“This
morning I read in Tennyson’s songs from `The Princess.’ I don’t know that any
poet writing in English ever had a better ear than Tennyson. He is best taken
in small doses. Too much Tennyson and the costive imagination needs the
purgative of Larkin.”
Better ear? Aim
high. Milton, Keats, Richard Wilbur (who would have turned ninety-seven today)?
At that level of accomplishment, ranking is an act of ingratitude. My friend is
right about small doses of Tennyson. His caloric content can be dangerously
high. I love this from Part I of “The Princess”:
“And quoted
odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the
stretch’d forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for
ever.”
And this
from a song in Part IV:
“The
splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy
summits old in story:
The long
light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild
cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle,
blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle;
answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
And Part VII:
“Sweet is
every sound,
Sweeter thy
voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of
rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
The moan of
doves in immemorial elms,
And
murmuring of innumerable bees.”
Memorize
those final two lines (it won’t take long). In the shower this morning or on
the drive to work, sing them to yourself. Let the m’s hum in your mouth like
a hive of bees.
2 comments:
Also, listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zZm7S7mGYc
Tennyson (a propos previous post) died with Cymbeline on his deathbed (along with Lear and Troilus & Cressida, his three favourites). And, a propos this post, I agree that it's generally true about small doses when it comes to Tennyson, but isn't In Memoriam an exception, an eminently readable long poem?
PS Remember Johnson on Cymbeline? 'To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.'
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