!

1198 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

100

You want a great song for your Italy free,Let none look at me!

1861 1862

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON1809-1892

W}1ether or not Alfred Tennyson was the greatest of the Victorian' poets, as affirmedby many critics today, there is no doubt that in his own lifetime he was the mostpopular of poets. On the bookshelves of almost every family of readers in Englandand the United States, from 1850 onward, were the works of a man who had incon-testably gained the title that Walt Whitman longed for: ''The Poet of the People"(Whitman, in fact, called Tennyson, colorfully, '.'the Boss"). Popularity inevitably pro-vided provocation for a reaction in the decades following his death. In the course ofrepudiating their Victorian predecessors, the Edwardtans and. Georgians establishedthe fashion of making fun of Tennyson's great achievements. Samuel Butler (1835-1902), who anticipated early twentieth-century tast~s, has a characteristic entry inhis Notebooks: "Talking it over, we agreed that Blake was no good because he learntItalian at sixty in order to study Dante, and we knew Dante was no good because hewas so fond of Virgil, and Virgil was no good because Tennyson ran him, and as forTennyson-well, Tennyson goes without saying," In the second half of the- twentiethcentury, Butler's flippant dismissal of Tennyson expresses an attitude that is no longerfashionable. The delights to be found in this superb "lord oflanguage"-asTennysonhimself addresses his favorite predecessor, Virgil-have been rediscovered, and Ten-nyson's stature as one of the major poets of any age has been reestablished.Like his poetry, Tennyson's life and character have been reassessed in the twentieth

century. To many of his contemporaries he seemed a remote wizard, secure in hislaureate's robes, a man whose life had been sheltered, marred only by the loss of hisbest friend in youth. During much of his career Tennyson may have been isolated,but his was not a sheltered life in the real sense of the word. Although he grew up ina parsonage, it was not the kind of parsonage one encounters in the novels of JaneAusten. It was a household dominated by frictions and loyalties and broodings overancestral inheritances, in which the children shewed marked strains of instability andeccentricity. 'Alfred was the fourth son in a family of twelve children. One of his brothers had

to be confined to an' insane asylum for life; another was long addicted to opium;another had violent quarrels with his father, the Reverend Dr. George Tennyson. Thisfather, a man of considerable learning, had himself been born the eldest son of awealthy landowner and had, therefore, expected to be heir to his family's estates.Instead he was disinherited in favor 'Ofhis younger brother and had to make his ownlivelihood by joining the clergy, a profession that he disliked. After George Tennysonhad settled in a small rectory in Somersby, his brooding sense of dissatisfaction ledto increasingly violent bouts of drunkenness, despite which he was able to serve astutor for his sons in classical and modern languages to prepare them for entering theuniversity.Before leaving this strange household for Cambridge, Alfred had already demon-

-strated a flair for writing verse-precocious exercises in the manner of Milton orByron or the Elizabethan dramatists. He had .even published a volume in 1827, in

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON / 1199

(!olla,beration with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers. This feat drew him to'the attention of a greup of gifted undergraduates at Cambridge, "the Apostles," whoeQcol!rage_d him to devote his life to poetry. Up until that time, the young man hadknown scarcely anyone outside the circle of his own family, Despite his massive frameapd;powerfu1 physique, he was painfully shy; and the friendships he found at Cam-bridge;.as_ welI as the intellectual and political discussions in which he participatedser:ved to give him confidence and to widen his horizons as a poet. The most importantof these ,friendships was with Arthur Hallam, a leader 'Of the Apostles, who later'bec~ejengaged to Tennyson's sister. Hallam's sudden death, in 1833', seemed anQveiWbelming calamity to his friend. Not only the long elegy In Memoriam but manyof Tennyson's other poems are tributes to this early friendship.Alfred's career at Cambridge was interrupted and finally broken off in 1831 by

family dissensions and financial need, and he returried home to study and practiceehe craft of poetry, His early volumes (1830 and 1832) were attacked as "obscure" or':affected" by some of the reviewers. Tennyson suffered acutely under hostile criti-cism, but he also profited from it. His volume 0~8'42 demonstrated a remarkableaav:.an~~,~n taste a~~ tec~nical exceIle~ce, and ilr ~e at last attained fame andfull critical recogmnon WIth InMemonam. In the 'same-year, he became poet laureatein succession to Wordsworth. The struggle during the previous twenty years had beenmade especially painful by the long postponement of his marriage to Emily Sellwood,whoml he had loved since 1836 but could not marry, because of poverty, until 1850.His life thereafter was a comfortable one. He was as popular as Byron had been.

