The Alfred Lord Tennyson Fan Club

[Beren3000]

Ok, I've asked around and I found some Tennyson fans among you. So here is the thread where you can talk about your favorite Tennyson poems and discuss his work in general.

[Beren3000]

My favorite Tennyson poem is called The Miller's Daughter, here it goes(continued in the next post):

I see the wealthy miller yet,
His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget
The busy wrinkles round his eyes?
The slow wise smile that, round about
His dusty forehead drily curl’d,
Seem’d half-within and half-without,
And full of dealings with the world?

In yonder chair I see him sit,
Three fingers round the old silver cup–
I see his gray eyes twinkle yet
At his own jest–gray eyes lit up
With summer lightnings of a soul
So full of summer warmth, so glad,
So healthy, sound, and clear and whole,
His memory scarce can make me sad.


Yet fill my glass: give me one kiss:
My own sweet Alice, we must die.
There’s somewhat in this world amiss
Shall be unriddled by and by.
There’s somewhat flows to us in life,
But more is taken quite away.
Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife,
That we may die the self-same day.


Have I not found a happy earth?
I least should breathe a thought of pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
I’d almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk,
And once again to woo thee mine–
It seems in after-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine–


To be the long and listless boy
Late-left an orphan of the squire,
Where this old mansion mounted high
Looks down upon the village spire:
For even here, where I and you
Have lived and loved alone so long,
Each morn my sleep was broken thro’
By some wild skylark’s matin song.


And oft I heard the tender dove
In firry woodlands making moan;
But ere I saw your eyes, my love,
I had no motion of my own.
For scarce my life with fancy play’d
Before I dream’d that pleasant dream–
Still hither thither idly sway’d
Like those long mosses in the stream.


Or from the bridge I lean’d to hear
The milldam rushing down with noise,
And see the minnows everywhere
In crystal eddies glance and poise,
The tall flag-flowers when they sprung
Below the range of stepping-stones,
Or those three chestnuts near, that hung
In masses thick with milky cones.


But, Alice, what an hour was that,
When after roving in the woods
(’Twas April then), I came and sat
Below the chestnuts, when their buds
Were glistening to the breezy blue;
And on the slope, an absent fool,
I cast me down, nor thought of you,
But angled in the higher pool.


A love-song I had somewhere read,
An echo from a measured strain,
Beat time to nothing in my head
From some odd corner of the brain.
It haunted me, the morning long,
With weary sameness in the rhymes,
The phantom of a silent song,
That went and came a thousand times.


Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood
I watch’d the little circles die;
They past into the level flood,
And there a vision caught my eye;
The reflex of a beauteous form,
A glowing arm, a gleaming neck,
As when a sunbeam wavers warm
Within the dark and dimpled beck.


For you remember, you had set,
That morning, on the casement-edge
A long green box of mignonette,
And you were leaning from the ledge
And when I raised my eyes, above
They met with two so full and bright–
Such eyes! I swear to you, my love,
That these have never lost their light.

[Beren3000]

(Continued; italics mine to indicate "the songs")

I loved, and love dispell’d the fear
That I should die an early death:
For love possess’d the atmosphere,
And fill’d the breast with purer breath.
My mother thought, what ails the boy?
For I was alter’d, and began
To move about the house with joy,
And with the certain step of man.


I loved the brimming wave that swam
Thro’ quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,
The meal-sacks on the whiten’d floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal.


And oft in ramblings on the wold,
When April nights began to blow,
And April’s crescent glimmer’d cold,
I saw the village lights below;
I knew your taper far away,
And full at heart of trembling hope,
From off the wold I came, and lay
Upon the freshly-flower’d slope.


The deep brook groan’d beneath the mill;
And ‘by that lamp,’ I thought, ‘she sits!’
The white chalk-quarry from the hill
Gleam’d to the flying moon by fits.
‘O that I were beside her now!
O will she answer if I call?
O would she give me vow for vow,
Sweet Alice, if I told her all?’


Sometimes I saw you sit and spin;
And, in the pauses of the wind,
Sometimes I heard you sing within;
Sometimes your shadow cross’d the blind.
At last you rose and moved the light,
And the long shadow of the chair
Flitted across into the night,
And all the casement darken’d there.


But when at last I dared to speak,
The lanes, you know, were white with may,
Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek
Flush’d like the coming of the day;
And so it was–half-sly, half-shy,
You would, and would not, little one!
Although I pleaded tenderly,
And you and I were all alone.


And slowly was my mother brought
To yield consent to my desire:
She wish’d me happy, but she thought
I might have look’d a little higher;
And I was young–too young to wed:
‘Yet must I love her for your sake;
Go fetch your Alice here,’ she said:
Her eyelid quiver’d as she spake.


