And sweet shall your welcome be:
O hither, come hither, and be our lords
For merry brides are we:
We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words:
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten
With pleasure and love and jubilee:
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten
When the sharp clear twang of the golden cords
Runs up the ridged sea.
Who can light on as happy a shore
All the world o’er, all the world o’er?
Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more.
Sonnet to J. M. K.
First printed in 1830, not in 1833.
This sonnet was addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, the well-known Editor of the Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems. He intended to go into the Church, but was never ordained, and devoted his life to early English studies. See memoir of him in Dict, of Nat. Biography.
My hope and heart is with thee thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily;
But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
POEMS, 1832
In the spring of 1831, Tennyson’s father died, requiring the poet to leave Cambridge before taking his degree. He returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years, sharing responsibility for his widowed mother and the family. At this time Tennyson published his second book of poetry, which included his now famous ballad, The Lady of Shalott. The volume received heavy criticism, discouraging Tennyson so much that he did not publish another book for ten years, though he continued to write privately. That same year, the poet’s close friend Hallam, who had recently married Tennyson’s sister, died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage while holidaying in Vienna. Hallam’s sudden and unexpected death in 1833 had a profound impact on the poet, and inspired several masterpieces, including In the Valley of Cauteretz and In Memoriam A.H.H., a long poem detailing the Way of the Soul.
The Lady of Shalott is now celebrated as one of Tennyson’s greatest poems, featuring an Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources. Tennyson wrote two versions of the poem; one published in 1833, of twenty stanzas, the other in 1842 of nineteen stanzas. It was loosely based on the Arthurian legend of Elaine of Astolat, as recounted in a thirteenth-century Italian novella Donna di Scalotta, with the 1833 version being closer to the source material than the 1842 version. Tennyson focused on the Lady’s isolation in the tower and her decision to participate in the living world, two subjects not even mentioned in Donna di Scalotta.
The first four stanzas describe a pastoral setting. The Lady of Shalott lives in an island castle in a river which flows to Camelot, but little is known about her by the local farmers. Then the mysterious conditions of the lady’s life are gradually revealed. She suffers from a curse and must continually weave images on her loom, without ever looking directly out at the world. Instead, she looks into a mirror which reflects the busy road and the people of Camelot, who pass by her island. The reflected images are described as ‘shadows of the world’ — a metaphor that suggests they are a poor substitute for seeing directly. The remaining seven stanzas describe the effect on the lady of seeing Lancelot, as she stops weaving and looks out of her window toward Camelot, bringing about the curse.
The poem poses a question that has interested artists and poets for centuries. Should artists use art to celebrate the world or should we enjoy the world by simply living in it? It has also been suggested that The Lady of Shalott is a representation of Tennyson’s view of society, with the distance at which other people are seen through the lady’s eyes being symbolic of the distance the poet feels from society. The fact that she only sees the world through a window pane is significant of the way in which Shalott and Tennyson see the world — in a filtered sense. The poem has gone on to inspire representations in numerous media forms for over a century, with some art historians going so far as to claim that the poem sparked the initial pre-Raphaelite fascination with Arthurian themes, as particularly demonstrated in the late Victorian paintings by John Waterhouse.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Mine be the strength of spirit...
To ––(“My life is full...”)
Buonoparte
Sonnet: “Oh, beauty, passing beauty!...”
Sonnet: “But were I loved, as I desire to be”
The Lady of Shalott, 1833
Mariana in the South
Eleänore
The Miller’s Daughter
Fatima (O Love, Love, Love!)
Œnone, 1833
The Sisters
To ––
The Palace of Art
The May Queen
New Year’s Eve
The Hesperides
The Lotos Eaters
Choric Song
Rosalind
My Rosalind, my Rosalind
A Dream of Fair Women
Song “Who can say...?”
Margaret
Kate
Sonnet: “Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar...”
Poland
To –– (“As when, with downcast eyes...”)
O Darling Room
To Christopher North
The Death of the Old Year
To J. S.
Waterhouse’s “I Am Half-Sick of Shadows,” Said the Lady of Shalott
John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, 1888
Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot
Mine be the strength of spirit...
Reprinted without any alteration, except that Power is spelt with a small p, among the Juvenilia in 1871 and onward.
Mine be the strength of spirit, full and free,
Like some broad river rushing down alone,
With the selfsame impulse wherewith he was thrown
From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:
Which with increasing might doth forward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
And in the middle of the green salt sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.
Mine be the Power which ever to its sway
Will win the wise at once, and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow;
Even as the great gulfstream of Florida
Floats far away into the Northern Seas
The lavish growths of Southern Mexico.