The earnings from his poetry (sometimes exceeding £10,OOO,a year) enabled him to.purchase a house in the country and to enjoy the kind' of 'seclusion he liked. Hisnotoriety was enhanced" like that of Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman, by his colorfulappearance. Huge and shaggy, in cloak and broad-brimmed hat, gruff in manner asa-fanner, he impressed everyone as what is called a "character." The pioneering pho-aographer Julia Cameron, who took magnificent portraits of him, called him "the mostbeautiful old man on earth." Like Dylan Thomas inthe twentieth- century, he had abooming voice that electrified listeners when he' read his' poetry, "mouthing out hishollow.o's and a's; / Deep-chested music." Moreover, for many Victorian readers, he-seemed not only a .great poetical phrase maker and a striking individual but also a.wi~e man whose occasional pronouncements' en politics or world affairs represented,thel national voice itself. In 1884 he accepted-a peerage. In 1892 he died and wasburied in Westminster Abbey.HI It is often said that success was bad fer Tennyson and that after InMemoriam hispoetic power seriously declined. That in his last forty-two years certain of his man-nerisms became accentuated is true. One of the difficulties of his dignified blankIverse was, as he said himself, that it is hard to describe commonplace objects and "atthe same time to retain poetical elevation." This difficulty is evident, for example, in-Enoch Arden (1864), a long blank verse narrative of everyday life in a fishing village,.in which a basketful of fish is ornately described as "Enoch's ocean spoil / In ocean-smelling osier." In others of his later poems, those dealing with national affairs, thereis also ali increased shrillness of tone-a mannerism'accentuated'byTennyson's real-izing that like Dickens he had a vast public behind him to back up his pronounce-ments.It is foolish, however, to try to shelve all of Tennyson's later productions. In, 1855

he published his experimental monologue Maud, perhaps his finest long poem, inwlWe dis.Plays the bitterness and despair its alienated hero feels toward society.In~~ he published four books of his Idylls of the, King, a large-scale epic thatoccupied most of his energies in the second half of his career. The Idylls uses thebody of Arthurian legend to construct a vision of the rise and fall of civilization; Inthis civilization, women at once inspire men's highest efforts and sow the seeds oftheir destruction. The Idylls provides Tennyson's most extensive social vision, onewh?se concern with medieval ideals of social community, heroism, and courtly love

Ij

!

1198 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

100

You want a great song for your Italy free,Let none look at me!

1861 1862

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON1809-1892

W}1ether or not Alfred Tennyson was the greatest of the Victorian' poets, as affirmedby many critics today, there is no doubt that in his own lifetime he was the mostpopular of poets. On the bookshelves of almost every family of readers in Englandand the United States, from 1850 onward, were the works of a man who had incon-testably gained the title that Walt Whitman longed for: ''The Poet of the People"(Whitman, in fact, called Tennyson, colorfully, '.'the Boss"). Popularity inevitably pro-vided provocation for a reaction in the decades following his death. In the course ofrepudiating their Victorian predecessors, the Edwardtans and. Georgians establishedthe fashion of making fun of Tennyson's great achievements. Samuel Butler (1835-1902), who anticipated early twentieth-century tast~s, has a characteristic entry inhis Notebooks: "Talking it over, we agreed that Blake was no good because he learntItalian at sixty in order to study Dante, and we knew Dante was no good because hewas so fond of Virgil, and Virgil was no good because Tennyson ran him, and as forTennyson-well, Tennyson goes without saying," In the second half of the- twentiethcentury, Butler's flippant dismissal of Tennyson expresses an attitude that is no longerfashionable. The delights to be found in this superb "lord oflanguage"-asTennysonhimself addresses his favorite predecessor, Virgil-have been rediscovered, and Ten-nyson's stature as one of the major poets of any age has been reestablished.Like his poetry, Tennyson's life and character have been reassessed in the twentieth

