ENOCH ARDEN AND OTHER POEMS BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE, JR., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND LOGIC IN UNION COLLEGE NEW YORK Gift 7-23-37 INTRODUCTION. A VOLUME of selections from the great representative English poet of the century, embodying much of his choicest and most characteristic work, may fitly be included among the issues of the "Standard Literature Series." Tennyson's writings worthily represent his age, and manifest many of the highest qualities of the thought and art of his time. Not only is his rank very high among the poets of his era, but he is also unsurpassed in the variety, interest, and charm of his work. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. Tennyson's life is eventful only in connection with his writings. These, as they successively appeared, are the milestone marks in the ascending path of fame. The poet was born August 6, 1809, at Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, and his youth was passed amid such scenes as he has described in the pleasing verse of his earlier poems. His father, himself somewhat of a poet and artist, as well as a fine scholar, was the village rector; and Alfred was one of twelve children, seven of whom were sons. Two of the latter, Frederick and Charles (afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner), had poetic gifts; Charies, auer on, joining Alfred in the publication of Poems of Two Brothers. The poet's mother was a woman of sweet and tender disposition. Alfred received his early training at the hands of his father, and, in due time, proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the chancellor's medal for the best English poem of his year. The subject was the rather uninspiring one of "Timbuctoo." At college, young Tennyson made the acquaintance of many men who attained fame in later life, among whom were Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Dean Alford, Frederick Denison Maurice, and, most endeared of all, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, whose memory he has immortalized in In Memoriam. In 1830, appeared his Poems chiefly Lyrical, containing Mariana, Claribel, Lilian, The Owl, etc., experiments in contemplative verse, overloaded, however, with ornament. Two years later, came a new collection, entitled Poems, showing a ripening of Tennyson's powers and a further development of his art. The volume included Lady Clare, A Dream of Fair Women, The May Queen, New Year's Eve, The Miller's Daughter, The Lotus Eaters, and other finished pieces of great rhythmi 9-21 cal beauty. Not a little of his work was at the time subjected to unfavorable criticism; but in spite of this he continued to write and seek new and wider fields for his now rapidly developing poetic gifts. In 1842, appeared two volumes, entitled Poems by Alfred Tennyson, which now won for him high rank as a poet of the first order. Many of these were new, though some were revisions of earlier productions. Among the former were Morte d' Arthur (now incorporated with the Idylls of the King), Dora, The Lord of Burleigh, The Talking Oak, Locksley Hall, St. Simeon Stylites, Godiva, The Gardener's Daughter, Ulysses, Sir Galahad, and the fragment "Break, Break, Break." The Princess: a Medley, was published in 1847, the motive of which is to illustrate woman's aspirations and indicate her place in relation to man. A later edition of the work was enriched by the songs which for their lyrical beauty are unsurpassed in literature. In 1850, appeared In Memoriam, the now famous elegy, and perhaps the most characteristic product of Tennyson's genius. It gives noble expression to the poet's sorrow at the death of young Hallam, his once bosom friend. The work consists of a hundred and thirty short lyrics, all representing, as it has been said, "a phase of the poet's sorrowbrooding thought." Maud, a rather sentimental metrical romance, appeared in 1855, together with some fine additional poems. The volume contains The Charge of the Light Brigade, and an Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. In this year the University of Oxford conferred on Tennyson the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law; while five years previously, on the death of Wordsworth, he had been awarded the English poet-laureateship. senses. During the years 1859-1872, appeared in successive instalments Tennyson's masterpiece, Idylls of the King, an epic of chivalry, interpreted by some as personifying in its various characters, the soul at war with the The Idylls may be read as a mere narrative-a poetical rendering of the romantic stories that gather around the legendary King Arthur; or as an allegory, opening with the birth of the soul as portrayed in The Coming of Arthur, and closing with its mystical vanishing, as recorded in The Passing of Arthur. In 1864, came Enoch Arden and Other Poems. The longer poem relates a simple but pathetic story of domestic life in a seafarer's home, which has won much favor for its rare idyllic beauty. It contains many fine descriptive passages not only of picturesque English hamlet life, but of rich tropic scenery on the desolate island upon which one of the characters (Enoch) has been cast. In the volume are The Northern Farmer (a dialect poem), Aylmer's Field, Lucretius, Sea Dreams, and Tithonus. The more important minor pieces in Tennyson's later life include De Profundis, Rizpah, The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, The Defence of Lucknow, and the spirited battle of the fleet, founded on an incident in the era of the Armada, entitled The Revenge. Other later productions are the volumes entitled Tiresias, Demeter and other Poems, Akbar's Dream, and The Death of Enone. His more ambitious modern work, which is full of extraordinary vigor and freshness, includes a number of historical dramas, the chief of which are Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket. Two of these have been placed on the stage with fine effect; but their chief merit is as historical delineations of dramatic incidents in English history, enriched by vivid character-painting and distinguished by numerous passages of strenuous and lofty thought. In 1874, the poet became Lord Tennyson, a peerage having been conferred upon him as a tribute to his worth. His death occurred at Aldworth, his seat in Sussex, October 6, 1892, in his eighty-third year, and literature still mourns the great and tuneful Laureate. POETIC FORM. Poetry is distinguished from prose by a heightened feeling which finds expression in poetic style. Thus poetry has its characteristic diction and its characteristic use of figures. It has also its own form. 1 2 Prose is based upon the every-day language of life; it is often far more elaborate and far more striking than ordinary conversation, but it never leaves the simpler form of utterance which comes naturally to everyone. Poetry, on the other hand, is always distinguished from common speech by its form. English poetry has sometimes rhyme and rhythm, sometimes rhythm alone. The poetry of our ancestors the Anglo-Saxons, and of the Teutonic tribes of Germany, had alliteration. The Greeks and Romans had an intricate system based upon the length 1 For a study of poetic diction the student may consult the introduction to Scott's "Lady of the Lake," No. 9 in this series. 2 See introduction to "Poems of Knightly Adventure," No. 26 in this series. 3 One of the latest alliterative poems in English is the "Vision of William concern ing Piers the Plowman" (about 1377), which begins thus : "In a summer season when soft was the sun, I shope me in shroudes as I a shepherd) were, In habit as a hermit unholy of works, |