No More Learning

Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,
Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver me the blessed sacrament;
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die to-night,
A quarter before twelve. [7] But thou, O Lord,
Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern: lead them to thy light.

[Footnote 1: For this incident 'cf. Acta', v. , 317:

"Petit aliquando ab aliquo ad se invisente funem, acceptumque circa
corpus convolvit constringitque tarn arete ut, exesa carne, quae istuc
mollis admodum ac tenera est, nudae costae exstarent".

The same is told also of the younger Stylites, where the incident of
concealing the torture is added, 'Acta', i. , 265. ]


[Footnote 2: For this retirement to a mountain see 'Acta', i. , 270, and
it is referred to in the other lives:

"Post haec egressus occulte perrexit in montem non longe a monasterio,
ibique sibi clausulam de sicca petra fecit, et stetit sic annos
tres. "]


[Footnote 3: In accurate accordance with the third life, 'Acta',
i. , 277:

"Primum quidem columna ad sex erecta cubitos est, deinde ad duodecim,
post ad vigenti extensa est";

but for the thirty-six cubits which is assigned as the height of the
last column Tennyson's authority, drawing on another account ('Id'. ,
271), substitutes forty:

"Fecerunt illi columnam habentem cubitos quadraginta". ]


[Footnote 4: For the miracles wrought by him see all the lives. ]

[Footnote 5: These details seem taken from the well-known stories about
Luther and Bunyan. All that the 'Acta' say about St.
Simeon is that
he was pestered by devils. ]

[Footnote 6: The 'Acta' say nothing about the crown, but dwell on the
supernatural fragrance which exhaled from the saint. ]

[Footnote 7: Tennyson has given a very poor substitute for the
beautifully pathetic account given of the death of St. Simeon in 'Acta',
i. , 168, and again in the ninth chapter of the second Life, 'Ibid'. ,
273. But this is to be explained perhaps by the moral purpose of the
poem. ]







THE TALKING OAK

First published in 1842, and republished in all subsequent editions with
only two slight alterations: in line 113 a mere variant in spelling, and
in line 185, where in place of the present reading the editions between
1842 and 1848 read, "For, ah! the Dryad-days were brief".

Tennyson told Mr. Aubrey de Vere that the poem was an experiment meant
to test the degree in which it is in the power of poetry to humanise
external nature. Tennyson might have remembered that Ovid had made the
same experiment nearly two thousand years ago, while Goethe had
immediately anticipated him in his charming 'Der Junggesett und der
Muhlbach'. There was certainly no novelty in such an attempt. The poem
is in parts charmingly written, but the oak is certainly "garrulously
given," and comes perilously near to tediousness.


Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah!