Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  In this peaceful world Charles found plenty to occupy his time. He saw little of society except when Alfred or Frederick, or one of his old college friends, came to visit him, and the resources of the neighbourhood were strained to the utmost to afford them entertainment. He found, however, a congenial companion in Mr. Townsend, a neighbouring clergyman of wide culture much interested in science. And the care of his parish occupied the greater part of his time. Theology, too, was a favourite study with him. He began life as an Evangelical, but in later years tended (partly under the influence of his wife, who would often, on the vigil of a saint, spend half the night on her knees) more and more towards the High Church.

  “I have been reading,” he wrote to Alfred in 1865, “Pusey’s Daniel the Prophet, which (thank God) completely — as I think and as very many will think with me — disposes of the rickety and crotchety arguments of those who vainly thought they had found a ποῦ στῶ in him whereby to upheave all prophecy and miracle. It is a noble book from its learning and its logic. I knew he was a holy and noble-minded and erudite man, but for some reason I had not credited him with such ‘act offence’ and powers of righteous satire.... I have never in my old desultory reading days found such a charm and interest as in the study of the Queen Science, as Trench calls Theology, and those who assume that they will find there no food for the mature reason will be surprised at its large provision for the intellect and rich satisfaction of the highest imagination. It is reading round about a subject and not the subject itself which damages the intellect so much. Maurice said the study of the Prophets had saved him from the Tyranny of books.”

  He and his wife also spent much time in the study of Italian, in which they were assisted by their occasional visits to and from the Frederick Tennysons. Charles’s Italian Grammar is annotated with numberless quaint rhymes made to fix its rules in his memory. On one page one finds in his wonderfully neat fluent hand (strangely like those of Frederick and Alfred):

  From use of the following is no ban,

  “The fair of the fair is Mistress Ann”

  or “Smith’s a learned, learned man”

  In English or Italian,

  Though the English use is far less common

  Speaking of Doctor or fine woman.

  On another:

  Say profeta, profeti

  Or else I shall bate ye.

  On another a couplet which has all the subtle romance of Edward Lear:

  Rare and changeless, firm and few,

  Are the Italian nouns in U.

  The life at Grasby Vicarage was of the simplest. The hall-floor rattled with loose tiles, the furniture was reduced to the barest necessities. Breakfast and lunch were movable feasts, for Charles had all a poet’s carelessness of time, lingering over morning prayers while his agonized guest saw the bacon cooling to the consistency of marble before his eyes, and prolonging his mid-day walk to such distances in the study of flower and bird and butterfly that it sometimes took a half-hour’s tolling of the outdoor bell to recall him. The cook (who in times of scarcity was at the service of the whole village) must have led a life of irritation, yet servants stayed long at the Vicarage.

  This sweet, even life knew little variety. The days of quiet service filled the year, and were succeeded by evenings no less quiet in the book-lined study, or, if the season were warm, in the hayfield near the house, where husband and wife would sit reading and talking to each other till the evening glow died away and left the haycocks and the steep side of the wold, which backed the red-brick Vicarage, gray and cold and silent.

  Troubles they had beyond the recurrent anxiety for Charles’s health. A rascally agent, a man of great plausibility and charm of manner, pillaged them for some years, and they were only able to recover a portion of his plunderings (most of which Charles subsequently devoted to the repair of the church) after a great deal of trouble. It is characteristic that in after years they always spoke of this gentleman as though he had been the person who had suffered most in the transaction and deserved most pity. Charles was indeed possessed of an almost saintly patience, and no crisis could ever wring from him any ejaculation more forcible than a half-humorous “I wish we were all in heaven.” His wife’s letters occasionally give us glimpses of days when the wish must often have been upon his lips, as when he was reluctantly compelled to join in a Harvest-Festival gathering in another parish. First of all we read how “poor Cubbie” (his wife’s pet name for him) “was caught and dressed in a surplice which hung about him like a clothes bag.” “Then he must join in a procession, with much singing and chanting, and then read the lessons in spite of a bad cold and hoarseness, and finally at the end of the day, in the full hubbub of a garden party, at which all the neighbourhood were present in their finery (poor Cubbie!), a cannon, which had been charged with blank cartridge for the occasion, went off unexpectedly and knocked down three boys who were standing in front of it. The boys, whose clothes were torn to rags and their faces burnt black, shrieked as though in the death agony, women fainted and men stampeded — and Cubbie ‘wished we were all in heaven.’”

