A wind arose and rushed upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together; and a Voice Went with it, Follow, follow, thou shalt win.' Then, ere the silver sickle of that month With 'Ho!' from some bay-window shake the night; 96-99. As long ago as 1880 Collins noted that this was a reminiscence of a quatrain from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (II. 1. 156-9): A wind arose among the pines; it shook The clinging music from their boughs, and then Dawson remarked (Study, p. 65), that it must have, consciously or unconsciously, dwelt in Tennyson's memory when writing these lines. See Tennyson's rejoinder in his letter, p. xxxviii. Mrs. Ritchie's statement should also be noted (Harper's Magazine LXVIII. 21): 'The wind . . . once. . . came sweeping through the garden of this old Lincolnshire rectory, and, as the wind blew, a sturdy child of five years old, with shining locks, stood opening his arms upon the blast and letting himself be blown along, and as he traveled on he made his first line of poetry and said, “I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind," and he tossed his arms, and the gust whirled on, sweeping into the great abyss of winds.' Compare also the line in Rizpah: And Willy's voice in the wind, 'O mother, come out to me.' 100. Briefly paraphrase the dependent clause. 109. Tilth. Cultivated soil; so in Milton, Paradise Lost XI. , and in Enoch Arden 676.—Grange. An isolated farmhouse 100 105 And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice, A little dry old man, without a star, Not like a king. Three days he feasted us, And my betrothed. 'You do us, Prince,' he said, regarded as the residence of a gentleman farmer (Standard Dictionary). Cf. the description of the grange in Mariana. There we have: Weeded and worn the ancient thatch And in Sir Galahad: So pass I hostel, hall, and grange. 'Uncultivated thickets Also In Memoriam XCI. 12; C. 5. 110. Blowing bosks of wilderness. blooming with wild flowers' (Dawson). Collins (Illustrations of Tennyson, p. 19) gives bosks as an illustration of Tennyson's propensity, like Virgil's, to 'affect archaisms and the revival or adoption of obsolete or provincial words.' Bristed says (Amer. Mag. VIII. 32): 'How like a journey in fairyland it is, with all those quaint Elizabethan words!' III. Mother-city. Metropolis; cf. 'mother-town,' In Memoriam XCVIII. 21. What is the literal meaning of metropolis? 113. 'Gama is the impersonation of insignificance and effeminacy, and his view of women is, like his character, insignificant.’ 114-5. Wace compares Shelley, Prince Athanase (II. ii. 47-51): But o'er the vision wan Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran, Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake, 116. Without a star. Stars are frequently worn by persons of rank as indications of their membership in orders of nobility. Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 'All honor. We remember love ourselves They fed her theories, in and out of place They harped on this; with this our banquets rang; To hear them; knowledge, so my daughter held, 121. Ourselves. Rolfe suggests that this should be ourself, comparing V. 198. 128 ff. Cf. III. 69 ff.; IV. 273 ff.; VI. 304 ff. 129. Husbandry. A pun? a very slender 134. Knowledge, etc. Dawson says (Study, p. 67): This is the central point of the Princess's delusion. Some have thought that Tennyson borrowed the idea of his poem from Johnson's Rasselas. It is a long way from Rasselas to The Princess. The following is the only passage upon which this theory is based, support: "The Princess thought that of all sublunary things knowledge was the best; she desired, first, to learn all sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would preside, that by conversing with the old and educating the young she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom." ... 'Others suppose that the idea was suggested by Love's Labor's Lost I. I: Our court shall be a little Academe, This is far more probable, because the plot of that play turns on the attempted seclusion of a king and his attendants for three I 20 125 130 135 Was all in all; they had but been, she thought, years in study, during which time no woman was to approach the court. The disturbing influence of love upon such a plan is the motive of the comedy.' Collins (Illustrations of Tennyson, p. 78) suggests the Faerie Queene, Bk. V., cantos iv.-vi., and adds: 'In any case, it should be carefully compared with the latter, as the moral and the teaching are identical; both being refutations of the theory advanced in the fifth book of Plato's Republic.' On the question of these origins, see Luce, Handbook, pp. 233-5. On the larger question of the rank of mere knowledge, cf. Locksley Hall: Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. In Memoriam, Invocation: Let knowledge grow from more to more, May make one music as before, But vaster. In Memoriam CXIV. 22-23: For she is earthly of the mind, But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. And indeed the whole of In Memoriam CXIV, besides the following from Cowper's Task (VI. 88–99) : Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 136. They must lose the child. Cf. Prol. 133. But all she is and does is awful; odes And they that know such things—I sought but peace; They mastered me. At last she begged a boon, A certain summer palace which I have For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more (Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed Thus the king; 140. Losing of the child. This was to be the title of one of Tennyson's songs, though in an entirely different sense; cf. p. xxxvii. The word child proves to have a cardinal importance in the poem. 142. These the women sang. How different from what the women sing between these Cantos! 148. The line halts metrically. 149. An. Should be A. What 151. The Princess, it has been said, commits three mistakes. This line discloses one, and lines 134-6 reveal two others. are they? As you read on, see which of them are ultimately abandoned. 140 145 150 155 160 152. For these brothers, see V. 245 ff. 155. Me. For my? |