The Alfred Lord Tennyson Fan Club

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Rosie Gamgee

Well, I went back and read WWLM. It seems to me that the first part deals almost exclusively with the exultation of liquor and its effects on the brain. The second part, concocted, it would seem, largely under the influence of said drink, is a fantastical monolouge concerning the origins of the headwaiter. The last part seems to me to be a series of thoughts on the lamentable state of the hangover. The final stanza is a blessing on the headwaiter, made in gratitude for the hour of happiness and inspiration his beverage effected upon the poet. The poem seems then, in short, to be a series of thoughts had while sitting in a public house put down in verse and rhyme for the purpose of killing a few spare moments that would have otherwise been spent in boredom.

Sure...if you look at it literally
When I first read the poem it seemed to me that the liquor was a metaphor for poetic inspiration (cf. the allegory with the Muse) but this seems to run amiss with the story of the headwaiter. However, I still think the poem has meaning beyond the literal one...

[inked]

All poems have meaning beyond the literal one! It is just that one cannot deny the literal one! Since poetry is concentrated symbols (words and images they evoke or suggest) it is pregnant with possibility. But to use the metaphor, the union of the poet's DNA with the reader's DNA results in a unique experience of the poet which is definitely recognizable as a "personality" of the poem and which different readers may experience as persons are experienced (daughter/mother/grandmother/friend/aunt/artist/coworker/etc).

Each of these experiental states is valid, but they find their unity in the person (the poem).

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

When I first read the poem it seemed to me that the liquor was a metaphor for poetic inspiration (cf. the allegory with the Muse) but this seems to run amiss with the story of the headwaiter.

I agree, partly, about inspiration. I think the poem is about the conflict between high-minded ideas and reality. The speaker remembers his ambitions and hopes of the past and the alcohol leads him to believe in great possibilities - like peace between political parties, future human progress, and especially being a poet (hence the talk of Muses and libations, associated with Greek poetry). He recalls his past dreams:

Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
And phantom hopes assemble;
And that child’s heart within the man’s
Begins to move and tremble.

Then he remembers that none of this will happen. This is just a pub and the waiter is just an ordinary man ("As just and mere a serving-man/ As any born of woman), and the speaker himself will never achieve more than he is at the moment. Only the port made him think otherwise for a little while. Moral: we have our "lot" and can't escape it by ambition and idealistic hopes, so we should be content.

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

Sure...if you look at it literally
When I first read the poem it seemed to me that the liquor was a metaphor for poetic inspiration (cf. the allegory with the Muse) but this seems to run amiss with the story of the headwaiter. However, I still think the poem has meaning beyond the literal one...

Oh, agreed! One of them would probably be that despite the idealistic dreams of our youth, we all seem to end up with gray hair "before [we] know it." But I think as a whole the poem is devoid of much of the heavy melancholy that seems to pervade most of T's works. Rather light-hearted I think.

p.s. I think that the 'Muse' is a pseudonym for the ale, not the other way around.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Rosie Gamgee

p.s. I think that the 'Muse' is a pseudonym for the ale, not the other way around.

Good way to look at it!

[Beren3000]

I started In Memoriam yesterday. Powerful stuff! I just finished reading canto VI and I love its ending!

[Rosie Gamgee]

I must admit that the sheer volume of In Memoriam really intimidates me. I have not read it, save for stray verses here and there- that, consequently, I cannot remember. I'll get around to it one of these days, I suppose.

I just bought a book of peotry by famous authors- Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, etc. It has Charge of the Light Brigade in it. I love that poem! The sheer darkness of it all- the tradegy, the glory, the loss, the victory! Wonderful! I love T's way of exalting the nameless nobodies without giving them a name- 'Noble six hundred!', etc.

[sun-star]

'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is an interesting poem to think of in terms of a poet's public role. Tennyson seems to have been one of the more successful Poet Laureates* and I think this poem demonstates why - he manages to capture a national mood, while also writing a poem which stands alone as good poetry. Some wonderful poets have been Poet Laureate, but few of them have succeeded in adapting their work to the public requirements as well as Tennyson did. Do you think there is a particular reason for this? Is Tennyson a more accessible writer, who can be enjoyed by people who don't usually like poetry?

