The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 62

Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.

For the pedigree and history of this see the present editor's 'Ill.u.s.trations of Tennyson', p. 63.]

[Footnote 8: The epithet "dreary" shows that Tennyson preferred realistic picturesqueness to dramatic propriety.]

[Footnote 9: See the introductory note to 'The Golden Year'.]

[Footnote 10: See the introductory note to 'The Golden Year'.]

[Footnote 11: Tennyson said that this simile was suggested by a pa.s.sage 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."]

[Footnote 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, e molto Piu che virili, in chi dell' uomo al tutto Da natura e minor. Che se piu molli E piu tenui le membra, essa la mente Men capace e men forte anco riceve.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 15: 'Cf'. Shakespeare, "foreheads villainously low".]

[Footnote 16: 1842. Peoples spin.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 18: 1842. The world.]

[Footnote 19: Cathay, the old name for China.]

[Footnote 20: 'Cf'. Ta.s.so, '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.)]

G.o.dIVA

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 Warwicks.h.i.+re in that year. The G.o.diva 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 G.o.diva 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 G.o.diva (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 G.o.diva'). With Tennyson's should be compared Moultrie's beautiful poem on the same subject, and Landor's Imaginary Conversation between Leofric and G.o.diva.

[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, G.o.diva, 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 pa.s.sions of her mind, As winds from all the compa.s.s s.h.i.+ft 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 pa.s.sing; 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 chast.i.ty: 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 c.h.i.n.ks 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 chast.i.ty: 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 n.o.ble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused; And she, that knew not, pa.s.s'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.

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

[Footnote 2: St. Michael's, Trinity, and St. John.]

[Footnote 3: 1844. Archway.]

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

[Footnote 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 t.i.tle 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. x.x.xviii.-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".