Introduction✦

I

The development of Tennyson’s genius, methods, aims and capacity of achievement in poetry can be studied with singular precision and fulness in the history of the poems included in the present volume. In 1842 he published the two volumes which gave him, by almost general consent, the first place among the poets of his time, for, though Wordsworth was alive, Wordsworth’s best work had long been done. These two volumes contained poems which had appeared before, some in 1830 and some in 1832, and some which were then given to the world for the first time, so that they represent work belonging to three eras in the poet’s life, poems written before he had completed his twenty-second year and belonging for the most part to his boyhood, poems written in his early manhood, and poems written between his thirty-first and thirty-fourth year.

The poems published in 1830 had the following title-page: “Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830”. They are fifty-six in number and the titles are:—

Claribel. Lilian. Isabel. Elegiacs.* The “How” and the “Why”. Mariana. To —— . Madeline. The Merman. The Mermaid. Supposed Confessions of a second-rate sensitive mind not in unity with itself.* The Burial of Love. To — (Sainted Juliet dearest name.) Song. The Owl. Second Song. To the same. Recollections of the Arabian Nights. Ode to Memory. Song. (I’ the glooming light.) Song. (A spirit haunts.) Adeline. A Character. Song. (The lint-white and the throstle cock.) Song. (Every day hath its night.) The Poet. The Poet’s Mind. Nothing will die.* All things will die.* Hero to Leander. The Mystic. The Dying Swan. A Dirge. The Grasshopper. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness. Chorus (in an unpublished drama written very early). Lost Hope. The Deserted House.*† The Tears of Heaven. Love and Sorrow. To a Lady Sleeping. Sonnet. (Could I outwear my present state of woe.) Sonnet. (Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon.) Sonnet. (Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good.) Sonnet. (The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain.) Love. Love and Death. The Kraken.* The Ballad of Oriana. Circumstance. English War Song. National Song. The Sleeping Beauty. Dualisms. We are Free. The Sea-Fairies.*† Sonnet to J.M.K. οἱ ῥέοντες

Of these the poems in italics appeared in the edition of 1842, and were not much altered. Those with an asterisk were, in addition to the italicised poems, afterwards included among the Juvenilia in the collected works (1871-1872), though excluded from all preceding editions of the poems. Those with both a dagger and an asterisk were restored in editions previous to the first collected editions of the works.

In December, 1832, appeared a second volume (it is dated on the title-page, 1833): “Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Moxon, MDCCCXXXIII.” This contains thirty poems:—

Sonnet.†† (Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free.) To— .†† (All good things have not kept aloof.) Buonaparte.†† Sonnet I. (O Beauty passing beauty, sweetest Sweet.) Sonnet II.†† (But were I loved, as I desire to be.) The Lady of Shalott.* _Mariana in the South._* Eleanore. _The Miller’s Daughter._* φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν Ἔμμεν ἀνήρ. Œnone. The Sisters. To— . (With the Palace of Art.)* _The Palace of Art_* The May Queen. New Year’s Eve. The Hesperides. The Lotos Eaters. Rosalind.†† _A Dream of Fair Women_* Song. (Who can say.) Margaret. Kate. Sonnet. Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection. Sonnet.†† On the result of the late Russian invasion of Poland. Sonnet.†† (As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood.) O Darling Room. To Christopher North. The Death of the Old Year. To J. S.

Of these the poems italicised were included in the edition of 1842; those marked with an asterisk being greatly altered and in some cases almost rewritten, those marked with a dagger being practically unaltered. To those reprinted in the collected works a double dagger is prefixed.

In 1842 appeared the two volumes which contained, in addition to the selections made from the two former volumes, several new poems:—

“Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In two volumes. London: Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII.”

The first volume is divided into two parts: Selections from the poems published in 1830, Claribel to the Sonnet to J. M. K. inclusive. Selections from the poems of 1832, The Lady of Shalott to The Goose inclusive. The second volume contains poems then, with two exceptions, first published.

