Published 1832, revised subsequently. Written 1831–2. Hallam wrote to W. B. Donne, 13 Feb. 1831: ‘It is observable in the mighty models of art, left for the worship of ages by the Greeks, & those too rare specimens of Roman production which breathe a Greek spirit, that their way of imaging a mood of the human heart in a group of circumstances, each of which reciprocally affects & is affected by the unity of that mood, resembles much Alfred’s manner of delineation, and should therefore give additional sanction to the confidence of our praise. I believe you will find instances in all the Greek poems of the highest order, at present I can only call into distinct recollection the divine passage about the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Lucretius, the desolation of Ariadne in Catullus, and the fragments of Sappho, in which I see much congeniality to Alfred’s peculiar power.’ Hallam then transcribed The Southern Mariana (AHH, pp. 401–2). She, and the other women, Iphigenia (for Lucretius’s passage, see l. 107n.), Ariadne, and Sappho, perhaps constitute an early grouping of ‘fair women’. In Allen MS, it is entitled The Legend of Fair Women; all variants are below. T. comments on l. 3: ‘Chaucer, the first great English poet, wrote the Legend of Good Women. From among these Cleopatra alone appears in my poem.’ J. F. A. Pyre points out that T.’s stanza form is used in Vaughan’s Psalm 104 (The Formation of Tennyson’s Style, 1921, p. 44). Cp. the stanza of The Poet (I 243), and of The Palace of Art (p. 50).
I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
‘ The Legend of Good Women’, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, though my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,
Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.
Those far-renownèd brides of ancient song
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars,
And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,
And trumpets blown for wars;
And clattering flints battered with clanging hoofs;
And I saw crowds in columned sanctuaries;
And forms that passed at windows and on roofs
Of marble palaces;
Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall
Dislodging pinnacle and parapet
Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall;
Lances in ambush set;
And high shrine-doors burst through with heated blasts
That run before the fluttering tongues of fire;
White surf wind-scattered over sails and masts,
And ever climbing higher;
Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates,
And hushed seraglios.
So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land
Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way,
Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand,
Torn from the fringe of spray.
I started once, or seemed to start in pain,
Resolved on noble things, and strove to speak,
As when a great thought strikes along the brain,
And flushes all the cheek.
And once my arm was lifted to hew down
A cavalier from off his saddle-bow,
That bore a lady from a leaguered town;
And then, I know not how,
All those sharp fancies, by down-lapsing thought
Streamed onward, lost their edges, and did creep
Rolled on each other, rounded, smoothed, and brought
Into the gulfs of sleep.
At last methought that I had wandered far
In an old wood: fresh-washed in coolest dew
The maiden splendours of the morning star
Shook in the stedfast blue.
Enormous elm-tree-boles did stoop and lean
Upon the dusky brushwood underneath
Their broad curved branches, fledged with clearest green,
New from its silken sheath.
The dim red morn had died, her journey done,
And with dead lips smiled at the twilight plain,
Half-fallen across the threshold of the sun,
Never to rise again.
There was no motion in the dumb dead air,
Not any song of bird or sound of rill;
Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre
Is not so deadly still
As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine turned
Their humid arms festooning tree to tree,
And at the root through lush green grasses burned
The red anemone.
I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I knew
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn
On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drenched in dew,
Leading from lawn to lawn.
The smell of violets, hidden in the green,
Poured back into my empty soul and frame
The times when I remember to have been
Joyful and free from blame.
And from within me a clear under-tone
Thrilled through mine ears in that unblissful clime,
‘Pass freely through: the wood is all thine own,
Until the end of time.’
At length I saw a lady within call,
Stiller than chiselled marble, standing there;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.
Her loveliness with shame and with surprise
Froze my swift speech: she turning on my face
The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes,
Spoke slowly in her place.
‘I had great beauty: ask thou not my name:
No one can be more wise than destiny.
Many drew swords and died. Where’er I came
I brought calamity.’
‘No marvel, sovereign lady: in fair field
Myself for such a face had boldly died,’
I answered free; and turning I appealed
To one that stood beside.
But she, with sick and scornful looks averse,
To her full height her stately stature draws;
‘My youth,’ she said, ‘was blasted with a curse:
This woman was the cause.
