Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson by William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
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William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson >> Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson
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Walter Savage Landor doubtless refers to the _Morte d'Arthur_ as early as
1837, when writing to a friend, as follows:--"Yesterday a Mr. Moreton, a
young man of rare judgment, read to me a manuscript by Mr. Tennyson,
being different in style from his printed poems. The subject is the
Death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any poem of our time, and
rivals some of the noblest parts of the Odyssea." A still earlier
composition is assured by the correspondence of Edward Fitzgerald who
writes that, in 1835, while staying at the Speddings in the Lake Country,
he met Tennyson and heard the poet read the _Morte d'Arthur_ and other
poems of the 1842 volume. They were read out of a MS., "in a little red
book to him and Spedding of a night 'when all the house was mute.'"
In _The Epic_ we have specific reference to the Homeric influence in
these lines:
"Nay, nay," said Hall,
"Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth," . . .
Critics have agreed for the most part in considering the _Morte d'Arthur_
as the most Homeric of Tennyson's poems. Bayne writes: "Not only in the
language is it Homeric, but in the design and manner of treatment. The
concentration of interest on the hero, the absence of all modernism in
the way of love, story or passion painting, the martial clearness,
terseness, brevity of the narrative, with definite specification, at the
same time, are exquisitely true to the Homeric pattern." Brimley notes,
with probably greater precision, that: "They are rather Virgilian than
Homeric echoes; elaborate and stately, not naive and eager to tell their
story; rich in pictorial detail; carefully studied; conscious of their
own art; more anxious for beauty of workmanship than interest of action."
It has frequently been pointed out in this book how prone Tennyson is to
regard all his subjects from the modern point of view:
a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day.
The Epic and the epilogue strongly emphasize this modernity in the varied
modern types of character which they represent, with their diverse
opinions upon contemporary topics. "As to the epilogue," writes Mr.
Brooke (p. 130), "it illustrates all I have been saying about Tennyson's
method with subjects drawn from Greek or romantic times. He filled and
sustained those subjects with thoughts which were as modern as they were
ancient. While he placed his readers in Camelot, Ithaca, or Ida, he made
them feel also that they were standing in London, Oxford, or an English
woodland. When the _Morte d'Arthur_ is finished, the hearer of it sits
rapt. There were 'modern touches here and there,' he says, and when he
sleeps he dreams of
"King Arthur, like a modern gentleman
Of stateliest port; and all the people cried,
'Arthur is come again, he cannot die.'
Then those that stood upon the hills behind
Repeated--'Come again, and thrice as fair:'
And, further inland, voices echoed--'Come
With all good things and war shall be no more.
"The old tale, thus modernised in an epilogue, does not lose its dignity,
for now the recoming of Arthur is the recoming of Christ in a wider and
fairer Christianity. We feel here how the new movement of religion and
theology had sent its full and exciting wave into Tennyson. Arthur's
death in the battle and the mist is the death of a form of Christianity
which, exhausted, died in doubt and darkness. His advent as a modern
gentleman is the coming of a brighter and more loving Christ into the
hearts of men. For so ends the epilogue. When the voices cry, 'Come
again, with all good things,'
"At this a hundred bells began to peal,
That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed,
The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn."
THE ALLEGORICAL ELEMENT.--The statement is made on p. xxxv of this book
that in _The Idylls of the King_ "the effort is made to reconcile the
human story with the allegory, and in consequence the issues are
confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the _Morte
d'Arthur_ fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical
intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element
of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of
allegory lies in the epilogue, and _The Passing of Arthur_ still further
enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes
(p. 371), "we are close throughout to the ancient tale. No allegory, no
ethics, no rational soul, no preaching symbolism, enter here, to dim,
confuse, or spoil the story. Nothing is added which does not justly
exalt the tale, and what is added is chiefly a greater fulness and
breadth of humanity, a more lovely and supreme Nature, arranged at every
point to enhance into keener life the human feelings of Arthur and his
knight, to lift the ultimate hour of sorrow and of death into nobility.
