there is no blank verse poem, equally restricted as to length, that approaches the Ulysses." 2. among these barren crags of Ithaca, the domain of Ulysses, an island near the entrance of the gulf of Corinth. 3. mete and dole. The words are used to indicate the pettiness of the work 'ndeed, the wording of the first five lines indicates the speaker's discontent with the existing conditions of his life. 5. and know not me. ' My broad and varied experience have given me a spirit and ideas which are beyond the comprehension and sympathy of the inhabitants of this isle, limited as they are by the narrow round of their daily Lves.' 6-7. Gf. Macbeth, ii., 3 : The wine of life ia drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of. 8. su£fer'd greatly. The poem is full of touches that recall Homer ; one of the stock epithets of Ulysses is TroXvr^f • much enduring. ' 10. the rainy Hyades. A group of stars in the head of the constel- lation * Taurus ' which, when they rose with the sun were supposed to bring rain ; hence the name which is derived from the Gk: verb for * to rain.' Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, i., 744: Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones. 11. lam become a name. 'I have become famous.' For this use of name, cf. Dream of Fair Women, 163 ; it is a common Latin idiom, of. Aeneid, ii., 89, etc. 198 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 17. ria^ng with the clash of weapons. 18. Cf. Aeneid, ii., 6 : quorum pars magna fui. Virgil uses the phrase in the sense of Iiaving taken a large share in events ; Tennyson means more than that : Ulysses has not only been influentia'' 'n all matters in which he has been concerned, but these things have i. iheir turn con- tributed to make him what he is. 19-21. Our experience at once reveals and limits our percsption of the possibilities of life and knowledge ; these last are infinite, and, there- fore, our advance oniy serves to widen our perception of their extent. So, experience may be compared to an arch, which at once enables us to see, and limits our vision of, the world beyond, whose horizon continually recedes as we approach. 22. Cf. Shakespeare, Troilua and Cressida, iii., .3, 150, where Ulysses Perseverance, dear my lord, Kefcps honour bright ; to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockcy. 25. one, i.e., one life. 29. three suns. * Three years ' ; so * moons ' for months. Oardener'a Daughter, 1. 15 : " for some three careless moons. The summer pilot of an empty heart." 33. Telemachus is represented in the Odyssey as a prudent young man ; Tennyson makes him an impersonation of humdrum respect- ability without the genius and inspiration which belong to the higher spirit of Ulysses. There is just a touch of contempt in Ulysses'" refer- ence to him. 44-45. Note how suggestive and admirable is the background in- dicated by this touch of landscape, and by lines 54-56. 45, fol. Cf. Teucer's address to his companions in Horace, Odes, i., 7: O fortes pejora qui pass! Mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pelliti ouras ; Cras ingens iterabinms aequor. In the Homeric story Ulysses had no such mariners ; they all perished on the return voyage from Troy. 53. According to Homer the Gods themselves took part in the con- flicts before the walls of Troy, Mars and Venus fighting for the Trojans. s the phrase yeon means matters in r turn con- sroption of and, there- leir extent, aables us to continually ere Ulysses ST. AONBS* EVE. 199 Oardener'a ler pilot of ]ent young respect- lihe higher jses'" refer- >und in- \dea, i., 7; [perished the con- ?rojans. 64. * The lights of the houses.' 55. Note the happy effect of the long monosyllables, and the double caesura. 58-59. sitting furrows. Suggested by the oft-recurring line of the Odyssey: i^ijc S'il^djuevot troh,^ oka tvtttov lpeT/noi( (And sitting in order they smote the hoary sea with their oars). 60-61. the baths Of all the western stars. The place where the stars seem to plunge into the Ocean. So in Iliad, xviii. , 48, it is said of the Constellation of the Bear : olri i'a/ifiopdi ean Ttoerpdv Q,Keavolo ( * it alone is free from the baths of Ocean ' ). 62. In Homer, Ocean is represented as a mighty stream encompassing the earth ; at the western side its waters plunge into a vast chasm where is the entrance to Hades (see Odyssey, x., 611, fol.). 63. the Happy Isles. The "Fortunatae Insulae" ('Islands of the Blessed ' ) which were supposed to lie somewhere to the west of the Pillars of Hercules, and were sometimes identified with Elysium, the dwelling-place, after death, of favoured heroes. 64. Achilles the greatest of the Greek heroes before Troy. 66. streng^. Abstract for concrete — 'that strong band.' 70. Note how the coincidence of the metrical pauses between the feet, with the sense pauses, gives a movement to the line in keeping with the thought expressed. ST. AGNES' EVE. Published originally in The Keepsake for 1837, under the title of St. Agnes ; included in the Poems of 1842 ; the title changed to St. Agnes' Eve in the edition of 1855. January 21st is sacred to St. Agnes who, it is narrated, refused to marry the heathen son of the pretor, and after terrible persecution suffered martyrdom in the reign of the emperor Diocletian (284-305, A.D.). With St. Agnes' Eve various superstitions were connected, more especially that upon observing the proper rites, a maiden might see her future husband (cf. Keats' Eve of St. Agnes). It is possible that Tennyson felt that the character and circumstances delineated in the poem did nob exactly suit St. Agnes, and, accordingly changed the title i 200 NOTES ON TENNYSON. of the poom, leaving the heroine a nameless embodiment of that ascetic enthusiasm which finds its masculine representative in Sir Galahad ; she is "the pure and beautiful enthusiast who has died away from all her human emotions, and become the bride for whom a .Heavenly Bride- groom is waiting.... Words worth at his best, as in 'Lucy,' might scarcely match the music of these stanzas ; their pictoriil perfection he could hardly attain unto ; every image is in such deiicate harmony with the pure young worshipper that it seems to have been transfigure?! by her purity, and in the last four Imes the very sentences faint with the breathless culmination of her rapture " (Luce). 16. argent round. 'The full moon.' 19. mine earthly house. Cf. //. Corinthians, v. , 1 : " For we know if our earthly house of this tabernacle wera dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." 21. Break up. 'Break open,' as in /. Henry VI., 1, 3, and Matthew, xxiv., 43 : "If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he.... would not have suffered his house to be broken up." 25-36. She too has her marvellous vision, like other maidens on St. Agnes' Eve, but a vision of an import and character very different from theirs. 35. the shining sea. Cf. Revelation, xv., 2: "I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire ; and them that had gotten the victory over the beast. . . .stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God." SIR GALAHAD. This, like The Lady of Shalott, is one of the earlier poems in which Tennyson works upon materials aflforded by Arthurian romance. In Malory's Morte d' Arthur, Sir Galahad is the knight who lived ' a clean maiden ' and in consequence saw tho Holy GraiL Tennyson seizes upon this personage to embody a type of the combination of ascetic and knightly virtue— of that devotion to an ideal which led the devotee to disregard earthly ties uid bodily needs, and to live in a spiritual ecstasy. This poem represents the masculine side of the same spiritual condition which is unfolded in St. Agne^* Eve. Su* Galahad reappears in the Idylls of the King, being one of the prominent personages in The Holy Orail. t)f that ascetio Sir Galahad; iway from all Javenly Bride- Lucy,' might perfection he ate harmouy 1 transfigured Bs faint with u For we J, we have a le heavens." id Matthew, t watch the louse to be lens on St. ferent from it were a ;he victory of God." in which ajice. In • * a clean izes upon setic and 3votee to spiritual spiritual 'appears sin The SIR GALAHAD. 5. shattering t>,« vli. ^^^ "o-nd. Of a t,„t^r; J'^^' " -<> to denote the broken „d st„„„i^ 14. onwhom=„„th„«eonwh„m ^- •, "hat he M most assur'd." ^"^'^' "■- 2-- " Most ignorant ol "oipt 'Undeiground ceU • ^"i** 0/Me ;r.„p. ""'^ *°"y » his . Sol!, Orail.' one rfT^' 6J- The emphasis is of „o„se on the ere. Ever 'gainst that sea»nn „^ Wherein our Saviour's h^k ^"^^^ ^Batnlet,L 1, 202 NOTES ON TENNYSON. ' 63. the leads. Lead vtm the common covering for roofs of substantial buildings in earlier times. It has been suggested that this noise of haii upon tl% roof is inconsistent with 1. 52. 61. According to Malorv'^ -"count of Sir Galahad's death, Joseph of Arimathea appears to j ^d says: "thou hast resembled me in two things, in that thou hast seen the marvels of the Sancgreal and In that thou hast been a clean maiden." *AS THRO' THE LAND AT EVE WE WENT.' This and the following six songs are from The Princess, published in 1847. These songs (with the exception of ' Tears, idle tears') were not, however, inserted until the third edition of the poem appeared in 1850. * In The Princess, a party of ladies and gentlemen are gathered on a pleasant summer day in the ruins of an old abbey, and to pass the time, seven young men tell in succession an impromptu story about a Princess who founded a college for women. The story is thus divided into seven parts, and between the parts a song is inserted, supposed to be sung by the ladies — the women sang Between the rougher voices of the men, Like linnets in the pauses of the wind. These six songs are given in the text, together with " Tears, idle tears," which is not one of the interludes, but belongs to the story itself. 6-9. The poem as originally printed consisted of two stanzas of five lines each. The 11. 6-9 were subsequently added and the lines printed without division into stanzas. In Dr. Rand's MS. the song stands as printed in our text except that lines 4 and 13 are wanting. ' SWEET AND LOW, SWEET AND LOW.' 6. dyingf. 'Setting.' 14-15, These phrases are thrown in without grammatical construction, . a practice extremely common in earlier forms of poetry. The con- nection ill thought is sufficiently apparent. * Dr. Theodore H. Rand, of McMaster University, had in his possession autograph copies of these intercalary songs which present some variations from the printed text. Dr. Rand's account of these MSS. and facsimile copies is to be found in the Appendix to Dr. Sykes' Select Poems of Tennyson (Gage, Toronto, 1894X substantial loise of haii ,, Joseph of bled me in real and in ^ » ublished in ') were not, }d in 1850.^ ;hered on a is the time, t a Princess i into seven 1 be sunK by idle tears," tself. izas of five ^es printed stands as struction, I The con- I autograph linted text. : Appendix 'TKAB8, IDLE TBAB&' 203 *THE SPLENDOUR FALLS ON CASTLE WALM.* L splendour. The splendour of sunset. 3. long; light. The rays of light seem long because the sun in low in the horizon. shakes. * Quivers through the motion of the water.' 9. scar. ' A bare or broken place on the side of a mountain ' ; the word is frequently used by Scott in the form scaur. 10. The mysterious and faint character of the echoes is well suited to suggest fairy agency. 'TEARS, IDLE TEARS, I KNOW NOT WHAT THEY MEAN.' In The Princess we hear how a party of ladies from the college spend a summer afternoon in a scientific ramble : — Many a little hand Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, Many a light foot shone like a Jewel set In the dark crag : and then we tum'd, we wound About the cliffs, the copses, out and in. Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns. then they gathered to their evening repast, and the Princess asked some one to sing — and a maid. Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 'Tears, idle tears,' etc. The form of this poem should be noted ; non-rhyming verse has not often been employed for lyrical purposes in modern English. Milton uses it but with very partial success in the choruses of Samson Agonistes. The most successful example of such use before Tennyson is the well known Ode to Evening, by Collins (1721-1759), which may be found in the Appendix to this volume. Mr. James Knowles, in The Nineteenth Century for Jan. 1893, reports that Tennyson speaking ■' !