No More Learning

The substantive cark, trouble or anxiety, is
generally in Old English coupled with "care". ]

[Footnote 3: Self-pleached, self-entangled or intertwined. 'Cf'.
Shakespeare, "pleached bower," 'Much Ado', iii. , i. , 7. ]

[Footnote 4: 1830. "'Long purples'," thus marking that the phrase is
borrowed from Shakespeare, 'Hamlet', iv. , vii. , 169:--

and 'long purples'
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.
It is the purple-flowered orchis, 'orchis mascula'. ]

[Footnote 5: 1830. Through. ]

[Footnote 6: Balm cricket, the tree cricket; 'balm' is a corruption of
'baum'. ]






LOVE AND DEATH

First printed in 1830.
What time the mighty moon was gathering light [1]
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:
"You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine".
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans [2] for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, "This hour is thine;
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death;
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all". [3]


[Footnote 1: The expression is Virgil's, 'Georg'. , i. , 427: "Luna
revertentes cum primum 'colligit ignes'". ]

[Footnote 2: Vans used also for "wings" by Milton, 'Paradise Lost', ii. ,
927-8:--

His sail-broad 'vans'
He spreads for flight.

So also Tasso, 'Ger. Lib'. , ix. , 60:

"Indi spiega al gran volo 'i vanni' aurati". ]

[Footnote 3: 'Cf. Lockley Hall Sixty Years After': "Love will conquer at
the last". ]






THE BALLAD OF ORIANA

First published in 1830, not in 1833.

This fine ballad was evidently suggested by the old ballad of Helen of
Kirkconnel, both poems being based on a similar incident, and both being
the passionate soliloquy of the bereaved lover, though Tennyson's
treatment of the subject is his own. Helen of Kirkconnel was one of the
poems which he was fond of reciting, and Fitzgerald says that he used
also to recite this poem, in a way not to be forgotten, at Cambridge
tables.