century. To many of his contemporaries he seemed a remote wizard, secure in hislaureate's robes, a man whose life had been sheltered, marred only by the loss of hisbest friend in youth. During much of his career Tennyson may have been isolated,but his was not a sheltered life in the real sense of the word. Although he grew up ina parsonage, it was not the kind of parsonage one encounters in the novels of JaneAusten. It was a household dominated by frictions and loyalties and broodings overancestral inheritances, in which the children shewed marked strains of instability andeccentricity. 'Alfred was the fourth son in a family of twelve children. One of his brothers had

to be confined to an' insane asylum for life; another was long addicted to opium;another had violent quarrels with his father, the Reverend Dr. George Tennyson. Thisfather, a man of considerable learning, had himself been born the eldest son of awealthy landowner and had, therefore, expected to be heir to his family's estates.Instead he was disinherited in favor 'Ofhis younger brother and had to make his ownlivelihood by joining the clergy, a profession that he disliked. After George Tennysonhad settled in a small rectory in Somersby, his brooding sense of dissatisfaction ledto increasingly violent bouts of drunkenness, despite which he was able to serve astutor for his sons in classical and modern languages to prepare them for entering theuniversity.Before leaving this strange household for Cambridge, Alfred had already demon-

-strated a flair for writing verse-precocious exercises in the manner of Milton orByron or the Elizabethan dramatists. He had .even published a volume in 1827, in

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON / 1199

(!olla,beration with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers. This feat drew him to'the attention of a greup of gifted undergraduates at Cambridge, "the Apostles," whoeQcol!rage_d him to devote his life to poetry. Up until that time, the young man hadknown scarcely anyone outside the circle of his own family, Despite his massive frameapd;powerfu1 physique, he was painfully shy; and the friendships he found at Cam-bridge;.as_ welI as the intellectual and political discussions in which he participatedser:ved to give him confidence and to widen his horizons as a poet. The most importantof these ,friendships was with Arthur Hallam, a leader 'Of the Apostles, who later'bec~ejengaged to Tennyson's sister. Hallam's sudden death, in 1833', seemed anQveiWbelming calamity to his friend. Not only the long elegy In Memoriam but manyof Tennyson's other poems are tributes to this early friendship.Alfred's career at Cambridge was interrupted and finally broken off in 1831 by

family dissensions and financial need, and he returried home to study and practiceehe craft of poetry, His early volumes (1830 and 1832) were attacked as "obscure" or':affected" by some of the reviewers. Tennyson suffered acutely under hostile criti-cism, but he also profited from it. His volume 0~8'42 demonstrated a remarkableaav:.an~~,~n taste a~~ tec~nical exceIle~ce, and ilr ~e at last attained fame andfull critical recogmnon WIth InMemonam. In the 'same-year, he became poet laureatein succession to Wordsworth. The struggle during the previous twenty years had beenmade especially painful by the long postponement of his marriage to Emily Sellwood,whoml he had loved since 1836 but could not marry, because of poverty, until 1850.His life thereafter was a comfortable one. He was as popular as Byron had been.

The earnings from his poetry (sometimes exceeding £10,OOO,a year) enabled him to.purchase a house in the country and to enjoy the kind' of 'seclusion he liked. Hisnotoriety was enhanced" like that of Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman, by his colorfulappearance. Huge and shaggy, in cloak and broad-brimmed hat, gruff in manner asa-fanner, he impressed everyone as what is called a "character." The pioneering pho-aographer Julia Cameron, who took magnificent portraits of him, called him "the mostbeautiful old man on earth." Like Dylan Thomas inthe twentieth- century, he had abooming voice that electrified listeners when he' read his' poetry, "mouthing out hishollow.o's and a's; / Deep-chested music." Moreover, for many Victorian readers, he-seemed not only a .great poetical phrase maker and a striking individual but also a.wi~e man whose occasional pronouncements' en politics or world affairs represented,thel national voice itself. In 1884 he accepted-a peerage. In 1892 he died and wasburied in Westminster Abbey.HI It is often said that success was bad fer Tennyson and that after InMemoriam hispoetic power seriously declined. That in his last forty-two years certain of his man-nerisms became accentuated is true. One of the difficulties of his dignified blankIverse was, as he said himself, that it is hard to describe commonplace objects and "atthe same time to retain poetical elevation." This difficulty is evident, for example, in-Enoch Arden (1864), a long blank verse narrative of everyday life in a fishing village,.in which a basketful of fish is ornately described as "Enoch's ocean spoil / In ocean-smelling osier." In others of his later poems, those dealing with national affairs, thereis also ali increased shrillness of tone-a mannerism'accentuated'byTennyson's real-izing that like Dickens he had a vast public behind him to back up his pronounce-ments.It is foolish, however, to try to shelve all of Tennyson's later productions. In, 1855