*:; 204 NOTES ON TENNYSON. of this song said: "It is in a way like St. Paul's 'groanings which cannot be uttered. ' It was written at Tintem when the woods were all yellowing with autumn seen through the ruined windows. It is what I have always felt even from a boy, and what as a boy I called the ' passion of the past.' And it is so always with me now ; it is the distance that charms me in the landscape, the picture and the past, and not the immediate to-day in which I move " (Compare with this last sentence the poem Far-far-away). The "Tintem" referred to is Tintem Abbey, "perhaps the most beautiful ruin in England," on the right bank of the Wye in Monmouthshire, associated with Words- worth's well-known Lines written above Tintem Abbey. Prof. W. M. Dixon is "inclined to regard [this poem] as the most characteristic of his genius of any poem ever written by the author, and that for two reasons. It is his most successful expression of the emotion of vague regret, of dumb inarticulate pain of heart, a province of universal human feeling, which Tennyson alone among poets has found a voice to render, and thus made particularly his own." The idea and feeling of this song are expressed in an early poem of Tennyson's published in The Oem for 18.31, but not contained in his collected works : sad no more I O sweet r»o more ! O strange no m,ore ! By a mossed brookbank on a stone 1 smelt a wildwood flower alone ; There was a ringing in my ears, And both my eyes gushed out with tears. Surely all pleasant things had gone before. Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, Nonwrel I «THY VOICE IS HEARD THRO' ROLLING DRUMS.' This song received its present form in the edition of 1851 ; the follow^ ing is the earlier version : — Lady, let the rolling drums Beat to battle where thy warrior stands ; Now thy face aoross his fancy comes And gives the battle to his hands. Lady, let the trumpet blow, Olasp thy little babes about thy knee : Now their warrior father meets the foe. And strikes bim dead for thine and tbe9. 7 h< ings which i^oods were ows. It is oy I called ; it is the 6 past, and th this last ;rred to is nd," on the ith Words- 9 the most luthor, and sion of the a province poets has M :ly poem of ined in his IMS.' le follow- 'ASK MB NO MOBS.' 20& 1-2. Dr. Rand's MS. reads : When all among the thundering drunui Thy soldier in the battle stands. 8. thine. Dr. Rand's MS. has "them " ; the reading in the text is a great improvement. *HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD.' In a volume of selections published in 1865, Tennyson included another version of this song: — Home they brought him slain with spears, They brought him home at evenfall ; All alone she sits and hears, Echoes in the empty hall, Sounding on the morrow. The sun peeped in from open field, The boy began to leap and prance, Rode upon his father's lance, Beat upon his father's shield, "Oh hush, my Joy, my sorrow." The poem may have been suggested by an incident in the Lay of the Last Minstrel^ i., 9 : — But o'er her warrior's bloody bier The Ladye dropp'd nor flower nor tear ! Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain, Had lock'd the source of softer woe ; And burning pride and high disdain. Forbade the rising tear to flow ; Until, amid his sorrowing clan, Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee — " And if I live to be a man, My father's death revenged shall be ! " Then fast the mother's tears did seek To dew the infant's kindling oheek. S. watching. Dr. Rand's MS. has "whispering." If *ASK ME NO MORE: THE MOON MAY DRAW THE SEA.' This song is closely linked in thought to the subject of Part VII. of The Princess, to which it forms a prologue. In Part VII. we are told how the Princess, under the influence of kindly feelings, undertakes to 206 NOTES ON TENNYSON. nurse the wounded hero, her long repulsed suitor, how pity gave place in her heart to a tenderer interest, how her novel ideas and schemes for her sex give place, and 'Love at last is lord of all,' or to quote the words of the Prince — Till out of long frustration of her care, And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons, And out of hauntings of my spoken love, And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream. And often feeling of the helpless hands, And wordless breedings on the wasted cheek — From all a closer interest flourish'd up, Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these. Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself, But such as gather'd colour day by day. Mr. p. M. Wallace in his notes on this song, says:— "Note the pre- dominance in this song of monosyllables. Of the 125 words which it contains only seven have more than one syllable, and these only two. This feature imparts a peculiar stateliness to the composition, empha- sising the solemnity of its tone without impairing its melody." 3. fold to fold. Dr. Rand's MS. has " fold on fold." 12. Cf. Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 772 : And all in vain you strive against the stream. 4 For *♦ and" in this line Dr. Rand's MS. reads "but." LANCELOT AND ELAINE. The Idylls of the King. — Tennyson's early purpose of writing "a whole great poem " on the subject of Arthur has been referred to in the introductory notes on The Epic, pp. 244-5, where Morte d^ Arthur, pub- lished in 1842, is represented as a fragment of such a poem. In 1857 a volume entitled Enid and Nimue ; or.. The True and the False was printed but immediately withdrawn ; it contained the earliest forms of the two idylls subsequently published under the titles Enid, and Vivien. In June 1858, Clough records that he had "heard Tennyson read a third Arthur poem — the detection of Guinevere, and the last interview with Arthur." Finally, in 1859 a volume appeared entitled Idylls qf the King, containing four Idylls : Enid, Vivien, Elaine, Ouine- pity gave place and schemes for or to quote the LANCELOT AND EUWB. N'ote the pre- ords which it 5se only two. ition, empha- ly." writing "a 9d to in the rihur, pub. In 1857 a J'hlse M'as iest forms Enid, and Tennyson d the last d entitled fie, Ouine- »«^«- ^^ 1862 the Dedi.nr """** ^^^ ^ere published r;^'^'^*'P^«fi^ed. InlSfiOf. ^ the who, p^„ = '» >885 it r:;'lf ™ -"ich fo™ a cC .^^ «Wed. and „„e of themdi:T/- *''° "^"» »' '859 LhX ^^^z t:T^i!^'z Zri '^r"'^' »-«=»« wwch he th! t ™ "'• '"^^""'y disoa J w, h t„i :"''• ''^ <=»". "ith only o^ « e^ot "'*T* '" *» '■"•-W-a^ poems bul? "«" ""^^ ' " "o-M- an ettective artistic wholp a x ^ ' '^"t does not constif„f« *i, plot which he strove to JL ,1^''* ^"^^ '^' ^^ternal unTtv of ! "" Bather than that ^21"^ * ?' """" '^'"'^ '^'^"^ Streams like a cloSnf.r^''^^'' ""™^' * »host. And Ceaves to c^ C^Eh ^ • '"°""^'''P-^' ^ut, again, as from the Doinf nf • been added which should haTe o"; Z™, "'^ ""•"■' "ig'.' no' C^e -«en t, „„f„,ding the co„crete~' t^;^,"-,- - th,„e aetull;; Lancelot and Elaine Th ^' °' *'"' """''■■'y-g meaning. •8^/ '^-'Wions, aswilfhrerfLtrLi; """"=' *'"'^""--<" "nail. It was written, therefore ),./., "°"''"8 "otes, are verv tons that these idylls were tte^ded to^f """' '""' «''*" ""^ ^ fr;a;:^Sa't^rhyrir„:n^^ fii ji #-){ fr 208 NOTES ON TENNYSON. i li II ,1 I i 1859 — a volume which, on the face of it, simply contained four atudiea of female character from Arthurian legend, not parts of a greater poem. Further, there was not in the volume of 1859 (as in the setting of Morte d* Arthur, or in the address To the Queen) any hint given to the readers of a symbolic meaning. It is very questionable if such meaning were present in his mind when he wrote the four idylls of 1859. Some of the later idylls such as Oareth and Lynette, and The Holy Orail must be interpreted symbolically to be fully appreciated. But of the many writers who have treated of the deeper significance of the idylls, no one seems to have found much symbolism in the present poem. In the completed poem, Arthur represents the Soul, or the spiritual element in man, or the universe, or the ideal ; Guinevere, the body, or the flesh, or the purely material ; Merlin, the intellect ; the knights the various powers of man, etc. But such interpretation can scarcely be applied to Lancelot and Elaine, nor is the poem made a whit more beau- tiful or eflFective by the attempt, although this need not be true in the case of some of the other idylls. The source of the story is Malory's Morte d' Arthur ; the relation of the poem to the original is illustrated by full quotations in the notes, but the student will do well to consult Malory himself.* 2. Malory calls her ** Elaine le Blank" (i.e. the blanche or white). Astolat. The name which appears as " Shalott " in Tennyson's earlier treatment of this theme. Malory identifies this place with Guildford in Surrey, but the geography of Tennyson's Idylls is purely imaginary. 9. blazon'd. The word * blazon ' meant properly a shield ; hence armorial bearings. The derived verb employed in this passage means to depict in colours as heraldic devices are depicted. 10. tinct. The common modern form of the word is * tint ' ; * tinct * is to be found in Hamlet, iii., 4, 91, and Cymb., ii., 2, 23. wit. Not in the narrower sense common in modern English, but in the broader original sense of * intellect in general. ' Of her wit, * out of her own invention.' 16. read. 'Perused,' 'studied.' 22. Caerlyle. Carlisle in Cumberland. Caer is of Celtic origin and means castle. *A cheap and convenient edition of Malory's Morte d' Arthur is published in Mao* millan's Olobe Library. > stadies of iter poem. g of M(yrit readers of ning were ome of the m must be the many rlls, no one le spiritual le body, or knights the scarcely be more beau- true in the is Malory's illustrated 1 to consult or white). jon's earlier ruildford in ^inary. jld ; hence isage means b' ; 'tinct' nglish, but er roil^ * out 2 origin and Ibhad in Mao LANCELOT AND ELAINE. ^ 209 23. Caerleon upon Usk is South Wales ; cf. Geraint and Enid : For Arthur on the Whitsuntide before Held court at old Caerleon-upon-UsIt. One of Arthur's twelre great battles was fought here. Camelot. See on Lady ofShalott, 1. 5. 31. jousts. * A tournament.' 34. In the edition of 1859 the lines read : — For Arthur when none knew from whence he came, Long ere the people chose him for their king, Roving the trackless realms of Lj'onnesse. The story of the origin of the jousts and the prize of diamonds is not in Malory. 35. Lyonnesse. See note on Morte d* Arthur, 1. 4. 45. This line was originally : — And one of these, the King, had on a crown. 53. shingly. • Covered with loose pebbles ; cf. Enoch Arden, 733 ; " Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot." 'Shingle' in this sense is, according to Skeat, a word of diflferent origin from * Shingle ' as applied to the covering of roofs. scaur. See note on " The splendour falls," 1. 9. 59. Divinely. * By divine guidance.' 62. There were nine diamonds, four on each side, and one in front (see 1. 46 above). 65. The heathen. The Saxons and Norsemen against whom the British were fighting. 67. still. * Always,' ' on each occasion ' ; cf. Oareth and Lynette, 176. This use of 'still' is common in Shakespeare, cf. Hamlet, ii., 2, 42. 75-76. the place, etc, 'London.' 76. let proclaim. 'Caused to be proclaimed,' so in Marriage of Geraint, 152: "the good king gave orders to let blow his horns for hunting." This use of ' let ' was sufficiently common in earlier English. So in the passage of Malory on which this is based (xviii,, 3): "The king let cry a great jousts and tournament that should be that day at 210 NOTES ON TENNYSON. An example of Tennyson's poetic Camelot, that is Winchester." diction, see p. 142 of this volume. 78, f ol. Compare Malory, xviii. , 8 : " So King Arthur made him ready to depart to these Jousta and would have had the queon with him : but that time she would not, she said, for she was sick and might not ride at that time. That me repeuteth, said the King, for this seven year ye saw not such a fellowship together, except at Whitsuntide, when Galahad departed from the court. Truly, said the queen to the King, you must hold me excused, I may not be there, and that me repenteth." 89. Love-loyal. For similar examples of Tennyson's use of alliter- ative compound words, see "tiay-trumpeting" (1. 137), "barren-beaten" (1. 161), "green-glimmering" (1. 483), " strange-statued " (1. 800). 91. tale. * Number,' of. Exodus, v., 8 : " And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them," and Macaulay's ^ora^itw : "And now hath every city sent up her tale of men » 94. lets. 'Hinders.' Cf. Hamlet, I, 4, 95: "I'll make a ghost of him that lets me " ; so in the collect for the fourth Sunday in Advent : "through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us." 97, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 8 : " Sir Launcelot ye are greatly to blame, thus to hold you behind my lord ; what trow ye, what will your enemies and mine say and deem ? Nought else but see how Sir Launcelot holdeth him ever behind the King and so doth the C^ueen, tor that they would be together : and thus will they say, said the queen to Launcelot, have ye no doubt thereof." 103, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 9 : •' Madam, said Sir Launcelot, I allow your wit, 'tis of late come sin [t. e., since] ye were so wise, and therefore Madam, as at this time I will be ruled by y jr counsel, and this night I will take my rest, and to-morrow by time will take my w9,y toward Winchester." 