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020 7738 2348<br />
Poetry<br />
October 2015<br />
Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 29<br />
online: www.KCWToday.co.uk<br />
IN THIS MONTH’S POETRY PAGE<br />
we head into October with some offerings<br />
from Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Emily<br />
Dickinson. Tennyson was moved to write<br />
In Memoriam A. H. H. and Ulysses after the<br />
untimely death of his best friend Arthur Henry<br />
Hallam in 1833. In Memoriam, in particular,<br />
is considered one of the greatest poems of the<br />
nineteenth century and was written over 17<br />
years. The prologue, which we include here, is<br />
believed to have been one of the last passages<br />
to have been written. In Ulysses, Tennyson uses<br />
techniques of dramatic monologue and action to<br />
draw attention to the protagonist’s heroic deeds,<br />
determination and strong desire ‘to strive, to seek,<br />
to find and not to yield.’ While the character of<br />
Ulysses is a subject of great interest with poets and<br />
playwrights throughout the centuries, Tennyson’s<br />
engagement with the virtues of perseverance and<br />
endurance was in a large part his way of coping<br />
with his deep sense of grief.<br />
In a very different vein Dickinson’s poem “Hope”<br />
is the thing with feathers arose from an almost<br />
reclusive life. She rarely left her home and<br />
mostly communicated with friends through a<br />
tireless series of poetic exchanges in letters. That<br />
Dickinson lived in such isolation gives rise to the<br />
question of how she was able to express her ideas,<br />
thoughts and feelings with such keen authority.<br />
Perhaps Dickinson’s greatest quality is her ability<br />
to use abstract ideas and material objects to<br />
explain one another and in doing so introduced a<br />
unique style of poetry to future generations.<br />
Emma Trehane Ph.D<br />
“Hope” is the<br />
thing with<br />
feathers<br />
Emily Dickinson (1891)<br />
“Hope” is the thing with feathers<br />
That perches in the soul<br />
And sings the tune without the words<br />
And never stops - at all<br />
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard<br />
And sore must be the storm<br />
That could abash the little Bird<br />
That kept so many warm<br />
I’ve heard it in the chillest land<br />
And on the strangest Sea<br />
Yet - never - in Extremity,<br />
It asked a crumb - of me.<br />
In Memoriam<br />
A. H. H<br />
Alfred, Lord Tennyson<br />
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,<br />
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,<br />
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,<br />
Believing where we cannot prove;<br />
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;<br />
Thou madest Life in man and brute;<br />
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot<br />
Is on the skull which thou hast made.<br />
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:<br />
Thou madest man, he knows not why,<br />
He thinks he was not made to die;<br />
And thou hast made him: thou art just.<br />
Thou seemest human and divine,<br />
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.<br />
Our wills are ours, we know not how;<br />
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.<br />
Our little systems have their day;<br />
They have their day and cease to be:<br />
They are but broken lights of thee,<br />
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.<br />
We have but faith: we cannot know;<br />
For knowledge is of things we see<br />
And yet we trust it comes from thee,<br />
A beam in darkness: let it grow.<br />
Let knowledge grow from more to more,<br />
But more of reverence in us dwell;<br />
That mind and soul, according well,<br />
May make one music as before,<br />
But vaster. We are fools and slight;<br />
We mock thee when we do not fear:<br />
But help thy foolish ones to bear;<br />
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.<br />
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;<br />
What seem'd my worth since I began;<br />
For merit lives from man to man,<br />
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.<br />
Forgive my grief for one removed,<br />
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.<br />
I trust he lives in thee, and there<br />
I find him worthier to be loved.<br />
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,<br />
Confusions of a wasted youth;<br />
Forgive them where they fail in truth,<br />
And in thy wisdom make me wise.<br />
Ulysses (1833)<br />
By Alfred Tennyson<br />
It little profits that an idle king,<br />
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,<br />
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole<br />
Unequal laws unto a savage race,<br />
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.<br />
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink<br />
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy’d<br />
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those<br />
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when<br />
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades<br />
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;<br />
For always roaming with a hungry heart<br />
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men<br />
And manners, climates, councils, governments,<br />
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,<br />
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,<br />
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.<br />
I am a part of all that I have met;<br />
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’<br />
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades<br />
For ever and for ever when I move.<br />
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,<br />
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!<br />
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life<br />
Were all too little, and of one to me<br />
Little remains; but every hour is saved<br />
From that eternal silence, something more,<br />
A bringer of new things; and vile it were<br />
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,<br />
And this gray spirit yearning in desire<br />
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,<br />
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.<br />
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,<br />
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,<br />
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill<br />
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild<br />
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees<br />
Subdue them to the useful and the good.<br />
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere<br />
Of common duties, decent not to fail<br />
In offices of tenderness, and pay<br />
Meet adoration to my household gods,<br />
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.<br />
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;<br />
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,<br />
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me,<br />
That ever with a frolic welcome took<br />
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed<br />
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;<br />
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.<br />
Death closes all; but something ere the end,<br />
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,<br />
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.<br />
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;<br />
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep<br />
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.<br />
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.<br />
Push off, and sitting well in order smite<br />
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds<br />
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths<br />
Of all the western stars, until I die.<br />
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;<br />
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,<br />
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.<br />
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’<br />
We are not now that strength which in old days<br />
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,<br />
One equal temper of heroic hearts,<br />
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will<br />
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.