My hope and heart is with thee--thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with
fieriest
energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below.
Tennyson
The.]
[Footnote 2: Till 1857. The.]
[Footnote 3: 1830. 'I the. So till 1853.]
[Footnote 4: 1830 Kist.]
SONNET TO J. M. K.
First printed in 1830, not in 1833.
This sonnet was addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, the well-known Editor
of the 'Beowulf' and other Anglo-Saxon poems. He intended to go into the
Church, but was never ordained, and devoted his life to early English
studies. See memoir of him in 'Dict, of Nat. Biography'.
My hope and heart is with thee--thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with
fieriest
energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below.
Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
First published in 1833.
This poem was composed in its first form as early as May, 1832 or 1833,
as we learn from Fitzgerald's note--of the exact year he was not certain
('Life of Tennyson', i., 147). The evolution of the poem is an
interesting study. How greatly it was altered in the second edition of
1842 will be evident from the collation which follows. The text of 1842
became the permanent text, and in this no subsequent material
alterations were made. The poem is more purely fanciful than Tennyson
perhaps was willing to own; certainly his explanation of the allegory,
as he gave it to Canon Ainger, is not very intelligible: "The new-born
love for something, for some one in the wide world from which she has
been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that
of realities". Poe's commentary is most to the point: "Why do some
persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces
as the 'Lady of Shallot'? As well unweave the ventum
textilem".--'Democratic Review', Dec., 1844, quoted by Mr. Herne
Shepherd. Mr.
