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many years before, about the time that Ulysses was composed, and is as beautiful as that masterpiece. Waugh says: Tithonus,' which in the original opened a little differently

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"Langsam rinnen aus einer die Stunden entfernter Geliebten :

Gegenwärtigen fliesst eilig die zweite herab."

Couplet 38, from Dante's Inferno, V.,

Ay me! Ay me! the woods decay and 121, is also similar to Alfred de Musset's fall,'

is not only touched with Tennyson's richest color, it has also a distinct place in his work as an utterance of his favorite creed. Μηδὲν ἄγαν is once more its motto. The immortality which Tithonus desired turns to ashes in his mouth: he is sick of life, who cannot die." (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1893, p. 185.)

Locksley Hall, p. 107.

First printed in 1842; its composition is said to have occupied the poet six weeks. The main thought he owed to a translation of the Arabic Moâllakát, prize odes "which were written in golden letters and hung up on the portals of the sacred shrine at Mecca."

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Tennyson thus comments on the place and the poem : Locksley Hall' is an imaginary place (tho' the coast is Lincolnshire) and the hero is imaginary. The whole poem represents young life, its good side, its deficiencies, and its yearnings. Mr. Hallam said to me that the English people liked verse in trochaics, so I wrote the poem in this metre."

There is a close parallel between couplets 9 and 10 and these lines from Pervigilium Veneris:

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique

amavit cras amet, Ver novum, vir jam canorum; vere natus orbis est, Vere concordant amores, vere nubent alites."

Couplet 16 recalls Goethe's epigram:"Eros, wie seh' ich dich hier! Im jeg

lichem Händchen die Sanduhr! Wie? Leichtsinniger Gott, missest du doppelt die Zeit?

lines in Lucie: —

"Il n'est pire douleur,

Qu'un souvenir heureux dans les jours du malheur."

The poet got the simile of the lion he was reading in 1837. (line 135) from Pringle's Travels, which

A considerable number of the phrases and lines of this deservedly popular poem have become familiar quotations, admired for their consummate brevity and felicity. Some of the more striking thoughts and images of Locksley Hall occur again and again in Tennyson's later works, in slightly different form.

Godiva, p. 113.

First published in 1842. While waiting for the train at Coventry in 1840 Tennyson shaped this ancient legend into an exquisite idyl, which has suggested two or three statues of Lady Godiva. A brief account of the circumstance, which took place in the eleventh century, is given in Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Cf. poems on Godiva by Moultrie and Leigh Hunt.

The Day-Dream, p. 114.

First published in 1842, except the part 1830. Edward Fitzgerald heard the poem entitled The Sleeping Beauty, printed in read in 1835, all but the prologue and the epilogue. Incidentally the poem reveals the new interest in physical science felt in England in the thirties. Lady Flora is evidently one of the few women in Tennyson's works who are intellectual and personally attractive.

Amphion, p. 118.

First published in 1842, but later sub

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Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, p. 122.

First published in 1842. One change

The birch tree swung her fragrant hair, in stanza 5 may be noted. The lines

The bramble cast her berry,

The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry."

St. Agnes' Eve, p. 120.

First printed, with the title St. Agnes, in The Keepsake, 1837. The poem is mentioned in correspondence of 1834. Says Professor Cook: "St. Agnes' Eve' is a study of medieval mysticism, - of pure devotional passion such as we encounter in the lives of St. Catharine of Siena and St. Teresa of Jesus. It belongs in the same class with 'St. Simeon Stylites' and 'Sir Galahad,' and may be regarded, together with them, as a lyrical forerunner of portions of the 'Idylls of the King,' particularly of such passages as the description of Percival's sister in The Holy Grail' and the cloistered penitence of Guinevere as depicted in the idyll of that name." (Poet-Lore, January, 1891, p. 10.)

Sir Galahad, p. 120.

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First published in 1842, though written as early as 1834. Says Luce: 'Sir Galahad' is an ideal of chivalry as well as a type of religion. But from one point of view he is St. Agnes in the form of a man. Like hers is his stainless purity and his ecstatic devotion to an ideal that has usurped the dearer instincts of humanity. But the poem, though full of lyrical splendor, is not so good as the former; that was perfect in its sufficiency; this is imperfect in its opulence." (Handbook, p. 183.)

Edward Gray, p. 121.

