Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson by William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

W >> William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson >> Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

133-142. Brimley in his valuable essay on Tennyson, analyses this poem
in some detail. Of this passage he writes: "A series of brilliant
effects is hit off in these two words, 'made lightnings.' 'Whirl'd in an
arch,' is a splendid instance of sound answering to sense, which the
older critics made so much of; the additional syllable which breaks the
measure, and necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to
express to the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And
with what lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the
collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought
before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted through a page,
and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without any result but interrupting
his narrative, where Tennyson in three lines strikingly illustrates the
fact he has to tell,--associates it impressively with one of Nature's
grandest phenomena, and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon
besides." The whole essay deserves to be carefully read.

143. DIPT THE SURFACE. A poetical construction.

157. Note the personification of the sword.

182-183. CLOTHED--HILLS. His breath made a vapour in the frosty air
through which his figure loomed of more than human size. Tennyson gives
us the same effect in _Guinevere_, 597:

The moving vapour rolling round the King,
Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold.

But the classical example is found in Wordsworth's description of the
mountain shepherd in _The Prelude_, Book VIII.

When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes
Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,
In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,
His sheep like Greenland bears, or as he stepped
Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,
His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun,

191-192. AND ON A SUDDEN--MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to
burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous
sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come out in a
moment upon--

"the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon!"

193. HOVE=hove in sight.

The closing scene in this drama is impressively described by Malory. "So
Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he saw. 'Alas,'
said the King, 'help me hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long.'
Then Sir Bedivere took the King upon his back, and so went with him to
that water side. And when they were at the water side, even fast by the
bank hoved a little barge, with many fair ladies in it, and among them
all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and
shrieked when they saw King Arthur. 'Now, put me into the barge,' said
the King: and so they did softly. And there received him three queens
with great mourning, and so they set him down, and in one of their laps
King Arthur laid his head; and then that queen said; 'Ah, dear brother,
why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath
caught overmuch cold.' And so then they rowed from the land; and Sir
Bedivere beheld ail those ladies go from him. Then Sir Bedivere cried;
'Ah, my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye so from me, and leave
me here alone among mine enemies?' 'Comfort thyself,' said the King:,
'and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in.
For I will into the vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound.
And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul.' But ever the
queens and the ladies wept and shrieked, that it was pity to hear. And,
as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and
wailed, and so took the forest, and so he went all that night. . . . . ."

It is interesting to note how the poet suggests here and there the
phrasing of his original, but even more interesting to note his
amplifications. It may be doubted whether Tennyson has here surpassed
his original. For its touching simplicity he has substituted a dignified
grandeur, and has involved plain statements in gorgeous rhetoric, as in
his passage upon the efficacy of prayer. The unadorned original had said
only "pray for my soul."

198. THREE QUEENS WITH CROWNS OF GOLD. "That one was King Arthur's
sister, Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgales (Wales); the
third was the Lady of the lake." _Malory_.

215-216. DASH'D WITH DROPS--OF ONSET. Words are sometimes poetical from
their precision, and sometimes, as here, they suggest without definite
reference. The meaning is "dashed with drops of blood" from the onset or
encounter.

2t6-220. Arthur is again described in _The Last Tournament_.

That victor of the Pagan throned in hall,
His hair, a sun that rayed from off a brow
Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes,
The golden beard that cloth'd his lips with light.

228. MY FOREHEAD AND MY EYES. Compare the note to line 132. Here the
specific terms are used according to the epical manner instead of the
general term "face."

232-233. Compare the Gospel of _Matthew_ ii. 11.

240-242. These often-quoted lines have been already referred to above.
Their very intellectuality is alien to the spirit of the original. In
Tennyson's conception they afford the central meaning of the poem, and
also of the completed _Idylls_. We must bow to the will of God who
brings all things in their due season. Good customs too deeply rooted
are like clear waters grown stagnant.

