Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson Part 18

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 subst.i.tuting "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 subst.i.tuted 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.

"Dewent.w.a.ter," 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 s.p.a.ce, _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 Pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociates 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 cla.s.sical 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 n.o.ble 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.'"

133-142. Brimley in his valuable essay on Tennyson, a.n.a.lyses this poem in some detail. Of this pa.s.sage he writes: "A series of brilliant effects is. .h.i.t off in these two words, 'made lightnings.' 'Whirl'd in an arch,' is a splendid instance of sound answering to sense, which the older critics made so much of; the additional syllable which breaks the measure, and necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to express to the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted through a page, and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without any result but interrupting his narrative, where Tennyson in three lines strikingly ill.u.s.trates the fact he has to tell,--a.s.sociates it impressively with one of Nature's grandest phenomena, and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon besides." The whole essay deserves to be carefully read.

143. DIPT THE SURFACE. A poetical construction.

157. Note the personification of the sword.

182-183. CLOTHED--HILLS. His breath made a vapour in the frosty air through which his figure loomed of more than human size. Tennyson gives us the same effect in _Guinevere_, 597:

The moving vapour rolling round the King, Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it, Enwound him fold by fold.

But the cla.s.sical example is found in Wordsworth's description of the mountain shepherd in _The Prelude_, Book VIII.

When up the lonely brooks on rainy days Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes Have glanced upon him distant a few steps, In size a giant, stalking through thick fog, His sheep like Greenland bears, or as he stepped Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow, His form hath flashed upon me, glorified By the deep radiance of the setting sun,