Chapter XII: Part IV (6)

“I shook him down because he was The finest on the tree. He lies beside thee on the grass. O kiss him once for me.

“O kiss him twice and thrice for me, That have no lips to kiss, For never yet was oak on lea Shall grow so fair as this.”

Step deeper yet in herb and fern, Look further thro’ the chace, Spread upward till thy boughs discern The front of Sumner-place.

This fruit of thine by Love is blest, That but a moment lay Where fairer fruit of Love may rest Some happy future day.

I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice, The warmth it thence shall win To riper life may magnetise The baby-oak within.

But thou, while kingdoms overset, Or lapse from hand to hand, Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet Thine acorn in the land.

May never saw dismember thee, Nor wielded axe disjoint, That art the fairest-spoken tree From here to Lizard-point.

O rock upon thy towery top All throats that gurgle sweet! All starry culmination drop Balm-dews to bathe thy feet!

All grass of silky feather grow— And while he sinks or swells The full south-breeze around thee blow The sound of minster bells.

The fat earth feed thy branchy root, That under deeply strikes! The northern morning o’er thee shoot High up, in silver spikes!

Nor ever lightning char thy grain, But, rolling as in sleep, Low thunders bring the mellow rain, That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath, That only by thy side Will I to Olive plight my troth, And gain her for my bride.

And when my marriage morn may fall, She, Dryad-like, shall wear Alternate leaf and acorn-ball In wreath about her hair.

And I will work in prose and rhyme, And praise thee more in both Than bard has honour’d beech or lime, Or that Thessalian growth,[6]

In which the swarthy ringdove sat, And mystic sentence spoke; And more than England honours that, Thy famous brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abode Till all the paths were dim, And far below the Roundhead rode, And humm’d a surly hymn.

[1] Spence is a larder and buttery. In the _Promptorium Parverum_ it is defined as “cellarium promptuarium”.

[2] Cf. Burns’ “godly laces,” _To the Unco Righteous_.

[3] All editions previous to 1853 have ‘staid’.

[4] The phrase is Marvell’s. _Cf. To his Coy Mistress_ (a favourite poem of Tennyson’s), “my vegetable loves should grow”.

[5] 1842 to 1850. “For, ah! the Dryad-days were brief.

[6] A reference to the oracular oaks of Dodona which was, of course, in Epirus, but the Ancients believed, no doubt erroneously, that there was another Dodona in Thessaly. See the article “Dodona” in Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography_.

Love and Duty

Published first in 1842.

Whether this beautiful poem is autobiographical and has reference to the compulsory separation of Tennyson and Miss Emily Sellwood, afterwards his wife, in 1840, it is impossible for this editor to say, as Lord Tennyson in his _Life_ of his father is silent on the subject.

Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts? Or all the same as if he had not been? Not so. Shall Error in the round of time Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout[1] For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro’ madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself! If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all, Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o’er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end. But am I not the nobler thro’ thy love? O three times less unworthy! likewise thou Art more thro’ Love, and greater than thy years. The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit Of wisdom.[2] Wait: my faith is large in Time, And that which shapes it to some perfect end. Will some one say, then why not ill for good? Why took ye not your pastime? To that man My work shall answer, since I knew the right And did it; for a man is not as God, But then most Godlike being most a man.— So let me think ’tis well for thee and me— Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow To feel it! For how hard it seem’d to me, When eyes, love-languid thro’ half-tears, would dwell One earnest, earnest moment upon mine, Then not to dare to see! when thy low voice, Faltering, would break its syllables, to keep My own full-tuned,—hold passion in a leash, And not leap forth and fall about thy neck, And on thy bosom, (deep-desired relief!) Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh’d Upon my brain, my senses, and my soul! For love himself took part against himself To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love— O this world’s curse—beloved but hated—came Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine, And crying, “Who is this? behold thy bride,” She push’d me from thee.

If the sense is hard To alien ears, I did not speak to these— No, not to thee, but to thyself in me: Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all. Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak, To have spoken once? It could not but be well. The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,[3] The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil, brought the night In which we sat together and alone, And to the want, that hollow’d all the heart, Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye, That burn’d upon its object thro’ such tears As flow but once a life.