The Epic. Morte d’Arthur. The Gardener’s Daughter. Dora. Audley Court. Walking to the Mail. St. Simeon Stylites. Conclusion to the May Queen. The Talking Oak. Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Love and Duty. Ulysses. Locksley Hall. Godiva. The Two Voices. The Day Dream. Prologue. The Sleeping Palace. The Sleeping Beauty. The Arrival. The Revival. The Departure. Moral. L’Envoi. Epilogue. Amphion. St. Agnes. Sir Galahad. Edward Gray. Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock. Lady Clare. The Lord of Burleigh. Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. A Farewell. The Beggar Maid. The Vision of Sin. The Skipping Rope. “Move Eastward, happy Earth.” “Break, break, break.” The Poet’s Song.

Only two of these poems had been published before, namely, St. Agnes, which was printed in The Keepsake for 1837, and The Sleeping Beauty in The Day Dream, which was adopted with some alterations from the 1830 poem, and only one of these poems was afterwards suppressed, The Skipping Rope, which was, however, allowed to stand till 1851. In 1843 appeared the second edition of these poems, which is merely a reprint with a few unimportant alterations, and which was followed in 1845 and in 1846 by a third and fourth edition equally unimportant in their variants, but in the fourth The Golden Year was added. In the next edition, the fifth, 1848, The Deserted House was included from the poems of 1830. In the sixth edition, 1850, was included another poem, To— , after reading a Life and Letters, reprinted, with some alterations, from the Examiner of 24th March, 1849.

The seventh edition, 1851, contained important additions. First the Dedication to the Queen, then Edwin Morris, the fragment of The Eagle, and the stanzas, “Come not when I am dead,” first printed in The Keepsake for 1851, under the title of Stanzas. In this edition the absurd trifle The Skipping Rope was excised and finally cancelled. In the eighth edition, 1853, The Sea-Fairies, though greatly altered, was included from the poems of 1830, and the poem To E. L. on his Travels in Greece was added. This edition, the eighth, may be regarded as the final one. Nothing afterwards of much importance was added or subtracted, and comparatively few alterations were made in the text from that date to the last collected edition in 1898.

All the editions up to, and including, that of 1898 have been carefully collated, so that the student of Tennyson can follow step by step the process by which he arrived at that perfection of expression which is perhaps his most striking characteristic as a poet. And it was indeed a trophy of labour, of the application “of patient touches of unwearied art”. Whoever will turn, say to The Palace of Art, to Œnone, to the Dream of Fair Women, or even to The Sea-Fairies and to The Lady of Shalott, will see what labour was expended on their composition. Nothing indeed can be more interesting than to note the touches, the substitution of which measured the whole distance between mediocrity and excellence. Take, for example, the magical alteration in the couplet in the Dream of Fair Women:—

One drew a sharp knife thro’ my tender throat Slowly,—and nothing more,

into

The bright death quiver’d at the victim’s throat; Touch’d; and I knew no more.

Or, in the same poem:—

What nights we had in Egypt! I could hit His humours while I cross’d him. O the life I led him, and the dalliance and the wit,

into

We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburn’d Canopus. O my life In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit, The flattery and the strife.

Or, in Mariana in the South:—

She mov’d her lips, she pray’d alone, She praying, disarray’d and warm From slumber, deep her wavy form In the dark lustrous mirror shone,

into

Complaining, “Mother, give me grace To help me of my weary load”. And on the liquid mirror glow’d The clear perfection of her face.

How happy is this slight alteration in the verses To J. S. which corrects one of the falsest notes ever struck by a poet:—

A tear Dropt on my tablets as I wrote.

A tear Dropt on the letters as I wrote.

or where in Locksley Hall a splendidly graphic touch of description is gained by the alteration of “droops the trailer from the crag” into “swings the trailer”.

So again in Love and Duty:—

Should my shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, so put it back. For calmer hours in memory’s darkest hold,

where by altering “so put it back” into “remand it thou,” a somewhat ludicrous image is at all events softened.

What great care Tennyson took with his phraseology is curiously illustrated in The May Queen. In the 1842 edition “Robin” was the name of the May Queen’s lover. In 1843 it was altered to “Robert,” and in 1845 and subsequent editions back to “Robin”.