he published his experimental monologue Maud, perhaps his finest long poem, inwlWe dis.Plays the bitterness and despair its alienated hero feels toward society.In~~ he published four books of his Idylls of the, King, a large-scale epic thatoccupied most of his energies in the second half of his career. The Idylls uses thebody of Arthurian legend to construct a vision of the rise and fall of civilization; Inthis civilization, women at once inspire men's highest efforts and sow the seeds oftheir destruction. The Idylls provides Tennyson's most extensive social vision, onewh?se concern with medieval ideals of social community, heroism, and courtly love

Ij

!1200 I ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

and whose despairing sense of the cycles of historical change typifies much socialthought of the age.W. H. Auden stated that Tennyson had "the finest ear, perhaps, of any English

"poet." The interesting point is that Tennyson did not "have" such an ear: he developedit. Studies of the original versions of his poems in the 1830 and 1832 volumes dem-onstrate how hard he worked at his craftsmanship. Like Chaucer or Keats or Pope,Tennyson studied his predecessors assiduously to perfect his technique. Anyonewanting to learn the traditional craft of English verse can study with profit the variousstages of revision that such poems as The Lotos-Eaters were subjected to by this'painstaking and artful poet, Some lines of 1988 by the American poet Karl Shapiroeffectively characterize Tennyson's accomplishments in these areas:

Long-lived, the very image of English Poet,Whose songs still break out tears in the generations,Whose poetry forpractitioners still astounds,Who crafted his life and letters like a watch.

Tennyson's early poetry shows other skills as wen. One of these was a capacity forlinking scenery to states of mind. As early as 1835, j. S. Mill identified the specialkind of scene painting to be found in early poems such as Mariana: "not the powerof producing that rather vapid species of composition usually termed descriptivepoetry. , . but the power of creating scenery, in keeping with some state of humanfeeling so fitted to it as to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the stateof feeling itself, with a force not to be surpassed by anything but reality."

Sestate of feeling to which Tennyson was most intensely drawn was a melancholynon, often portrayed through the consciousness of an abandoned woman, as inana. Tennyson's absorption with such emotions in his early poetry evoked con-

siderable criticism, His friend R. C. Trench warned him, "Tennyson, we cannot livein Art," and Mill urged him to "cultivate, and with no half devotion, philosophy aswell as poetry." Advice of this kind Tennyson was already predisposed to heed, Thedeath of Hallam, the religious uncertainties that he had himself experienced, togetherwith his. own extensive study of writings by geologists, astronomers, and biologists,led him to confront many of the religious issues that bewildered his and later gen-erations. The result was In Memoriam_(850), a long elegy written over a period ofseventeen years, embodying the poet's reflections on our relation to God and tonature,Was Tennyson intellectually equipped to deal with the great questions raised in In

Memoriam?, The answer may depend on a reader's religious and philosophical pre-suppositions. Some, such as T, H. Huxley, considered Tennyson an intellectual giant,a thinker who had mastered the scientific thought of his century and fully confrontedthe issues it raised. Others dismissed Tennyson, in this phase, as a lightweight. Audenwent so far as to call him the "stupidest" of English poets. He went on to say, "Therewas little about melancholia that he didn't know; there was little else that he did."Perhaps T. S. Eliot's evaluation of In Memoriam is the more accurate: the poem, hewrote, is remarkable not "because of the quality of its faith but because of the quality. of its doubt," Tennyson's mind was slow, ponderous, brooding; for the compositionof In Memoriam such qualities of mind were assets, not liabilities. In these terms wecan understand when Tennyson's poetry really fails to measure up: it is when hewrites of events of the moment over which his thoughts and feelings have had notime to brood. Several of his poems are what he himself called "newspaper verse."They are letters to the editor, in effect, with the ephemeral heat and simplicity weexpect of such productions. The Charge of the Light Brigade, inspired. by a report inthe Times of a cavalry charge at Balaclava during the Crimean War, is one of the bestof his productions in this category.Tennyson's poems of contemporary events were inevitably popular in his own day.