106. the uiyriad cricket. Cf. Enoch Arden, 679: "The mjrriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl. " 108. is nothing. *Is of no account, not worthy of regard.' 110. worship. Cf. Merlin and Vivien, 11-13: Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl But the great Queen herself, fought in her name, Sware by her. I poetic e had the ind might ar ye saw ,rted from ; may not I alliter- ■beaten " )). B bricks, OQ," and r tale of ghost of Advent : dered in ird; what It Bee how that they bve ye no since] ye counsel, |,y toward myriad and Ouinevere : LANCELOT AND SLAINB. To love one maiden only, cleave to her. And worship her by years of noble deeds. 211 \ 1 I i is allow'd. According to The New English Dictionary, there are confounded in the word ' allow ' two words of different origins, one ulti- mately from Lat. allaudare, ' to praise ' another from allocare, * to assign, bestow.' " Between the two primary significations there naturally arose a variety of uses blending them in the general idea of assign toith approval, grant, concede a thing claimed or urged, admit a thing offered, permit, etc., etc." As an illustration of this variation in the meaning, compare the use of allow in the line before us with its use in lines 153 and 202 below, and also Malory's use of the same word in the pas- sage quoted in the note to 1. 103. In the present passage the meaning *is allowed of ' is closer to allaudare than in the most ordinary iJern use; cf. Luhe, xi., 48: "Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers. " 118. devoir. 'Duty.' Chaucer, Clerkes Tale, 1. 28, Spenser, Shep- herd's Calendar, ix., 227; especially 'knightly duty,' cf. Malory, vii., 23, XX,, 18. 121-2. Cf. 1. 132 below and Maud, Pt. I., ii.: Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null. Dead perfection, no more. 127. Cf. 1. 95 above. 130. In Oareth and Lynette, these are described as vows— Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness, And, loving, utter faithfulness in love. And uttermost obedience to the King. and in another place Merlin calls them — Such vows as is a shame A man should not be bound by, yet the which Nu man can keep. In Ouinevere, Arthur says of his knights — I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, II i 212 NOTES ON TENNYSON. To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honour his own word as if his Ood's, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her. 134. The low sun. ' The sun low in the horizon ' which colours the clouds, unlike *' the Sun in heaven " (1. 123) which gives a white light. Cf. 11. 113-4 below. 135. the bond of marriage. 137-9. Cf. 105-8 above. 143-4. Cf. the seventh line of the passage from Ouinevere quoted in note on 1. 130. 148. wit. * Intelligence sufficient to get you out of your difficulty. ' 163. allow. See note on 1. 110 above. 158. prove. * Show the character of his work and justify it.' 175, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 9 : " This old baron had a daughter that time that was called the fair maid of Astolat. And ever she beheld Sir Launcelot wonderfully. And, as the book saith, she cast such love unto Sir Launcelot that she could never withdraw her love, wherefore she died ; and her name was Elaine 1«^ Blank. So thus as she came to and fro, she was so hot in her love that she besought Sir Launcelot to wear upon him at the justs a token of hers. Fair damsel, said Sir Launcelot, and if I grant you that, ye may say I do more fory our love than ever I did for lady or damsel. Then he remembered him that he would go to the justs disguised, and for because he had never afore that time borne no manner of token of no damsel, then he bethought him that he would bear one of her, that none of his blood thereby might know him. And then he said. Fair maiden, I will grant you to wear a token of yours upon my helmet, and therefore what it is shew it me. Sir, she said, it is a red sleeve of mine, of scarlet well embroidered with great pearls. So she brought it him. So Sir Launcelot received it and said. Never did I erst so much for no damsel. And then Sir Launcelot betook the fair maiden his shield in keeping, and prayed her to keep that until that he came again. And so that night he had merry rest and great cheer. For ever the damsel Elaine was about Sir Launcelot, all the while she might be suffered." 182. Livest between the lips. Cf. Aeneid, xii., 235: vivusque per ora feretur. 188, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 9 : " Fair Sir, said Sir Launcelot to his host, I would pray you to lend me a shield that were not openly known, for mine is well known. Sir, said his host, ye shall have your desire, for me seemeth ye be one of the likeliest knights in the world, and therefore I L colours the white light. e quoted in difficulty.' it.' ud of Astolat. , she cast such Fore she died; was so hot in token of hers. more fory our would go to no manner of ler, that none vill grant you it me. Sir, it pearls. So so much for keeping, and le had merry all the while nisque per a shield that ill have your I therefore I LAKCBLOT AND ELAINB. 213 shall shew you friendship. Sir, wit you well I have two sons which were but late made knights, and the eldest hight Sir Ter.'e, and he was hurt that same day that he was made knight, that he may not ride, a.'id his shield ye shall have, for that is not known, I dare say, but here and in no place else. And my youngest son hight Sir Lavaine, and if it please you he shall ride with you unto that justs, and he is of his age strong and wight." 197. his shield is blank enough. See Qareth and Lynette, 405-409, where it is said of the shields carved about the walls of Arthur's hall — When some good knight had done one noble deed. His arms were carven only ; but if twain ^ His arms were blazon'd also ; but if none The shield was blank and bare without a sig^ Saving the name beneath. 202. Allow him. See note on 1. 101. 219. an if. A phrase in common use in Middle English for 'if/ originally *and if,' sometimes merely 'an.' Cf. /. Henry VI. ^ v., 4, 125: "It dies and if it had a thousand lives. " Abbot, Shakespearian Qrammary 103, gives many examples. 234. slightly — slight. Such repetitions of forms of the same word, or of the same word in diflferent applications are frequent in Tennyson j so kindly — Und (1. 265), hard-ioon — hardly won (1. 1165), worship — woraUpfully (1. 1327-9), also 1. 164, 262. 244. read. See note on 1. 16 above. 247. 'mar* is used in reference to the face in Par. Lost, iv., 166: Isaiah, iii., 14. 252. Cf. the account in Luke, viii., 29 : "For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him : and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters ; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness." 254, fol. As Mr. Rowe says : This description of the chief of the knights with his face marred by his sin recalls Milton's fine picture (Par. Lost, i., 599-602) of the chief of the fallen angels : Darkened eo, yet shone Above them all the Archangel ; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and oare Sat on his faded cheek. 260. which was her doom, tion upon her.' Which brought her doom, her destruc- I > 1 214 NOTBS ON TENNYSON. 264. in a smzJler time. 'In an era less noble than that of Arthur.' 265. Cf. A Memoriam, Ixvi. : " Has made me kindlier with my kind." 271, fol. The "wordless man " and his story seem to be the invention of the poet himself. In Malory we find a single hint in the description of the arrival of the barge with the dead body (chap, xx.) : "They found the fairest corpse lying in a rich bed, and a poor man sitting in the barget's end," and no word would he speak." 280. "The battle of Mons Badoniciis is the only one of Arthur's battles mentioned by Gildas in his Latin History of Britain, and it is the only one which is recognized as definitely historical by modem historians. Thus Green, Short History of the English People, writes : — ' It is certain that a victory of the Britons at Mount Badon in the year 520 checked the progress of the West Saxons, and was followed by % long pause in their advance ' " (Rowe). 287. In this list of battles Tennyson follows the Latin Historia Brittonuni, by Nennius, who wrote in the 8th or 9th century. The places mentioned are variously identified with modern sites. 289. loud was "wild" in the edition of 1859. 294-6. In the passage of Nennius referred to in the last note, it is said: "The eighth was near Gurnion castle, where Arthur bore the image of the Holy Virgin, mother of God, upon his shoulders, and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight and pursued them the whole day with great slaughter." Mr. Littledale says, chap. xi. : "Geoflfrey of Monmouth says that the picture of the blessed Mary was on Arthur's shield Priwen, in order to put him in mind of her Tennyson seems to have been thinking of the famous ' Russian emerald,' said to have been sent originally by Pilate to Tiberius. It is supposed to have the head of Christ carved upon it But the poet has taken the detail of the head on the cuirass from Spenser's Arthur : — Athwart his breast a bauldrick brave he ware That shined, like twinkling stars, with stones most pretious rare, And in the midst thereof, one pretious stone, Of wondrous worth, and eke of wondrous mights, Shapt like a ladle's head, exceeding shone." 294. cuirass. 'The armour that protected breast and back.' 296. lighten'd as he breathed. The light played upon it through the movements of his chest. LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 215 Arthur.' lykind." nvention scription : "They jitting in Arthur's and it is J modem vrites : — the year wed by ft ffistoria ry. The igh the 298. The emblem of the Saxons was a White Horse, Cf. Ouinevere, 15 : "the Lords of the White Horse, Heathen, the brood by Hengist left." 305. 'Christ and Arthur* was their battle-cry ; cf. Henry V., iii., 1, 34 J * * Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George, " 315. the fire of God. ' A heaven-sent force and inspiration ' ; cf. The Coming of Arthur , 127, where Lancelot says to Arthur — * Sir and my liege,' he cried, ' the fire of God Descends upon thee in the battle-field.' 327. make him cheer. 'Entertain him in any fashion.' 330. all was nature. Elaine thought this tenderness was wholly the natural expression of feeling and not (as wrs the case) in part mere politeness. 333-7. Tennyson here indicates the incomparable superiority of a por- trait by a great painter over a photograph, for example, which registers a single, and often transitory and uncharacteristic, expression of the features. 340. rathe. 'Early.' Hence comes the comparative rather. Cf. Milton, LycidaSf 142: " Bring the rathe primrose tliat forsaken dies." In Memoriam, ex. : " The men of ripe and rather years." 340-1. Half deceiving herself with the pretext that the reason for her rising is to bid farewell to Lavaine. 349. flattering;. 'Caressing.' According to the etymologists 'stroke,' 'pat ' is the original signification of the word. 358. It was usual that the knights at tournaments should wear some gift of his lady-love as a t iken of her favour, — a glove, scarf, etc. Cf. Henry V., iv., 7, 160: "The glove which I have given him as a favour." 359. She braved a riotous heart. ' In spite of the flutterings of her heart which she could not control.' 360. fol. Cf. the passage from Malory quoted in note on 1. 175. 384. squire. It was the business of the squire to carry his master's shield ; indeed the word means etymologically shield-bearer (from Lat. scutum, a shield). 394. by- near. In ed. of 1859 in— by. 216 NOTES ON TENNYSON. ! ! 398, lived in fantasy. These words repeated from 1. 27 carry us back to the point at which the story broke oflf to tell how Elaine came to have the shield. 400. the long backs, etc. Very suggestive of the long undulations of the downs. 408. The green light, etc. An example of the poet's minute accuracy in the observation of nature. 409. milky roofs. The cave was scooped out of the chalky formation of which the downs of the South of England consist, cf . 1. 40.5. 411. noise. This word is applied to pleasing sounds in Tempest, iiL, 2:- the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Milton, Hymn on the Nativity, 97 ; Spenser, Faerie Queene, i., 12, 39, etc. 424. The Dragon was the symbol of royalty among the Britons (see 11. 434 fol., below), said to have been adopted by Uther, the father of Arthur, in consequence of having seen a fiery dragon in the heavens. Pendragon (literally, dragon's head) was a title given to Uther and his son. 425. There was a mystery connected with the birth of Arthur (see Coming of Arthur, 177, fol.), and also with his "passing" ; there was a current idea that he should *' come again." The mystery which exists in the old stories, Tennyson adapts to the symbolic meaning which he gives to the subject, Arthur representing the soul, the spiritual, the ideal 432. clear-faced. "Fair of complexion; also, perhaps, with the added idea of frank openness of expression. Arthur was * fair. Beyond the race of Britons and of men' (The Cotnirig of Arthur ^ 329-330)" (Rowe). But seel. 1159. 