The trance gave way To those caresses, when a hundred times In that last kiss, which never was the last, Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died. Then follow’d counsel, comfort and the words That make a man feel strong in speaking truth; Till now the dark was worn, and overhead The lights of sunset and of sunrise mix’d In that brief night; the summer night, that paused Among her stars to hear us; stars that hung Love-charm’d to listen: all the wheels of Time Spun round in station, but the end had come. O then like those, who clench[4] their nerves to rush Upon their dissolution, we two rose, There-closing like an individual life— In one blind cry of passion and of pain, Like bitter accusation ev’n to death, Caught up the whole of love and utter’d it, And bade adieu for ever.

Live—yet live— Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all Life needs for life is possible to will— Live happy; tend thy flowers; be tended by My blessing! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou For calmer hours to Memory’s darkest hold,[5] If not to be forgotten—not at once— Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams, O might it come like one that looks content, With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee frëer, till thou wake refresh’d, Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv’n her plow of pearl[6] Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea.

[1] As this passage is a little obscure, it may not be superfluous to point out that “shout” is a substantive.

[2] The distinction between “knowledge” and “wisdom” is a favourite one with Tennyson. See _In Memoriam_, cxiv.; _Locksley Hall_, 141, and for the same distinction see Cowper, _Task_, vi., 88-99.

[3] Suggested by Theocritus, _Id_., xv., 104-5.

[4] 1842 to 1845. O then like those, that clench.

[5] Pathos, in the Greek sense, “suffering”. All editions up to and including 1850 have a small “s” and a small “m” for Shadow and Memory, and read thus:—

Too sadly for their peace, so put it back For calmer hours in memory’s darkest hold, If unforgotten! should it cross thy dreams, So might it come, etc.

[6] _Cf. Princess_, iii.:—

Morn in the white wake of the morning star Came furrowing all the orient into gold,

and with both cf. Greene, _Orlando Furioso_, i., 2:—

Seest thou not Lycaon’s son? The hardy plough-swain unto mighty Jove Hath _trac’d his silver furrows in the heaven_,

which in its turn is borrowed from Ariosto, _Orl. Fur._, xx., lxxxii.:—

Apena avea Licaonia prole Per li solchi del ciel volto L’aratro.

The Golden Year

This poem was first published in the fourth edition of the poems 1846. No alterations were made in it after 1851. The poem had a message for the time at which it was written. The country was in a very troubled state. The contest between the Protectionists and Free-traders was at its acutest stage. The Maynooth endowment and the “godless colleges” had brought into prominence questions of the gravest moment in religion and education, while the Corn Bill and the Coercion Bill had inflamed the passions of party politicians almost to madness. Tennyson, his son tells us, entered heartily into these questions, believing that the remedies for these distempers lay in the spread of education, a more catholic spirit in the press, a partial adoption of Free Trade principles, and union as far as possible among the different sections of Christianity.

Well, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: It was last summer on a tour in Wales: Old James was with me: we that day had been Up Snowdon; and I wish’d for Leonard there, And found him in Llanberis:[1] then we crost Between the lakes, and clamber’d half-way up The counterside; and that same song of his He told me; for I banter’d him, and swore They said he lived shut up within himself, A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days, That, setting the _how much_ before the _how_, Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, “Give,[2] Cram us with all,” but count not me the herd! To which “They call me what they will,” he said: “But I was born too late: the fair new forms, That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught— Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown’d— Are taken by the forelock. Let it be. But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn. “We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel’d in her ellipse; And human things returning on themselves Move onward, leading up the golden year. “Ah, tho’ the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets’ seasons when they flower, Yet seas, that daily gain upon the shore,[3] Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. “When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro’ all the season of the golden year. “Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle. Happy days Roll onward, leading up the golden year. “Fly happy happy sails and bear the Press; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year. “But we grow old! Ah! when shall all men’s good Be each man’s rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?” Thus far he flow’d, and ended; whereupon “Ah, folly!” in mimic cadence answer’d James— “Ah, folly! for it lies so far away. Not in our time, nor in our children’s time, ’Tis like the second world to us that live; ’Twere all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven As on this vision of the golden year.” With that he struck his staff against the rocks And broke it,—James,—you know him,—old, but full Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet, And like an oaken stock in winter woods, O’erflourished with the hoary clematis: Then added, all in heat: “What stuff is this! Old writers push’d the happy season back,— The more fools they,—we forward: dreamers both: You most, that in an age, when every hour Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death, Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman, rapt Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip[4] His hand into the bag: but well I know That unto him who works, and feels he works, This same grand year is ever at the doors.” He spoke; and, high above, I heard them blast The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff.