254-255. FOR SO--GOD. The idea that the earth is bound by a gold chain
to heaven is comparatively common in literature from Homer downwards.
Archdeacon Hare has a passage in his sermon on _Self-Sacrifice_ which
doubtless was familiar to Tennyson: "This is the golden chain of love,
whereby the whole creation is bound to the throne of the Creator."

257-258. IF INDEED I GO--DOUBT. There is no reason to suppose that these
lines indicate Tennyson's personal misgivings on the subject of
immortality.

259. THE ISLAND VALLEY OF AVILION. Mr. Rhys in his _Studies in the
Arthurian Legend_ combats the old idea that Avalon (Avilion) meant the
"Island of Apples" (Welsh aval, apple). The name implies the Island of
King Avalon, a Celtic divinity, who presided among the dead.

The valley of Avalon was supposed to be near Glastonbury, in
Somersetshire, where Joseph of Arimathea first landed with the Holy Grail.

67 ff. There is an evident symbolical meaning in this dream. Indeed
Tennyson always appears to use dreams for purposes of symbol. The lines
are an application of the expression; "The old order changeth," etc. The
parson's lamentation expressed in line 18, "Upon the general decay of
faith," is also directly answered by the assertion that the modern Arthur
will arise in modern times. There is a certain grotesqueness in the
likening of King Arthur to "a modern gentleman of stateliest port." But
Tennyson never wanders far from conditions of his own time. As Mr.
Stopford Brooke writes; "Arthur, as the modern gentleman, as the modern
ruler of men, such a ruler as one of our Indian heroes on the frontier,
is the main thing in Tennyson's mind, and his conception of such a man
contains his ethical lesson to his countrymen."

THE BROOK

Published in 1855 in the volume, _Maud and other Poems_. _The Brook_ is
one of the most successful of Tennyson's idylls, and is in no degree, as
the earlier poem _Dora_ was, a Wordsworthian imitation. The brook
itself, which bickers in and out of the story as in its native valley,
was not the Somersby brook, which does not now "to join the brimming
river," but pours into the sea. The graylings and other details are
imaginary. A literary source has been suggested (see Dr. Sykes' note) in
Goethe's poem, _Das Baechlein_, which begins:

klar, and clear,
sinn; and think;
du hin? goest thou?
Du Bachlein, silberhell und Thou little brook, silver bright Du eilst
vorueber immerdar, Thou hastenest ever onward, Am Ufer steh' ich,
sinn' und I stand on the brink, think Wo kommst du her? Wo gehst
Whence comest thou? Where

The Brook replies:

Schoss, dark rocks,
Moss'. and moss.
Ich komm' aus dunkler Felsen I come from the bosom of the Mein Lauf
geht ueber Blum' und My course goes over flowers

The charm of the poem lies in its delicate characterization, in its tone
of pensive memory suffused with cheerfulness, and especially in the song
of the brook, about which the action revolves. Twenty years have wrought
many changes in the human lives of the story, but the brook flows on
forever, and Darnley bridge still spans the brimming river, and shows for
only change a richer growth of ivy.

6. HOW MONEY BREEDS, i.e. by producing interest at loan.

8. THE THING THAT--IS. The poet's function is thus described by
Shakespeare:

As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
--_Midsummer Night's Dream_, V., 1.

17. HALF-ENGLISH NEILGHERRY AIR. The Neilgherry Hills are in Madras.
The climate resembles somewhat that of England.

37. MORE IVY, i.e. than twenty years ago.

46. WILLOW WEED AND MALLOW. These are marsh plants.

93-95. NOT ILLITERATE--DEED. Katie was not without reading; but she was
not of those who dabble in sentimental novels (the source of imaginary
tears), and saturate themselves with unctuous charities; and whose powers
to act are sapped by their excess of feeling.

105. UNCLAIM'D. As having nothing to do with her. Katie resented the
implication in the question of line 100. She therefore disdained to
answer it. Messrs. Rowe and Webb hold that line 100 is a hint that the
speaker, Lawrence Aylmer, was responsible for James's fit of jealousy.

l25f. Note the art with which the old man's garrulousness is expressed.
The cautious precision of lines 151-152 is particularly apt.