First published in 1842. The "sweet Emma Moreland" of this pretty ballad (written in 1840) forms the subject of a fine painting by Sir John E. Millais.

"Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days"-
were substituted in 1853 for-

"Like Hezekiah's backward runs
The shadow of my days."

Edward Fitzgerald remarks: "The plump head-waiter of The Cock,' by Temple Bar, famous for chop and porter,

was rather offended when told of the poem (Will Waterproof '). 'Had Mr. Tennyson dined oftener there, he would not have minded it so much,' he said." In 1887 the proprietors of the Cock Tavern remembered the poet with the gift of an old tankard, which he prized

as an heirloom of "the old vanished Tavern."

The poem, which is written in a pleasant vein, proves that Tennyson was not always steeped in melancholy and gloom in his early manhood.

Lady Clare, p. 124.

First published in 1842. Some changes were made in the text in 1851. The poem is based on the plot of Miss Ferrier's novel, The Inheritance. Says Napier, in Homes and Haunts of Tennyson, p. 90: "The marriage relationship is a favorite theme with him, and many of his finest poems circle round it. In

The Lord of Burleigh,' 'Lady Clare,' etc., he brushes aside all traditions, and with exquisite pathos, revels in that true sentiment he is so fond of, showing that when there exists between two persons what Scott calls the secret sympathy,' their union is almost sure to be a happy one."

The Captain, p. 126.

First published in A Selection from the Works of Alfred Tennyson, 1865. Of

this "legend of the navy" Luce says: "The incidents are improbable; no enemy would riddle a ship that did not

fire a shot in return."

more

The Lord of Burleigh, p. 127. First published in 1842, though written as early as 1835. According to Mr. Napier, this "ballad of ballads" is " than the creation of a poet's fancy, being rather a narrative in verse, with the usual poetic licenses, of the wooing and romantic marriage of the tenth Earl and first Marquis of Exeter." Under the assumed name of John Jones he married a farmer's daughter, Sarah Hoggins, of Bolas, Shropshire (April 13, 1790). She died in 1797,"aged 24," sincerely lamented by her husband and all his dependents. Burleigh House dates back to 1587 and is situated "in Northamptonshire, on the borders of the counties of Rutland and Lincoln."

The Voyage, p. 128.

First printed, apparently, in the Enoch Arden volume, 1864. The poem is an allegorical description of the pursuit of the ideal. Cf. Tennyson's later poem, Merlin and The Gleam, p. 679.

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, p. 129.

First published in 1842. Even in his college days Tennyson was attracted by the Arthurian legend and composed some verses on Launcelot and Guinevere. A single stanza of these unpublished verses was preserved by Edward Fitzgerald:

"Life of the Life within my blood,

Light of the Light within mine eyes,

The May begins to breathe and bud,
And softly blow the balmy skies;
Bathe with me in the fiery flood,
And mingle kisses, tears, and sighs,
Life of the Life within my blood,

Light of the Light within mine eyes."

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Give him new nerves with old ex-rescued by chance from a pile of

perience.""

waste paper. The babbling stream of this exquisite idyl is not the rivulet near Somersby, but a brook existing only in the poet's imagination. The "fig

According to Shepherd (Bibliography of Tennyson, 1896, pp. 40-41) these lines occur only in this edition. The poem itself is an allegory convey-ure like a wizard pentagram" (line 103) ing a religious lesson-the just and inevitable penalty that sooner or later overtakes the sensualist. As Palgrave puts it: "The life of selfish pleasure ends in cynicism and cynicism in moral

death."

To —, p. 134.

Contributed to the Examiner, March 24, 1849. First included in Poems, 6th ed., 1850, and reprinted (with slight changes) in 1853. Like The Dead Prophet (p. 634), the poem expresses Tennyson's abhorrence of publicity.

recalls a passage in Faust, Pt. I., Act I., — 'The wizard's foot that on the threshold made is," etc.

Lines 20-25 of The Brook recall

Goethe's Bächlein.

Aylmer's Field, p. 140.

First published in 1855. Mr. Woolner, who was a friend of Tennyson's, furnished the plot. It is the opinion of Mr. Luce that the locality is in Kent, while Mr. Napier thinks the scenery is like that near Bayons Manor, the seat of the Tennyson-d'Eyncourts. It is

To E. L., on his Travels in Greece, certainly depicted with wonderful loveli

p. 135.

