Chapter CXXIII (3)

THE STORY OF THE IDYLLS.--It is well to remember the events that led up to Arthur's death. Guinevere's guilty love for Lancelot had been discovered and revealed by Arthur's nephew, the traitor Modred. The Queen fled the court and sought refuge with the nuns of Almesbury. Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told. Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last weird battle in the west" is given in _The Passing of Arthur_, and leads up to the impressive line with which our present poem opens. Towards the close of that fateful day, there came--

A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Broke in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.

The King speaks despairingly to Bedivere, who answering, swears to him undying allegiance, and points to the traitor, Modred, who still stands unharmed:

Thereupon:--

the King
Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege
Hard on the helm which many a heathen sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

4. LYONNESSE. The geography of the _Idylls of the King_ is designedly vague. The region of Lyonnesse was supposed to be adjacent to Cornwall, and the sea now covers it. The Scilly Islands are held to have been the western limit of this fabulous country.

6. THE BOLD SIR BEDIVERE. The epithet "bold" is used repeatedly in this vaguely descriptive fashion with Sir Bedivere's name. Cf. lines 39, 69, 115, 151, 226. The use of "permanent epithets" in narrative poetry has been consecrated by the example of Homer, who constantly employs such expressions as "the swift-footed Achilles," "wide-ruling Agamemnon," etc.

Bedivere is described in _The Coming of Arthur_ as follows:--

For bold in heart and act and word was he
Whenever slander breathed against the King.

12. A GREAT WATER. This expression has occasioned much unnecessary comment on the score of its alleged artificiality. There might be a gain in definiteness in substituting "lake," or "river," as the case might be, but there would be a corresponding loss in poetry and in meaning at this particular place. "Had 'a great lake' been substituted for it, the phrase would have needed to be translated by the mind into water of a certain shape and size, before the picture was realized by the imagination." (Brimley.) It would have, consequently, been more precise, but "less poetic and pictorial."

If further justification for the expression were needed it might be stated that "water" stands for lake in certain parts of England, e.g. "Dewentwater," etc.; and, what is of more importance, that Malory uses "water" in the same sense: "The king . . . . saw afore him in a great water a little ship." _Morte d'Arthur_ iv. 6.

21. OF CAMELOT. Arthur's capital, as noted in _The Lady of Shalott_. In speaking of the allegorical meaning of _The Idylls of the King_, Tennyson states that "Camelot, for instance, a city of shadowy palaces, is everywhere symbolical of the gradual growth of human beliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual development of man." Always bear in mind that Tennyson has also said: "There is no single fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever."

22. I PERISH--MADE. In _The Coming of Arthur_ this thought is amplified:

For first Aurelius lived and fought and died,
And after him King Uther fought and died,
But either failed to make the kingdom one.
And after these King Arthur for a space,
_And thro the puissance of his Table Round
Drew all their petty princedoms under him,
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reigned_.

And in _The Passing of Arthur_ we read:

Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.

23. THO' MERLINE SWARE--AGAIN. Merlin was the great wizard of Arthur's court. In the allegorical view of the poem he typifies the intellect, or, in Tennyson's words: "the sceptical understanding."

This prophecy concerning Arthur is again referred to in _The Coming of Arthur_:

And Merlin in our time
Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn,
Though men may wound him, that he will not die,
But pass and come again.

This belief is common to all the Arthurian sources. Compare, for example, Wace's _Brut_: "Arthur, if the story lies not, was mortally wounded in the body: he had himself borne to Avalon to heal his wounds. There he is still; the Britons await him, as they say and understand . . . The prophet spoke truth, and one can doubt, and always will doubt whether he is dead or living." Dr. Sykes writes that, "The sleep of Arthur associates the British story with the similar stories of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Brian in Ireland, Boabdil el Chico in Spain, etc."

27. EXCALIBUR. Arthur's magical sword. It is described in _The Coming of Arthur_, ll. 295 f., as:

the sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur rowed across and took it--rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,
Bewildering heart and eye--the blade so bright
That men are blinded by it--on one side,
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
"Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
"Cast me away."

It has been variously held that Excalibur typifies temporal authority, or spiritual power. The casting away of the sword, therefore, represents the inevitable change in which human things are involved, and even faith itself. Compare _Morte d'Arthur_, ll. 240-241.

Magical weapons and enchanted armour are a portion of the equipment of almost all the great legendary heroes. Their swords and their horses usually bear distinctive names. Roland's sword was _Durandal_, and Charlemagne's was _Joyeuse_.

37. FLING HIM. The sword is viewed as possessing life.

THE MIDDLE MERE. Compare a similar classical construction in Oenone, l. 10, topmost Gargarus.