433. samite. See on Morte d' Arthur, 1. 31. 440-1. In the pattern, the forms of dragons gradually changed into other ornamental designs; such transitions may be observed in any piece of arabesque. 442. tender. 'Delicately wrought.' 448. crescent. 'Growing,' i.e., in knightly skill and fame; cf. 1. 1400 below : ** May not your crescent fear for name and fame," and Hamlet L, 3, 11 : " For nature orescent does not grow alone in thews and bulk." LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 217 (see was a exists ich he the 1 1400 }> 449-51. Mr. Churton Collins compares with these fine lines the famous saying of Socrates (Plato Apology ^ ix.): Oirof (To0(irar(5f eoriv bang iyvuKev bri ov^evbg &^i6g eari r^ akT^eig. irpbg acxpiav. (He is the wisest who knows that his wisdom is, in truth, worth nothing.) 455. held the lists. ' Stood on the defensive.' 466. Malory (xviii., 11) gives the following account : " So these nine knights of Sir Launcelot's kin thrust in mightily, for they were all noble knights. And they, of great hate and despite that they had unto iiim, thought to rebuke that noble knight Sir Launcelot, and Sir Lavaine, for they knew them not. And 80 they came hurtling together, and smote down many knights of Northgalis and of Northumberland. And when Sir Launcelot saw them fare so, he gat a spear in his hand, and there encountered with him all at once Sir Bors, Sir Ector, and Sir Lionel, and all they three smote him at once with their spears. And with force of themselves they smote Sir Launcelot's horse to the earth. And by misfortune Sir Bors smote Sir Launcelot through the shield into the side, and the spear brake, and the head left still in his side. When Sir Lavaine saw his master lie on the ground, he ran to the king of Scots, and smote him to the earth, and by great force he took his horse and brought him to Sir Launcelot, and maugre them all he made him to mount upon that horse. And then Sir Launcelot gat a spear in his hand, and there he smote Sir Bors horse and man to the earth. And then he smote Sir Bleoberis, etc. . . . And by this Sir Bors was horsed, and then he came with Sir Ector and Sir Lionel, and all they three smote with swords upon Sir Launcelot's helmet. And when he felt their buffets, and his wound, the which was so grievous, then he thought to do what he might while he might endure ; and then he gave Sir Bors such a buffet that he made him bow his head passing low, and therewithal he rased off his helm, and might have slain him and so pulled him down. And in the same wise he served Sir Ector and Sir Lionel. For, as the book saith, he might have slain them, but when he saw their visages his heart might not serve him thereto, but left them there." 476-8. Of. TJie Last TournamerUy 648 : For Lancelot's kith and kin so worship him That ill to him ia ill to them. 482. In the Iliad, xv., 381, and also 624 there are similar comparisons of the onset of battle with that of a wave. The " green-glimmering " is a characteristic touch of Tennyson's own close observation. "There was a period of my life," says the poet in his letter to Mr. Dawson, quoted in A Study of the Princess, "when, as an artist, Turner, for example, takes rough sketches of landscapes, etc., in order to work them eventually into some great picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five words or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in Nature. I never put these down, and many a line has gone away on the north wind, but some remain, e.g., in the 'Idylls of the King ' : With all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, 218 NOTES ON TENNYSON. I'i i ! Suggestion : A storm which came upon us in the middle of the North Sea." 604-5. Diamond me No diamonds. A common form of expression in literature, cf. Richard II., ii,, 3, 87 : " Grace me no grace nor uncle me no uncle." Romeo and Juliet, iii., 5, 153, etc. 504, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 12 : " Fair lords, I pray you that ye will BufFer me to depart where me liketh, for I am sore hurt. I take none force of none honour, for I had lever to repose mo than to be lord of all the world. And therewithal he groaned piteously, and rode a great gallop away-ward from them, until he came under a wood's side ; and when he saw that he was from the field nigh a mile, and he was sure that he might not be seen, then he said with a high voice, O gentle knight Sir Lavaine, help me that this truncheon were out of my side, for it sticketh so sore that it nigh slayeth me. O mine own lord, said Sir Lavaine, I would fain do that might please you, but I dread me sore, and I draw out the truncheon, that ye shall be in peril of death. I charge you, said Sir Launcelot, as ye love me draw it out. And therewithal ho descended from his horse, and right so did Sir Lavaine, and forthwith Sir Lavaine drew the truncheon out of his side. And he gave a great shriek, and a marvellous grisly groan, and his blood brast out nigh a pint at once, that at last he sank down, and so swooned pale and deadly," 515. Sir Lancelot gave. Originally the reading was " that other gave. " 530, fol. In Malory, Arthur knows that the knight is Lancelot, having "espied him as he did walk in a garden beside the castle at Astolat. " On hearing from his attendants that the victorious knight has probably received a mortal wound, " Alas, said Arthur, how may this be? ' < '^e so hurt ? What is his name? said King Arthur. Truly, said they all, we know not his name, nor from whence he came, nor whither he would. Alas, said the king, these be to me the worst tidings that came to me this seven year : for I could not for all the lands I hold, to know and wit it were so that the noble knight were slain. Know ye him ? said they all. As for that, said Arthur, whether I know him or know him not, ye shall not know for me what man he is, but Almighty Jesu send me good tidings of him." 536-7. Wherefore, rise, O Gawain. In the ed. of 1859, the reading was: "Gawain, arise, my nephew." Professor Jones (Growth of the Idylls of the King, p. 144) notes the significance of this change in the reading. "In 1859, Arthur the king was a man and Modred and Gawain were his nephews. It is true that the poet has said that by Arthur he always meant the soul. However, with the introduction of the allegory into the later poems, the statement of his relationship to Modred and Gawain was omitted. Indeed an explicit denial of the relationship was introduced." At line 10 of Guinevere, Sir Modred was, le North icpresBion nor uncle , for I am than to be ;reat gallop aw that he len, then he cheon were ti lord, said and I draw r Launoelot, j,nd right so side. And out nigh a ihat other Lancelot, e castle at night has I? said King )e came, nor lat came to It it were so that, said Ut man he reading th of the re in the Jred and that by iiction of iship to of the ced yfBSf LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 219 in the ed. of 1859, styled Arthur's nephew ; this is expunged from the present text. So in the same poem, 1. 569, Arthur is now made to say : I must strike against the man they call My sister's son — no kin of mine. where in the ed. of 1859 he said : "I must strike against my sister's son." 549-50. The diamond seems to have been fixed in one of the flowers which formed the design of the canopy (see 11. 443-4) where it formed a flaehing or glistening, hence " restless " centre. 655. Gawain. Mr. Rowe (in his edition of Lancelot and Elaine) has the following note on Gawain : Oawain's character ia gradually and consistently developed in the Idyllt. At first we have a bright, frank, impulsive boy : see The Coming of Arthur, 319-321 :— " And Gawain went ; and breaking into song Sprang out, and follow'd by his flying hair Ban like a colt, and leapt at all he saw." Later (In Gareth and Lynet.te) he appears as a knight of brilliant achievements, for Oareth saw on the wall of Arthur's hall "The shield of Gawain blazon'd rich and bright," in token that he had done more than one "noble deed." Here (in Lancelot and Elaine) we find the first hint of the taint of disloyalty ; and below we are told that his famed courtesy, which gave him his surname of ' The Courteous,' was "Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it." In The Holy Grail his want of lofty aim and serious purpose is contrasted with his noisy impulsiveness, and we read that when the knights took the oath to ride a twelve- month and a day in quest of the Orail, " Gawain swore, and louder than the rest," but that soon, growing much awearied of the quest, he renounced it and spent the year in dalliance ; and how subsequently in " foolish words— A reckless and irreverent knight was he "—he ridiculed all such lofty enterprises. And, finally, in Pelleaa and Etarre, although at first there flashed through Gawain's heart " The fire of honour and all noble deeds," all noble impulse is dissipated by the first shock with sensual temptation. Although Pelleas already knows him for the one " whom men call light-of-love," he is induced to trust to his pledged troth, only to find himself treacherously betrayed :— " Alas that ever knight should b3 so false." It is only after Gawain's death that his spirit discovers and mourns the worthlessnesa of those earthly delights which in his lifetime he had put above loyalty and duty. We read in The Passing qf Arthur (29-32), how " There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain kill'd In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering mnd, and past hia ear Went shrilling, < Hollow, hollow, all delight' " I 5- tl 220 NOTES ON TENNYSON. m The gradual lowering of Oawain's character is symbolic of that moral degradation of the whole order of the Round Table which spoiled the purpose of Arthur's life. The older chroniclers, before Malory, give Gawain a much nobler character. Geoflfrey of Monmouth gives him the first place in the ranks of Arthur's army, his prowess ol)8Curing that of Arthur himself. In many of the verse romances he is represented as the mirror of knighthood and courtesy. It is not till the later prose romances and the introduction of the spiritual Grail element that Gawain is deposed from this pride of place : in the Percivale he is reserved for " the role of dreadful example." 558. and the child of Lot. Originally read " of a crafty house." 658. Lot, King of Orkney, was husband of Bellicent, reputed sister of Arthur ; he had three sons, Modred, Gawain, and Gareth. Lot was "traitor to the king. He fought against him in the Barons' wars' {Oareth and Lynette, 75-6). Modred followed his father's example, leagued himself with the "Lords of the White Horse" (Ouimvere, 670), fought against Arthur in the great "battle in the west" — smote his liege Hard on the helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin ; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell. — Passing of Arthur. 562. concourse. Note the unusual but earlier accentuation ; cf. 'discotirse,' 'recourse.' Milton accentuates * concotirse. ' 569. tarriance. This form is found in Two Oentlemen of Verona, ii. , 7, 90, and Passionate Pilgrim, 74. 695. fine. * Fine-spun/ 'over-subtle.' 609. Past. In the ed. of 1859 "moved." 630. a random. In the ed. of 1859, "wildly." 633. more at random. In the ed. of 1859, " longer wildly." 646. This treachery is not found in Malory where Gawain's conduct towards Elaine is irreproachable. 657. her. "Originally *him* former, which was a slip, as the male bird was seldom used in hawking, the female being larger and stronger " (Rolfe). hern. A form of heron ; this shorter form is the one always employed by Tennyson, so in The Brook: "I come from haunts of coot and hern." 661. an. See note on 1. 219. gradation of 8 life. The Geoffrey of :8S obscuring 18 the mirror introduction lace : in the )use. jd sister of Lot was ms' wars' I example, ivere, 670), f Arthur. lation ; cf . ^erona, ii., 's conduct the male [stronger " [employed coot and LANCELOT AND BLAINE. 