[1] 1846 to 1850.

And joined him in Llanberis; and that same song He told me, etc.

[2] Proverbs xxx. 15:

“The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give”.

[3] 1890. Altered to “Yet oceans daily gaining on the land”.

[4] _Selections_, 1865. Plunge.

Ulysses

First published in 1842, no alterations were made in it subsequently.

This noble poem, which is said to have induced Sir Robert Peel to give Tennyson his pension, was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, presumably therefore in 1833. “It gave my feeling,” Tennyson said to his son, “about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in _In Memoriam_.” It is not the _Ulysses_ of Homer, nor was it suggested by the _Odyssey_. The germ, the spirit and the sentiment of the poem are from the twenty-sixth canto of Dante’s _Inferno_, where Ulysses in the Limbo of the Deceivers speaks from the flame which swathes him. I give a literal version of the passage:—

“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 deserted me.... I and my companions were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks. ‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West deny not to this the brief vigil of your senses that 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).

But if the germ is here the expansion is Tennyson’s; he has added elaboration and symmetry, fine touches, magical images and magical diction. There is nothing in Dante which answers to—

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

or

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Of these lines well does Carlyle say what so many will feel: “These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would till whole Lacrymatorics as I read”.

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. 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[1] 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 And manners, climates, councils, governments,[2] Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; 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 For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,[3] 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 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 To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus,[4] To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil 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 Of common duties, decent not to fail 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, Souls that have toil’d and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; 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 Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,[5] And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One 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.

[1] Virgil, _Æn_., i., 748, and iii., 516.

[2] _Odyssey_, i., 1-4.

[3] _Cf_. Shakespeare, _Troilus and Cressida_:—

Perseverance, dear, my lord, Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail In monumental mockery.

[4] How admirably has Tennyson touched off the character of the Telemachus of the _Odyssey_.

[5] The Happy Isles, the _Fortunatæ Insulæ_ of the Romans and the αἱ τῶν Μακάρων νῆσοι of the Greeks, have been identified by geographers as those islands in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa; some take them to mean the Canary Islands, the Madeira group and the Azores, while they may have included the Cape de Verde Islands as well. What seems certain is that these places with their soft delicious climate and lovely scenery gave the poets an idea of a happy abode for departed spirits, and so the conception of the _Elysian Fields_. The _loci classici_ on these abodes are Homer, Odyssey, iv., 563 _seqq._:—

ᾁλλά σ’ ες Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πέιρατα γαιής

ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς

τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν,

οὐ νιφετὸς, οὔτ’ ἄρ χειμὼν πολὺς, οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρος

ἀλλ’ άιεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνέιοντας ἀήτας

ὠκεανὸς ἀνιήσιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους.

[But the Immortals will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world’s limits where is Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, where life is easiest for man; no snow is there, no nor no great storm, nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the shrilly breezes of the West to cool and refresh men.], and Pindar, _Olymp_., ii., 178 _seqq_., compared with the splendid fragment at the beginning of the _Dirges_. Elysium was afterwards placed in the netherworld, as by Virgil. Thus, as so often the suggestion was from the facts of geography, the rest soon became an allegorical myth, and to attempt to identify and localise “the Happy Isles” is as great an absurdity as to attempt to identify and localise the island of Shakespeare’s _Tempest_.

Locksley Hall

First published in 1842, and no alterations were made in it subsequently to the edition of 1850; except that in the Selections published in 1865 in the third stanza the reading was “half in ruin” for “in the distance”. This poem, as Tennyson explained, was not autobiographic but purely imaginary, “representing young life, its good side, its deficiences and its yearnings”. The poem, he added, was written in Trochaics because the elder Hallam told him that the English people liked that metre. The hero is a sort of preliminary sketch of the hero in _Maud_, the position and character of each being very similar: both are cynical and querulous, and break out into tirades against their kind and society; both have been disappointed in love, and both find the same remedy for their afflictions by mixing themselves with action and becoming “one with their kind”.