To ––(“My life is full...”)
When this poem was republished among the Juvenilia in 1871 several alterations were made in it. For the first stanza was substituted the following:
My life is full of weary days,
But good things have not kept aloof,
Nor wander’d into other ways:
I have not lack’d thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largess of thy praise.
The second began “And now shake hands”. In the fourth stanza for “sudden laughters” of the jay was substituted the felicitous “sudden scritches,” and the sixth and seventh stanzas were suppressed.
I
All good things have not kept aloof
Nor wandered into other ways:
I have not lacked thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largess of thy praise.
But life is full of weary da
ys.
II
Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go:
Shake hands once more: I cannot sink
So far far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.
III
When in the darkness over me
The fourhanded mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypresstree,
Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.
IV
And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the showery gray,
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And through damp holts newflushed with May,
Ring sudden laughters of the Jay,
V
Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnels grow;
Come only, when the days are still,
And at my headstone whisper low,
And tell me if the woodbines blow.
VI
If thou art blest, my mother’s smile
Undimmed, if bees are on the wing:
Then cease, my friend, a little while,
That I may hear the throstle sing
His bridal song, the boast of spring.
VII
Sweet as the noise in parchèd plains
Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,
(If any sense in me remains)
Thy words will be: thy cheerful tones
As welcome to my crumbling bones.
Buonoparte
He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak,
Madman! to chain with chains, and bind with bands
That island queen who sways the floods and lands
From Ind to Ind, but in fair daylight woke,
When from her wooden walls, lit by sure hands,
With thunders and with lightnings and with smoke,
Peal after peal, the British battle broke,
Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands.
We taught him lowlier moods, when Elsinore
Heard the war moan along the distant sea,
Rocking with shatter’d spars, with sudden fires
Flamed over: at Trafalgar yet once more
We taught him: late he learned humility
Perforce, like those whom Gideon school’d with briers.
Sonnet: “Oh, beauty, passing beauty!...”
Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!
How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs?
I only ask to sit beside thy feet.
Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes,
Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold
My arms about thee scarcely dare to speak.
And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek.
Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,
The bare word KISS hath made my inner soul
To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note
Hath melted in the silence that it broke.
Sonnet: “But were I loved, as I desire to be”
Reprinted in 1872 among Early Sonnets with two alterations, “If I were loved” for “But were I loved,” and “tho’” for “though”.
But were I loved, as I desire to be,
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
And range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear if I were loved by thee?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,
Fresh water-springs come up through bitter brine.
‘Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,
To wait for death mute careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, though the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.
The Lady of Shalott, 1833
Part the First.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-tower’d Camelot;
The yellow-leaved waterlily
The green-sheathed daffodilly
Tremble in the water chilly
Round about Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens shiver.
The sunbeam showers break and quiver
In the stream that runneth ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
Underneath the bearded barley,
The reaper, reaping late and early,
Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
Like an angel, singing clearly,
O’er the stream of Camelot.
Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,
Beneath the moon, the reaper weary
Listening whispers, ‘ ‘Tis the fairy,
Lady of Shalott.’
The little isle is all inrail’d
With a rose-fence, and overtrail’d
With roses: by the marge unhail’d
The shallop flitteth silken sail’d,
Skimming down to Camelot.
A pearl garland winds her head:
She leaneth on a velvet bed,
Full royally apparelled,
The Lady of Shalott.
Part the Second.
No time hath she to sport and play:
A charmed web she weaves alway.
A curse is on her, if she stay
Her weaving, either night or day,
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be;
Therefore she weaveth steadily,
Therefore no other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
She lives with little joy or fear.
Over the water, running near,
The sheepbell tinkles in her ear.
Before her hangs a mirror clear,
Reflecting tower’d Camelot.
And as the mazy web she whirls,
She sees the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower’d Camelot:
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, came from Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
`I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.
Part the Third.
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flam’d upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
<
br /> Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down from Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his arm our rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together,
As he rode down from Camelot.
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over green Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down from Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
‘Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:’
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro’ the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Part the Fourth.
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower’d Camelot;
Outside the isle a shallow boat
Beneath a willow lay afloat,
Below the carven stern she wrote,
The Lady of Shalott.
A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight,
All raimented in snowy white
That loosely flew (her zone in sight
Clasp’d with one blinding diamond bright)
Her wide eyes fix’d on Camelot,
Though the squally east-wind keenly
Blew, with folded arms serenely
By the water stood the queenly
Lady of Shalott.
With a steady stony glance —
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 18
