The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson — John Shaqi
The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord TennysonTennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
General
The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
English poetry -- 19th century
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth:
So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms
And cool impleachèd twilights. Child of Man,
See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o' the City, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes;
Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,
Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells:
Her obelisks of rangèd Chrysolite,
Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring
To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my City in their depths.
Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen _Discovery_: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement,
How chang'd from this fair City!'
Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!
[The following review of 'Timbuctoo' was published in the _Athenæum_
of 22nd July, 1829: 'We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps
without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among
us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which
is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and
that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a
young man, and that where we should least expect it--namely, in a
prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant
but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really
first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any
men that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little
work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves,
for they have assigned the prize to the author, though the measure in
which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for
honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration (50 lines,
62-112, quoted). How many men have lived for a century who could equal
this?' At the time when this highly eulogistic notice of the youthful
unknown poet appeared, the _Athenæum_ was edited by John Sterling and
Frederick Denison Maurice, its then proprietors.]
[Footnote A: Mr Swinburne failed to find this couplet in any of
Chapman's original poems or translations, and was of opinion that it
is Tennyson's own.]
[Footnote B: Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.]
=Poems Chiefly Lyrical=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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