Book: The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

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or than the following (in 'Enid') from Theocritus:--

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

[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais.]

--'Idyll', xxii., 48 'seq.'

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

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

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


he was merely unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"dumb
wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus
nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I., xix., 8, is given us in Tennyson's
picture of the Oread in Lucretius:--


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

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

[Greek: pothoi d' uperpontias phasma doxei dom_on anassein.]

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


What are the lines in 'Guinevere' but an expansion of what is latent but
unfolded in the pregnant suggestiveness of the Greek poet:--

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


with a reminiscence also perhaps of Constance's speech in 'King John',
III., iv.

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

He used those poets as his master Virgil used his Greek predecessors,
and what the elder Seneca said of Ovid, who had appropriated a line from
Virgil, might exactly be applied to Tennyson: "Fecisse quod in multis
aliis versibus Virgilius fecerat, non surripiendi causâ sed palam
imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci".[4]

He had plainly studied with equal attention the chief Italian poets,
especially Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso. On a passage in Dante he
founded his 'Ulysses', and imitations of that master are frequent
throughout his poems. 'In Memoriam', both in its general scheme as
well as in numberless particular passages, closely recalls Petrarch; and
Ariosto and Tasso have each influenced his work. In the poetry of his
own country nothing seems to have escaped him, either in the masters or
the minor poets.[5] To apply the term plagiarism to Tennyson's use of
his predecessors would be as absurd as to resolve some noble fabric into
its stones and bricks, and confounding the one with the other to taunt
the architect with appropriating an honour which belongs to the quarry
and the potter. Tennyson's method was exactly the method of two of the
greatest poets in the world, Virgil and Milton, of the poet who stands
second to Virgil in Roman poetry, Horace, of one of the most illustrious
of our own minor poets, Gray.

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


[Footnote 1: 'De Sublimitate,' xvii.]

[Footnote 2: Tennyson's blank verse in the _Idylls of the King_
(excepting in the _Morte d'Arthur_ and in the grander passages), is
obviously modelled in rhythm on that of Shakespeare's earlier style seen
to perfection in _King John_. Compare the following lines with the
rhythm say of _Elaine_ or _Guinevere_;--

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

--_King John_, III., iv.]

[Footnote 3: 'Illustrations of Tennyson'.]

[Footnote 4: Seneca, third 'Suasoria'.]

[Footnote 5: For fuller illustrations of all this, and for the influence
of the ancient classics on Tennyson, I may perhaps venture to refer the
reader to my 'Illustrations of Tennyson'. And may I here take the
opportunity of pointing out that nothing could have been farther from my
intention in that book than what has so often been most unfairly
attributed to it, namely, an attempt to show that a charge of plagiarism
might be justly urged against Tennyson. No honest critic, who had even
cursorily inspected the book, could so utterly misrepresent its purpose.]






IV


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

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

and he was a loyal disciple of that poet whose aim had been, in his own
words, "to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making
the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to
see, to think, to feel, and therefore to become more actively and
securely virtuous". [1] Wordsworth had said that he wished to be
regarded as a teacher or as nothing, but unhappily he did not always
distinguish between the way in which a poet and a philosopher should
teach. He forgot that the didactic element in a poem should be, to
employ a homely illustration, what garlic should be in a salad, "scarce
suspected, animate the whole," that the poet teaches not as the moralist
and the preacher teach, but as nature and life teach us. He taught us
when he wrote 'The Fountain' and 'The Highland Reaper, The
Leach-gatherer' and 'Michael', he merely wearied us when he sermonised
in 'The Excursion' and in 'The Prelude'. Tennyson never makes this
mistake. He is seldom directly didactic. Would he inculcate subjugation
to the law of duty--he gives us the funeral ode on Wellington, 'The
Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Love and Duty'. Would he inculcate
resignation to the will of God, and the moral efficacy of conventional
Christianity--he gives us 'Enoch Arden'. Would he picture the endless
struggle between the sensual and the spiritual, and the relation of
ideals to life--he gives us the 'Idylls of the King'. Would he point to
what atheism may lead--he gives us 'Lucretius'. Poems which are
masterpieces of sensuous art, such as mere aesthetes, like Rosetti and
his school, must contemplate with admiring despair, he makes vehicles of
the most serious moral and spiritual teaching. 'The Vision of Sin' is
worth a hundred sermons on the disastrous effects of unbridled
profligacy. In 'The Palace of Art' we have the quintessence of 'The Book
of Ecclesiastes' and much more besides. Even in 'The Lotos Eaters' we
have the mirror held up to Hedonism. On the education of the affections
and on the purity of domestic life must depend very largely, not merely
the happiness of individuals, but the well-being of society, and how
wide a space is filled by poems in Tennyson's works bearing
influentially on these subjects is obvious. And they admit us into a
pleasaunce with which it is good to be familiar, so pure and wholesome
is their atmosphere, so tranquilly beautiful the world in which the
characters move and the little dramas unfold themselves. They preach
nothing, but deep into every heart must sink their silent lessons. "Upon
the sacredness of home life," writes his son, "he would maintain that
the stability and greatness of a nation largely depend; and one of the
secrets of his power over mankind was his true joy in the family duties
and affections." What sermons have we in 'The Miller's Daughter', in
'Dora', in 'The Gardener's Daughter' and in 'Love and Duty'. 'The
Princess' was a direct contribution to a social question of momentous
importance to our time. 'Maud' had an immediate political purpose, while
in 'In Memoriam' he became the interpreter and teacher of his generation
in a still higher sense.