So too were those poems in which, as in Locksley Hall, he dipped into the future,

j·HE KRAKEN / 1201

The technological changes wrought by Victorian inventors and engineers fascinatedhim. Sometimes they gave him an assurance of human progress as swaggeringly exul-tant as that of Macaulay, At other times the horrors of industrialism's by-products inthe slums, the persistence of barbarity and bloodshed, the greed of the newly rich,destroyed his hopes that humanity was evolving upward. Such a late poem as TheDawn embodies an attitude that he found in Virgil: "Thou majestic in thy sadness atthe doubtful doom of human kind,"

For despite Tenn~as.cination with te~~olo~!.sJ~.Lg_ex~JQP!ll..!:!l.E~t.~e~~.s<:~_~~!2:_!ially a ~~.2.L~h~counmide, a_man who~~_Who~e~ein~_~~~~:?~di!~~~ed. by therecurring r~thrp_t£f rural rather than urban iife,tre haat1ie country dweller's aware-

-;essortraditionai r~aiia~senseof1he)jasflTis~approprfa"te that most of his bestpoems are about the past, no~out ~~ p~esS!).Lor fu.~!L~ Eve~ISCh1Ta~?O~Tennyson salC1:nar'Tne wora~ awID'....b.~4.,,~l~~,,_~_~"t~ng.~~h~,~~~f_~E.~~was haun,ted b¥-What.~h.e_calkd..'"~th.e~p.assion..o£..tb~p.fl_$t." TFi~..~P~st~erG..~m$..".h!t_gr.~[!!theme, whe~.her it be his own past~as in Inthe Vallry ofc,au,teret;),_his country's past(as in Th.!!J#.yII.S·9f.t-~e··K1iig}.:ijj'~~p,k.~J:..of_hu_~n~.~5!,.!.~"~past of the ~orlg_.itself:---

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.o earth, what changes hast thou seen!There where the long street roars hath been

The stillness of the central sea,

Tennyson is the first major writer to express this awareness of the vast extent ofgeological time that has haunted human consciotisness since Victorian scientistsexposed the history of the earth's crust. In his more usual vein, however, it is therecorded past of humankind that inspires him, the classical past in particular. Clas-sical themes, as Douglas Bush -has noted, "generally banished from his mind whatwas timid, parochial, sentimental .. , and evoked his special gifts and most authenticemotions, his rich and wistful sense of the past, his love of nature, and his power ofstyle."

One returns, finally, to the question of language. At the time of his death, a criticcomplained that Tennyson was merely "a discoverer of words rather than of ideas."The same complaint has been made by Bernard Shaw and others-not about Ten-nyson but about Shakespeare.

The Krakenl

Below the thunders of the upper deep,Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,His ancient, dreamless, unlnvaded sleepThe Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights fleeAbout his shadowy sides; above him swellHuge sponges of millennial growth and height;And far away into the sickly light,From many a wondrous grot and secret cellUnnumbered and enormous polypi"Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green,There hath he lain for ages, and will lieBattening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,Until the latter fire' shall heat the deep;

I, A mythical sea beast of gigantic size.2, Fire that would finally consume the world (Revelation 16,8-9),

octopuses10

!

1200 I ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

and whose despairing sense of the cycles of historical change typifies much socialthought of the age.W. H. Auden stated that Tennyson had "the finest ear, perhaps, of any English

"poet." The interesting point is that Tennyson did not "have" such an ear: he developedit. Studies of the original versions of his poems in the 1830 and 1832 volumes dem-onstrate how hard he worked at his craftsmanship. Like Chaucer or Keats or Pope,Tennyson studied his predecessors assiduously to perfect his technique. Anyonewanting to learn the traditional craft of English verse can study with profit the variousstages of revision that such poems as The Lotos-Eaters were subjected to by this'painstaking and artful poet, Some lines of 1988 by the American poet Karl Shapiroeffectively characterize Tennyson's accomplishments in these areas:

Long-lived, the very image of English Poet,Whose songs still break out tears in the generations,Whose poetry forpractitioners still astounds,Who crafted his life and letters like a watch.