Arthur is borne to a chapel nigh the field--
"A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land;
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
"What a noble framework--and with what noble consciousness it is drawn! .
. . . All the landscape--than which nothing better has been invented by
any English poet--lives from point to point as if Nature herself had
created it; but even more alive than the landscape are the two human
figures in it--Sir Bedivere standing by the great water, and Arthur lying
wounded near the chapel, waiting for his knight. Take one passage, which
to hear is to see the thing:
"So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept,
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
"Twice he hides the sword, and when Arthur asks: 'What hast thou seen,
what heard?' Bedivere answers:
"'I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag,'
"--lines so steeped in the loneliness of mountain tarns that I never stand
in solitude beside their waters but I hear the verses in my heart. At
the last he throws it.
"The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
"'So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur,' and never yet in poetry did
any sword, flung in the air, flash so superbly.
"The rest of the natural description is equally alive, and the passage
where the sound echoes the sense, and Bedivere, carrying Arthur, clangs
as he moves among the icy rocks, is as clear a piece of ringing, smiting,
clashing sound as any to be found in Tennyson:
"Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rung
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels.
"We hear all the changes on the vowel _a_--every sound of it used to give
the impression--and then, in a moment, the verse runs into breadth,
smoothness and vastness: for Bedivere comes to the shore and sees the
great water;
"And on a sudden lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon,
"in which the vowel _o_, in its changes is used, as the vowel _a_ has been
used before.
"The questions and replies of Arthur and Bedivere, the reproaches of the
King, the excuses of the Knight, the sorrow and the final wrath of
Arthur, are worthy of the landscape, as they ought to be; and the
dominance of the human element in the scene is a piece of noble
artist-work. Arthur is royal to the close, and when he passes away with
the weeping Queens across the mere, unlike the star of the tournament he
was of old, he is still the King. Sir Bedivere, left alone on the
freezing shore, hears the King give his last message to the world. It is
a modern Christian who speaks, but the phrases do not sound out of
harmony with that which might be in Romance. Moreover, the end of the
saying is of Avilion or Avalon--of the old heathen Celtic place where the
wounded are healed and the old made young."
In the final analysis, therefore, the significance of the _Morte
d'Arthur_ is a significance of beauty rather than moralistic purpose. It
has been said that the reading of Milton's _Lycidas_ is the surest test
of one's powers of poetical appreciation. I fear that the test is too
severe for many readers who can still enjoy a simpler style of poetry.
But any person who can read the _Morte d'Arthur_, and fail to be
impressed by its splendid pictures, and subdued to admiration by the
dignity of its language, need scarcely hope for pleasure from any poetry.
THE EPIC
3. SACRED BUSH. The mistletoe. This plant was sacred to the Celtic
tribes, and was an object of particular veneration with the Druids,
especially when associated with the oak-tree.
8. OR GONE=either gone.
18. THE GENERAL DECAY OF FAITH. The story of Arthur is intended to show
how faith survives, although the form be changed. See esp. _Morte
d'Arthur_, ll. 240-242.
27-28. 'HE BURNT--SOME TWELVE BOOKS.' This must not be taken literally.
See, however, p. xxxiii. of the Biographical Sketch, as to Tennyson's
hesitation in treating the subject.
48-51. This is self-portraiture. Lord Tennyson's method of reading was
impressive though peculiar.
MORTE D'ARTHUR
THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. Throughout the mediaeval period three great cycles
of stories commanded the imagination of the poets. Of these cycles one,
the tale of Troy in its curious mediaeval guise, attested the potent
spell of antique legend.[1] The two other great cycles were of later
origin, and centred around the commanding historical figures of
Charlemagne, and the phantom glory of the legendary Arthur.
[1]The extraordinary interest in the half legendary career of Alexander
the Great must be noticed here, as also the profound respect amounting to
veneration for the Roman poet, Vergil.