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

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

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


[Footnote 1: See Wordsworth's letter to Lady Beaumont, 'Prose Works',
vol. ii., p. 176.]




TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

EARLY POEMS:--
To the Queen
Claribel: a Melody
Lilian
Isabel
Mariana
To----("Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn")
Madeline
Song--The Owl
Second Song to the Same
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
Ode to Memory
Song ("A spirit haunts the year's last hours")
Adeline
A Character
The Poet
The Poet's Mind
The Sea-Fairies
The Deserted House
The Dying Swan
A Dirge
Love and Death
The Ballad of Oriana
Circumstance
The Merman
The Mermaid
Sonnet to J. M. K.
The Lady of Shalott
Mariana in the South
Eleänore
The Miller's Daughter
Fatima *
‘none
The Sisters
To-----("I send you here a sort of allegory")
The Palace of Art
Lady Clara Vere de Vere
The May Queen
New Year's Eve
Conclusion
The Lotos-Eaters
Dream of Fair Women
Margaret
The Blackbird
The Death of the Old Year
To J. S.
"You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease"
"Of old sat Freedom on the heights"
"Love thou thy land, with love far-brought"
The Goose
The Epic
Morte d'Arthur
The Gardener's Daughter; or, The Pictures
Dora
Audley Court
Walking to the Mail
Edwin Morris; or, The Lake
St. Simeon Stylites
The Talking Oak
Love and Duty
The Golden Year
Ulysses
Locksley Hall
Godiva
The Two Voices
The Day-Dream:--Prologue
The Sleeping Palace
The Sleeping Beauty
The Arrival
The Revival
The Departure
Moral
L'Envoi
Epilogue
Amphion
St. Agnes
Sir Galahad
Edward Gray
Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue
To----, after reading a Life and Letters
To E.L., on his Travels in Greece
Lady Clare
The Lord of Burleigh
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere: a Fragment
A Farewell
The Beggar Maid
The Vision of Sin
"Come not, when I am dead"
The Eagle
"Move eastward, happy earth, and leave"
"Break, break, break"
The Poet's Song


APPENDIX.--SUPPRESSED POEMS:--

Elegiacs
The "How" and the "Why"
Supposed Confessions
The Burial of Love
To----("Sainted Juliet! dearest name !")
Song ("I' the glooming light")
Song ("The lintwhite and the throstlecock")
Song ("Every day hath its night")
Nothing will Die
All Things will Die
Hero to Leander
The Mystic
The Grasshopper
Love, Pride and Forgetfulness
Chorus ("The varied earth, the moving heaven")
Lost Hope
The Tears of Heaven
Love and Sorrow
To a Lady Sleeping
Sonnet ("Could I outwear my present state of woe")
Sonnet ("Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon")
Sonnet ("Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good")
Sonnet ("The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain")
Love
The Kraken
English War Song
National Song
Dualisms
We are Free
[Greek: oi rheontes]
"Mine be the strength of spirit, full and free"
To--("All good things have not kept aloof)
Buonaparte
Sonnet ("Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!")
The Hesperides
Song ("The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit")
Rosalind
Song ("Who can say")
Kate
Sonnet ("Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar")
Poland
To--("As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood")
O Darling Room
To Christopher North
The Skipping Rope
Timbuctoo


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS OF 1842





TO THE QUEEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MARCH, 1851.


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

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

[Footnote 3: This stanza added in 1853.]

[Footnote 4: 1851. Your sweetness.]

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

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

[Footnote 6: 1851. Broader yet.]

[Footnote 7: With this cf. Shelley, 'Ode to Liberty':--

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





CLARIBEL

A MELODY


First published in 1830.

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


1

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

2

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


[Footnote 1: 1830. "Wild" omitted, and "low" inserted with a hyphen
before "hummeth".]

[Footnote 2: 1851 and all previous editions, "fledgling" for "callow".]





LILIAN

First printed in 1830.

1

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


2

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


3

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


4

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


[Footnote 1: 1830. Through and through me.]

[Footnote 2: 1830. Purfled.]

[Footnote 3: 1830. Through.]

[Footnote 4: With "crimson-threaded" 'cf.' Cleveland's 'Sing-song on
Clarinda's Wedding', "Her 'lips those threads of scarlet dye'"; but the
original is 'Solomons Song' iv. 3, "Thy lips are 'like a thread of
scarlet'".]

[Footnote 5: 1830. Silver treble-laughter.]





ISABEL

First printed in 1830.

Lord Tennyson tells us ('Life of Tennyson', i., 43) that in this poem
his father more or less described his own mother, who was a "remarkable
and saintly woman". In this as in the other poems elaborately painting
women we may perhaps suspect the influence of Wordsworth's 'Triad',
which should be compared with them.


1

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


2

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


3


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


[Footnote 1: With these lines may be compared Shelley, 'Dedication to
the Revolt of Islam':--

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


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

[Footnote 3: 1830. Wifehood.]

[Footnote 4: 1830. Blenched.]

[Footnote 5: 1830 and all before 1853. Through.]

[Footnote 6: 1830. Through.]




MARIANA

"Mariana in the moated grange."--'Measure for Measure'.

First printed in 1830.


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

[Greek: deduke men ha selanna kai Plaeïades, mesai de nuktes, para d'
erchet h'ora ego de mona kateud'o.]

"The moon has set and the Pleiades, and it is midnight: the hour too
is going by, but I sleep alone."

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