Tennyson's early poetry shows other skills as wen. One of these was a capacity forlinking scenery to states of mind. As early as 1835, j. S. Mill identified the specialkind of scene painting to be found in early poems such as Mariana: "not the powerof producing that rather vapid species of composition usually termed descriptivepoetry. , . but the power of creating scenery, in keeping with some state of humanfeeling so fitted to it as to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the stateof feeling itself, with a force not to be surpassed by anything but reality."

Sestate of feeling to which Tennyson was most intensely drawn was a melancholynon, often portrayed through the consciousness of an abandoned woman, as inana. Tennyson's absorption with such emotions in his early poetry evoked con-

siderable criticism, His friend R. C. Trench warned him, "Tennyson, we cannot livein Art," and Mill urged him to "cultivate, and with no half devotion, philosophy aswell as poetry." Advice of this kind Tennyson was already predisposed to heed, Thedeath of Hallam, the religious uncertainties that he had himself experienced, togetherwith his. own extensive study of writings by geologists, astronomers, and biologists,led him to confront many of the religious issues that bewildered his and later gen-erations. The result was In Memoriam_(850), a long elegy written over a period ofseventeen years, embodying the poet's reflections on our relation to God and tonature,Was Tennyson intellectually equipped to deal with the great questions raised in In

Memoriam?, The answer may depend on a reader's religious and philosophical pre-suppositions. Some, such as T, H. Huxley, considered Tennyson an intellectual giant,a thinker who had mastered the scientific thought of his century and fully confrontedthe issues it raised. Others dismissed Tennyson, in this phase, as a lightweight. Audenwent so far as to call him the "stupidest" of English poets. He went on to say, "Therewas little about melancholia that he didn't know; there was little else that he did."Perhaps T. S. Eliot's evaluation of In Memoriam is the more accurate: the poem, hewrote, is remarkable not "because of the quality of its faith but because of the quality. of its doubt," Tennyson's mind was slow, ponderous, brooding; for the compositionof In Memoriam such qualities of mind were assets, not liabilities. In these terms wecan understand when Tennyson's poetry really fails to measure up: it is when hewrites of events of the moment over which his thoughts and feelings have had notime to brood. Several of his poems are what he himself called "newspaper verse."They are letters to the editor, in effect, with the ephemeral heat and simplicity weexpect of such productions. The Charge of the Light Brigade, inspired. by a report inthe Times of a cavalry charge at Balaclava during the Crimean War, is one of the bestof his productions in this category.Tennyson's poems of contemporary events were inevitably popular in his own day.

So too were those poems in which, as in Locksley Hall, he dipped into the future,

j·HE KRAKEN / 1201

The technological changes wrought by Victorian inventors and engineers fascinatedhim. Sometimes they gave him an assurance of human progress as swaggeringly exul-tant as that of Macaulay, At other times the horrors of industrialism's by-products inthe slums, the persistence of barbarity and bloodshed, the greed of the newly rich,destroyed his hopes that humanity was evolving upward. Such a late poem as TheDawn embodies an attitude that he found in Virgil: "Thou majestic in thy sadness atthe doubtful doom of human kind,"

For despite Tenn~as.cination with te~~olo~!.sJ~.Lg_ex~JQP!ll..!:!l.E~t.~e~~.s<:~_~~!2:_!ially a ~~.2.L~h~counmide, a_man who~~_Who~e~ein~_~~~~:?~di!~~~ed. by therecurring r~thrp_t£f rural rather than urban iife,tre haat1ie country dweller's aware-