176. NETTED SUNBEAM. The sunlight reflected like a net-work on the
bottom. The ripples on the surface would have this effect.

189. ARNO. A river in Italy which flows past Florence.

189-190. DOME OF BRUNELLESCHI. Brunelleschi (Broo-nei-les'-ke) was an
Italian architect (1377-1444), who completed the cathedral of Santa Maria
in Florence. Its dome is of great size and impressiveness.

194. BY--SEAS. Tennyson was fond of quoting this line as one of his
roost successful individual lines. Its rhythm is indeed sonorous.

195-196. AND HOLD--APRIL AUTUMNS. Objection has been taken to the
somewhat pedantic precision of these lines. See, however, the reference
on pp. lxxii.-lxxvii. to Tennyson's employment of science in poetry.

The fact is familiar, of course, that in the Antipodes the seasons are
the reverse of ours.

203. BRIONY RINGS. Formed by the tendrils of the plant.

IN MEMORIAM

The poem, _In Memoriam_, in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, was published
in 1850, at first anonymously, but the authorship was not long in doubt.

Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the historian, was born in
1811. He entered Eton in 1822, and remained there until 1827, when he
went to Cambridge. There he met Alfred Tennyson, and the two young men
formed a friendship for one another, broken only by Hallam's early death.
In 1832, he graduated from Cambridge, became engaged to Emily Tennyson,
the sister of Alfred, and entered on the study of law. In 1833, he had a
severe illness and after his recovery was taken by his father for a tour
on the Continent, in the hope of restoring his health. Sir Francis
Hastings Doyle tells the story of his death: "A severe bout of influenza
weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and
to recover his strength, one of his usual attacks apparently returned
upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it; so
that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of
Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a
short rest. Mr. Hallam sat down to write his letters, and it was only by
slow and imperceptible degrees that a certain anxiety, in consequence of
Arthur's stillness and silence, dawned upon his mind; he drew near to
ascertain why he had not moved nor spoken, and found that all was over."
The body was brought back to England and buried in Clevedon Church, on
the banks of the Severn.

The effect upon Tennyson of the death of Arthur Hallam was overwhelming.
For a time it "blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for
death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and
comfort to his sister." Under the influence of this great sorrow he
wrote _The Two Voices_, _Ulysses_, "_Break, Break, Break_," and began
that exquisite series of lyric poems, afterwards joined together in the
_In Memoriam_. His friendship for Hallam remained throughout life with
him as one of his most precious possessions.

The poems in the text are selected from the _In Memoriam_, and have a
more or less close connection with each other. It is better, however, to
regard each poem as a separate poem, without any attempt to place it in
its relation to the _In Memoriam_ as a whole.

The best annotated edition of _In Memoriam_ is that by A. C. Bradley
(Macmillan). Other useful editions are edited by Wallace (Macmillan),
and by Robinson (Cambridge Press). Elizabeth B. Chapman's _Companion to
In Memoriam_ (Macmillan), contains the best analysis of the poem.

XXVII

"The very memory of such an affection as he had cherished for Hallam is
an inspiration. Keen and acute as the sense of loss may be, it purifies
rather than destroys the influence of a hallowed love--its effect is to
idealize and sanctify. This general truth is enforced by several
illustrations."--_Henry E. Shepherd_.

2. NOBLE RAGE. Fierce love of freedom.

6. HIS LICENSE. "Lives without law, because untroubled by the promptings
of a higher nature."

6. FIELD OF TIME. The term of his natural life.

12. WANT-BEGOTTEN REST. Hallam, Lord Tennyson interprets: "Rest--the
result of some deficiency or narrowness."

16. NEVER TO HAVE LOVED. Life is enriched by the mere act of having
loved.

LXIV

"Still brooding on all the possible relations of his old friend to the
life and the love that he has left, the poet now compares him to some
genius of lowly birth, who should leave his obscure home to rise to the
highest office of state, and should sometimes in the midst of his
greatness, remember, as in a dream, the dear scenes of old, and it may
be, the humble villager who was his chosen playmate."--Elizabeth R.
Chapman.