Also, it's curious that 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', which is about failure, is more popular than 'The Charge of the Heavy Brigade', which is about success. They're similar in other respects. Heroic failure must make better subject matter for poetry - like the Battle of Maldon

*Poets Laureate, I suppose, but you know what I mean

[Beren3000]

Check this out

Tennyson reads The Charge of the Light Brigade

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by sun-star

Is Tennyson a more accessible writer, who can be enjoyed by people who don't usually like poetry?

I don't know that on the whole he is a particularily engaging poet (his poems are often very loooooong and hard to digest), but he could write some catchy stuff- The Lady of Shalott, Roses on the Terrace, or The Charge of the Light Brigade, for instance. I think this may be the reason that particular poem is well-liked- it is very eloquent and moving, emotionally stirring, full of national pride, and hey, it rhymes and the meter is practical.

About it being more popular than The Charge of the Heavy Brigade (which I have never read)- which is, you say, about a victory- I personally am attracted to tragic stories. I think that poetry is a medium that lends itself partcularily well to tragedy- there's probably more melancholy poems than there are really happy ones- and it therefore stands to reason that, in general, if you like poetry you like tragedy, to a certain extent. Thus a poem about failure and sadness is more appealing than a poem where everyone lives happily ever after- in general.
Anyway, it's a theory.

[Lotesse]

all you Tennyson addicts out there, here is my all-time favourtie Tennyson poem, which is rather lenghy so I'll break it up into a couple posts.




ulysses

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 hoard, 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 shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
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,
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.

[Falagar]

Ulysses is, I think, my favorite as well, though there are quite a few of his I enjoy

[Beren3000]

Lotesse, Ulysses is indeed a great Tennyson poem. What other poems by Tennyson do you like?

[Lotesse]

here's one for you, Beren...


In Memoriam
A. H. H.

XLIII
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Thro' all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower :

So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;

And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[Beren3000]

In Memoriam is definitely great. My favorite Canto of it is:

XXI.

I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.

The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
‘This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.’

Another answers, ‘Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.’

A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?

‘A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?’

Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:

And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol’n away.

Have you read The Miller's Daughter? It's in my second post in this thread. If you find time tell me what you think of it.

[Lotesse]

I hadn't read "The Miller's Daughter" before; of course I feel this poem. Anyway, it is an impossibility for me to remain unaffected by the subtle emotional power of Tennyson's verse. He was a lingual artist, a genius.
My wonderful, terribly missed grandfather in England was passionate about Tennyson, and turned me on to his works while I was still very young, for which I'm eternallly grateful.
Did it seem to you that there were a few word combinations in "Millers Daughter" reminiscent of "Ulysses"?

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

My wonderful, terribly missed grandfather in England was passionate about Tennyson, and turned me on to his works while I was still very young, for which I'm eternallly grateful.

Discovering poetry at an early age...now that sounds interesting!

Originally Posted by Lotesse

Did it seem to you that there were a few word combinations in "Millers Daughter" reminiscent of "Ulysses"?

Not really. What's your take on it?

[Lotesse]

Here is the way I am feeling as of late...


Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly glows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

- A. Lord Tennyson, 1830

[Rosie Gamgee]

I'm sorry. How come? Take a walk in the woods, eh? The flowers are blooming and the trees are leaving (or is the leafing?)...

'And all so variously wrought;
I wondered 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!"'

~ A, LT

[Beren3000]

This may not be news to some of you but I never knew it before:
Yesterday I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary on war. They were talking about industrialized war and all... and they mentioned the charge of the light brigade at Balaklava. Apparently the light brigade was real and they were charged to capture a russian cannon battery. According to the documentary, the light brigade numbered about 637 men!
The strange thing is they never mentioned Tennyson at all...