-;essortraditionai r~aiia~senseof1he)jasflTis~approprfa"te that most of his bestpoems are about the past, no~out ~~ p~esS!).Lor fu.~!L~ Eve~ISCh1Ta~?O~Tennyson salC1:nar'Tne wora~ awID'....b.~4.,,~l~~,,_~_~"t~ng.~~h~,~~~f_~E.~~was haun,ted b¥-What.~h.e_calkd..'"~th.e~p.assion..o£..tb~p.fl_$t." TFi~..~P~st~erG..~m$..".h!t_gr.~[!!theme, whe~.her it be his own past~as in Inthe Vallry ofc,au,teret;),_his country's past(as in Th.!!J#.yII.S·9f.t-~e··K1iig}.:ijj'~~p,k.~J:..of_hu_~n~.~5!,.!.~"~past of the ~orlg_.itself:---

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.o earth, what changes hast thou seen!There where the long street roars hath been

The stillness of the central sea,

Tennyson is the first major writer to express this awareness of the vast extent ofgeological time that has haunted human consciotisness since Victorian scientistsexposed the history of the earth's crust. In his more usual vein, however, it is therecorded past of humankind that inspires him, the classical past in particular. Clas-sical themes, as Douglas Bush -has noted, "generally banished from his mind whatwas timid, parochial, sentimental .. , and evoked his special gifts and most authenticemotions, his rich and wistful sense of the past, his love of nature, and his power ofstyle."

One returns, finally, to the question of language. At the time of his death, a criticcomplained that Tennyson was merely "a discoverer of words rather than of ideas."The same complaint has been made by Bernard Shaw and others-not about Ten-nyson but about Shakespeare.

The Krakenl

Below the thunders of the upper deep,Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,His ancient, dreamless, unlnvaded sleepThe Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights fleeAbout his shadowy sides; above him swellHuge sponges of millennial growth and height;And far away into the sickly light,From many a wondrous grot and secret cellUnnumbered and enormous polypi"Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green,There hath he lain for ages, and will lieBattening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,Until the latter fire' shall heat the deep;

I, A mythical sea beast of gigantic size.2, Fire that would finally consume the world (Revelation 16,8-9),

octopuses10

!

ULYSSES I 1213

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shoreThan labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;0, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

LIt .0\- leA<>\. 11~~r5 1832 1842\> 0-- W"1lt> of; ()'i(r' ,vtw.th

Ulysses'

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Matched with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequallaws2 unto a savage race, .-That hoard, and sleep, and feed," and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times 1 have enjoyedGreatly, have suffered greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

iO Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades'Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name; .For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known-cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,

15 Myself not least, but honored of them all-And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,I am a part of all that I have met; .Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

20 Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fadesForever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to -make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"As though to breathe were life! Life piled .on life

25 Were all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor somllhr~~ suns to store and hoard myself,

30 _&4.-tlg~_graY spirit yearning in (le-sire--~··--·"··-

1. Accordteg to Dante, after the fall of Troy, Ulys-ses never returned to his island home of Ithaca.lps!ead he persuaded some of his followers to seeknew experiences by a voyage of exploration west-ward out beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. In hisinspiring speech to his aging crew he said: "Con-sider your origin: you were not made to live asbrutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge"(Inferno 26), Tennyson modified Dante's versionby combining it with Homer's account (Odyssey19-24), Thus Tennyson has Ulysses make hisspeech in Ithaca some time after his return hometctlus reunion with his wife, Penelope, and his son,Telemachus, and, presumably, his resumption ofadministrative responsibilities involved in govern-ing his kingdom.

Tennyson himself stated that this poem• expressed his own "need of going forward and brav-ing the struggle of life" after the death of Hallam.2. Measure out rewards and punishments.3. Cf Hamlet 4,4.33-35: "What is a man, / lfhischief good. / Be but to sleep and feed? a beast,no more"4. A group of stars whose rising was assumed tobe followed by rain. "Scudding drifts": drivingshowers of spray and rain.5. cr. Ulysses' speech in Troilus and Cres,sida3.3.150-53: "Perseverance, dear my lord, / Keepshonour bright; to have done, is to hang J Quiteout of fashion, like a rusty mail / in monumentalmockery."

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,-Beyon-dthe 'utmost bound of human thought.----..:.__._-_.- ..-.. .-.