_Locksley Hall_ was suggested, as Tennyson acknowledged, by Sir William Jones’ translation of the old Arabian Moâllakât, a collection from the works of pre-Mahommedan poets. See Sir William Jones’ works, quarto edition, vol. iv., pp. 247-57. But only one of these poems, namely the poem of Amriolkais, could have immediately influenced him. In this the poet supposes himself attended on a journey by a company of friends, and they pass near a place where his mistress had lately lived, but from which her tribe had then removed. He desires them to stop awhile, that he may weep over the deserted remains of her tent. They comply with his request, but exhort him to show more strength of mind, and urge two topics of consolation, namely, that he had before been equally unhappy and that he had enjoyed his full share of pleasures. Thus by the recollection of his past delights his imagination is kindled and his grief suspended. But Tennyson’s chief indebtedness is rather in the oriental colouring given to his poem, chiefly in the sentiment and imagery. Thus in the couplet—

Many a night I saw the Pleiads rising through the mellow shade Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangl’d in a silver braid,

we are reminded of “It was the hour when the Pleiads appeared in the firmament like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems”.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

’Tis the place, and all around it,[1] as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams[2] about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s[3] breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove; In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, “My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.”

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light, As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs— All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong”; Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long”.

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.[4]

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips.[5]

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine. Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought: Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand— Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace, Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten’d forehead of the fool!

Well—’tis well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved— Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? I will pluck it from my bosom, tho’ my heart be at the root.

Never, tho’ my mortal summers to such length of years should come As the many-winter’d crow that leads the clanging rookery home.[6]

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind? Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish’d: sweetly did she speak and move: Such a one do I remember, whom to look it was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? No—she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn’d of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow[7] is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, To thy widow’d marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the “Never, never,” whisper’d by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry, ’Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest. Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due. Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

“They were dangerous guides the feelings—she herself was not exempt— Truly, she herself had suffer’d”—Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care, I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng’d with suitors, all the markets overflow. I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman’s ground, When the ranks are roll’d in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other’s heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;[8]

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;[9]

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;[10]

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;[10]

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunderstorm;[10]

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.[10]

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph’d, ere my passion sweeping thro’ me left me dry, Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint, Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,[11] Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Tho’ the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy’s?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string? I am shamed thro’ all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain—[12] Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine—

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr’d;— I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle’s ward.

Or to burst all links of habit—there to wander far away, On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.[13]

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer[14] from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom’d bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree— Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp’d no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks. Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I _know_ my words are wild, But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

_I_, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,[15] Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime? I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range. Let the great world spin[16] for ever down the ringing grooves[17] of change.

Thro’ the shadow of the globe[18] we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.[19]

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun: Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun—[20]

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

[1] 1842. And round the gables.

[2] “Gleams,” it appears, is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson had never, he said, heard of that meaning of “gleams,” adding he wished he had. He meant nothing more in the passage than “to express the flying gleams of light across a dreary moorland when looking at it under peculiarly dreary circumstances”. See for this, _Life_, iii., 82.

[3] 1842 and all up to and including 1850 have a capital _R_ to robin.

[4] Cf. W. R. Spencer (_Poems_, p. 166):—

What eye with clear account remarks The ebbing of his glass, When all its sands are diamond sparks That dazzle as they pass.

But this is of course in no way parallel to Tennyson’s subtly beautiful image, which he himself pronounced to be the best simile he had ever made.

[5] Cf. Guarini, _Pastor Fido_:—

Ma i colpi di due labbre innamorate Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca, ... ove l’ un alma e l’altra Corre.

[6] _Cf._ Horace’s _Annosa Cornix_, Odes III., xvii., 13.

[7] The reference is to Dante, _Inferno_, v. 121-3:—

Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.

For the pedigree and history of this see the present editor’s _Illustrations of Tennyson_, p. 63.

[8] The epithet “dreary” shows that Tennyson preferred realistic picturesqueness to dramatic propriety.

[9] See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_.

[10]

See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_.

