And trust me, while I turn’d the page, And track’d you still on classic ground, I grew in gladness till I found My spirits in the golden age. For me the torrent ever pour’d And glisten’d—here and there alone The broad-limb’d Gods at random thrown By fountain-urns;-and Naiads oar’d A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars; on the swell The silver lily heaved and fell; And many a slope was rich in bloom From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks, To him who sat upon the rocks, And fluted to the morning sea. [1] _Cf_. Lear’s description of Tempe: “It is not a vale, it is a narrow pass, and although extremely beautiful on account of the precipitous rocks on each side, the Peneus flowing deep in the midst between the richest overhanging plane woods, still its character is distinctly that of a ravine.” (_Journal_, 409.) [2] The Akrokeraunian walls: the promontory now called Glossa. [3] Tomóhr, Tomorit, or Tomohritt is a lofty mountain in Albania not far from Elbassan. Lear’s account of it is very graphic: “That calm blue plain with Tomóhr in the midst like an azure island in a boundless sea haunts my mind’s eye and varies the present with the past”. Lady Clare First published 1842. After 1851 no alterations were made. This poem was suggested by Miss Ferrier’s powerful novel _The Inheritance_. A comparison with the plot of Miss Ferrier’s novel will show with what tact and skill Tennyson has adapted the tale to his ballad. Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, marries a Miss Sarah Black, a girl of humble and obscure birth. He dies, leaving a widow and as is supposed a daughter, Gertrude, who claim the protection of Lord Rossville, as the child is heiress presumptive to the earldom. On Lord Rossville’s death she accordingly becomes Countess of Rossville. She has two lovers, both distant connections, Colonel Delmour and Edward Lyndsay. At last it is discovered that she was not the daughter of Thomas St. Clair and her supposed mother, but of one Marion La Motte and Jacob Leviston, and that Mrs. St. Clair had adopted her when a baby and passed her off as her own child, that she might succeed to the title. Meanwhile Delmour by the death of his elder brother succeeds to the title and estates forfeited by the detected foundling, but instead of acting as Tennyson’s Lord Ronald does, he repudiates her and marries a duchess. But her other lover Lyndsay is true to her and marries her. Delmour not long afterwards dies without issue, and Lyndsay succeeds to the title, Gertrude then becoming after all Countess of Rossville. In details Tennyson follows the novel sometimes very closely. Thus the “single rose,” the poor dress, the bitter exclamation about her being a beggar born, are from the novel. The 1842 and all editions up to and including 1850 begin with the following stanza and omit stanza 2:—