And down I went to fetch my bride:
But, Alice, you were ill at ease;
This dress and that by turns you tried,
Too fearful that you should not please.
I loved you better for your fears,
I knew you could not look but well;
And dews, that would have fall’n in tears,
I kiss’d away before they fell.


I watch’d the little flutterings,
The doubt my mother would not see;
She spoke at large of many things,
And at the last she spoke of me;
And turning look’d upon your face,
As near this door you sat apart,
And rose, and, with a silent grace
Approaching, press’d you heart to heart.


Ah, well–but sing the foolish song
I gave you, Alice, on the day
When, arm in arm, we went along,
A pensive pair, and you were gay
With bridal flowers–that I may seem,
As in the nights of old, to lie
Beside the mill-wheel in the stream,
While those full chestnuts whisper by.


It is the miller’s daughter,
And she is grown so dear, so dear,
That I would be the jewel
That trembles in her ear:
For hid in ringlets day and night,
I’d touch her neck so warm and white.


And I would be the girdle
About her dainty dainty waist,
And her heart would beat against me,
In sorrow and in rest:
And I should know if it beat right,
I’d clasp it round so close and tight.


And I would be the necklace,
And all day long to fall and rise
Upon her balmy bosom,
With her laughter or her sighs,
And I would lie so light, so light,
I scarce should be unclasp’d at night.


A trifle, sweet! which true love spells–
True love interprets–right alone.
His light upon the letter dwells,
For all the spirit is his own.
So, if I waste words now, in truth
You must blame Love. His early rage
Had force to make me rhyme in youth,
And makes me talk too much in age.


And now those vivid hours are gone,
Like mine own life to me thou art,
Where Past and Present, wound in one,
Do make a garland for the heart:
So sing that other song I made,
Half-anger’d with my happy lot,
The day, when in the chestnut shade
I found the blue Forget-me-not.


Love that hath us in the net,
Can he pass, and we forget?
Many suns arise and set.
Many a chance the years beget.
Love the gift is Love the debt.


Even so.

Love is hurt with jar and fret.
Love is made a vague regret.
Eyes with idle tears are wet.
Idle habit links us yet.
What is love? for we forget:

Ah, no! no!


Look thro’ mine eyes with thine. True wife,
Round my true heart thine arms entwine
My other dearer life in life,
Look thro’ my very soul with thine!
Untouch’d with any shade of years,
May those kind eyes for ever dwell!
They have not shed a many tears,
Dear eyes, since first I knew them well.

Yet tears they shed: they had their part
Of sorrow: for when time was ripe,
The still affection of the heart
Became an outward breathing type,
That into stillness past again,
And left a want unknown before;
Although the loss had brought us pain,
That loss but made us love the more,


With farther lookings on. The kiss,
The woven arms, seem but to be
Weak symbols of the settled bliss,
The comfort, I have found in thee:
But that God bless thee, dear–who wrought
Two spirits to one equal mind–
With blessings beyond hope or thought,
With blessings which no words can find.


Arise, and let us wander forth,
To yon old mill across the wolds;
For look, the sunset, south and north,
Winds all the vale in rosy folds,
And fires your narrow casement glass,
Touching the sullen pool below:
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass
Is dry and dewless. Let us go.

To those who actually got this far , what do you think?

[Mercutio]

He's on my list to read, what do you reccommend I start with?

[Beren3000]

Well, look here. I'd recommend Amphion, Edward Gray, Ulysses, Lilian, Claribel, Isabel and The Lady of Shalott.
After you get familiar with his style, you should try his longer poems like the one I posted just above and Locksley Hall and finally, before you switch to another poet read his magnum opus: In Memoriam A. H. H. an elegy for his friend in 131 parts (which I have yet to read)

[inked]

Well, I should say begin with In Memoriam , if only the introduction. This poem made such an impact on me that I memorized the opening in HS and have inscribed its inital words on pottery and used it in memorials to friends who have died.

So potent is the opening and so utterly human!

Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,
Whom we that have not seen thy face
By faith and faith alone embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.

Thine are these orbs of light and shade!
Thou madest life in man and brute.
Thou madest death, and, lo Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made!

as is the ending of another of his great poems,

This is how the world ends.
This is how the world ends.
Not with a bang
But with a whimper.

The Charybdis of hope and the Scylla of despair! What a poet!

[Beren3000]

Inked, that was great! I'd recommend Amphion and The Miller's Daughter from the link I posted above...

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by inked

as is the ending of another of his great poems,

This is how the world ends.
This is how the world ends.
Not with a bang
But with a whimper.

The Charybdis of hope and the Scylla of despair! What a poet!

That's great, except it's by T.S. Eliot (The Hollow Men)

I recommend Ulysses, Crossing the Bar, Mariana and the Idylls of the King as Tennyson's most accessible poems. In Memoriam also works very well if you just dip into it, rather than trying to read the whole thing in one go. Lots of the poems there are good stand-alones.