[11] Tennyson said that this simile was suggested by a passage in _Pringle’s Travels;_ the incident only is described, and with thrilling vividness, by Pringle; but its application in simile is Tennyson’s. See _A Narrative of a Residence in South Africa_, by Thomas Pringle, p. 39:

“The night was extremely dark and the rain fell so heavily that in spite of the abundant supply of dry firewood, which we had luckily provided, it was not without difficulty that we could keep one watchfire burning.... About midnight we were suddenly roused by the roar of a lion close to our tents. It was so loud and tremendous that for the moment I actually thought that a thunderstorm had burst upon us.... We roused up the half-extinguished fire to a roaring blaze ... this unwonted display probably daunted our grim visitor, for he gave us no further trouble that night.”

[12] With this _cf_. Leopardi, _Aspasia_, 53-60:—

Non cape in quelle Anguste fronti ugual concetto. E male Al vivo sfolgora di quegli sguardi Spera l’uomo ingannato, e mal chiede Sensi profondi, sconosciuti, è molto Più che virili, in chi dell’ uomo al tutto Da natura è minor. Che se più molli E più tenui le membra, essa la mente Men capace e men forte anco riceve.

[13] One wonders Tennyson could have had the heart to excise the beautiful couplet which in his MS. followed this stanza.

All about a summer ocean, leagues on leagues of golden calm, And within melodious waters rolling round the knolls of palm.

[14] 1842 and all up to and inclusive of 1850. Droops the trailer. This is one of Tennyson’s many felicitous corrections. In the monotonous, motionless splendour of a tropical landscape the smallest movement catches the eye, the flight of a bird, the gentle waving of the trailer stirred by the breeze from the sea.

[15] _Cf_. Shakespeare, “foreheads villainously low”.

[16] 1842. Peoples spin.

[17] Tennyson tells us that when he travelled by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830 it was night and he thought that the wheels ran in a groove, hence this line.

[18] 1842. The world.

[19] Cathay, the old name for China.

[20] _Cf_. Tasso, _Gems_, ix., st. 91:—

Nuova nube di polve ecco vicina Che fulgori in grembo tiene.

(Lo! a fresh cloud of dust is near which Carries in its breast thunderbolts.)

Godiva

First published in 1842. No alteration was made in any subsequent edition.

The poem was written in 1840 when Tennyson was returning from Coventry to London, after his visit to Warwickshire in that year. The Godiva pageant takes place in that town at the great fair on Friday in Trinity week. Earl Leofric was the Lord of Coventry in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and he and his wife Godiva founded a magnificent Benedictine monastery at Coventry. The first writer who mentions this legend is Matthew of Westminster, who wrote in 1307, that is some 250 years after Leofric’s time, and what authority he had for it is not known. It is certainly not mentioned by the many preceding writers who have left accounts of Leofric and Godiva (see Gough’s edition of Camden’s _Britannia_, vol. ii., p. 346, and for a full account of the legend see W. Reader, _The History and Description of Coventry Show Fair, with the History of Leofric and Godiva_). With Tennyson’s should be compared Moultrie’s beautiful poem on the same subject, and Landor’s Imaginary Conversation between Leofric and Godiva.

[1] _I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To match the three tall spires;_[2] _and there I shaped The city’s ancient legend into this:_ Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtax’d; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry: for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamouring, “If we pay, we starve!” She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And pray’d him, “If they pay this tax, they starve”. Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, “You would not let your little finger ache For such as _these_?”—“But I would die,” said she. He laugh’d, and swore by Peter and by Paul; Then fillip’d at the diamond in her ear; “O ay, ay, ay, you talk!”—“Alas!” she said, “But prove me what it is I would not do.” And from a heart as rough as Esau’s hand, He answer’d, “Ride you naked thro’ the town, And I repeal it”; and nodding as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bad him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition; but that she would loose The people: therefore, as they loved her well, From then till noon no foot should pace the street, No eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barr’d. Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Unclasp’d the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim Earl’s gift; but ever at a breath She linger’d, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head, And shower’d the rippled ringlets to her knee; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid From pillar unto pillar, until she reach’d The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt In purple blazon’d with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen’d round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth’d heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey’s footfall shot Light horrors thro’ her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she Not less thro’ all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower’d elder-thicket from the field Gleam thro’ the Gothic archways[3] in the wall. Then she rode back cloth’d on with chastity: And one low churl,[4] compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peep’d—but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell’d into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait On noble deeds, cancell’d a sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass’d: and all at once, With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon Was clash’d and hammer’d from a hundred towers,[5] One after one: but even then she gain’d Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown’d, To meet her lord, she took the tax away, And built herself an everlasting name.

