The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 54

To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark, And either twilight and the day between; For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe." [4]

Or this or something like to this he spoke.

Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull, "I take it, G.o.d made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world, A pretty face is well, and this is well, To have a dame indoors, that trims us up, And keeps us tight; but these unreal ways Seem but the theme of writers, and indeed Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff.

I say, G.o.d made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world."

"Parson," said I, "you pitch the pipe too low: But I have sudden touches, and can run My faith beyond my practice into his: Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill, I do not hear the bells upon my cap, I scarce hear [5] other music: yet say on.

What should one give to light on such a dream?"

I ask'd him half-sardonically.

"Give? Give all thou art," he answer'd, and a light Of laughter dimpled in his swarthy cheek; "I would have hid her needle in my heart, To save her little finger from a scratch No deeper than the skin: my ears could hear Her lightest breaths: her least remark was worth The experience of the wise. I went and came; Her voice fled always thro' the summer land; I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy days!

The flower of each, those moments when we met, The crown of all, we met to part no more."

Were not his words delicious, I a beast To take them as I did? but something jarr'd; Whether he spoke too largely; that there seem'd A touch of something false, some self-conceit, Or over-smoothness: howsoe'er it was, He scarcely hit my humour, and I said:--

"Friend Edwin, do not think yourself alone Of all men happy. Shall not Love to me, As in the Latin song I learnt at school, Sneeze out a full G.o.d-bless-you right and left? [6]

But you can talk: yours is a kindly vein: I have I think--Heaven knows--as much within; Have or should have, but for a thought or two, That like a purple beech [7] among the greens Looks out of place: 'tis from no want in her: It is my shyness, or my self-distrust, Or something of a wayward modern mind Dissecting pa.s.sion. Time will set me right."

So spoke I knowing not the things that were.

Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull: "G.o.d made the woman for the use of man, And for the good and increase of the world".

And I and Edwin laugh'd; and now we paused About the windings of the marge to hear The soft wind blowing over meadowy holms And alders, garden-isles [8]; and now we left The clerk behind us, I and he, and ran By ripply shallows of the lisping lake, Delighted with the freshness and the sound.

But, when the bracken rusted on their crags, My suit had wither'd, nipt to death by him That was a G.o.d, and is a lawyer's clerk, The rentroll Cupid of our rainy isles. [9]

'Tis true, we met; one hour I had, no more: She sent a note, the seal an _Elle vous suit_, [10]

The close "Your Letty, only yours"; and this Thrice underscored. The friendly mist of morn Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran My craft aground, and heard with beating heart The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving keel; And out I stept, and up I crept: she moved, Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers: [11]

Then low and sweet I whistled thrice; and she, She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore faith, I breathed In some new planet: a silent cousin stole Upon us and departed: "Leave," she cried, "O leave me!" "Never, dearest, never: here I brave the worst:" and while we stood like fools Embracing, all at once a score of pugs And poodles yell'd within, and out they came Trustees and Aunts and Uncles. "What, with him!

"Go" (shrill'd the cottonspinning chorus) "him!"

I choked. Again they shriek'd the burthen "Him!"

Again with hands of wild rejection "Go!-- Girl, get you in!" She went--and in one month [12]

They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, To lands in Kent and messuages in York, And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile And educated whisker. But for me, They set an ancient creditor to work: It seems I broke a close with force and arms: There came a mystic token from the king To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy!

I read, and fled by night, and flying turn'd: Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below: I turn'd once more, close-b.u.t.ton'd to the storm; So left the place, [13] left Edwin, nor have seen Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to hear.

Nor cared to hear? perhaps; yet long ago I have pardon'd little Letty; not indeed, It may be, for her own dear sake but this, She seems a part of those fresh days to me; For in the dust and drouth of London life She moves among my visions of the lake, While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then While the gold-lily blows, and overhead The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag.

[Footnote 1: Agaric (some varieties are deadly) is properly the fungus on the larch; it then came to mean fungus generally. Minshew calls it "a white soft mushroom". See Halliwell, 'Dict. of Archaic and Provincial Words, sub vocent'.]