The origin of the Arthurian story is involved in obscurity. The crudest
form of the myth has doubtless a core of historic truth, and represents
him as a mighty Celtic warrior, who works havoc among the heathen Saxon
invaders. Accretions naturally are added, and a miraculous origin and a
mysterious death throw a superstitious halo around the hero. When the
brilliant personality of Lancelot breaks into the tale, and the legend of
the Holy Grail is superadded, the theme exercised an irresistible
fascination upon the imagination of mediaeval Europe.
The vicissitudes of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain are as romantic as
any of which history holds record. After the departure of the Roman
invaders from the island, the native population swiftly reasserted
itself. The Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland were their
natural foes, but conflict with these enemies served only to stimulate
the national life. But actual disaster threatened them when in the fifth
and sixth centuries the heathen Angles and Saxons bore down in
devastating hordes upon the land. It is at this critical period in the
national history that Arthur must have lived. How long or how valiant
the resistance was we cannot know. That it was vain is certain. A large
body of Britons fled from annihilation across the channel, and founded in
the region of Armurica in France, a new Brittany. Meanwhile, in the
older Britain, the foe pressed hard upon their fellow-countrymen, and
drove them into the western limits of the island, into the fastnesses of
Wales, and the rocky parts of Cornwall. Here, and in Northern France,
proud in their defeat and tenacious of the instincts of their race, they
lived and still live, in the imaginative memories of the past. For them
the future held little store of earthly gain, and yet they made the whole
world their debtor.
Even in the courts of the conqueror Saxon their strange and beautiful
poetry won favour, and in a later century the Norman kings and barons
welcomed eagerly the wandering minstrels from Brittany and Wales. But it
was not from these scattered sources that Celtic traditions became a
European possession, as a brief statement of literary history will
clearly show.
The first recorded mention of Arthur's name occurs in a brief and
anonymous _History of the Britons_, written in Latin in the tenth
century, and attributed to Nennius. This history is curiously amplified
in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, first in a story dealing
with the prophecies of Merlin, and later in a _History of the Kings of
Britain_. This book, with its brilliant description of the court of
Arthur, gave the legend a widespread popularity. It was four times
within the same century translated into French verse, the most famous of
these renderings being the version of Wace, called _Le Brut_, which makes
some addition to Geoffrey's original, gathered from Breton sources. In
the same century, too, Chretien de Troyes, the foremost of Arthurian
poets, composed his famous cycle of poems.
Of all these manifold sources Tennyson was confessedly ignorant. Where
the details are not of his own invention, his _Idylls of the King_ rest
entirely upon Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, which Caxton printed in 1485,
supplemented in the case of _Enid and Geraint_, and _The Marriage of
Geraint_ by a translation of the Welsh _Mabinogion_ by Lady Charlotte
Guest.
THE STORY OF THE IDYLLS.--It is well to remember the events that led up
to Arthur's death. Guinevere's guilty love for Lancelot had been
discovered and revealed by Arthur's nephew, the traitor Modred. The
Queen fled the court and sought refuge with the nuns of Almesbury.
Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged
him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with
the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward
to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in
the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told.
Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last
weird battle in the west" is given in _The Passing of Arthur_, and leads
up to the impressive line with which our present poem opens. Towards the
close of that fateful day, there came--
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Broke in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
The King speaks despairingly to Bedivere, who answering, swears to him
undying allegiance, and points to the traitor, Modred, who still stands
unharmed:
Thereupon:--
the King
Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege
Hard on the helm which many a heathen sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.
4. LYONNESSE. The geography of the _Idylls of the King_ is designedly
vague. The region of Lyonnesse was supposed to be adjacent to Cornwall,
and the sea now covers it. The Scilly Islands are held to have been the
western limit of this fabulous country.