[1] These four lines are not in the privately printed volume of 1842, but were added afterwards.

[2] St. Michael’s, Trinity, and St. John.

[3] 1844. Archway.

[4] His effigy is still to be seen, protruded from an upper window in High Street, Coventry.

[5] A most poetical licence. Thirty-two towers are the very utmost allowed by writers on ancient Coventry.

The Two Voices

First published in 1842, though begun as early as 1833 and in course of composition in 1834. See Spedding’s letter dated 19th September, 1834. Its original title was _The Thoughts of a Suicide_. No alterations were made in the poem after 1842.

It adds interest to this poem to know that it is autobiographical. It was written soon after the death of Arthur Hallam when Tennyson’s depression was deepest. “When I wrote _The Two Voices_ I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and to my family, that I said, ‘Is life worth anything?’” It is the history—as Spedding put it—of the agitations, the suggestions and counter-suggestions of a mind sunk in hopeless despondency, and meditating self-destruction, together with the manner of its recovery to a more healthy condition. We have two singularly interesting parallels to it in preceding poetry. The one is in the third book of Lucretius (830-1095), where the arguments for suicide are urged, not merely by the poet himself, but by arguments placed by him in the mouth of Nature herself, and urged with such cogency that they are said to have induced one of his editors and translators, Creech, to put an end to his life. The other is in Spenser, in the dialogue between Despair and the Red Cross Knight, where Despair puts the case for self-destruction, and the Red Cross Knight rebuts the arguments (_Faerie Queene_, I. ix., st. xxxviii.-liv.).

A still small voice spake unto me, “Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?”

Then to the still small voice I said; “Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made”.

To which the voice did urge reply; “To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie.

“An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

“He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew.”

I said, “When first the world began Young Nature thro’ five cycles ran, And in the sixth she moulded man.

“She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast.”

Thereto the silent voice replied; “Self-blinded are you by your pride: Look up thro’ night: the world is wide.

“This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.

“Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?”

It spake, moreover, in my mind: “Tho’ thou wert scatter’d to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind”.

Then did my response clearer fall: “No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all”.

To which he answer’d scoffingly; “Good soul! suppose I grant it thee, Who’ll weep for thy deficiency?

“Or will one beam[1] be less intense, When thy peculiar difference Is cancell’d in the world of sense?”

I would have said, “Thou canst not know,” But my full heart, that work’d below, Rain’d thro’ my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me: “Thou art so steep’d in misery, Surely ’twere better not to be.

“Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep: Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.”

I said, “The years with change advance: If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

“Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev’n yet.” But he: “What drug can make A wither’d palsy cease to shake?”

I wept, “Tho’ I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

“And men, thro’ novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not.”

“Yet,” said the secret voice, “some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

“Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven’s starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

“Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells.”

I said that “all the years invent; Each month is various to present The world with some development.

“Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho’ watching from a ruin’d tower How grows the day of human power?”

“The highest-mounted mind,” he said, “Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

“Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main?

“Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down, Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

“Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dream’d not yet.

“Thou hast not gain’d a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite.

“’Twere better not to breathe or speak, Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek.

“Moreover, but to seem to find Asks what thou lackest, thought resign’d, A healthy frame, a quiet mind.”

I said, “When I am gone away, ‘He dared not tarry,’ men will say, Doing dishonour to my clay.”

“This is more vile,” he made reply, “To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh, Than once from dread of pain to die.

“Sick art thou—a divided will Still heaping on the fear of ill The fear of men, a coward still.

“Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground?

“The memory of the wither’d leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garner’d Autumn-sheaf.

“Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust; The right ear, that is fill’d with dust, Hears little of the false or just.”

“Hard task, to pluck resolve,” I cried, “From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride!

“Nay—rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm’d me in the days While still I yearn’d for human praise.

“When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flash’d and rung.

“I sung the joyful Paean clear, And, sitting, burnish’d without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear—

“Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life—

“Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And mete the bounds of hate and love—

“As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about—

“To search thro’ all I felt or saw, The springs of life, the depths of awe, And reach the law within the law:

“At least, not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed,