LXXII. 1. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, etc. The anniversary of Arthur's death, September 15th. Blasts that blow the poplar white. By turning up the white under-side of the leaf. Cf. the description of the olive-trees in The Palace of Art: "With realms of upland, prodigal in oil, 3. And the daisy close Her crimson fringes. In Maud, on the other hand, the maiden's tread opens these crimson fringes: "For her feet have touch'd the meadows, And left the daisies rosy." 4. Along the hills, yet look'd the same. The first reading was: hill to hill, etc. "From 7. And hide thy shame beneath the ground. Gatty remarks: "We are reminded of Job's imprecation on his own birthday, Let the day perish on which I was born.' LXXIII. 3. What fame is left for human deeds? etc. "After all, what is fame? A mere shadow that, even at the best, lasts for a few years, but lays no hold on eternity. One can well afford to dispense with the short-lived subjective immortality of the Comtists, mere fame to which its object is utterly insensible, provided he obtain objective immortality, an ever-widening and deepening conscious life. What is even Shakespeare's fame compared with eternal bliss? Dante, who was himself by no means free from the last infirmity of noble minds,' has expressed this with great force and truth, in words placed in the mouth of an enlightened soul in Purgatory: "The rumor of the world is but a breath Of wind, that now comes hence and now comes thence, Is to the circle that in heaven moves slowest? Your fame is as the greenness of the grass, That comes and goes, and he discolors it mon," “Indifference to fame naturally follows from a firm belief in immortality. It is, therefore, peculiarly characteristic of sincere Christians. Among pagans, fame was reckoned as one of the noblest motives, as we see in the Homeric poems and the Edda. In the latter we find an excellent expression of the pagan feeling on the subject: Cattle die; friends die; a man himself dies; but fame dies never to him that gets it well" (Davidson). I See Comte's Catéchisme Positiviste, pp. 161 fol. where this immortality is described in a very amusing, not to say absurd, way. 2 "Il pappo e il dindi," childish words for bread and money. 3 Purg. xi. 100-8, 115-7. LXXV. 3. To stir a little dust of praise. For the figure, cf. The Two Voices: "I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, and The Vision of Sin: "Fill the can, and fill the cup: 5. So here shall silence guard thy fame, etc. Gatty remarks: "One cannot but feel that, were it not for this immortal elegy, its subject would have been long since forgotten, like other promising youths who died in their Spring.' LXXVI. 1. Are sharpen'd to a needle's end. Cf. Cymbeline, i. 3. 18 : – "To look upon him till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle." 2. Before the mouldering of a yew. The yew attains to a great age, at least three or four hundred years. "These 3. The matin songs, etc. The songs of the great early poets. LXXVII. 1. What hope is here for modern rhyme, etc. songs will die; nor do they count themselves lasting. But their use in the present is their sufficient justification. To sing of his sorrow and his love is sweeter to the poet than fame, is its own reward" (Genung). LXXVIII. 1. Again at Christmas, etc. Cf. xxx. above, and see note on xxviii. I. The present Christmas is probably that of 1834. Genung remarks: The Christmas which introduces this Second Cycle [see page 172 above] is an occasion characterized by calmness. The lapse of time has brought a change in the spirit of its observance, in this respect, that the merriments and pleasures peculiar to Christmas are accepted and enjoyed no longer under querulous protest but for their own sake. At the same time, 'the quiet sense of something lost' is a reminder that the occasion is not what it was before bereavement." 3. The mimic picture's breathing grace. That is, tableaux vivants. Hoodman-blind. Blindman's buff. Cf. Hamlet, iii. 4. 77: • That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind." 4. No mark of pain. The first ed. has "no type of pain." LXXIX. 1. More than my brothers are to me. Cf. ix. 5, above. 66 This poem is evidently addressed to Charles, the brother nearest his own age, and associated with him in the production of Poems by Two Brothers. 3. For us the same cold streamlet curl'd. The brook near Somersby to which reference is made in the early Ode to Memory: "And chiefly from the brook that loves Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodland." LXXX. 2. Then fancy shapes, as fancy can, etc. If places were changed and he the mourner, I know that he would turn his sorrow into gain, by being stayed in peace with God and man. So let me do, and thus honor his influence" (Genung). LXXXIII. I. O sweet new-year, etc. "As in the preceding cycle Springtide added to the thought of immortality the suggestiveness of a new awaking season, so in this broader field of thought New Year heralds a new round of seasons. The spirit of the thought too has changed, has become more wholesome and free. Frozen in the past sorrow as the mind was in the preceding cycle, the Springtide must thrust its cheer from without on a reluctant mood; but here the New Year illustrates the greater health of spirit, in that now the mood answers to the promise of the season, and goes forth congenially to meet it" (Genung). 3. Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. Cf. Cowper, Task, vi. :— "Laburnum rich In streaming gold." LXXXIV. 3. When thou shouldst link thy life with one, etc. Referring to Arthur's betrothal to the poet's sister Emily. See p. 168 above. Davidson remarks: "The picture of the life that might have been is drawn with infinite tenderness and warmth. The poet sees his friend daily growing in all the graces of manhood, 'a central warmth diffusing bliss' on all his kin, which would have included himself. He sees him a power for good in society and state, earning an honest, unsought fame among men, and the approval of God. He sees himself an honor'd guest,' walking by the side of his friend through all the phases of a noble life, rich in good, until at last "He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand, LXXXV. 1. 'Tis better to have loved and lost, etc. Cf. xxvii. 4. above. 2. O true in word, and tried in deed, etc. This, as the poet explained to Gatty, is addressed to Prof. E. L. Lushington, like the epithalamium at the close of In Memoriam. The poet" recounts how when his sorrow fell he was kept from being unmanned by taking Arthur's life as an influence in all daily action, and how also his study of spiritual problems has been of practical good in diffusing the shock of grief; until, now that the friendship of which he is the divided half' has reached a permanence beyond fear of the ravages of time, he finds behind his grief a reserve of strength impelling and enabling him to seek what Arthur's pure spirit seems to bid, a friendship in the present, which in the healthful action of soul on soul may preserve his spiritual integrity. His heart therefore seeks the new friendship, which he protests may be as true, if not so fresh, as the other" (Genung). LXXXVI. 1. Sweet after showers, etc. The four stanzas form a single sentence. Compare the early poem on The Poet for a fine passage similarly sustained. Tennyson told Knowles that this was one of the poems he liked. It was written at Bournemouth, and the "ambrosial air" was "the west wind," which in the last stanza, is represented as rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star." In the third "the fancy stanza, 'imagination—the fancy no particular fancy." Slowly breathing bare The round of space. Clearing the sky from 66 clouds. means 66 LXXXVII. 1. The reverend walls. Of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2. Their high-built organs. Not only lofty in themselves, but often also in their situation above the screen separating the choir from the nave. The prophet blazon'd on the panes. Referring to the stained glass windows. 4. That long walk of limes. In the grounds of Trinity College. 6. Where once we held debate. Referring, as the poet told Mr. Knowles, to the "Water Club," so-called "because there was no wine." He added: "They used to make speeches - I never did." 10. The bar of Michael Angelo. "Michael Angelo had a strong bar of bone over his eyes" (Tennyson to Gatty). This is hardly noticeable in the bust of Arthur, but it is strongly marked in the profile portraits of Michael Angelo. LXXXVIII. 1. Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet. ingale. The budded quicks. The hawthorn hedges. The night 2. The darkening leaf. The first ed. has "the dusking leaf." LXXXIX. 1. Witch-elms that counterchange the floor, etc. "The past is lived over again, and all its congenial occupations with Arthur, in the scenes of the former summer retreat. How fully peace is restored is well indicated by comparing the appearance of Nature in this poem with such poems as viii., xxiii., xxxviii." (Genung). The summer retreat is at Somersby. 66 Towering sycamore. This tree is again alluded to in xcv. 14. "It is cut down, and the four poplars are gone, and the lawn is no longer a flat one (Tennyson to Gatty). The poplars, not mentioned here, form a part of the Somersby scenery in the Ode to Memory: "Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside, 3. Fresh from The seven elms, the poplars four That stand beside my father's door," etc. then studying law. dusky purlieus.' brawling courts. In London, where Arthur was See. p. 168 above. In the next line the first ed. has 4. The landscape winking thro' the heat. Nothing could be more pictorial than the winking. 6. The Tuscan poets on the lawn. See p. 168 above. 12. Before the crimson-circled star, etc. Before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea, where her father, the sun, had already disap peared. The allusion is not to mythology, but, as Tennyson told Gatty, to "La Place's theory," according to which the planet is "evolved from the sun." XC. 1. He tasted love with half his mind, etc. "Emphatically and solemnly he repudiates the thought that, could the beloved dead return to us, after howsoever long an interval, after whatsoever changes in our lives and in our homes, their presence could be unwelcome to us. He who first uttered such a thought could have known little of love. Suddenly, indignant remonstrance melts into a cry of longing" (Chapman). 5. These and peace form a very imperfect rhyme. Cf. gaze and face in xxxii. 2, disease and peace in cvi. 7, etc. Confusion worse than death. Cf. The Lotos-Eaters, vi. : "Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change: Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Let what is broken so remain. 'T is hard to settle order once again. Long labor unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars." XCI. 1. The sea-blue bird of March. The kingfisher, as the poet himself explained. Gatty quotes, as a parallel passage: "The fields made golden with the flower of March, The throstle singing in the feather'd larch, XCII. 4. And such refraction of events, etc. An allusion to the effect of atmospheric refraction in making objects appear above the horizon when they are actually below it. Cf. Coleridge, Death of Wallenstein, V. I: "As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image Davidson remarks here: "In a biographical sketch of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, who, like his brother, died young, - a sketch written by Sir Henry Sumner Maine and Franklin Lushington and prefixed to the brother's Remains, -we find this curious passage: 'He was conscious nearly to the last, and met his early death (of which his presentiments for several years had been frequent and very singular) with calmness and fortitude' (p. lvi.).” |