The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 58

[Footnote 4: 1842 to 1845. O then like those, that clench.]

[Footnote 5: Pathos, in the Greek sense, "suffering". All editions up to and including 1850 have a small "s" and a small "m" for Shadow and Memory, and read thus:--

Too sadly for their peace, so put it back For calmer hours in memory's darkest hold, If unforgotten! should it cross thy dreams, So might it come, etc.]

[Footnote 6: 'Cf. Princess', iii.:--

Morn in the white wake of the morning star Came furrowing all the orient into gold,

and with both cf. Greene, 'Orlando Furioso', i., 2:--

Seest thou not Lycaon's son?

The hardy plough-swain unto mighty Jove Hath _trac'd his silver furrows in the heaven_,

which in its turn is borrowed from Ariosto, 'Orl. Fur.', xx., lx.x.xii.:--

Apena avea Licaonia prole Per li solchi del ciel volto L'aratro.]

THE GOLDEN YEAR

This poem was first published in the fourth edition of the poems 1846.

No alterations were made in it after 1851. The poem had a message for the time at which it was written. The country was in a very troubled state. The contest between the Protectionists and Free-traders was at its acutest stage. The Maynooth endowment and the "G.o.dless colleges" had brought into prominence questions of the gravest moment in religion and education, while the Corn Bill and the Coercion Bill had inflamed the pa.s.sions of party politicians almost to madness. Tennyson, his son tells us, entered heartily into these questions, believing that the remedies for these distempers lay in the spread of education, a more catholic spirit in the press, a partial adoption of Free Trade principles, and union as far as possible among the different sections of Christianity.

Well, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: It was last summer on a tour in Wales: Old James was with me: we that day had been Up Snowdon; and I wish'd for Leonard there, And found him in Llanberis: [1] then we crost Between the lakes, and clamber'd half-way up The counterside; and that same song of his He told me; for I banter'd him, and swore They said he lived shut up within himself, A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days, That, setting the _how much_ before the _how_, Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, "Give, [2]

Cram us with all," but count not me the herd!

To which "They call me what they will," he said: "But I was born too late: the fair new forms, That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught-- Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown'd-- Are taken by the forelock. Let it be.

But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn.

"We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel'd in her ellipse; And human things returning on themselves Move onward, leading up the golden year.

"Ah, tho' the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets' seasons when they flower, Yet seas, that daily gain upon the sh.o.r.e, [3]

Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year.

"When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro' all the season of the golden year.

"Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?

If all the world were falcons, what of that?

The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle. Happy days Roll onward, leading up the golden year.

"Fly happy happy sails and bear the Press; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year.

"But we grow old! Ah! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro' all the circle of the golden year?"

Thus far he flow'd, and ended; whereupon "Ah, folly!" in mimic cadence answer'd James-- "Ah, folly! for it lies so far away.

Not in our time, nor in our children's time, 'Tis like the second world to us that live; 'Twere all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven As on this vision of the golden year."

With that he struck his staff against the rocks And broke it,--James,--you know him,--old, but full Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet, And like an oaken stock in winter woods, O'erflourished with the h.o.a.ry clematis: Then added, all in heat: "What stuff is this!

Old writers push'd the happy season back,-- The more fools they,--we forward: dreamers both: You most, that in an age, when every hour Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death, Live on, G.o.d love us, as if the seedsman, rapt Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip [4]

His hand into the bag: but well I know That unto him who works, and feels he works, This same grand year is ever at the doors."

He spoke; and, high above, I heard them blast The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff.

[Footnote 1: 1846 to 1850.

And joined him in Llanberis; and that same song He told me, etc.]

[Footnote 2: Proverbs x.x.x. 15:

"The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give".]

[Footnote 3: 1890. Altered to "Yet oceans daily gaining on the land".]

[Footnote 4: 'Selections', 1865. Plunge.]

ULYSSES

First published in 1842, no alterations were made in it subsequently.

This n.o.ble poem, which is said to have induced Sir Robert Peel to give Tennyson his pension, was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, presumably therefore in 1833. "It gave my feeling," Tennyson said to his son, "about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in 'In Memoriam'." It is not the 'Ulysses' of Homer, nor was it suggested by the 'Odyssey'. The germ, the spirit and the sentiment of the poem are from the twenty-sixth canto of Dante's 'Inferno', where Ulysses in the Limbo of the Deceivers speaks from the flame which swathes him. I give a literal version of the pa.s.sage:--

"Neither fondness for my son nor reverence for my aged sire nor the due love which ought to have gladdened Penelope could conquer in me the ardour which I had to become experienced in the world and in human vice and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one ship and with that small company which had not deserted me.... I and my companions were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pa.s.s where Hercules a.s.signed his landmarks. 'O brothers,' I said, 'who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West deny not to this the brief vigil of your senses that remain, experience of the unpeopled world beyond the sun. Consider your origin, ye were not formed to live like Brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.... Night already saw the other pole with all its stars and ours so low that it rose not from the ocean floor'"

('Inferno', xxvi., 94-126).

But if the germ is here the expansion is Tennyson's; he has added elaboration and symmetry, fine touches, magical images and magical diction. There is nothing in Dante which answers to--

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

or

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.

Of these lines well does Carlyle say what so many will feel: "These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would till whole Lacrymatorics as I read".

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That h.o.a.rd, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on sh.o.r.e, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades [1]

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, [2]

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.