6. THE BOLD SIR BEDIVERE. The epithet "bold" is used repeatedly in this
vaguely descriptive fashion with Sir Bedivere's name. Cf. lines 39, 69,
115, 151, 226. The use of "permanent epithets" in narrative poetry has
been consecrated by the example of Homer, who constantly employs such
expressions as "the swift-footed Achilles," "wide-ruling Agamemnon," etc.
Bedivere is described in _The Coming of Arthur_ as follows:--
For bold in heart and act and word was he
Whenever slander breathed against the King.
12. A GREAT WATER. This expression has occasioned much unnecessary
comment on the score of its alleged artificiality. There might be a gain
in definiteness in substituting "lake," or "river," as the case might be,
but there would be a corresponding loss in poetry and in meaning at this
particular place. "Had 'a great lake' been substituted for it, the
phrase would have needed to be translated by the mind into water of a
certain shape and size, before the picture was realized by the
imagination." (Brimley.) It would have, consequently, been more precise,
but "less poetic and pictorial."
If further justification for the expression were needed it might be
stated that "water" stands for lake in certain parts of England, e.g.
"Dewentwater," etc.; and, what is of more importance, that Malory uses
"water" in the same sense: "The king . . . . saw afore him in a great
water a little ship." _Morte d'Arthur_ iv. 6.
21. OF CAMELOT. Arthur's capital, as noted in _The Lady of Shalott_. In
speaking of the allegorical meaning of _The Idylls of the King_, Tennyson
states that "Camelot, for instance, a city of shadowy palaces, is
everywhere symbolical of the gradual growth of human beliefs and
institutions, and of the spiritual development of man." Always bear in
mind that Tennyson has also said: "There is no single fact or incident in
the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot be explained without
any mystery or allegory whatever."
22. I PERISH--MADE. In _The Coming of Arthur_ this thought is amplified:
For first Aurelius lived and fought and died,
And after him King Uther fought and died,
But either failed to make the kingdom one.
And after these King Arthur for a space,
_And thro the puissance of his Table Round
Drew all their petty princedoms under him,
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reigned_.
And in _The Passing of Arthur_ we read:
Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.
23. THO' MERLINE SWARE--AGAIN. Merlin was the great wizard of Arthur's
court. In the allegorical view of the poem he typifies the intellect,
or, in Tennyson's words: "the sceptical understanding."
This prophecy concerning Arthur is again referred to in _The Coming of
Arthur_:
And Merlin in our time
Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn,
Though men may wound him, that he will not die,
But pass and come again.
This belief is common to all the Arthurian sources. Compare, for
example, Wace's _Brut_: "Arthur, if the story lies not, was mortally
wounded in the body: he had himself borne to Avalon to heal his wounds.
There he is still; the Britons await him, as they say and
understand . . . The prophet spoke truth, and one can doubt, and always
will doubt whether he is dead or living." Dr. Sykes writes that, "The
sleep of Arthur associates the British story with the similar stories of
Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Brian in Ireland,
Boabdil el Chico in Spain, etc."
27. EXCALIBUR. Arthur's magical sword. It is described in _The Coming
of Arthur_, ll. 295 f., as:
the sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur rowed across and took it--rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,
Bewildering heart and eye--the blade so bright
That men are blinded by it--on one side,
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
"Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
"Cast me away."
It has been variously held that Excalibur typifies temporal authority, or
spiritual power. The casting away of the sword, therefore, represents
the inevitable change in which human things are involved, and even faith
itself. Compare _Morte d'Arthur_, ll. 240-241.
Magical weapons and enchanted armour are a portion of the equipment of
almost all the great legendary heroes. Their swords and their horses
usually bear distinctive names. Roland's sword was _Durandal_, and
Charlemagne's was _Joyeuse_.
37. FLING HIM. The sword is viewed as possessing life.
THE MIDDLE MERE. Compare a similar classical construction in Oenone, l.
10, topmost Gargarus.
53-55. THE WINTER MOON--HILT. The frosty air made the moonlight more
than usually brilliant.
