And he sat him down in a lonely place, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly, The wild hawk stood with the down on his many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away.' The Poet's 'Not die but live a life of purest breath. This is the central idea, the holy power of love.'-TENNYSON. 'As he said himself, “This poem is a little Hamlet," the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence of a recklessly speculative age. He is the heir of madness, an egotist with the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature, passing from the height of triumph to the lowest depth of misery, driven into madness by the loss of her whom he has loved, and, when he has at length passed through the fiery furnace, and has recovered his reason, gives himself up to work for the good of mankind through the unselfishness born of his great passion.' ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON : A MEMOIR BY HIS SON, 'I can now see, and I at once confess, that a feeling, which had reference to the growth of the war-spirit in the outer world at the date of this article (Quarterly Review, 1855), dislocated my frame of mind, and disabled me from dealing even tolerably with the work as a work of imagination.-W. E. GLADSTONE, The Text. The present collection, the last of three volumes in which is included so much of Tennyson's work (except his share in the Poems by Two Brothers) as appeared up to October 1857, contains the following :—(i.) Maud, and other Poems; (ii.) Poems, 1842. 1. Maud, etc. The poem was published in a volume which appeared in 1855 with the following title :— MAUD AND OTHER POEMS BY ALFRED TENNY- Maud on its first appearance was greeted with hostile criticism on almost all sides, though it remained the poet's pet bantling' to the end. Dr. Mann's Maud Vindicated (1855) was especially acceptable to the poet,1 and the recently published Memoir contains a strikingly valuable extract from the work, giving the substance of Tennyson's own explanation of the course of the drama, or monodramatic lyric,' as the poem may well be termed. It is a "Drama of the Soul," writes the author of the Memoir, 'set in a landscape glorified by Love,' 1 He was particularly obliged to Dr. Mann for defending him against the egregiously nonsensical imputation' of having attacked the Quakers and Mr. Bright. Among the defenders of the poem was the author of Ionica, with some fine lines, entitled 'After reading "Maud," September 1855,' 'A Poet of the People published an Anti-Maud (second edition, enlarged, 1856); cp. Tennysoniana, p. 123. 2 Cp. Memoir, vol. i. p. 394-5; the poet's reading of Maud seems to have been its finest commentary. I shall never forget his last reading of Maud on August 24th, 1892.. His voice low and calm in everyday life, capable of delicate manifold inflection, but with organ-tones" of great power and range, thoroughly brought out the drama of the poem." R 1 |