Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson Part 20

The body was brought back to England and buried in Clevedon Church, on the banks of the Severn.

The effect upon Tennyson of the death of Arthur Hallam was overwhelming.

For a time it "blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and comfort to his sister." Under the influence of this great sorrow he wrote _The Two Voices_, _Ulysses_, "_Break, Break, Break_," and began that exquisite series of lyric poems, afterwards joined together in the _In Memoriam_. His friends.h.i.+p for Hallam remained throughout life with him as one of his most precious possessions.

The poems in the text are selected from the _In Memoriam_, and have a more or less close connection with each other. It is better, however, to regard each poem as a separate poem, without any attempt to place it in its relation to the _In Memoriam_ as a whole.

The best annotated edition of _In Memoriam_ is that by A. C. Bradley (Macmillan). Other useful editions are edited by Wallace (Macmillan), and by Robinson (Cambridge Press). Elizabeth B. Chapman's _Companion to In Memoriam_ (Macmillan), contains the best a.n.a.lysis of the poem.

XXVII

"The very memory of such an affection as he had cherished for Hallam is an inspiration. Keen and acute as the sense of loss may be, it purifies rather than destroys the influence of a hallowed love--its effect is to idealize and sanctify. This general truth is enforced by several ill.u.s.trations."--_Henry E. Shepherd_.

2. n.o.bLE RAGE. Fierce love of freedom.

6. HIS LICENSE. "Lives without law, because untroubled by the promptings of a higher nature."

6. FIELD OF TIME. The term of his natural life.

12. WANT-BEGOTTEN REST. Hallam, Lord Tennyson interprets: "Rest--the result of some deficiency or narrowness."

16. NEVER TO HAVE LOVED. Life is enriched by the mere act of having loved.

LXIV

"Still brooding on all the possible relations of his old friend to the life and the love that he has left, the poet now compares him to some genius of lowly birth, who should leave his obscure home to rise to the highest office of state, and should sometimes in the midst of his greatness, remember, as in a dream, the dear scenes of old, and it may be, the humble villager who was his chosen playmate."--Elizabeth R.

Chapman.

1. DOST THOU, ETC. This section was composed by Tennyson when he was walking up and down the Strand and Fleet Street in London.

5. INVIDIOUS BAR. Obstacle to success. Invidious is used in the sense of "offensive."

7. CIRc.u.mSTANCE. Adverse circ.u.mstances.

9. BY FORCE. Strength of character and will.

10. GOLDEN KEYS. Keys of office of state.

11. MOULD. As a minister of the Crown.

14. CROWNING SLOPE. A felicitous phrase. If it were a precipice it could not be climbed.

15. PILLAR. That on which they build, and which supports them.

21. NARROWER. When he was still in his "low estate."

28. REMEMBER ME. Bradley notes that "the pathetic effect is increased by the fact that in the two preceding stanzas we are not told that his old friend does remember him."

Lx.x.xIII

"With the dawning of the New Year, fresh hope quickens in the poet's breast. He would fain hasten its laggard footsteps, longing for the flowers of spring and for the glory of summer. Can trouble live in the spring--the season of life and love and music? Let the spring come, and he will sing 'for Arthur a sweeter, richer requiem.'"--_Elizabeth R.

Chapman_.

1. NORTHERN Sh.o.r.e. Robertson explains: "The north being the last to be included in the widening circle of lengthening daylight as it readies further and further down from the equator."

2. NEW-YEAR. The natural, not the calendar year. The re-awakening of life in nature.

5. CLOUDED NOONS. From the noons, which are still clouded.

6. PROPER. Own.

9. SPIRE. Flowering spikes.

10. SPEEDWELL. "The Germander Speedwell is a slender, wiry plant, whose stem sometimes creeps along the surface of the ground before it grows upwards. The flowers have four small petals of the brightest blue, and within the flower at the foot of the petals is a small white circle, with a little white eye looking up. Two stamens with crimson heads rise from this white circle, and in the very centre of the flower there is a tiny green seed-vessel, with a spike coming out of the top."--_C. B. Smith_.

12. LABURNUMS.

"And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drops to the gra.s.s." --_To Mary Boyle_.

Lx.x.xVI

"I can open my being also to the reviving influences of Nature--as on a certain evening, balmy and glorious after the rain, when the breeze seemed as if it might breathe new life, and waft me across the seas away from the land of doubt and death to some far off sphere of more than earthly peace,"--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

1. SWEET AFTER SHOWERS, ETC. This poem was written at Barmouth.

1. AMBROSIAL. Ambrosia was the food of the immortal G.o.ds. The wind was from the west and was "divinely reviving."

4. BREATHING BARE. Making the horizon bare of clouds.

5. RAPT. Violent motion is not implied.

6. DEWY-Ta.s.sEL'D. From the showers.

7. HORNED FLOOD. Between two promontaries.

9. SIGH. "Impart as by a breath or sigh."

10. NEW LIFE. Due to the new friends.h.i.+p.

11. DOUBT AND DEATH. These have up to this time haunted him.

13. FROM BELT, ETC. Tennyson explains: "The west wind rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star."

16. WHISPER "PEACE." Stopford Brooke says of this poem: "Each verse is linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, swelling as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of earth to the landscape of infinite s.p.a.ce. Can anything be more impa.s.sioned and yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of youth and the n.o.bleness of manhood's sacred joy."