First published in Poems, 8th ed., 1853. Addressed to Edward Lear (1812-88), author of Journal of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania, 1851, and other illustrated books of travel.

Break, break, break, p. 135.

ness and effectiveness. It is a labored idyl, which the poet found hard to manage. Says Napier: "In Maud' and 'Locksley Hall' he declaims in tones of thunder against those who sin against 'the truth of love' and especially in 'Aylmer's Field,' taking for his text the words, 'Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!' he teaches the lesson of First published in 1842, but probably pride trampling on love, and leaving in composed in the spring of 1834. This melodious wail, occasioned by the death of Arthur Hallam, was not written at Clevedon by the Severn, but "in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning."

The Poet's Song, p. 135. First published in 1842. Cf. The Poet (p. 16) and The Poet's Mind (p. 17).

The Brook, p. 136.

First published in Maud, and Other Poems, 1855. It is said that the poem, or one on the same subject, was written some twenty years before and, like other verses of this productive period, was thrown aside. The manuscript was

its train desolation and ruin.”

Sea Dreams, p. 155.

First printed in Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1860; afterward included in the Enoch Arden volume, 1864. Sea Dreams, says Stopford Brooke, in his work on Tennyson, p. 419, "is not a narrative of years and of many characters, but of a single day in the life of a man and his wife, and of a crisis in their souls." The poem is especially entitled to the name "Idyl of the Hearth," being an affecting recital of the ups and downs of domestic life in the middle classes. The kind-hearted, pious wife has in her the right material for a true woman.

Lucretius, p. 160.

First printed in Macmillan's Magazine, May, 1868; included in the Holy Grail volume, 1869. In Mrs. Tennyson's Journal for 1865 is this entry, dated Oct. 6th: "A. read me some 'Lucretius,' and the 1st Epistle of St. Peter.' (At work at his new poem of 'Lucretius ')." As first printed the last line was: —

"Care not thou

averting Jove's angry lightnings." It is needless to cite instances of Tennyson's use of the thoughts and imagery of Lucretius' great poem De Rerum Natura.

Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington, p. 165.

First published in pamphlet form on the morning of Nov. 18, 1852, and again in 1853; included in the Maud volume,

What matters? All is over: Fare thee 1855. The poem was written in the in

well!"

terval between the death of the Duke (Sept. 14), and his funeral (Nov. 18).

The later reading (of 1869) is still re- This elaborate ode was not appreciated tained.

At the time the poem was written the materialistic teaching of the Epicureans was coming into favor in England. Professor Tyndall was one of its new exponents. The Lucretian doctrine briefly stated is this: "Atoms wrought on by impulse and gravity, and excited in every mode to cohere, and having been tried in all possible aggregations, motions, and relations, fell at last into those that could endure." Given atoms and motion, the universe was the result.

Professor Jebb thus comments on Tennyson's remarkably successful poem dealing with the philosophy and personality of the Roman poet-philosopher (who lived in the first century B.C.): "Apart from its artistic qualities, the poem has another which, in a work of art, is accidental, its historical truth; that is, the Lucretius whom it describes has a true resemblance to the real Lucretius, as revealed in his own work; the picture is not merely a picture but happens to be a portrait also."

Cf. the description of the Lucretian Gods (lines 94-100) with the concluding passage of The Lotos Eaters (p. 61).

The allusion in lines 120-22 is to the Odyssey, XII., 374-96. According to the story in Ovid's Fasti it was King Numa who "snared Picus and Faunus" and compelled them to reveal" the secret of

at first, but Sir Henry Taylor wrote of it: "It has a greatness worthy of its theme, and an absolute simplicity and truth, with all the poetic passion of your nature moving beneath." Its patriotic passages especially appeal to the national heart and conscience.

The Third of February, p. 169.

Contributed to the Examiner, Feb. 7, 1852; included in the Library edition of Tennyson's collected Works, 1872. This and other patriotic poems were occasioned by the disturbed political condition of England after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, p. 170.

Contributed to the Examiner, Dec. 9, 1854; reprinted (with changes) in the Maud volume, 1855. A four-page copy was privately printed for distribution among the soldiers before Sebastopol. The famous charge took place in the Crimean War (Oct. 25, 1854). Says Waugh: "The poem has become almost too popular for discussion; it is the one stirring, galloping piece of energy which all shades of mind and sympathy seem to admire alike."

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