The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

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Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd;--
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit--there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. [13]

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer [14] from
the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and
breathing-space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks.
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books--

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I _know_ my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

_I_, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, [15]
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage--what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time--

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
Let the great world spin [16] for ever down the ringing grooves [17]
of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe [18] we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. [19]

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the
Sun--[20]

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

[Footnote 1: 1842. And round the gables.]

[Footnote 2: "Gleams," it appears, is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of
the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an
interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid
of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson
had never, he said, heard of that meaning of "gleams," adding he wished
he had. He meant nothing more in the passage than "to express the flying
gleams of light across a dreary moorland when looking at it under
peculiarly dreary circumstances". See for this, 'Life', iii., 82.]

[Footnote 3: 1842 and all up to and including 1850 have a capital 'R' to
robin.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. W. R. Spencer ('Poems', p. 166):--

What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of his glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks
That dazzle as they pass.

But this is of course in no way parallel to Tennyson's subtly beautiful
image, which he himself pronounced to be the best simile he had ever
made.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. Guarini, 'Pastor Fido':--

Ma i colpi di due labbre innamorate
Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca,
... ove l' un alma e l'altra Corre.]

[Footnote 6: Cf. Horace's 'Annosa Cornix', Odes III., xvii., 13.]

[Footnote 7: The reference is to Dante, 'Inferno', v. 121-3:--

Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

For the pedigree and history of this see the present editor's
'Illustrations 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 passage
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'. Tasso, '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.)]

GODIVA

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 Warwickshire in that year. The Godiva
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 Godiva 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 Godiva (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 Godiva'). With Tennyson's should be compared
Moultrie's beautiful poem on the same subject, and Landor's Imaginary
Conversation between Leofric and Godiva.

[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,
Godiva, 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 passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift 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 passing; 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 chastity:
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 chinks 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 chastity:
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 noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, pass'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 title 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. xxxviii.-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".

To which the voice did urge reply;
"To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.

"An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"He dried his wings: like gauze they grew:
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."

I said, "When first the world began
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

"She gave him mind, the lordliest
Proportion, and, above the rest,
Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied;
"Self-blinded are you by your pride:
Look up thro' night: the world is wide.

"This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres?"

It spake, moreover, in my mind:
"Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind".

Then did my response clearer fall:
"No compound of this earthly ball
Is like another, all in all".

To which he answer'd scoffingly;
"Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

"Or will one beam [1] be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference
Is cancell'd in the world of sense?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not know,"
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me:
"Thou art so steep'd in misery,
Surely 'twere better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,
Nor any train of reason keep:
Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, "The years with change advance:
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take,
Ev'n yet." But he: "What drug can make
A wither'd palsy cease to shake?"

I wept, "Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, thro' novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not."

"Yet," said the secret voice, "some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

"Not less swift souls that yearn for light,
Rapt after heaven's starry flight,
Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

"Not less the bee would range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

I said that "all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.

"Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower
How grows the day of human power?"

"The highest-mounted mind," he said,
"Still sees the sacred morning spread
The silent summit overhead.

"Will thirty seasons render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain,
Just breaking over land and main?

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

"Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet.

"Thou hast not gain'd a real height,
Nor art thou nearer to the light,
Because the scale is infinite.

"'Twere better not to breathe or speak,
Than cry for strength, remaining weak,
And seem to find, but still to seek.

"Moreover, but to seem to find
Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd,
A healthy frame, a quiet mind."

I said, "When I am gone away,
'He dared not tarry,' men will say,
Doing dishonour to my clay."

"This is more vile," he made reply,
"To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh,
Than once from dread of pain to die.

"Sick art thou--a divided will
Still heaping on the fear of ill
The fear of men, a coward still.

"Do men love thee? Art thou so bound
To men, that how thy name may sound
Will vex thee lying underground?

"The memory of the wither'd leaf
In endless time is scarce more brief
Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf.

"Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust;
The right ear, that is fill'd with dust,
Hears little of the false or just."

"Hard task, to pluck resolve," I cried,
"From emptiness and the waste wide
Of that abyss, or scornful pride!

"Nay--rather yet that I could raise
One hope that warm'd me in the days
While still I yearn'd for human praise.

"When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue,
Among the tents I paused and sung,
The distant battle flash'd and rung.