  But Charles Turner’s poems are, after all, the best mirror of his life. With Frederick it is otherwise. In spite of his great lyric gift, Frederick lacked the persistence and enthusiasm necessary for full self-expression. The want of proportion, which gave his ardent, erratic personality so much charm, prevented his longer poems being really successful. In spite of much beauty of phrase and richness of feeling, they lack architecture and have not sufficient unity to make them vital. Had he continued to work at lyrical writing after his first volume, he might have avoided falling into the desultory method, which marred his later work, and left a really large body of first-class poetry.

  In the best of Charles’s Sonnets, in all, that is, which spring from his daily experience, there breathes a spirit perpetually quickened by the beauty and holiness of common life and common things, an imagination which saw a life and a purpose not only in the ways of men and of all wild creatures and growing things, but in the half-human voice of the buoy-bell ringing on the shoals, the sad imprisoned heart-beat of the water-ram in the little wood-girt field, the welcome of the sunbeam in the copse running through the yielding shade to meet the wanderer, in the “mystic stair” of the steam thrashing-machine:

  Accepting our full harvests like a God

  With clouds about his shoulders.

  and the “mute claim” of the old rocking-horse:

  In the dim window where disused, he stands

  While o’er him breaks the flickering limewalks’ shade;

  No provender, no mate, no groom has he —

  His stall and pasture is your memory.

  But in spite of the intimate correspondence between Charles Turner’s life and his art, an intimacy which only the seclusion of that life made possible, one cannot help regretting that fortune did not force upon him some calling which would have afforded a progressive stimulus to his creative powers. These years of devotion amongst the bleak hill-sides and flowery dingles of his remote parish did for him what a life of ease and sunshine did for Frederick. Both had great talents, but neither the tender felicity of Charles nor Frederick’s heart of cloud and fire ever came to full development. They represent two extremes of the Tennyson temperament, the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred. In the elder the lyric fury, in the younger the craftsman’s humility of the more perfect poet were developed to excess, and both suffered for the affection and respect in which they held him whom they knew to be their master. Yet each has left himself a monument, some part at least of which is worthy to rank with the more complete achievement of their younger brother.

  TENNYSON ON HIS CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS

  A. H. H. Obiit 1833.

  ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

  I past beside the reverend walls

  In which of old I wore the gown;

  I roved at random thro’ the town,

  And saw the tumult of the halls;

  And hear
d once more in college fanes

  The storm their high-built organs make,

  And thunder-music, rolling, shake

  The prophet blazon’d on the panes;

  And caught once more the distant shout,

  The measured pulse of racing oars

  Among the willows; paced the shores

  And many a bridge, and all about

  The same gray flats again, and felt

  The same, but not the same; and last

  Up that long walk of limes I past

  To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

  Another name was on the door:

  I linger’d; all within was noise

  Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys

  That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;

  Where once we held debate, a band

  Of youthful friends, on mind and art,

  And labour, and the changing mart,

  And all the framework of the land;

  When one would aim an arrow fair,

  But send it slackly from the string;

  And one would pierce an outer ring,

  And one an inner, here and there;

  And last the master-bowman, he,

  Would cleave the mark. A willing ear

  We lent him. Who, but hung to hear

  The rapt oration flowing free

  From point to point, with power and grace

  And music in the bounds of law,

  To those conclusions when we saw

  The God within him light his face,

  And seem to lift the form, and glow

  In azure orbits heavenly-wise;

  And over those ethereal eyes

  The bar of Michael Angelo.

  TO JAMES SPEDDING

  ON THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER

  The wind, that beats the mountain, blows

  More softly round the open wold,

  And gently comes the world to those

  That are cast in gentle mould.

  And me this knowledge bolder made,

  Or else I had not dared to flow

  In these words toward you, and invade

  Even with a verse your holy woe.

  ‘Tis strange that those we lean on most,

  Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,

  Fall into shadow, soonest lost:

  Those we love first are taken first.

  God gives us love. Something to love

  He lends us; but, when love is grown

  To ripeness, that on which it throve

  Falls off, and love is left alone.

  This is the curse of time. Alas!

  In grief I am not all unlearn’d;

  Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass;

  One went, who never hath return’d.

  He will not smile — not speak to me

  Once more. Two years his chair is seen

  Empty before us. That was he

  Without whose life I had not been.

  Your loss is rarer; for this star

  Rose with you thro’ a little arc

  Of heaven, nor having wander’d far

  Shot on the sudden into dark.