1. DOST THOU, ETC. This section was composed by Tennyson when he was
walking up and down the Strand and Fleet Street in London.

5. INVIDIOUS BAR. Obstacle to success. Invidious is used in the sense
of "offensive."

7. CIRCUMSTANCE. Adverse circumstances.

9. BY FORCE. Strength of character and will.

10. GOLDEN KEYS. Keys of office of state.

11. MOULD. As a minister of the Crown.

14. CROWNING SLOPE. A felicitous phrase. If it were a precipice it
could not be climbed.

15. PILLAR. That on which they build, and which supports them.

21. NARROWER. When he was still in his "low estate."

28. REMEMBER ME. Bradley notes that "the pathetic effect is increased by
the fact that in the two preceding stanzas we are not told that his old
friend does remember him."

LXXXIII

"With the dawning of the New Year, fresh hope quickens in the poet's
breast. He would fain hasten its laggard footsteps, longing for the
flowers of spring and for the glory of summer. Can trouble live in the
spring--the season of life and love and music? Let the spring come, and
he will sing 'for Arthur a sweeter, richer requiem.'"--_Elizabeth R.
Chapman_.

1. NORTHERN SHORE. Robertson explains: "The north being the last to be
included in the widening circle of lengthening daylight as it readies
further and further down from the equator."

2. NEW-YEAR. The natural, not the calendar year. The re-awakening of
life in nature.

5. CLOUDED NOONS. From the noons, which are still clouded.

6. PROPER. Own.

9. SPIRE. Flowering spikes.

10. SPEEDWELL. "The Germander Speedwell is a slender, wiry plant, whose
stem sometimes creeps along the surface of the ground before it grows
upwards. The flowers have four small petals of the brightest blue, and
within the flower at the foot of the petals is a small white circle, with
a little white eye looking up. Two stamens with crimson heads rise from
this white circle, and in the very centre of the flower there is a tiny
green seed-vessel, with a spike coming out of the top."--_C. B. Smith_.

12. LABURNUMS.

"And all the gold from each laburnum chain
Drops to the grass." --_To Mary Boyle_.

LXXXVI

"I can open my being also to the reviving influences of Nature--as on a
certain evening, balmy and glorious after the rain, when the breeze
seemed as if it might breathe new life, and waft me across the seas away
from the land of doubt and death to some far off sphere of more than
earthly peace,"--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

1. SWEET AFTER SHOWERS, ETC. This poem was written at Barmouth.

1. AMBROSIAL. Ambrosia was the food of the immortal gods. The wind was
from the west and was "divinely reviving."

4. BREATHING BARE. Making the horizon bare of clouds.

5. RAPT. Violent motion is not implied.

6. DEWY-TASSEL'D. From the showers.

7. HORNED FLOOD. Between two promontaries.

9. SIGH. "Impart as by a breath or sigh."

10. NEW LIFE. Due to the new friendship.

11. DOUBT AND DEATH. These have up to this time haunted him.

13. FROM BELT, ETC. Tennyson explains: "The west wind rolling to the
Eastern seas till it meets the evening star."

16. WHISPER "PEACE." Stopford Brooke says of this poem: "Each verse is
linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, swelling as
they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of
earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything be more
impassioned and yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of youth and the
nobleness of manhood's sacred joy."

CI

"In the garden, looking round on tree and shrub and flower and brook--all
the friends of many years--a fresh pang comes with the sight of each.
All these will be unwatched, unloved, uncared for; till, perhaps, they
find a home in a stranger's heart, growing dear to him and his, while the
memory fades of those who love them now."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

10. THE BROOK. The brook at Somersby flowed past the bottom of the
parsonage grounds. It is constantly mentioned in Tennyson's poems.
Hallam Tennyson says that the charm and beauty of the brook haunted his
father through life.

