No More Learning

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneian pass, [1]
The vast Akrokeraunian walls, [2]

Tomohrit, [3] Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me, while I turn'd the page,
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour'd
And glisten'd--here and there alone
The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown
By fountain-urns;-and Naiads oar'd

A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom

From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.


[Footnote 1: 'Cf'. Lear's description of Tempe:

"It is not a vale, it is a narrow pass, and although extremely
beautiful on account of the precipitous rocks on each side, the Peneus
flowing deep in the midst between the richest overhanging plane woods,
still its character is distinctly that of a ravine. "

--'Journal', 409. ]


[Footnote 2: The Akrokeraunian walls: the promontory now called Glossa. ]

[Footnote 3: Tomohr, Tomorit, or Tomohritt is a lofty mountain in
Albania not far from Elbassan. Lear's account of it is very graphic:

"That calm blue plain with Tomohr in the midst like an azure island in
a boundless sea haunts my mind's eye and varies the present with the
past". ]








LADY CLARE

First published 1842. After 1851 no alterations were made.

This poem was suggested by Miss Ferrier's powerful novel 'The
Inheritance'. A comparison with the plot of Miss Ferrier's novel will
show with what tact and skill Tennyson has adapted the tale to his
ballad. Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, marries
a Miss Sarah Black, a girl of humble and obscure birth. He dies, leaving
a widow and as is supposed a daughter, Gertrude, who claim the
protection of Lord Rossville, as the child is heiress presumptive to the
earldom.
On Lord Rossville's death she accordingly becomes Countess of
Rossville. She has two lovers, both distant connections, Colonel Delmour
and Edward Lyndsay. At last it is discovered that she was not the
daughter of Thomas St. Clair and her supposed mother, but of one Marion
La Motte and Jacob Leviston, and that Mrs. St. Clair had adopted her
when a baby and passed her off as her own child, that she might succeed
to the title. Meanwhile Delmour by the death of his elder brother
succeeds to the title and estates forfeited by the detected foundling,
but instead of acting as Tennyson's Lord Ronald does, he repudiates her
and marries a duchess. But her other lover Lyndsay is true to her and
marries her. Delmour not long afterwards dies without issue, and Lyndsay
succeeds to the title, Gertrude then becoming after all Countess of
Rossville. In details Tennyson follows the novel sometimes very closely.
Thus the "single rose," the poor dress, the bitter exclamation about her
being a beggar born, are from the novel.

The 1842 and all editions up to and including 1850 begin with the
following stanza and omit stanza 2:--



Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare,
I trow they did not part in scorn;
Lord Ronald, her cousin, courted her
And they will wed the morrow morn.


It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air,
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin Lady Clare.

I trow they did not part in scorn:
Lovers long-betroth'd were they:
They two will wed the morrow morn!
God's blessing on the day!

"He does not love me for my birth,
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well," said Lady Clare.