  I knew your brother; his mute dust

  I honour and his living worth:

  A man more pure and bold and just

  Was never born into the earth.

  I have not look’d upon you nigh,

  Since that dear soul hath fall’n asleep.

  Great Nature is more wise than I:

  I will not tell you not to weep.

  And tho’ mine own eyes fill with dew,

  Drawn from the spirit thro’ the brain,

  I will not even preach to you,

  “Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain.”

  Let Grief be her own mistress still.

  She loveth her own anguish deep

  More than much pleasure. Let her will

  Be done — to weep or not to weep.

  I will not say, “God’s ordinance

  Of Death is blown in every wind”;

  For that is not a common chance

  That takes away a noble mind.

  His memory long will live alone

  In all our hearts, as mournful light

  That broods above the fallen sun,

  And dwells in heaven half the night.

  Vain solace! Memory standing near

  Cast down her eyes, and in her throat

  Her voice seem’d distant, and a tear

  Dropt on the letters as I wrote.

  I wrote I know not what. In truth,

  How should I soothe you anyway,

  Who miss the brother of your youth?

  Yet something I did wish to say:

  For he too was a friend to me:

  Both are my friends, and my true breast

  Bleedeth for both; yet it may be

  That only silence suiteth best.

  Words weaker than your grief would make

  Grief more. ‘Twere better I should cease

  Although myself could almost take

  The place of him that sleeps in peace.

  Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace:

  Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,

  While the stars burn, the moons increase,

  And the great ages onward roll.

  Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.

  Nothing comes to thee new or strange.

  Sleep full of rest from head to feet;

  Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

  TO EDWARD FITZGERALD

  (Dedication of “Tiresias,” written in 1882)

  Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,

  Where once I tarried for a while,

  Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,

  And greet it with a kindly smile;

  Whom yet I see as there you sit

  Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,

  And while your doves about you flit,

  And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,

  Or on your head their rosy feet,

  As if they knew your diet spares

  Whatever moved in that full sheet

  Let down to Peter at his prayers;

  Who live on milk and meal and grass;

  And once for ten long weeks I tried

  Your table of Pythagoras,

  And seem’d at first “a thing enskied”

  (As Shakespeare has it) airy-light

  To float above the ways of men,

  Then fell from that half-spiritual height

  Chill’d, till I tasted flesh again

  One night when earth was winter-black,

  And all the heavens flash’d in frost;

  And on me, half-asleep, came back

  That wholesome heat the blood had lost,

  And set me climbing icy capes

  And glaciers, over which there roll’d

  To meet me long-arm’d vines with grapes

  Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold

  Without, and warmth within me, wrought

  To mould the dream; but none can say

  That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,

  Who reads your golden Eastern lay,

  Than which I know no version done

  In English more divinely well;

  A planet equal to the sun

  Which cast it, that large infidel

  Your Omar; and your Omar drew

  Full-handed plaudits from our best

  In modern letters, and from two,

  Old friends outvaluing all the rest,

  Two voices heard on earth no more;

  But we old friends are still alive,

  And I am nearing seventy-four,

  While you have touch’d at seventy-five,

  And so I send a birthday line

  Of greeting; and my son, who dipt

  In some forgotten book of mine

  With sallow scraps of manuscript,

  And dating many a year ago,

  Has hit on this, which you will take
<
br />   My Fitz, and welcome, as I know

  Less for its own than for the sake

  Of one recalling gracious times,

  When, in our younger London days,

  You found some merit in my rhymes,

  And I more pleasure in your praise.

  EPILOGUE AT END OF “TIRESIAS”

  “One height and one far-shining fire”

  And while I fancied that my friend

  For this brief idyll would require

  A less diffuse and opulent end,

  And would defend his judgment well,

  If I should deem it over nice —

  The tolling of his funeral bell

  Broke on my Pagan Paradise,

  And mixt the dream of classic times

  And all the phantoms of the dream,

  With present grief, and made the rhymes,

  That miss’d his living welcome, seem

  Like would-be guests an hour too late,

  Who down the highway moving on

  With easy laughter find the gate

  Is bolted, and the master gone.

  Gone into darkness, that full light

  Of friendship! past, in sleep, away

  By night, into the deeper night!

  The deeper night? A clearer day

  Than our poor twilight dawn on earth —

  If night, what barren toil to be!

  What life, so maim’d by night, were worth

  Our living out? Not mine to me