Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase.
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase.
Tennyson
"
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]
[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. ]
Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--
The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.
They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]
[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]
[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--
Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.
Mr.
Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--
Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.
I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre. "]
[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's. ]
[Footnote 6: 1842. Said. ]
[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a
couplet which he afterwards omitted:--
Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense! "
"Give him new nerves with old experience. "]
[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted
in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some
explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:
"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the
imagination was very different from that of writing them".
And on another occasion he said very happily:
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader
must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet".
Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it
expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to
comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name
for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--
"The gentle readers wax unkind,
And, not so studious for the poet's ease,
Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard
And hapless situation for a bard".
Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--
"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]
COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD. .
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]
[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. ]
Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--
The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.
They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]
[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]
[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--
Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.
Mr.
Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--
Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.
I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre. "]
[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's. ]
[Footnote 6: 1842. Said. ]
[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a
couplet which he afterwards omitted:--
Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense! "
"Give him new nerves with old experience. "]
[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted
in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some
explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:
"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the
imagination was very different from that of writing them".
And on another occasion he said very happily:
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader
must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet".
Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it
expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to
comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name
for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--
"The gentle readers wax unkind,
And, not so studious for the poet's ease,
Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard
And hapless situation for a bard".
Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--
"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]
COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD. .