[inked]

Sun-star,




I shall blame it on too many years reading anthologies and linking opposites in the formerly robust neurons which, alas, occasionally short-circuit!

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

[Beren3000]

Ok, fans! We need to be discussing a poem here (at least I say so ).
Here's one I never understood:

The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

So what is this Kraken? an Apocalyptic monster or a representation of some hateful quality in humans? or something else entirely?

[inked]

Conquered Chaos released and destroyed for eternity in the Final Judgment.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

Conquered Chaos released and destroyed for eternity in the Final Judgment.

Great interpretation! However, it has 2 flaws (IMHO). First, I don't see how this explains the "huge seaworms" the Kraken battens upon. Second, the idea of conquered Chaos is rather pagan because it presupposes the existence of Chaos before Creation (please correct me if I'm wrong). But we can see from other poems that Tennyson is a Christian, so....

[Earniel]

The Kraken could stand for that which man never could discover and never will, since the creature sleeps and will only reveal itself to die at the end of things.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

The Kraken could stand for that which man never could discover and never will, since the creature sleeps and will only reveal itself to die at the end of things.

Yeah, that explanation makes more sense to me.

[inked]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

Great interpretation! However, it has 2 flaws (IMHO). First, I don't see how this explains the "huge seaworms" the Kraken battens upon. Second, the idea of conquered Chaos is rather pagan because it presupposes the existence of Chaos before Creation (please correct me if I'm wrong). But we can see from other poems that Tennyson is a Christian, so....

It does explain the huge seaworms if we take worms in the sense of dragons in the western understanding of destructive forces. You could make the same objection about the polypi whose growth and winnowing the slumbering kraken battening the worms allows, that they are not explained either.

Tennyson was a Christian by profession and we see that explicitly in this poem affirming the conquering of chaos in its manifestation as kraken and seaworms. It is a very image of the Psalmist - YHWH is without peer. The pagan gods may have arisen from matter and chaos to control it, but YHWH is above that and His might unimpeachable. Also, if I am correct in the association of the sea and its creatures being in God's control, that final line about surfacing, roaring and dying is a statement of the Apocalypse of St John that "there will be no more sea" when the enemies are made Christ's footstool. So the conquering of the sea is an image of God's ultimate power of all Creation.

That help?

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

The pagan gods may have arisen from matter and chaos to control it, but YHWH is above that and His might unimpeachable.

But the fact that Chaos should be conquered first seems to suggest that it's a match to God! In my edition of Paradise Lost, the editor called the idea that God made order out of Chaos "Milton's heresy".

[inked]

Beren3000,

The fact is clearly stated as a matter of belief that God made matter: Genesis 1:1 IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH. This foundational statement NECESSITATES the relegation of all matter as under his control. It also NECESSITATES that all pagan gods attributed to have arisen from matter and subjugated chaos by non-Hebraic religions were INFERIOR to GOD the CREATOR. So, the imagery of God conquering chaos or Chaos is literary and dramatic shorthand, not heresy. And the sea is the traditonal imagery for chaos or Chaos. So, in this context, the Kraken's sleep is an image for the mastery of chaos and "battening down the seaworms" an image of the lesser false gods, the polypi survive in and due to the calm due to God's victory. In the final battle, the Master leaves no witness unconvinced of the mastery - significantly men and angels (those groups of whom there are faithful and rebels, believers and unbelievers) and faith or lack of it thus becomes incontrovertible fact.

More better?

[Minielin]

Having just recently read a book to my little niece on the subject (in a way), I'll venture my thoughts... the Kraken (in this particular storybook, anyway) is, simply put, a mythical sea-monster, the tales of which probably originated from sightings of giant squid. More here. Of course, it's entirely possible and highly probable that in this context Tennyson was using it to symbolize the mastery of Chaos.

[Rosie Gamgee]

I love Tennyson! My favorite poems are his Idylls of the King- my favorite being Lancelot and Elaine. As for his other poems, I like Roses on the Terrace, The Lady of Shalott (this one's the one that caught me), and lots more.

Anyone read Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue (I think that's it's full title)? I love the part where T makes up a history for the headwaiter and the rooster. It's very funny.

The Two Voices is also very good. The ending is powerful, when he wonders "how the mind was brought/ To anchor by one gloomy thought// And wherefore rather I made choice/ To commune with that barren voice/ Than him that said 'Rejoice! Rejoice!'"

[inked]

RG, you whet my appetite for greater experience of Tennyson. Thank you for your descriptions.

Minielin, have you perused the X'n Themes in HP thread. I started on Fawkes. Would love your reactions/impressions/evaluations. Gracias!