11. LESSER WAIN. Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear; a small constellation
containing the pole star. Wain means "wagon," another name for the
constellation.

14. HERN AND CRAKE. Heron and corn-crake.

21. LABOURER. He does not move away, but stays always there.

22. GLEBE. Soil.

CXIV

"The world now is all for the spread of knowledge: and I should be the
last to demur. But knowledge has an ardent impetuosity, which in its
present immature condition may be fraught with many perils. Knowledge by
itself, so far from being of necessity heavenly, may even become devilish
in its selfish violence. Everything depends upon its being held in due
subordination to those higher elements in our nature which go to make
wisdom. Would that the ideal aim of our education were to produce such
as he was, in whom every increase in intellectual ability was accompanied
by the growth of some finer grace of the spirit."--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

4. HER PILLARS. "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her
seven pillars."--_Proverbs_ 9: 1.

5. A FIRE. The fire of inspiration.

6. SETS. Hard, like a flint.

6. FORWARD. Bold, without reverence.

7. CHANCE. Of success.

8. TO DESIRE. Governed by passion, without restraint or self-control.

10. FEAR OF DEATH. Knowledge does not know what is beyond the grave and
therefore fears death.

11. CUT FROM LOVE, ETC. Wallace says: "Knowledge, in its own nature, can
have no love, for love is not of the intellect, and knowledge is all of
the intellect: so, too, she can have no faith, for faith in its nature is
a confession of ignorance, since she believes what she cannot know."

12. PALLAS. Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom among the Greeks, was
fabled to have sprung, fully grown and fully armed, from the brain of
Zeus. Wild Pallas means "false wisdom."

17. A HIGHER HAND. Wisdom.

23. THY GOAL. The goal of wisdom.

28. REVERENCE, ETC. In faith and love.

CXV

"Another spring has come, and all its lovely sights and sounds wake
answering chords in the poet's breast. The life within him stirs and
quickens in responsive harmony with the world without. But his regret,
too, blossoms like a flower,"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

2. BURGEONS. Buds.

2. MAZE OF QUICK. Quick-set tangle.

3. SQUARES. Fields.

8. SIGHTLESS. Invisible.

14. GREENING. Shining out on the sea.

CXVIII

"Do not believe that man's soul is like mere matter, or has been
produced, like lower forms in the earlier ages of the earth, only to
perish. Believe that he is destined both to advance to something higher
on the earth, and also to develop in some higher place elsewhere, if he
repeats the process of evolution by subduing the lower within him to the
uses of the higher, whether in peaceful growth or through painful
struggle."--_A. C. Bradley_.

2. HIS YOUTH. "Limited time, however old or long, must be always young,
compared with the hoary age of eternity."

4. EARTH AND LIME. Flesh and bone.

10. SEEMING-RANDOM. But in reality shaped and guided.

11. CYCLIC STORMS. "Periodic cataclysms," or "storms lasting for whole
ages."

16. TYPE. Exemplify.

18. ATTRIBUTES OF WOE. Trial and suffering are the crown of man in this
world.

20. IDLE. Useless.

22. HEATED HOT. A reference to the tempering of steel.

26. REELING FAUN. Human beings with horns, a tail, and goats' feet.
They were more than half-brutish in their nature.

28. THE APE AND THE TIGER. A reference to the theory of evolution,
although Darwin's _Origin of Species_ did not appear until 1859.

CXXIII

"Again the mysterious play of mighty cosmic forces arrests his thought.
Everything in the material universe is changing, transient; all is in a
state of flux, of motion, of perpetual disintegration or re-integration.
But there is one thing fixed and abiding--that which we call spirit--and
amid all uncertainty, one truth is certain--that to a loving human soul a
parting which shall be eternal is unthinkable."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

4. STILLNESS. Hallam Tennyson remarks that balloonists say that even in
a storm the middle sea is noiseless. It is the ship that is the cause of
the howling of the wind and the lashing of the storm.

4. CENTRAL SEA. Far from land.

8. LIKE CLOUDS, ETC. A reference to geological changes.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10