221 662, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 14: "Ah, mercy, said Sir Gawaine, now is my heart more heavier than ever it was tofore. Why ? said Elaine. For I have great cause, said Sir Gawaine ; is that knight that owneth this shield your love ? Yea, truly, said she, my love he is, God would I were his love. Truly, said Sir Gawaine, fair damsel, ye have right, for, and he be your love, ye love the most honourable knight of the world, and the man of most worship. So me thought ever, said the damsel, for never, or that time, for no knight that ever I saw loved I never none erst. God grant, said Sir Gawaine, that either of you may rejoice other, but that is in a great adventure. But truly, said Sir Gawaine unto the damsel, ye may say ye have a fair grace, for why, I have known that noble knight this four and twenty year, and never or that day I nor none other knight, I dare make it good, saw nor heard say that e\'er he bare token or sign of no lady, gentlewoman, nor maiden, at no Justs nor tournament. And therefore, fair maiden, said Sir Gawaine, ye are much beholden to him to give him thanks. But I dread me, said Sir Gawaine, that ye shall never see him in this world, and that is great pity that ever was of carthi} knight. Alas, said she, how may this be ? Is he slain ? I sa^' not so, said Sir Gawaine, but wit ye well, he is grievously wounded, by all manner of signs, and by men's sight more likely to be dead then to be on live ; and wit ye well he is the noble knight Sir Launcelot, for by this shield I know him. Alas, said the fair maiden of Astolat, how may this be, and what was his hurt? Truly, said Sir Gawaine, the man in the world that loved him best hurt him so, and I dare say, said Sir Gawaine, and that knight that hurt him knew the very certainty that he had hurt Sir Launcelot, it would be the most sorrow that ever came to his heart. Now, fair father, said then Elaine, I require you give me leave to ride and to seek him, or else I wot well I shall go out of my mind, for I shall never stint till that I find him and my brother Sir Lavaine. Do as it liketh you, said her father, for me right sore repenteth of the hurt of that noble knight. Bight so the maid made her ready, and before Sir Gawaine making great dole. Then on the morn Sir Gawaine came to king Arthur, and told him how he hod found Sir Launcelot's shield in the keeping of the fair maiden of Astolat. All that knew I afore- hand, said king Arthur, and that caused me I would not suffer you to have ado at the great Justs: for I espied, said king Arthur, when he came in till his lodging, full late in the evening in Astolat. But marvel have I, said Arthur, that ever he would bear any sign of any damsel : for, or [before] now, I never heard say nor knew that ever he bare any token of none earthly woman. By my head, said Sir Gawaine, the fair maiden of Astolat loveth him marvellously well ; what it meaneth I cannot say ; and she is ridden after to seek him. So the king and all came to London, and there Sir Gawaine openly disclosed to all the court that it was Sir Launcelot that justed beat." 664. Ramp in the field. Rarrp is the technical term in heraldry to describe an animal on its hind feet in the posture of attack ; field is the heraldic term for the general surface of the shield, the background of the emblazonry. 669. ye know it. ' You know that I imagine you love Lancelot.' 670. waste myself in vain. ' By trying to win your love which is already Lancelot's.' 678. I know there is. In ed. of 1859, " Methinks there is." in i I 222 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 687. Nay— like enow. In ed. of 1859, " May it be so." 720. For twenty strokes of the blood. 'While hii heart beat twenty times. ' 733. aim. In the ed. of 1859, " point." Marr'd— tranquillity. The old dame had hoped that the news would produce an exhibition of the Queen's feelings. 791, fol. Of. Malory, xviii., 15 : •• By fortune Sir Lavaine was ridden to play him, to enchafe hia horse. And anon as Elaine saw him she knew him, and then she cried onloud until him. And when he heard her, anon he came t>o her ; and then she asked her brother ; How did my lord Sir Launcelot ? Who told you sister that my lord's name was Launcclot? Then she told him how Sir Gawaine by his shield knew him. So they rode together till they came to the hermitage, and anon she alight. So Sir Lavaine brought her to Sir Laun- celot. And when she saw him lie so sick and pale in his bed, she might not speak, bufc suddenly she fell to the earth down sudderily in a swoon, and there she lay a great while. And when she was relieved she sighed, and said. My lord Sir Launcelot, alas, why be ye in this plight? and then she swooned again. And then Sir Launcelot prayed Sir Lavaine to take her up, — And bring her to me. And when she came to herself, Sir Launcelot kissed her, and said, Fair maiden, why fare ye thus? Ye put me to pain ; wherefore make ye no more such cheer, for, and ye be come to comfort me, ye be right welcome, and of this little hurt that I have, I shall be right hastily whole, by the grace of God. But I marvel, said Sir Launcelot, who told you my name." 799. in his moods. ' In one of the moody fits to which he was sub- ject.' Cf. Maud I., xiv. : "What 1 am I r«tging alone as my father raged in his mood?" 800. For a description of the gate, see Oareth and Lynette, 209-226. 801. mystically. ' In such a way as to symbolize a deeper meaning.' 812. battle-writhen. This characteristically Tennysonian phrase seems to mean ' with the knotted sinews developed through their con- stant use in battle.' In ed. of 1859, " wildly-sculptured "- 844. weirdly-sculptured, doubtless a misprint. 849. either twilight. Cf. Edwin Morris : To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and changt With all the varied changes of the dark. And either twilight and the day between. 866. forebore him. • Was patient with him ' ; cf. Epiiesians, iv., 2 ** with long suflfering, forbearing one another in love. 1 I Ii a a rt beat s would And anon when he id my lord Then she ;r till they , Sir Laun- not speak, lay a great celot, alas, Launcelot he came to Ye put me omfort me, stily whole, me." was sub- ly father )9-226. aeaning.' phrase heir con- bured"— LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 223 iv.. 2 856, fol, Cf. Malory, xviii., 15: ** So this maiden, Elaine, never went from Sir Lancelot, but watched him day and night, and did such attendance to him that the French book saith there was never woman did more kindlier for a man than she." 862. simples. * L^iedicinal plants '; a common meaning of the word, see Romeo and Juliet, v. 1, 40, Merry Wives, i., 4, 65, etc. 876. He was pledged by his honour to his dishonourable love for Guinevere. 882. bright. In ed. of 1859, " sweet." 885. that ghostly grace. The visionary beauty referred to in 1. 882. 888. See U. 854-5. 903. burthen. * The refrain of a song'; So in the stage direction to the song va. As You Like It, iv., 2 : ** The rest shall bear this burden," and in Enoch Arden, 792 : Beating it in upon his weary brain As tho' it were the burtheu of a song. 910. This refers to the practice of putting garlands of flowers upon victims to be sacrificed at the altar ; cf. Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn : Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, Aiid all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 919. There was a popular notion that a ghost could not speak unless first spoken to ; cf. Hamlet, I., I, 45. 929. Cf. Malory, xviii., 19 : '•My lord Sir Launcelot, now I see ye will depart, now, fair knight and courteous knight, have mercy upon me, and suflfer me not to die for thy love. What would ye that I did ? said Sir Launcelot. I would have you to my husband, said Elaine. Fair damsel, I thank you, said Sir Launcelot, but, truly, said he, I cast me never to be wedded man. Then, fair knight, said she, will ye be my love? Jesu defend me, said Sir Launcelot, for then I rewarded to your father and your brother full evil for their great goodness. Alas, said she, then must I die for your love. Ye shall not so, said Sir Launcelot, for wit ye well, fair maiden, I might have been married and I liad would, but I never applied me to be married yet. But because, fair damsel, that yo love me as ye say ye do, I will, for your good will and kindness, shew you some good- ness, and that is this ; that wheresoever ye will beset your heart upon some gootl knight that will wed you, I shall give you together a thousand pound yt.rly, to you and to your heirs. Thus much will I give you, fair maiden, for your kindness, and always while I live to be your own knight. Of all this, said the maiden, I will none, for in f ;■ f i| n 224 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 'Ill III !i> ^ll but if ye will wed me, or else he my lover, wit you well, Sir Launcelot, my good days are done. Fair damsel, said Sir Launcelot, of these two things ye must pardon me Then she shrieked shrilly, and fell down in a swoon." Stopf ord Brooke remarks here : ' ' She rises to the very verge of innocent maidenli ness in passionate love, but she does not go over the ver},'e. And to be on the verge, and not to pass beyond it, is the very peak of innocent girlhood when seized by over- mastering love. It was as difficult to represent Elaine as to represent Juliet ; and Teimyson has succeeded well where Shakespeare has succeeded beautifully. It is great praise, but it is well deserved." 942. To interpret ear and eye. ' To draw conclusions as to what the things "which it hears or sees, mean.' 943. blare. *Blow abroad,' properly of trumpets, cf. Welcome to Alexandra : *' Warble, O bugle, and trumpet blare." 958. Lancelot's ancv;stral domain was in France — " Benwick, some men call it Bayoane, and some men call it Beaume" (see Malory, xx., 18). 999-1003. Mr. Churton Collins says (p. 147): "This passage is an admirable illustration of Tennyson's power of transfusing the very essence of Virgil into English," au'l cites Aeneid, iv., 460-3 : Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox oum terras obscura teneret ; Solaque culminibus f erali carmine bubo Saepe queri et longas in fietum ducere voces. 1002. sallow-rifted glooms. ' The darkness broken by patches of pallid light.' 1006. make in earlier English is the technical phrase for the compo* sition of poetry ; and poets were called makers ; this, indeed, is the meaning of the Greek word iroirjTijq from which the word 'poet' is derived. 1007. Songs of similar form are found repeatedly in the "Idylls of the King" (see Mr.rriage of Oerainty 347, Coming of Arthur, 481, Merlin and Vivien, 386, Guinevere, 166, Gareth and Lynette, 974, 1034, etc. J the third lines of th*; stanzas rhyme in the song before us and in the Marriage of Geraint, elsewhere all the stanzas have merely similar endings. The three lino stanzas may have been suggested by the Welsh Triads. "The most ancient of the Cimbrian Bards wrote in stanzas of three rhyming lines. . . . each line containing seven syllables. Hence are said to have sprung the Welsh Triads which contained the Cymric systems of theology, ethics, history, jurisprudence and Bardism" (Rowe), A more exact imitation of these Triads is to be found at line 402 of The Coming of Arthur, where Merlin speaks "In riddling triplets of old time," each stanza consisting of three lines rhyming together. LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 225 jood days ,rdon me maidenll the verge, i by over- iliet ; and It is great to what elcome to lome men XX., 18). ige is an the very latches of le compo* jd, is the I* poet' is Idylls of Ihur, 481, |74, 1034, I us and in ly similar [he Welsh stanzas of Hence le Cymric [' (Rowe). )2of The bs of old 1022-3. Phantoms that give notice of death in particular families are common in tradition. In Ireland such an apparition in the form of a woman is called a ' Benshee.' 1.026. shrilling^. Tennyson is fond of using shrill as a verb, cf . Passing of Arthur, 34, 42, Talking Oak, 68, Enoch Arden, 178. 1056. muse at me. Cf. Macbeth, iii., 4, 85 : "Do no"^ muse at me, my most worthy friend," King John, iii., 1, 317 : "I muse your majesty doth seem so cold." 1068. an. See note on 1. 219. 1091. pass. 'Die'; cf. the expression 'the passing bell,' and In Memoriam, Ivii.: The passing of the sweetest soul That ever look'd with human eyes. 1099, fol. Cf. Malory, xviii., 19 : " Now speak we of the fair maiden of Astolat, that made such sorrow day and night, that she never slept, eat, nor drank ; and ever she made her complaint unto Sir Laun- oelot. So when she had thus endured a ten days, that she feebled so that she must needs pass out of this world, then she shrived her clean, and received her Creator. And ever she complained still upon Sir Launcelot. Then her ghostly father bade her leave such thoughts. Then she said, Why should I leave such thoughts ? am I not an earthly woman ? and all the while the breath is in my body I may complain me, for my belief is I do none offence though I love an earthly man, and I take God to my record I never loved none but Sir Launcelot du Lake, nor never shall ; and a pure maiden I am for him and for all other. And since it is the sufferance of Qod that I shall die for the love of so noble a knight, I beseech the High Father of heaven to have mercy upon my soul, and upon mine innumerable pains that I suffered may be allegiance of part of my sins. For sweet Lord Jesu, said the fair maiden, I take thee to record, on thee I was never great offender against thy laws, but that I loved this noble knight Sir Laun- celot out of measure, and of myself, good Lord, I might not withstand the fervent love wherefore I have my death. And then she called her father Sir Bernard, and her brother Sir Tirre, and heartily she prayed her father that her brother might write a letter like ae she did indite it ; and so her father granted her. And when the letter was written word by word like as she devised, then she prayed her father that she might be watched until she were dead,— And wiiile niy body is hot, let this letter be put in my right hand, and my hand bound fast with tiie letter until that I be cold, and let me be put in a fair bed, with all the richest clothes that I have about me, and so let my bed, and all my richest clothes, be laid with me in a chariot unto the next place where Thames is, and there let me be put within a barget, and but one man with me, such as ye trust to steer nie thither, and that my barget be covered with black samite, over and over. Thus, father, I ))esecch you, let it be done. So her father granted it her faithfully, all things should be done like aa she hiid devised. Then her father and her brother made great dole, for, when this was done, anon sin ed. And so when she was dead, the corpse, and the bed, all was led the next way unto Thames, and there a man, and the corpse, and all, were put into Thames, and so the man steered the barget unto Westminster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro or any espied it." i 226 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 1101. ghostly man. * A spiritual man,^ * a priest'; cf. Romeo and Juliety iii., 3, 49 : "Being a divine, a ghostly confessor," and the com- munion service in the Book of Common Prayer ; "He may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice." 1138. with bent brows. 