‘I was cut off from hope in that sad place,
Which men called Aulis in those iron years:
My father held his hand upon his face;
I, blinded with my tears,
‘Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs
As in a dream. Dimly I could descry
The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes,
Waiting to see me die.
‘The high masts flickered as they lay afloat;
The crowds, the temples, wavered, and the shore;
The bright death quivered at the victim’s throat;
Touched; and I knew no more.’
Whereto the other with a downward brow:
‘I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam,
Whirled by the wind, had rolled me deep below,
Then when I left my home.’
Her slow full words sank through the silence drear,
As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea:
Sudden I heard a voice that cried, ‘Come here,
That I may look on thee.’
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
Brow-bound with burning gold.
She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began:
‘I governed men by change, and so I swayed
All moods. ’Tis long since I have seen a man.
Once, like the moon, I made
‘The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to my humour ebb and flow.
I have no men to govern in this wood:
That makes my only woe.
‘Nay – yet it chafes me that I could not bend
One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye
That dull cold-blooded Cæsar. Prythee, friend,
Where is Mark Antony?
‘The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime
On Fortune’s neck: we sat as God by God:
The Nilus would have risen before his time
And flooded at our nod.
‘We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
Lamps which out-burned Canopus. O my life
In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife,
‘And the wild kiss, when fresh from war’s alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailèd Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!
‘And there he died: and when I heard my name
Sighed forth with life I would not brook my fear
Of the other: with a worm I balked his fame.
What else was left? look here!’
(With that she tore her robe apart, and half
The polished argent of her breast to sight
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh,
Showing the aspick’s bite.)
‘I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found
Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,
A name for ever! – lying robed and crowned,
Worthy a Roman spouse.’
Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range
Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance
From tone to tone, and glided through all change
Of liveliest utterance.
When she made pause I knew not for delight;
Because with sudden motion from the ground
She raised her piercing orbs, and filled with light
The interval of sound.
Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts;
As once they drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts Of
captains and of kings.
Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard
A noise of some one coming through the lawn,
And singing clearer than the crested bird
That claps his wings at dawn.
‘The torrent brooks of hallowed Israel
From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon,
Sound all night long, in falling through the dell,
Far-heard beneath the moon.
‘The balmy moon of blessèd Israel
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splintered crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine.’
As one that museth where broad sunshine laves
The lawn by some cathedral, through the door
Hearing the holy organ rolling waves
Of sound on roof and floor
Within, and anthem sung, is charmed and tied
To where he stands, – so stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died
To save her father’s vow;
The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
A maiden pure; as when she went along
From Mizpeh’s towered gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and with song.
My words leapt forth: ‘Heaven heads the count of crimes
With that wild oath.’ She rendered answer high:
‘Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times
I would be born and die.
‘Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root
Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath,
Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to fruit
Changed, I was ripe for death.
‘My God, my land, my father – these did move
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave,
Lowered softly with a threefold cord of love
Down to a silent grave.
‘And I went mourning, “No fair Hebrew boy
Shall smile away my maiden blame among
The Hebrew mothers” – emptied of all joy,
Leaving the dance and song,
‘Leaving the olive-gardens far below,
Leaving the promise of my bridal bower,
The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow
Beneath the battled tower.
‘The light white cloud swam over us.
Anon We heard the lion roaring from his den;
We saw the large white stars rise one by one,
Or, from the darkened glen,
‘Saw God divide the night with flying flame,
And thunder on the everlasting hills.
I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became
A solemn scorn of ills.
‘When the next moon was rolled into the sky,
Strength came to me that equalled my desire.
How beautiful a thing it was to die
For God and for my sire!
‘It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,
That I subdued me to my father’s will;
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,
Sweetens the spirit still.
‘Moreover it is written that my race
Hewed Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth.’ Here her face
Glowed, as I looked at her.
She locked her lips: she left me where I stood:
‘Glory to God,’ she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
Losing her carol I stood pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.
‘Alas! alas!’ a low voice, full of care,
Murmured beside me: ‘Turn and look on me:
I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,
If what I was I be.
‘Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor!
O me, that I should ever see the light!
Those dragon eyes of angered Eleanor
Do hunt me, day and night.’