53-55. THE WINTER MOON--HILT. The frosty air made the moonlight more than usually brilliant.

60. THIS WAY--MIND. An echo of Vergil's line, Aeneid, VIII. 20. _Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc_. "And he divides his swift mind now this way, now that."

63. MANY-KNOTTED WATER FLAGS. Dr. Sykes has a careful note on this expression (_Select Poems of Tennyson_; Gage & Co.). "The epithet many-knotted is difficult to explain. The possible explanations would refer the description to (1) the root-stock of the flag, which shows additional bulbs from year to year; (2) the joints in the flower stalks, of which some half-dozen may be found on each stalk; (3) the large seed-pods that terminate in stalks, a very noticeable feature when the plant is sere; (4) the various bunches or knots of iris in a bed of the plants, so that the whole phrase suggests a thickly matted bed of flags. I favour the last interpretation, though Tennyson's fondness of technical accuracy in his references makes the second more than possible."

70-71. I HEARD--CRAG. It is interesting to read Chapter V., Book XXI. of Malory in connection with Tennyson's version of the story. He is throughout true to the spirit of the original. _A propos_ of lines 70-71, we find in Malory: "What saw thou, there?" said the King. "Sir," he said, "I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan." Tennyson, in these two lines, gives us a consummate example of creative imitation.

84. COUNTING THE DEWY PEBBLES. This aptly describes the absorption of his mind.

85 f. and 56-58 supra. Compare the description of Excalibur, and of Bedivere's hesitancy, in Malory's book. "So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree."

104. THE LONELY MAIDEN OF THE LAKE. The "Lady of the Lake" was present at the crowning of Arthur. In the _Coming of Arthur_ she is described as dwelling--

Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

Arthur's first meeting with her is described in Malory:-- "So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. 'Lo,' said Merlin, 'yonder is that sword that I spake of.' With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake; 'What damsel is that?' said Arthur. 'That is the Lady of the Lake,' said Merlin; 'and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any upon earth, and richly beseen.'"

In _Gareth and Lynette_ the Lady of the Lake is mystically figured forth upon the great gate of Camelot.

105-106. NINE YEARS--HILLS. Hallam, Lord Tennyson, in the Memoir, quotes Fitzgerald's short account of a row on Lake Windermere with the poet; "'Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for a week from dear Spedding's (Mirehouse), at the end of May, 1835; resting on our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred quoted from the lines he had lately read us from the MS. of _Morte d'Arthur_ about the lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur:

"Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps,
Under the hidden bases of the hills.

"--Not bad, that. Fitz, is it?

"This kind of remark he would make when rendering his own or others' poetry when he came to lines that he particularly admired from no vanity but from a pure feeling of artistic pleasure." (Vol. I. pp. 152-153).

112. Note the slowness of the movement expressed in the rhythm of this line, and compare with it line 168. Contrast the swiftness and energy expressed in ll. 133-136.

121. AUTHORITY--KING. This line has been described as Shakespearian. Its strength is derived from the force of the metaphorical personification. The boldness of the poetical construction is carried into the metaphor in the next line.

129. FOR A MAN. Because a man.

132. AND SLAY THEE WITH MY HANDS. Compare Malory: "And but if thou do now as I bid thee, if ever I may see thee, I shall slay thee with mine own hands, for thou wouldest for my rich sword see me dead." In Rowe and Webb's edition it is suggested that 'with my hands' is added for one of two reasons,--either "because he had now no sword; or more probably, these words are introduced in imitation of Homer's habit of mentioning specific details: cf. 'he went taking long steps with his feet.'" This explanation is ingenious, but unnecessary in view of the quotation from Malory. The note proceeds: "Notice the touch of human personality in the king's sharp anger; otherwise Arthur is generally represented by Tennyson as a rather colourless being, and as almost 'too good for human nature's daily food.'"

133-142. Brimley in his valuable essay on Tennyson, analyses this poem in some detail. Of this passage he writes: "A series of brilliant effects is hit off in these two words, 'made lightnings.' 'Whirl'd in an arch,' is a splendid instance of sound answering to sense, which the older critics made so much of; the additional syllable which breaks the measure, and necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to express to the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted through a page, and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without any result but interrupting his narrative, where Tennyson in three lines strikingly illustrates the fact he has to tell,--associates it impressively with one of Nature's grandest phenomena, and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon besides." The whole essay deserves to be carefully read.

143. DIPT THE SURFACE. A poetical construction.

157. Note the personification of the sword.

182-183. CLOTHED--HILLS. His breath made a vapour in the frosty air through which his figure loomed of more than human size. Tennyson gives us the same effect in _Guinevere_, 597:

The moving vapour rolling round the King,
Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold.