This is my son, mine own Telernachus,To whom I leave the scepter and the isle-

" Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfillThis labor, by slow prudence to make mildA rugged people, and through soft degreesSubdue them to the useful and the good.Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere

~o Of common duties, decent not to failIn offices of tenderness, and payMeet adoration to my household gods,When I am gone, He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;45 There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me-That ever with a frolic welcome tookThe thunder and the sunshine, and opposedFree hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old;

;0 Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.Death closes all; but something ere the end,Some work of noble note, may yet be done,Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

5~ The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deepMoans round with many voices. Come, my friends,'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.Push off, and sitting well in order smiteThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

1i0 To sail beyond the sunset, and the bathsOf all the western stars," until I die,It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,'And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

hS Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

70 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

1833 1842

6. The outer ocean or river that. in Greek cos-molo~y, surrounded the flat circle of the eflrth andinto which tht' stars descended.7. In Greek myth the Islands of the Blessed, a par·

adlse IIf perpetual summer, located in the far-western ocean. They were peopled Ill' great heroeswho, without having died, had heen translatedthere bv the gods Hod made immortal.

!

ULYSSES I 1213

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shoreThan labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;0, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

LIt .0\- leA<>\. 11~~r5 1832 1842\> 0-- W"1lt> of; ()'i(r' ,vtw.th

Ulysses'

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Matched with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequallaws2 unto a savage race, .-That hoard, and sleep, and feed," and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times 1 have enjoyedGreatly, have suffered greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

iO Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades'Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name; .For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known-cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,

15 Myself not least, but honored of them all-And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,I am a part of all that I have met; .Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

20 Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fadesForever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to -make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"As though to breathe were life! Life piled .on life

25 Were all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor somllhr~~ suns to store and hoard myself,

30 _&4.-tlg~_graY spirit yearning in (le-sire--~··--·"··-

1. Accordteg to Dante, after the fall of Troy, Ulys-ses never returned to his island home of Ithaca.lps!ead he persuaded some of his followers to seeknew experiences by a voyage of exploration west-ward out beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. In hisinspiring speech to his aging crew he said: "Con-sider your origin: you were not made to live asbrutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge"(Inferno 26), Tennyson modified Dante's versionby combining it with Homer's account (Odyssey19-24), Thus Tennyson has Ulysses make hisspeech in Ithaca some time after his return hometctlus reunion with his wife, Penelope, and his son,Telemachus, and, presumably, his resumption ofadministrative responsibilities involved in govern-ing his kingdom.

Tennyson himself stated that this poem• expressed his own "need of going forward and brav-ing the struggle of life" after the death of Hallam.2. Measure out rewards and punishments.3. Cf Hamlet 4,4.33-35: "What is a man, / lfhischief good. / Be but to sleep and feed? a beast,no more"4. A group of stars whose rising was assumed tobe followed by rain. "Scudding drifts": drivingshowers of spray and rain.5. cr. Ulysses' speech in Troilus and Cres,sida3.3.150-53: "Perseverance, dear my lord, / Keepshonour bright; to have done, is to hang J Quiteout of fashion, like a rusty mail / in monumentalmockery."

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,-Beyon-dthe 'utmost bound of human thought.----..:.__._-_.- ..-.. .-.

This is my son, mine own Telernachus,To whom I leave the scepter and the isle-

" Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfillThis labor, by slow prudence to make mildA rugged people, and through soft degreesSubdue them to the useful and the good.Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere

~o Of common duties, decent not to failIn offices of tenderness, and payMeet adoration to my household gods,When I am gone, He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;45 There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me-That ever with a frolic welcome tookThe thunder and the sunshine, and opposedFree hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old;

;0 Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.Death closes all; but something ere the end,Some work of noble note, may yet be done,Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

5~ The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deepMoans round with many voices. Come, my friends,'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.Push off, and sitting well in order smiteThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

1i0 To sail beyond the sunset, and the bathsOf all the western stars," until I die,It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,'And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

hS Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

70 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

1833 1842

6. The outer ocean or river that. in Greek cos-molo~y, surrounded the flat circle of the eflrth andinto which tht' stars descended.7. In Greek myth the Islands of the Blessed, a par·

adlse IIf perpetual summer, located in the far-western ocean. They were peopled Ill' great heroeswho, without having died, had heen translatedthere bv the gods Hod made immortal.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!