She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust:
To whom the Egyptian: ‘O, you tamely died!
You should have clung to Fulvia’s waist, and thrust
The dagger through her side.’
With that sharp sound the white dawn’s creeping beams,
Stolen to my brain, dissolved the mystery
Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Morn broadened on the borders of the dark,
Ere I saw her, who clasped in her last trance
Her murdered father’s head, or Joan of Arc,
A light of ancient France;
Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
No memory labours longer from the deep
Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore
That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep
To gather and tell o’er
Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain
Compassed, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
But no two dreams are like.
As when a soul laments, which hath been blest,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,
In yearnings that can never be exprest
By signs or groans or tears;
Because all words, though culled with choicest art,
Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,
Wither beneath the palate, and the heart
Faints, faded by its heat.
¶173. Opening] 1832 preceded l. 1 with four stanzas:
As when a man, that sails in a balloon,
Downlooking sees the solid shining ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon, –
Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:
And takes his flags and waves them to the mob,
That shout below, all faces turned to where
Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,
Filled with a finer air:
So, lifted high, the Poet at his will
Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,
Higher through secret splendours mounting still,
Selfpoised, nor fears to fall,
Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
While I spoke thus, the seedsman, memory,
Sowed my deepfurrowed thought with many a name,
Whose glory will not die.
E. F. Shannon (PQ xxxi (1952) 441–5) suggests that T.’s source was probably the participation of his friend Richard Monckton Milnes in a flight from Cambridge, 19 May 1829. T. may also have remembered the plates (under ‘Aerostation’) in the English Encyclopaedia (1802), of which there was a copy at Somersby (Lincoln). It has two balloon ascents, plus ‘A View from a Balloon above the Clouds’. Cp. the seventh line with Keats, Imitation of Spenser 13: ‘Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow’. Instead of these stanzas, Allen MS has:
The poet’s steadfast soul, poured out in songs,
Unmoved moves all things with exceeding might,
Fixed as between his wings the Eagle’s lungs
Unshook of his wide flight.
1 my … their] I dropt my eyelids’ H.Nbk 4.
3. 3. Arthur Hallam had called Chaucer ‘our beautiful morning star’, in The influence of Italian upon English Literature (1831; Motter, p. 227). He was echoing Denham, On Cowley 1: ‘Old Chaucer, like the morning Star’.
5. 5. H.T. compares Faerie Queene IV ii st. 32: ‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled’.
9–10. 9–10. Cp. Marvell, On Paradise Lost 5–6: ‘the Argument / Held me a while misdoubting his Intent.’ There ‘argument’ means ‘subject’.
16^17] In every land I thought that, more or less,
The stronger sterner nature overbore
The softer, uncontrolled by gentleness
And selfish evermore:
And whether there were any means whereby,
In some far aftertime, the gentler [gentle Allen MS] mind
Might reassume its just and full degree
Of rule among mankind. 1832
These lines anticipate the concerns of The Princess (1847).
18. the hollow dark: In deep and solemn dreams 59. The phrase occurs in Keats, The Fall of Hyperion i 455 (not published, though, till 1856), which suggests the status of romantic poetic diction.
21–32] Not H.MS.
23. passed] 1842; screamed 1832.
25–8] Not Allen MS.
27. tortoise: ‘the “testudo” of ancient war. Warriors with shields upheld on their heads’ (T.).
29. Cp. Semele 3: ‘The blast of Godhead bursts the doors’.
33. Squadrons and squares] And I saw files Allen MS 1st reading.
35. grates] rails Allen MS (error). iron grates: T. said of ‘Thorough the iron gates of life’, To His Coy Mistress 44: ‘he could fancy grates would have intensified Marvell’s image’ (Mem. ii 501).
36. seraglios: Paden (p. 136) remarks the influence, here and in other details, of C.-E: Savary’s Letters on Egypt (T. used the 1799 translation, Lincoln, for Fatima and other poems).
36^7]. And as a dog goes round and round again
And eyes his place of rest before he sleep,
So my s. s.1 [? sad soul] with a continual pain
Flowed eddylike and deep,
Returning on itself H.MS.