But the classical example is found in Wordsworth's description of the mountain shepherd in _The Prelude_, Book VIII.

When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes
Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,
In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,
His sheep like Greenland bears, or as he stepped
Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,
His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun,

191-192. AND ON A SUDDEN--MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come out in a moment upon--

"the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon!"

193. HOVE=hove in sight.

The closing scene in this drama is impressively described by Malory. "So Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he saw. 'Alas,' said the King, 'help me hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long.' Then Sir Bedivere took the King upon his back, and so went with him to that water side. And when they were at the water side, even fast by the bank hoved a little barge, with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. 'Now, put me into the barge,' said the King: and so they did softly. And there received him three queens with great mourning, and so they set him down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head; and then that queen said; 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath caught overmuch cold.' And so then they rowed from the land; and Sir Bedivere beheld ail those ladies go from him. Then Sir Bedivere cried; 'Ah, my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye so from me, and leave me here alone among mine enemies?' 'Comfort thyself,' said the King:, 'and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I will into the vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul.' But ever the queens and the ladies wept and shrieked, that it was pity to hear. And, as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and wailed, and so took the forest, and so he went all that night. . . . . ."

It is interesting to note how the poet suggests here and there the phrasing of his original, but even more interesting to note his amplifications. It may be doubted whether Tennyson has here surpassed his original. For its touching simplicity he has substituted a dignified grandeur, and has involved plain statements in gorgeous rhetoric, as in his passage upon the efficacy of prayer. The unadorned original had said only "pray for my soul."

198. THREE QUEENS WITH CROWNS OF GOLD. "That one was King Arthur's sister, Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgales (Wales); the third was the Lady of the lake." _Malory_.

215-216. DASH'D WITH DROPS--OF ONSET. Words are sometimes poetical from their precision, and sometimes, as here, they suggest without definite reference. The meaning is "dashed with drops of blood" from the onset or encounter.

2t6-220. Arthur is again described in _The Last Tournament_.

That victor of the Pagan throned in hall,
His hair, a sun that rayed from off a brow
Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes,
The golden beard that cloth'd his lips with light.

228. MY FOREHEAD AND MY EYES. Compare the note to line 132. Here the specific terms are used according to the epical manner instead of the general term "face."

232-233. Compare the Gospel of _Matthew_ ii. 11.

240-242. These often-quoted lines have been already referred to above. Their very intellectuality is alien to the spirit of the original. In Tennyson's conception they afford the central meaning of the poem, and also of the completed _Idylls_. We must bow to the will of God who brings all things in their due season. Good customs too deeply rooted are like clear waters grown stagnant.

254-255. FOR SO--GOD. The idea that the earth is bound by a gold chain to heaven is comparatively common in literature from Homer downwards. Archdeacon Hare has a passage in his sermon on _Self-Sacrifice_ which doubtless was familiar to Tennyson: "This is the golden chain of love, whereby the whole creation is bound to the throne of the Creator."

257-258. IF INDEED I GO--DOUBT. There is no reason to suppose that these lines indicate Tennyson's personal misgivings on the subject of immortality.

259. THE ISLAND VALLEY OF AVILION. Mr. Rhys in his _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_ combats the old idea that Avalon (Avilion) meant the "Island of Apples" (Welsh aval, apple). The name implies the Island of King Avalon, a Celtic divinity, who presided among the dead.

The valley of Avalon was supposed to be near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, where Joseph of Arimathea first landed with the Holy Grail.

67 ff. There is an evident symbolical meaning in this dream. Indeed Tennyson always appears to use dreams for purposes of symbol. The lines are an application of the expression; "The old order changeth," etc. The parson's lamentation expressed in line 18, "Upon the general decay of faith," is also directly answered by the assertion that the modern Arthur will arise in modern times. There is a certain grotesqueness in the likening of King Arthur to "a modern gentleman of stateliest port." But Tennyson never wanders far from conditions of his own time. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes; "Arthur, as the modern gentleman, as the modern ruler of men, such a ruler as one of our Indian heroes on the frontier, is the main thing in Tennyson's mind, and his conception of such a man contains his ethical lesson to his countrymen."