"I sung the joyful Paean clear,
And, sitting, burnish'd without fear
The brand, the buckler, and the spear--

"Waiting to strive a happy strife,
To war with falsehood to the knife,
And not to lose the good of life--

"Some hidden principle to move,
To put together, part and prove,
And mete the bounds of hate and love--

"As far as might be, to carve out
Free space for every human doubt,
That the whole mind might orb about--

"To search thro' all I felt or saw,
The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And reach the law within the law:

"At least, not rotting like a weed,
But, having sown some generous seed,
Fruitful of further thought and deed,

"To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor in a merely selfish cause--

"In some good cause, not in mine own,
To perish, wept for, honour'd, known,
And like a warrior overthrown;

"Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears,
When, soil'd with noble dust, he hears
His country's war-song thrill his ears:

"Then dying of a mortal stroke,
What time the foeman's line is broke.
And all the war is roll'd in smoke." [2]

"Yea!" said the voice, "thy dream was good,
While thou abodest in the bud.
It was the stirring of the blood.

"If Nature put not forth her power [2]
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?

"Then comes the check, the change, the fall.
Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.
There is one remedy for all.

"Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain,
Link'd month to month with such a chain
Of knitted purport, all were vain.

"Thou hadst not between death and birth
Dissolved the riddle of the earth.
So were thy labour little worth.

"That men with knowledge merely play'd,
I told thee--hardly nigher made,
Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade;

"Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind,
Named man, may hope some truth to find,
That bears relation to the mind.

"For every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late and soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

"Cry, faint not: either Truth is born
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,
Or in the gateways of the morn.

"Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope
Beyond the furthest nights of hope,
Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope.

"Sometimes a little corner shines,
As over rainy mist inclines
A gleaming crag with belts of pines.

"I will go forward, sayest thou,
I shall not fail to find her now.
Look up, the fold is on her brow.

"If straight thy track, or if oblique,
Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike,
Embracing cloud, Ixion-like;

"And owning but a little more
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,
Calling thyself a little lower

"Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl!
Why inch by inch to darkness crawl?
There is one remedy for all."

"O dull, one-sided voice," said I,
"Wilt thou make everything a lie,
To flatter me that I may die?

"I know that age to age succeeds,
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,
A dust of systems and of creeds.

"I cannot hide that some have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with Heaven:

"Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream";

"But heard, by secret transport led, [3]
Ev'n in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head--

"Which did accomplish their desire,--
Bore and forbore, and did not tire,
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire.

"He heeded not reviling tones,
Nor sold his heart to idle moans,
Tho' cursed and scorn'd, and bruised with stones:

"But looking upward, full of grace,
He pray'd, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face."

The sullen answer slid betwixt:
"Not that the grounds of hope were fix'd,
The elements were kindlier mix'd." [4]

I said, "I toil beneath the curse,
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse. [5]

"And that, in seeking to undo
One riddle, and to find the true,
I knit a hundred others new:

"Or that this anguish fleeting hence,
Unmanacled from bonds of sense,
Be fix'd and froz'n to permanence:

"For I go, weak from suffering here;
Naked I go, and void of cheer:
What is it that I may not fear?"

"Consider well," the voice replied,
"His face, that two hours since hath died;
Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride?

"Will he obey when one commands?
Or answer should one press his hands?
He answers not, nor understands.

"His palms are folded on his breast:
There is no other thing express'd
But long disquiet merged in rest.

"His lips are very mild and meek:
Tho' one should smite him on the cheek,
And on the mouth, he will not speak.

"His little daughter, whose sweet face
He kiss'd, taking his last embrace,
Becomes dishonour to her race--

"His sons grow up that bear his name,
Some grow to honour, some to shame,--
But he is chill to praise or blame. [6]

"He will not hear the north wind rave,
Nor, moaning, household shelter crave
From winter rains that beat his grave.

"High up the vapours fold and swim:
About him broods the twilight dim:
The place he knew forgetteth him."

"If all be dark, vague voice," I said,
"These things are wrapt in doubt and dread,
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.

"The sap dries up: the plant declines. [7]
A deeper tale my heart divines.
Know I not Death? the outward signs?

"I found him when my years were few;
A shadow on the graves I knew,
And darkness in the village yew.

"From grave to grave the shadow crept:
In her still place the morning wept:
Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept.

"The simple senses crown'd his head: [8]
'Omega! thou art Lord,' they
said; 'We find no motion in the dead.'

"Why, if man rot in dreamless ease,
Should that plain fact, as taught by these,
Not make him sure that he shall cease?

"Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?

"He owns the fatal gift of eyes, [9]
That read his spirit blindly wise,
Not simple as a thing that dies.

"Here sits he shaping wings to fly:
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.

"That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself in every wind.

"He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And thro' thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.

"The end and the beginning vex
His reason: many things perplex,
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.

"He knows a baseness in his blood
At such strange war with something good,
He may not do the thing he would.

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