'The brows contracted in grief,' cf. Aylmer'a Field, 625: "Long o'er his bent brows linger'd Averil." To bend the brows was originally to arch the eyebrows, later to knit the brow or frown {New English Dictionary). Mr. Rowe interprets this "with bowed heads," and Mr. Webb similarly interprets the passage in Aylm^r's Field. 1140-1. Note the season; the various Idylls are assigned to appro- priate seasons of the year. 1142. samite. See note a Morte d^ Arthur ^ 1. 31. 1154. Oar'd. In the ed. of 1869, "steer'd." 1167. for. ^^Fwt like 7^9 hi Greek and enim in Latin, often begins a promised f»tory. Cf. The Coming of Arthur, 184, The Passing of Arthur, 6 '* (Rowe). 1176. parted. For 'departed' ; cf. Gray's Elegy, 11, 1 and 89. 1177. oriel. 'A projecting window.' 1185. Is tawnier than her cygnet's. A cypiet is a young swan which is of a dark, bluish-gray colour. 1213. lost your own. 8c. * worth.* 1214-15. So Ophelia thought {Hamlet, III., 1) : Take these e^ain ; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 1238. disdain. In ed. of 1859, "disgust." 1257-9. The idea of a second coming is connected with several popular heroes, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, etc. ; and Malory says, xxi., 7 : *' Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but lived by the will of our Lord Jesu Ju another place. And men say that he will come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say, here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse : * Hio Jacet Arthur UB Rex quondam rexque f u turns. '" LA17CEL0T AND ELAINE. 227 leo and be com- sive the ef,' cf. 11." To cnit the •ets this issage in appro- jn begixis assing of ng Bwan In the Idylls such a belief in regard to Arthur is repeatedly referred to. In The Coming of Arthur y 420, we are told that Merlin has said : Tho' men may wound him, that he will not die But pass to come again. In Oareth and Lynette, 199, it is rumoured — that this King is not the King But only changeling out of Fairyland. 1262. Hitherto his face had been seen in profile only, now he turned his full'face towards the bank. 1264-5. For Sir Percivale and Sir Galahad see The Holy OraU. Both were distinguished among the Knights of the Round Table for their purity. Sir Galahad (see the poem so entitled) alone saw the Grail on its first appearance at Camelot. Sir Percivale " Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure," was partially successful in the quest of the Grail, and afterwards pass'd into the silent life of prayer, Praise, fast, and alms ; and leaving for the cowl The helmet in an Abbey far away From Oamelot, there, and not long after died. 1268. Cf. the concluding stanza of The Lady of Shalott. 1272, foL Cf. Malory, xviiL, 20 : "And this was the intent of the letter :— Most noble knight, Sir I^auncelot, now hath death made us two at debate for your love ; I was your lover, that men called the fair maiden of Astolat ; therefore unto all ladies I make my moan ; yet pray for my soul, and bury me at the least, and offer ye my mass-penny. This is my lost request. And a clean maiden I died, I take Qod to witness. Pray for my soul, Sir Launcelot, as thou art peerless.— This was all the substance in the letter. And when it was read the king, the queen, and all the knights wept for pity of the doleful complaints. Then was Sir Launcelot sent for. And when he was come, king Arthur made t>' letter to be read to him ; and when Sir Launcelot heard it word by word, he said. My lord Arthur, wit ye well I am right heavy of the death of this fair damsel. God knoweth I WdS never causer of her death by my willing, and that will I report me to her own brother; here he is, Sir Lav^aine. I will not say nay, said "Sir Launcelot, but that she was both fair and good, and much I was beholden unto her, but she loved me out of measure. Yo might have shewed her, said the queen, some bounty and gentleness, that might have preserved her life. Madam, said Sir Launcelot, she would none other way be answered, but thaii alio would be my wife, or else my love, and of these two I would not grant her ; but I proffered her, for her good love that she showed me, a thousand pound yearly to her and to her heirs, and to wed any manner knight that she could find best to love in her heart. For madam, said Sir Launcelot, I love not to be constrained to love ; for love must arise of the heart, and not by no constraint. That is truth, said the king, and many knights : love is free in himself, and never will be bounden ; for where he is bounden he loseth himself. \ 228 NOTES ON TENNYSON. i II Then said the king unto Sir Launcelot, It will be your worship that ye oversee that she be interred worshipfully. Sir, said Sir Launcelot, that shall be done as I can best devise. And so many knights went thither to behold that fair maiden. And so upon the morn she was interred richly, and Sir Launcelot offered her mass-penny, and all the knights of the Table Round that were there at that time offered with Sir Launcelot. And then the poor man went again with the barget. Then the Queen sent for Sir Launcelot, and prayed him for mercy, for why she had been wroth with him causeless. This is not the first time, said Sir Launcelot, that ye have been displeased with me causeless ; but, madam, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force." 1324. joyance. An antique and poetical word, found in Spenser, etc. 1327. worship. * Honour ' — the word is Malory's ; see passage quoted in note to 1, 1272, and cf. 1. 110 and note. 1330. that shrine. According to Malory (see passage quoted in the note on 1. 1099), this was Westminster Abbey, or rather the church that stood on the site, built by Sebert, King of the West Saxons in the seventh century. 1344. blazon'd. See note on 1. 9. 1354-7. In the ed. of 1859, these lines read : But Arthur who beheld his cloudy brows Approach'd him, and with full affection flung One arm about his neck, and spake and said, ' Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have Most love and most affiance.' 1357. affiance. 'Trust,' 'confidence,' so in Shakespeare, Henry F"., ii., 2, 127, and in the Book of Common Prayer, the petition for the Queen, "that she may evermore have affiance in thee." 1365. In the ed. of 1859, instead of this line we have : For the wild people say wild things of thee. The new line is not only superior poetically to the one it replaces, but, as Professor Jones says (p. 146), makes Arthur "less liable to the charge of obtuseness in that he is not represented as closing his ears to testimony, but is represented rather as attributing to homelessness the trouble in the eyes." 1400. crescent. See note on 1. 448 ; the ' crescent moon * is also in the speaker's mind. 1404-7. In the ed. of 1859, these lines read : Launcelot, whom the Lady of the Lake Stole from his mother — as the story runs — She chanted snatches of mysterious song. I I TO VIRGIL. 229 B that she can best 1 so upon nd all the launcelot. nt for Sir causeless, with me I take no ser, etc. e quoted i in the B church as in the The change is evidently caused by the increasing importance of the symbolism in the mind of Tennyson, as the Idylls grew. "In 1859, when there was no thought of making the Lady of the Lake symbolical of religion, she was merely one of the fairies whose custom war to ' steal babies,' and she 'stole' Lancelot from his mother's arms and chanted snatches of * mysterious songs.' But with the change in the conception of the Lady of the Lake in 1869, this description was no longer con- gruous" (Prof. Jones, p. 143). 1410. ** I will thou wit and know that I am Launcelot du Lake, King Barr's son of Benwicke, and very knight of the Table Round " ( Malory, vi., 8). 1419-20. a man Not after Arthur's heart. Cf. /. Samuel, viii., 14: *' the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart." 1421. without. The use of "without" as a conjunction is usually regarded as a vulgarism. Such use is, however, occasionally found in good writers, especially of an errlier date : see, for example. Much Ado About Nothing, iii., 3, 86. 1429. die a holy man. In Malory, xvi., 5, we find it said of Lance- lot, "yet shall he die right an holy man " ; and in chap. 12 of the last book, there is a- description of his holy end. nry V., le Queen, 368, but, |e to the ears to less the also in TO VIRGIL. * Published in the Nineteenth Century for November 1882, and included in Tiresias and Other Poems, 1885. "Tennyson," says Professor Tyrrel, "gave a crowning instance of his insight into the character and genius of Latin poetry when, in the poem on Virgil, he sang of 'All the chosen,' etc., and 'All the charm of all the Muses,'" etc. Tennyson's appreciation for Virgil was doubtless helped by a certain kinship between the genius of the two poets. Some sentences from Professor H. Nettleship's Virgil (Classical Writers Series) will serve to indicate points of contact. Speaking of Virgil and Horace, Prof. Nettleship says: "They practically laid down the principle that no amount of labour could be too great to expend on poetical expression " (p. 17) ; " The elaboration of [Virgil's] style would 230 NOT El ON TENNYSON. lead us to expect that he was a slow worker, and this appears to have been really the -^ase " (p. 76); " Unquestionably it was Virgil's style which more than anything else gave him his pre-eminence among Roman poets" (p. 90); "It will not be disputed that the great power of Virgil's style lies in the haunting music of the verse, in the rhythm and fall of his language" (p. 91) ; "A hundred passages might easily be quoted which echo, with exquisite music and subtle alliteration, the voices of priests and of waters, whether the roar of the sea or the murmur of them " (p. 102). 1. Virgil was born at Andes, a small village near Mantua, B.C. 70, and died 19 a. d. thou that pjngest, etc., namely in the Aeneid which describes the fall of Ilium (or Troy); Aeneas's filial care for his father, Anchises, whom he bore from the burning city on his shoulders ; his meeting with Dido Queen of Carthage, their love and her self-destruction when Aeneas left her ; his arrival in Italy, his wars there, and the foundation of Eome. 6. he that sang the Works and Days, viz. Hesiod, an early Greek poet, who wrote a poem entitled 'Epya /cat U/uipai (Works and Days) containing ethical, economical, and political precepts. 9-10. The reference is to Virgil's Oeorgics, a poem which, in four books, treats of the various occupations of a farmer indicated in these lines. 11-12. Cardinal N ewman speaks of Virgil's "single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experi- ence of her children in every time. " 13-20. These lines refer to Virgil's Eclogues, a series of pastoral poems. Tityrus is a shepherd who appears as an interlocutor in Eclogue, i. 15, the poet-satyr is Silenus ; in Eclogue, vi., he sings in response to the desire of two shepherds who had bound him with flowery garlands. 17. the PoUio. The fourth Eclogue, called "the Pollio," because in it Virgil addresses Asinius Pollio, who was consul at the time the poem was written (b.c. 40). The Pollio sings the coming of a golden age, which is connected with the birth of some mysterious child. In this new age the earth will bring forth without tillage, serpents and poisonous plants will perish, men will cease to go forth on the sea in boats, peace and EARLY SPRING. 