37–40] Added in H.MS, but beginning So thought chased thought…
45–52] Not H. MS; ll. 45–8 deleted in Allen MS.
52. Cp. Shelley, Queen Mab ix 175: ‘the transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep’.
53–6, 69–72] Added in H.MS, which does not have ll. 57–68.
54. T. says: ‘The wood is the Past’, and ll. 83–4, ‘i.e. time backward’.
56. Shook … stedfast] Throbbed … deepening H.MS.
61–4. T. comments: ‘Refers to the early past. How magnificently old Turner would have painted it’.
62. twilight] languid Allen MS.
67. Cp. Ode: O Bosky Brook 108–10: ‘With stillness like the stillness of the tomb / And grossest gloom, / As it were of the inner sepulchre.’ The sepulchre, as Paden says (p. 136), derives from Savary’s Letters on Egypt, the interior of the great pyramid. Cp. Isaiah lx 2: ‘The darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.’
69. As … of] Black ivy, and star-flowered H.MS. Growths of] 1842; Clasping 1832.
70. Their humid] 1842; Its twinèd 1832.
73–92] Not H.MS (missing sheet?).
77–80. Cp. Song, which immediately followed this poem in 1832:
Who can say
Why Today
Tomorrow will be yesterday?
Who can tell Why to smell
The violet, recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.
82. mine … unblissful] my … unjoyful Allen MS.
83. Paden (pp. 36, 52) contrasts the wood in Savary’s Letters on Egypt: ‘Thus abandoned to the delights of contemplation, and indulging those delicious sensations the time and place inspired, I incautiously proceeded towards the thickest part of the wood; when a terrifying voice suddenly exclaimed – where are you going? Stand, or you are dead. – It was a slave who guarded the entrance of the grove, that no rash curiosity might disturb the females who reposed upon the verdant banks.’
87. Cp. The Mystic 26: ‘Daughters of time, divinely tall’. Helen, ‘daughter of Zeus and Leda’ (T.).
100. ‘Iphigenia, who was sacrificed by Agamemnon to Artemis’ (T.).
101. sick … looks] sad … eyes Allen MS 1st reading.
106] 1883; Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears: 1832–82. T. says that the revised ‘line (as far as I recollect) is almost synchronous with the old reading; but the inversion there … displeased me’.
107. H.T. comments: ‘No doubt my father had in his mind the famous picture by Timanthes, The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia (described by Valerius Maximus, VIII ii 6), of which there is a Pompeiian wall-painting. Also the passage in Lucretius, i 84 foll.’ See headnote.
113–16] 1853; ‘The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat,
The temples and the people and the shore.
One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat
Slowly, – and nothing more.’ 1832–51
‘I thought [it] too ghastly realistic’ (T.). It had been ridiculed by J. W. Croker, QR, April 1833: ‘what touching simplicity – what pathetic resignation – he cut my throat – “nothing more!” One might indeed ask, “ What more” she would have?’
117–20. Cp. Helen, Iliad vi 345ff: ‘I would that on the day when first my mother gave me birth an evil storm-wind had borne me away to some mountain or to the wave of the loud-resounding sea, where the wave might have swept me away or ever these things came to pass.’
120]. H.MS breaks off here.
127. T. comments: ‘I was thinking of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra: “Think of me / That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black” (Antony and Cleopatra I v 28). Millais has made a mulatto of her in his illustration. I know perfectly well that she was a Greek. “Swarthy” merely means sunburnt. I should not have spoken of her breast as “polished silver” if I had not known her as a white woman. Read “sunburnt” if you like it better.’ Cp. Antony to Cleopatra (I 102).
128. Coriolanus II ii 96: ‘Brow-bound with the oak’.
129. haughty] subtle Allen MS.
132–4. John Churton Collins compared John Ford’s Witch of Edmonton II ii: ‘You are the powerful moon of my blood’s sea, / To make it ebb or flow.’ Alongside Collins’s note (Cornhill, Jan. 1880), T. wrote: ‘Not known to me’ (Lincoln).
139. dull] proud Allen MS.