[Footnote 2: The Latin factus 'ad unguem'. For Crichton, a half-mythical figure, see Tytler's 'Life' of him.]

[Footnote 3: 1851. Of different ages, like twin-sisters throve.]

[Footnote 4: 1853. To breathe, to wake.]

[Footnote 5: 1872. Have.]

[Footnote 6: The reference is to the 'Acme' and 'Septimius' of Catullus, xliv.--

Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram, ut ante, Dextram sternuit approbationem.]

[Footnote 7: 1851. That like a copper beech.]

[Footnote 8: 1851.

garden-isles; and now we ran By ripply shallows.]

[Footnote 9: 1851. The rainy isles.]

[Footnote 10: Cf. Byron, 'Don Juan', i., xcvii.:--

The seal a sunflower--'elle vous suit partout'.]

[Footnote 11: 'Cf'. Milton, 'Par. Lost', iv., 268-9:--

Not that fair field Of Enna where Proserpine gathering flowers ...

Was gather'd.]

[Footnote 12: 1851.

"Go Sir!" Again they shrieked the burthen "Him!"

Again with hands of wild rejection "Go!

Girl, get you in" to her--and in one month, etc.]

[Footnote 13: 1851.

I read and wish'd to crush the race of man, And fled by night; turn'd once upon the hills; Her taper glimmer'd in the lake; and then I left the place, etc.]

ST. SIMEON STYLITES

First published in 1842, reprinted in all the subsequent editions of the poems but with no alterations in the text, except that in eighth line from the end "my" was subst.i.tuted for "mine" in 1846. Tennyson informed a friend that it was not from the 'Acta Sanctorum', but from Hone's 'Every-Day Book', vol. i., pp. 35-36, that he got the material for this poem, and a comparison with the narrative in Hone and the poem seems to show that this was the case.

It is not easy to identify the St. Simeon Stylites of Hone's narrative and Tennyson's poem, whether he is to be identified with St. Simeon the Elder, of whom there are three memoirs given in the 'Acta Sanctorum', tom. i., 5th January, 261-286, or with St. Simeon Stylites, Junior, of whom there is an elaborate biography in Greek by Nicephorus printed with a Latin translation and notes in the 'Acta Sanctorum', tom. v., 24th May, 298-401. It seems clear that whoever compiled the account popularised by Hone had read both and amalgamated them. The main lines in the story of both saints are exactly the same. Both stood on columns, both tortured themselves in the same ways, both wrought miracles, and both died at their posts of penance. St. Simeon the Elder was born at Sisan in Syria about A.D. 390, and was buried at Antioch in A.D. 459 or 460. The Simeon the Younger was born at Antioch A. D. 521 and died in A.D. 592. His life, which is of singular interest, is much more elaborately related.

This poem is not simply a dramatic study. It bears very directly on Tennyson's philosophy of life. In these early poems he has given us four studies in the morbid anatomy of character: 'The Palace of Art', which ill.u.s.trates the abuse of aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment of self; 'The Vision of Sin', which ill.u.s.trates the effects of similar indulgence in the grosser pleasures of the senses; 'The Two Voices', which ill.u.s.trates the mischief of despondent self-absorption, while the present poem ill.u.s.trates the equally pernicious indulgence in an opposite extreme, asceticism affected for the mere gratification of personal vanity.

Altho' I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamour, morn and sob, Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer, Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty G.o.d, This not be all in vain that thrice ten years, Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold, In coughs, aches, st.i.tches, ulcerous throes and cramps, A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud, Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow; And I had hoped that ere this period closed Thou wouldst have caught me up into Thy rest, Denying not these weather-beaten limbs The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe, Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.

Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear, Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd My spirit flat before thee. O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first, For I was strong and hale of body then; And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt away, Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard Was tagg'd with icy fringes in the moon, I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with sound Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.

Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh; I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am, So that I scarce can hear the people hum About the column's base, and almost blind, And scarce can recognise the fields I know; And both my thighs are rotted with the dew; Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry, While my stiff spine can hold my weary head, Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone, Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul, Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?

Show me the man hath suffered more than I.

For did not all thy martyrs die one death?