60. THIS WAY--MIND. An echo of Vergil's line, Aeneid, VIII. 20. _Atque
animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc_. "And he divides his swift
mind now this way, now that."
63. MANY-KNOTTED WATER FLAGS. Dr. Sykes has a careful note on this
expression (_Select Poems of Tennyson_; Gage & Co.). "The epithet
many-knotted is difficult to explain. The possible explanations would
refer the description to (1) the root-stock of the flag, which shows
additional bulbs from year to year; (2) the joints in the flower stalks,
of which some half-dozen may be found on each stalk; (3) the large
seed-pods that terminate in stalks, a very noticeable feature when the
plant is sere; (4) the various bunches or knots of iris in a bed of the
plants, so that the whole phrase suggests a thickly matted bed of flags.
I favour the last interpretation, though Tennyson's fondness of technical
accuracy in his references makes the second more than possible."
70-71. I HEARD--CRAG. It is interesting to read Chapter V., Book XXI. of
Malory in connection with Tennyson's version of the story. He is
throughout true to the spirit of the original. _A propos_ of lines
70-71, we find in Malory: "What saw thou, there?" said the King. "Sir,"
he said, "I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan." Tennyson,
in these two lines, gives us a consummate example of creative imitation.
84. COUNTING THE DEWY PEBBLES. This aptly describes the absorption of
his mind.
85 f. and 56-58 supra. Compare the description of Excalibur, and of
Bedivere's hesitancy, in Malory's book. "So Sir Bedivere departed, and
by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all
of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich
sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.'
And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree."
104. THE LONELY MAIDEN OF THE LAKE. The "Lady of the Lake" was present
at the crowning of Arthur. In the _Coming of Arthur_ she is described as
dwelling--
Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.
Arthur's first meeting with her is described in Malory:-- "So they rode
till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in
the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite,
that held a fair sword in that hand. 'Lo,' said Merlin, 'yonder is that
sword that I spake of.' With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake;
'What damsel is that?' said Arthur. 'That is the Lady of the Lake,' said
Merlin; 'and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place
as any upon earth, and richly beseen.'"
In _Gareth and Lynette_ the Lady of the Lake is mystically figured forth
upon the great gate of Camelot.
105-106. NINE YEARS--HILLS. Hallam, Lord Tennyson, in the Memoir, quotes
Fitzgerald's short account of a row on Lake Windermere with the poet;
"'Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for
a week from dear Spedding's (Mirehouse), at the end of May, 1835; resting
on our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred
quoted from the lines he had lately read us from the MS. of _Morte
d'Arthur_ about the lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur:
"Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps,
Under the hidden bases of the hills.
"--Not bad, that. Fitz, is it?
"This kind of remark he would make when rendering his own or others'
poetry when he came to lines that he particularly admired from no vanity
but from a pure feeling of artistic pleasure." (Vol. I. pp. 152-153).
112. Note the slowness of the movement expressed in the rhythm of this
line, and compare with it line 168. Contrast the swiftness and energy
expressed in ll. 133-136.
121. AUTHORITY--KING. This line has been described as Shakespearian.
Its strength is derived from the force of the metaphorical
personification. The boldness of the poetical construction is carried
into the metaphor in the next line.
129. FOR A MAN. Because a man.
132. AND SLAY THEE WITH MY HANDS. Compare Malory: "And but if thou do
now as I bid thee, if ever I may see thee, I shall slay thee with mine
own hands, for thou wouldest for my rich sword see me dead." In Rowe and
Webb's edition it is suggested that 'with my hands' is added for one of
two reasons,--either "because he had now no sword; or more probably,
these words are introduced in imitation of Homer's habit of mentioning
specific details: cf. 'he went taking long steps with his feet.'" This
explanation is ingenious, but unnecessary in view of the quotation from
Malory. The note proceeds: "Notice the touch of human personality in the
king's sharp anger; otherwise Arthur is generally represented by Tennyson
as a rather colourless being, and as almost 'too good for human nature's
daily food.'"
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