231 I to have il's style g Roman power of s rhythm ;ht easily btion, the ;a or the ,, B.C. 70, es the fail whom he jrith Dido eneaa left f Rome. ,rly Greek a,nd Days) in four id in these [d phrases, :e herself, |he experi- ral poems. jgue, i. ^sponse to garlands. l)ecause in [the poem ^e, which new age kus plants keace and innocence will reign. The resemblance to some of the prophecies of Isaiah {e.g., cf. chap, xi., 1-9) has drawn special attention to this Eclogue, and suggested Pope's Messiah. 21-22. Virgil's doctrine of a universal mind present in, and animating all nature (cf. Wordsworth's Lines Written abov« Tint«rn Abbey) is given in Aeneid, vi., 724-751, which begin : Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore u;i8cet. ("First, the sky and earth and watery plaint, ana ihe moon's bright sphere, and Titan's stars, a spirit feeds within ; and a mind instilled throughout the limbs, gives energy to the whole mass, and mingles with the mighty body.") See also Georgic, iv., 222 : deum namque ire per omnes Terrartque, tractusque maris caelumque profundum. 23-24. ** It is in the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making rthers feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense, too, of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces his most powerful eflFect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application." (Sellar's Virgil.) 25-28. Tennyson has in his mind the description (in Aeneid, "Bk. vi., 125 fol. ) of the descent of Aeneas to the lower world, carrying in his hand a golden branch which he was to offer to Proserpine and so visit the dead in safety. 29. thy Forum. The market place of Rome and the scene of her great political assemblages. 33. In 1870, Rome became the capital of the modern and constitu- tional monarchy of Italy, and the long struggle for nationality and free government was at length successful. EARLY SPRING. First published in 1884 in an American periodical. The Youth'a Companion ; included in Tiresias and Other Poems, pub. 1885. 6. The reader may turn to Tennyson's poem entitled The Throstle for a representation of the throstle as an expression of the spirit of the spring. \\ ■y 1^' 232 NOTES ON TENNYSON. 7. a door. Subject of ' ' opens. " 10. greening^. * Growing green ' ; this use of a verb " green " is uncommon in English ; cf. Whittier, Flowers in Winter. The corres- ponding German verb grllnen is very common. 17. stars. * Starlike flowers ' ; probably the reference is to the Wood Anemone (Anemone nemerosa) with its white blossoms which appear in large numbers in British woods in April and May. 21-24. * The low sound of the waves on the shore in calm weather.' 31. Compare with the thought of this stanza, * Tears, idle tears,' Wordsworth's Immortality Ode. There is a vague suggestiveness about various objects, sounds, smells in nature, subtle associations of thought and feeling of which we are but half- conscious : Moreover, something is or seems, Tiiat touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams Of something felt liice something here Of something done, I know not where. Such as no language may declare. —The Two Voices. 34. fell. 'A ridge or hill.' 37-38. The bird addressed is doubtless the blackbird; "when dis- turbed it flies off with a somewhat magpie-like chuckle; its familiar flight along the hedges is wavering and fitful and in the breeding season the female especially moves by a i^uccession of stores.... It pairs very early in spring " {Chambers' Encyclopedia). 39-42. The poetic fancy is stirred by external nature, and begins to ring out its word-chimes. FREEDOM. First published in Macmillan's Magazine for December, 1884, subse- quently included in Tiresiaa and Other Poems, 1885. This poem should be compared with "0/" old sat Freedom" and "Love thou thy land." It gives expression to the distrust and dislike which the poet felt for some of the popular tendencies making themselves conspicuous during his later years. There is not a difference in opinion, but a difference in tone, between this and the earlier poems ; there is more of hopefulness and kindliness in the earlier works, more of distrust and bitterness in the later. 8 1 t d a (I 81( VO no sen" is corres- B Wood ipear in ther.' e tears,* ss about thought CROSSING THE OAR. 233 rhen dis- familiar ig season lirs very )egins to subse- should \y land" felt for |s during ^rence in Lefulness irness in 3. inform'd. 'Gave vitality to,' 'animated.' Cf. Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici, Pt. I., xii. : " If one soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a petty trinity." 3. Parthenon. The famous temple of Athene in Athens. 4. The glittering Capitol. The temple of Jupiter in Rome ; the gates were of bronze, and the ceilings and tiles gilt. 7. here. *ln England.' Gf. the similar contrast of Englisli and southern climates in the first stanza of ** You ask me why." 9-12. Freedom was less noble and majestic as exhibited at Athens and Rome than in Britain, because in the former cases it coexisted with slavery. 13. the Vision. What the Vision is, the poet explains below : "a dream of knowledge fusing," etc. Cf. *' Of old sat Freedom," 1. 16 : "Her open eyes desire the truth." 17-20. This stanza was not in the poem as originally printed. 23. Her Human Star. 'The Earth.' 26. Cf. " Love thou thy land," 11. 27-30. 27-28. ' When the nations attain some foolish or evil end by blood- shed.' 33-40. The occasion and point of the whole poem is indicated in these stanzas. The poet seems to have been aroused to a reassertion of what he conceives true freedom to be, by the socialistic and anarchistic tendencies of the later democracy. In the poet's opinion the advocates of these and such doctrines, would destroy instead of establishing free- dom ; they lack both knowledge and reverence, and the patience to await that slow development which is the law of the universe (cf. "Love thou thy land," 11. 37-40, 65-68, 93-96). CROSSING THE BAR. First published in Demeter and Other Poems, 1889. This poem is a good example of the suggestiveness of poetic expres- sion, through the use of picturesque language, and of the complete in- volution of the two members of a simile, so that the poet and reader do not separate, even in thought, the fundamental ideas and the picturesque \>fl Ml ^1 234 NOTES ON TENNYSON. objects which embody these. The idea of soul coming from and passing again into * the great deep ' was an old one with the poet. Arthur, in the Idylls, comes from the sea and passes away on the great water ; " From the great deep to the great deep he goes," says Merlin. Again in the Epilogue co In Memoriam : A soul shall draw from out the vait And strike his being into bounds, and more strikingly in De Profundis : Out of the deep my child, out of the deep 1 To that last deep where we and thou are still. 3. bar. ' 'I he sand bar which separai/cs the harbour from the open sea.* 13. boume. This word is suggested by, and carries with it, t' 3 associa- tions of its use by Hamlet in his famous soliloquy when he speaks of " the bourne from which no traveller returns." ud passing Arthur, in Jat water ; u. Again open sea.* a associa- speaks of APPENDIX. APPENDIX. SELECTIONS FOR "SIGHT" READING. 1.— SONG FOR SAINT CECILIA'S DAY. From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began. When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high : "Arise ye more than dead ! " Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry In order to their stations leap. And Music's power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began : From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man. 10 ^i *■-■ . 16 What passion cannot Music raise and quell ? When Jubal struck the chorded shell. His listening brethren stood around, And, wondering, on their faces fell To worship that celestial sound. Less than a God they thought there could not dwell Witbin the hollow of that shell That spoke so sweetly and so well. What passion cannot Music raise and quell ? The trumpet's loud clangour Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms. 3 HI 20 26 APPENDIX. The double double double beat Of the thundering drum Cries, *' Hark I the foes come ; Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat ! " The soft complaining flute In dv !;ig notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute. Sharp violins proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of p^ins, and height of passion For the fair disdainful dame. But O, what art can teach, What human voice can reach The sacred organ's praise ? Notes inspiring holy love, Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre ; But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher ; When to her organ vocal breath was given, An angel heard, and straight appeared — Mistaking Earth for Heaven I As from the power of sacred lay j The spheres began to move, And sung the great Creator's praise « To all the blest above ; So, when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour. The Trumpet shall be heard on high. The dead shall live, the living die. And Music shall untune the sky. 90 36 40 45 60 66 60 —Dryden, 2. — ODE TO EVENING. 80 86 40 45 60 66 60 [Dryden, 2.— ODE TO EVENING. If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear (Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs and dying gales) ; Nymph reserved, — while now the Ibright-haired Sun 6 Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed, Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, 10 Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum, — Now teach me, Maid composed, 15 To breathe some softened strain. Whose numbers, stealmg through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit. As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial, loved return ! 20 For when thy folding-star arising shows . His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds the day, And many a Nymph who wreathes her brow with sedge, 26 And sheds the freahening dew, and, lovelier still. The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car. Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells, 30 Whose walls more awful nod By thy religious gleams. 6 n m APPENDIX. Or if chill blustering winds or driving rain Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut That from the mountain-side Views wilds, and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light ! While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves j Or Winter, yeUing through the troublous air, AflFrights thy shrinking tiain. And rudely rends thy robes : So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, Thy gentlest influence own, And love thy favourite name ! 36 40 46 60 W. Collins. 3.— INTRODUCTION TO THE SEVENTH BOOK OF PARADISE LOST. Descend from Heav'n, Urania, by that name If rightly thou art call'd, whose voice divine Following, above th' Olympian hill I soar. Above the flight of Pegasean wing. The meaning, not the name I call : for thou Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top Of old Olympus dwell'st, but Heav'nly born, Before the hills appear'd, or fountain flow'd, Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse. Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 10 In presence of th' Almighty Father, pleas'd 6 85 40 45 50 Collins. ARADISB 4. — SONNET. With thy celestial song. Up led by thee, Into the Heav'n of Heav'ns I have presum'd, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air, Thy tempering ; with like safety guided down, Return me to my native element : Lest from this flying steed unrein'd (as once Bellerophon, though from a lower clime) Dismounted, on th' Aleian field I fall, Erroneous there to wander and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere ; Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues ; In darkness, and with dangers compast round, And solitude ; yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east : still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive far oflf the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the ra^e Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd Both harp and voice ; nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores : For thou art Heav'nly, she an empty dream. II 15 20 2ft 30 85 — Milton. 10 4.— SONNET. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year ! My hasting days fly on with full career. But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth. That I to manhood am arrived so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear That some more tiraely-happy spirits indu'th. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, 7 i^ APPENDIX. It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which time leads me, and the will of Heaven. All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-master's eye. — Milton. 10 5.— TO CYRIACK SKINNER. Oyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause. Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench. To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws ; T^et Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause. And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way ; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains. And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains, — Milton. 