141–4] 1843; ‘By him great [Beside him Allen MS 1st reading] Pompey
dwarfs and suffers pain,
A mortal man before immortal Mars;
The glories of great Julius lapse and wane,
And shrink from suns to stars. 1832–42
145–8] 1845; ‘That man, of all the men I ever knew,
Most touched my fancy. O! what days and nights
We had in Egypt, ever reaping new
Harvest [Harvests Allen MS] of ripe delights,
‘Realmdraining revels! Life was one long feast.
What wit! what words! what sweet words, only made
Less sweet by the kiss that broke ’em, liking best
To be so richly stayed! 1832–42;
What nights we had in Egypt! I could hit
His humours while I crossed them: O the life
I led him, and the dalliance … 1843
146. Canopus: ‘in the constellation of Argo’ (T.). Moore’s Lalla Rookh: The Fire-Worshippers had a footnote to ‘the Star of Egypt’: ‘The brilliant Canopus, unseen in European climates.’ The index to Charles Rollin’s Ancient History has ‘Canopus: a city of the Lower Egypt, remarkable for lewdness’; there was a copy of Rollin (1789 translation) at Somersby (Lincoln).
149. And … kiss] 1843; What dainty strifes 1832–42. Cp. these lines with Antony and Cleopatra IV viii 14–16: ‘Chain mine armed neck; leap thou, attire and all, / Through proof of harness to my heart, and there / Ride on the pants triumphing!’
150. Roman] 1843; gallant 1832–42.
151. Bacchus] 1843; captain 1832–42.
153. there … when] 1843; in those arms he died: 1832–42.
154. life … my] 1845; life: then I shook off all 1832–42; life: I had no further 1843. Allen MS has fragmentary line: In his last sigh.
155] 1845; Oh what a little snake [worm 1843] stole Caesar’s fame! 1832–42.
160. aspick’s] aspic-Allen MS, which breaks off with l. 160 (end of sheet), and then has on following sheet ll. 249–56 only.
161–4. T. compares non humilis mulier, Horace’s Odes I xxxvii 32, on the death of Cleopatra.
166. Struck] 1843; Touched 1832–42.
178. A noise] The sound H.MS extra sheet.
179. singing] chanting H.MS extra sheet.
181–4, 216–20. Adapted from Margaret 35^6, MS (I 495):
Or when the Gileadite returned,
Whether Jephtha’s daughter mourned
Two moons beside the heavy flow
Of torrent brooks in purple glens
Of Judah, leaving far below,
Leaving the fruitful olive plains,
Leaving the hope of her bride bower
In royal Mizpeh’s battled tower.
Jephtha’s daughter was sacrificed by him because of his vow to God: ‘If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering’ (Judges xi 30–1). She appears in Percy’s Reliques (Jephtha, Judge of Israel), as do Rosamond and Eleanor, ll. 250–6 (Fair Rosamond).
211. Cord] 1842; chord 1832.
222. from] 1853; in 1832–51.
225. H.T. compares Horace, Odes I xxxiv 5–6: Diespiter / igni corusco nubila dividens.
242–4. Cp. Job xxxviii 7: ‘When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’.
243. T. compares Comus 313: ‘every bosky bourn’.
251. Rosamond de Clifford, the mistress of Henry II, was said to have been poisoned by Queen Eleanor. Cp. Rosamund’s Bower (II 177). She appears in T.’s play Becket. T. may have read of her in the English Encyclopaedia (1802), of which there was a copy at Somersby (Lincoln).
253. poor] fair Allen MS.
259. Fulvia: ‘wife of Antony, named by Cleopatra as a parallel to Eleanor’ (T.).
263. he captain: ‘Venus, the star of morning’ (T.).
266. T. comments: ‘Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More, who is said to have transferred his headless corpse from the Tower to Chelsea Church. Sir Thomas More’s head had remained for fourteen days on London Bridge after his execution, and was about to be thrown into the Thames to make room for others, when she claimed and bought it… . [Her] vault was opened, and it is stated that she was found in her coffin, clasping the small leaden box which inclosed her father’s head.’
266–7. who … head] 1842; that in her latest trance / Clasped her dead father’s heart 1832.
269–72. T. comments: ‘Eleanor, wife of Edward I, went with him to the Holy Land (1269), where he was stabbed at Acre with a poisoned dagger. She sucked the poison from the wound.’