“Yet, mother Ida, hear me ere I die. I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me, more and more, Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it is born. I will not die alone. “Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone, Lest their shrill, happy laughter, etc. (Same as last stanza of subsequent editions.) [1] Tennyson, as we learn from his _Life_ (vol. i., p. 83), began _Œnone_ while he and Arthur Hallam were in Spain, whither they went with money for the insurgent allies of Torrigos in the summer of 1830. He wrote part of it in the valley of Cauteretz in the Pyrenees, the picturesque beauty of which fascinated him and not only suggested the scenery of this Idyll, but inspired many years afterwards the poem _All along the valley_. The exquisite scene with which the Idyll opens bears no resemblance at all to Mount Ida and the Troad. [2] Gargarus or Gargaron is the highest peak of the Ida range, rising about 4650 feet above the level of the sea. [3] The epithet many-fountain’d πλπῖδαοξ is Homer’s stock epithet for Ida. _Cf. Iliad_, viii., 47; xiv., 283, etc., etc. [4] A literal translation from a line in Callimachus, _Lavacrum Palladis_, 72: μεσαμβρινὴ δ’ ἔιχ’ ὅρος ἡσυχία (noonday quiet held the hill). [5] So Theocritus, _Idyll_, vii., 22:— Ανίκα δὴ καὶ σαῦρος ἐφ’ αἱμασιᾶισι καθεύδει. (When indeed the very lizard is sleeping on the loose stones of the wall.) [6] This extraordinary mistake in natural history (the cicala being of course loudest in mid noonday when the heat is greatest) Tennyson allowed to stand, till securing accuracy at the heavy price of a pointless pleonasm, he substituted in 1884 “and the winds are dead”. [7] An echo from _Henry VI._, part ii., act ii., se. iii.:— Mine eyes arc full of tears, my heart of grief. [8] Œnone was the daughter of the River-God Kebren. [9] For the myth here referred to see Ovid, _Heroides_, xvi., 179-80:— Ilion aspicies, firmataque turribus altis Moenia, Phoeboeae; structa canore lyrae. It was probably an application of the Theban legend of Amphion, and arose from the association of Apollo with Poseidon in founding Troy. A fabric huge _Rose like an exhalation,_ (Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, i., 710-11.) _Cf. Gareth and Lynette_, 254-7. [10] The river Simois, so often referred to in the _Iliad_, had its origin in Mount Cotylus, and passing by Ilion joined the Scamander below the city. [11] _Cf._ the σύνοφρυς κόρα (the maid of the meeting brows) of Theocritus, _Id._, viii., 72. This was considered a great beauty among the Greeks, Romans and Orientals. Ovid, _Ars. Amat_., iii., 201, speaks of women effecting this by art: “Arte, supercilii confinia nuda repletis”.