10 6.— SONNET. CXVI. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove : no 1 it is an ever-fix6d mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; It is the star to every wandering bark. Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come ; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and Upon rae proved, 1 never writ, nor no man ever loved. — Shakespeare. 8 10 7. A DROP CF DEW. 10 •Milton. 10 —Milton. m. 10 7.— A DROP OF DEW. See, how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the mom. Into the blowing roses, (Yet careless of its mansion new. For the clear region where 'twas bom, ) Round in itself incloses And, in its little globe's extent. Frames, as it can, its native element. How it the purple flower does slight, Scarce touching where it lies ; But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light. Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere. Restless it rolls, and unsecure, Trembling lest it grow impure ; Till the warm sun pities its pain. And to the skies exhales it back again. So the soul, that drop, that ray. Of the clear fountain of eternal day, Gould it within the human flower be seen. Remembering still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green. And recollecting its own light, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express The greater heaven in a heaven less. In how coy a figure wound. Every way it turns away. So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day, Dark beneath, but bright above, Here disdaining, there in love. How loose and easy hence to go ; How girt and ready to ascend ; Moving but on a point below. It all about does upwards bend. 10 16 20 26 30 36 ^espeare. APPENDIX. Such did the manna's sacred dew distil, White and entire, although congealed and chill ; Congealed on earth ; but does, disp^lving, run Into the glories of tho almighty sun. 40 — A. Marvell. 8.— TO Look at the fate of summer flowers. Which blow at daybreak, droop ere evensong ; And, grieved for their brief date, confess that ours, Measured by what we are and ought to be. Measured by all that, trembling, we foresee. Is not so long ! If human Life do pass away. Perishing more swiftly than the flower. If we are creatures of a winter's day ; What space hath Virgin's beauty to disclose Her sweets, and triumph o'er the breathing rose ? Not even an hour I The deepest grove whose foliage hid The happiest lovers Arcady might boast, Gould not the entrance of this thought forbid : be thou wise as they, soul-gifted Maid I Nor rate too high what must so quickly fade, So soon be lost. Then shall love teach some virtuous Youth * To draw out of the object of his eyes,' The while on thee they gaze in simple truth. Hues more exalted, * a refined form, ' That dreads not age, nor suffers from the worm, And never dies. — Wordsworth. 10 15 20 10 9. — TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 40 \IarveU. 10 15 20 9.— TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL 1786. Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour ; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem. To spare thee now is past my power, fi Thou bonnie gem. Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie Lark, companion meet. Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckled breast, 10 When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth ; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 16 Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield, 20 But thou, beneath the random bield 0' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-fleld. Unseen, alane. rdaworth. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawy bosom sun- ward spread. Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise ; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies ! 25 80 U I' APPENDIX. Such is the fate of artless Maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade I By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust ; Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple bard. On life's rough ocean luckless starred 1 Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er ! Such fate to sufifering worth is given. Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink ! Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine — no distant date ; Stem Kuin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom ; Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom ! 86 40 46 60 — Bufns. 10.— FROM **THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES." On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide : A fn me of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire ; O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain, Unconquer'd lord of pleasure and of pain ; No joys to him pacific scepters yield, — War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field ; Behold surrounding kings their pow'rs combine, 12 3 86 40 45 50 11. — ON THE EVE OF THE BATTLE OF QUATRB BRAS. And one capitulate, and one resign : 10 Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain ; "Think nothing jain'd," he cries, "till naught remain, On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly. And all be mine beneath the polar sky." The march begins in military state, 15 And nations on his eye suspended wait ; Stern Famine guards the solitary coast^, And Winter barricades the realms of Frost : He comes ; nor want nor cold his course delay ; — Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day : 20 The vanquish'd hero leaves his broken bands, And shows his miseries in distant lands ; Condemn'd a needy supplicant to wait. While ladies interpose and slaves debate. But did not Chance at length her error mend ? 25 Did no subverted empire mark his end ? Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound ? Or hostile millions press him to the ground ? His fall was destin'd to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand. 80 He left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale. — Dr. Johnson. — Bufna, Ies." & 11.— ON THE EVE OF THE BATTLE OF QUATRE BRAS. There was a sound of revelry by night. And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 6 Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again. And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. Did ye not hear it ? — No ; 'twas but the wind, 10 Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; On with the dance ! let joy be un confined ; No sleep till mom when Youth and Pleasure meet 18 APPENDIX. To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet — But hark ! that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! Arm I arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar 1 Within a windowed niche of that high hall Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain : he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone w^th Death's prophetic ear ; And when they smiled because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell : He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro. And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated ; who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise ? 15 20 25 30 35 And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed. The mustering squadron, and the clattering car Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swjftly forming in the ranks of war ; 40 And the Jeep thunder, peal on peal, afar : And near, the beat of the alarming drum Koused up the soldier ere the morning star ; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb. Or whispering, with white lips-—* 'The foe 1 they come I they come 1 " 45 And wild and high the * ' Cameron's Gathering " rose I The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : — How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, 14 15 20 26 30 35 i 12. AFTER THE BATTLE. Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which tills 50 Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ear ! And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 55 Dewy with nature's tear-drops as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave, — alas ! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow 60 In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low. Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 65 The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife. The morn the marshalling in arms, — the day Battle's magnificently-stern array I The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is covered thick with other clay, 70 Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse, — friend, foe, — in one red burial blent ? — Byron. 40 le ! they 45 ! 12.— AFTER THE BATTLE. Night closed around the conqueror's way And lightnings showed the distant hill. Where those who lost that dreadful day Stood few and faint, but fearless still 1 The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal, For ever dimmed, for ever crossed, — O who shall say what heroes feel When all but life and honour's lost ? The last sad hour of freedom's dream, And valour's task, moved slowly by. While mute they watche>^ ffll m\ k APPENDIX. But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match ? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The f ar-oflf interest of tears ? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss : Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast, ' Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn. ' XXVII. I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods : I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unl'etter'd by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes ; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall j I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. LIV. Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 2i 10 16 10 16 18. — SELECTIONS FROM TENNYSOn's "IN MBMORIAM." ^ '^ 10 16 6 10 16 That nothing walks with aimless feet ; That not one life shall be destroy 'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire. Or but subserves another's gain. Behold, we know not anything ; I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far oflf — at last, to all. And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream : but what am I ? An infant crying in the night : An infant crying for the light : And with no language but a cry. LXXVI. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, And in a moment set thy face Where all the starry heavens of space Are sharpen'd to a needle's end ; Take wings of foresight ; lighten thro' The secular abyss to come. And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew ; And if the matin songs, that woke The darkness of our planet, last, Thine own shall wither in the vast, Ere half the lifetime of an oak. Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; And what are they when these remain The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ? 25 10 16 ao 10 15 APPENDIX. LXXXVI. Sweet after show^ers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below 6 Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood. And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath 10 Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, HI brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odour streaming far, To where in yonder orient star 15 A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.* cxiv. Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail Against her beauty ? May she mix With men and prosper ! Who shall fix Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. But on her forehead sits a fire : 5 She sets her forward countenance And leaps into the future chance, Submitting all things to desire. Half -grown as yet, a child, and vain — She cannot fight the fear of death. 10 What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons ? fiery-hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her place ; 16 She is the second, not the first. 26 18. — SELECTIONS PROM TENNYSON's *' IN MEMORIAM." 10 th, 16 A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain ; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child : For she is earthly of the mind. But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. O, friend, who earnest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind, I would the great world grew like thee, Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity. cxxxi. living will that shalt endure When all that seems shall sufiTer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, That we may lift from out of dust A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conqiioi'd years To one that with us works, and trust. With faith that comes of self-control. The t-iiths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And all we flow from, soul in boxlL 20 ^ 26 10 10 16 27