THE BROOK

Published in 1855 in the volume, _Maud and other Poems_. _The Brook_ is one of the most successful of Tennyson's idylls, and is in no degree, as the earlier poem _Dora_ was, a Wordsworthian imitation. The brook itself, which bickers in and out of the story as in its native valley, was not the Somersby brook, which does not now "to join the brimming river," but pours into the sea. The graylings and other details are imaginary. A literary source has been suggested (see Dr. Sykes' note) in Goethe's poem, _Das Baechlein_, which begins:

klar, and clear, sinn; and think; du hin? goest thou? Du Bachlein, silberhell und Thou little brook, silver bright Du eilst vorueber immerdar, Thou hastenest ever onward, Am Ufer steh' ich, sinn' und I stand on the brink, think Wo kommst du her? Wo gehst Whence comest thou? Where

The Brook replies:

Schoss, dark rocks,
Moss'. and moss.
Ich komm' aus dunkler Felsen I come from the bosom of the Mein Lauf
geht ueber Blum' und My course goes over flowers

The charm of the poem lies in its delicate characterization, in its tone of pensive memory suffused with cheerfulness, and especially in the song of the brook, about which the action revolves. Twenty years have wrought many changes in the human lives of the story, but the brook flows on forever, and Darnley bridge still spans the brimming river, and shows for only change a richer growth of ivy.

6. HOW MONEY BREEDS, i.e. by producing interest at loan.

8. THE THING THAT--IS. The poet's function is thus described by Shakespeare:

As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
--_Midsummer Night's Dream_, V., 1.

17. HALF-ENGLISH NEILGHERRY AIR. The Neilgherry Hills are in Madras. The climate resembles somewhat that of England.

37. MORE IVY, i.e. than twenty years ago.

46. WILLOW WEED AND MALLOW. These are marsh plants.

93-95. NOT ILLITERATE--DEED. Katie was not without reading; but she was not of those who dabble in sentimental novels (the source of imaginary tears), and saturate themselves with unctuous charities; and whose powers to act are sapped by their excess of feeling.

105. UNCLAIM'D. As having nothing to do with her. Katie resented the implication in the question of line 100. She therefore disdained to answer it. Messrs. Rowe and Webb hold that line 100 is a hint that the speaker, Lawrence Aylmer, was responsible for James's fit of jealousy.

l25f. Note the art with which the old man's garrulousness is expressed. The cautious precision of lines 151-152 is particularly apt.

176. NETTED SUNBEAM. The sunlight reflected like a net-work on the bottom. The ripples on the surface would have this effect.

189. ARNO. A river in Italy which flows past Florence.

189-190. DOME OF BRUNELLESCHI. Brunelleschi (Broo-nei-les'-ke) was an Italian architect (1377-1444), who completed the cathedral of Santa Maria in Florence. Its dome is of great size and impressiveness.

194. BY--SEAS. Tennyson was fond of quoting this line as one of his roost successful individual lines. Its rhythm is indeed sonorous.

195-196. AND HOLD--APRIL AUTUMNS. Objection has been taken to the somewhat pedantic precision of these lines. See, however, the reference on pp. lxxii.-lxxvii. to Tennyson's employment of science in poetry.

The fact is familiar, of course, that in the Antipodes the seasons are the reverse of ours.

203. BRIONY RINGS. Formed by the tendrils of the plant.

IN MEMORIAM

The poem, _In Memoriam_, in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, was published in 1850, at first anonymously, but the authorship was not long in doubt.

Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the historian, was born in 1811. He entered Eton in 1822, and remained there until 1827, when he went to Cambridge. There he met Alfred Tennyson, and the two young men formed a friendship for one another, broken only by Hallam's early death. In 1832, he graduated from Cambridge, became engaged to Emily Tennyson, the sister of Alfred, and entered on the study of law. In 1833, he had a severe illness and after his recovery was taken by his father for a tour on the Continent, in the hope of restoring his health. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells the story of his death: "A severe bout of influenza weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and to recover his strength, one of his usual attacks apparently returned upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it; so that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a short rest. Mr. Hallam sat down to write his letters, and it was only by slow and imperceptible degrees that a certain anxiety, in consequence of Arthur's stillness and silence, dawned upon his mind; he drew near to ascertain why he had not moved nor spoken, and found that all was over." The body was brought back to England and buried in Clevedon Church, on the banks of the Severn.

The effect upon Tennyson of the death of Arthur Hallam was overwhelming. For a time it "blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and comfort to his sister." Under the influence of this great sorrow he wrote _The Two Voices_, _Ulysses_, "_Break, Break, Break_," and began that exquisite series of lyric poems, afterwards joined together in the _In Memoriam_. His friendship for Hallam remained throughout life with him as one of his most precious possessions.

The poems in the text are selected from the _In Memoriam_, and have a more or less close connection with each other. It is better, however, to regard each poem as a separate poem, without any attempt to place it in its relation to the _In Memoriam_ as a whole.

The best annotated edition of _In Memoriam_ is that by A. C. Bradley (Macmillan). Other useful editions are edited by Wallace (Macmillan), and by Robinson (Cambridge Press). Elizabeth B. Chapman's _Companion to In Memoriam_ (Macmillan), contains the best analysis of the poem.