Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun: Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun—[20] O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet. Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall. Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. [1] 1842. And round the gables. [2] “Gleams,” it appears, is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson had never, he said, heard of that meaning of “gleams,” adding he wished he had. He meant nothing more in the passage than “to express the flying gleams of light across a dreary moorland when looking at it under peculiarly dreary circumstances”. See for this, _Life_, iii., 82. [3] 1842 and all up to and including 1850 have a capital _R_ to robin. [4] Cf. W. R. Spencer (_Poems_, p. 166):— What eye with clear account remarks The ebbing of his glass, When all its sands are diamond sparks That dazzle as they pass. But this is of course in no way parallel to Tennyson’s subtly beautiful image, which he himself pronounced to be the best simile he had ever made. [5] Cf. Guarini, _Pastor Fido_:— Ma i colpi di due labbre innamorate Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca, ... ove l’ un alma e l’altra Corre. [6] _Cf._ Horace’s _Annosa Cornix_, Odes III., xvii., 13. [7] The reference is to Dante, _Inferno_, v. 121-3:— Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. For the pedigree and history of this see the present editor’s _Illustrations of Tennyson_, p. 63. [8] The epithet “dreary” shows that Tennyson preferred realistic picturesqueness to dramatic propriety. [9] See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_. [10] See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_. [11] Tennyson said that this simile was suggested by a passage in _Pringle’s Travels;_ the incident only is described, and with thrilling vividness, by Pringle; but its application in simile is Tennyson’s. See _A Narrative of a Residence in South Africa_, by Thomas Pringle, p. 39: