Published 1842, dated ‘1833’. H.T. describes it as ‘begun under the cloud of his overwhelming sorrow after the death of Arthur Hallam’, news of which was sent to T. on 1 October 1833. This statement has not hitherto been disputed, but that T. had begun it before Hallam’s death is clear from a letter by J. M. Kemble to W. B. Donne (which came down to Mary Barham Johnson). The letter is postmarked 22 June 1833: ‘Next Sir are some superb meditations on Self destruction called Thoughts of a Suicide wherein he argues the point with his soul and is thoroughly floored. These are amazingly fine and deep, and show a mighty stride in intellect since the Second-Rate Sensitive Mind.’ Clearly a version of The Two Voices was already in existence. Spedding wrote to T., 19 Sept. 1834: ‘Last and greatest (though not most perfect in its kind), I have received [from Douglas and John Heath] The thoughts of a suicide. The design is so grand and the moral, if there is one, so important that I trust you will not spare any elaboration of execution. At all events let me have the rest of it and I will tell you at large what I think’ (Letters i 118). In its origin, as Kemble points out, it is a poem like Supposed Confessions (1830, p. 7), and the earlier Remorse (1827, I 98). But T.’s writing of it may well have been affected by the death of Hallam. Both Heath MS (all variants are below) and H.Lpr 254 (virtually identical with Heath MS) stop after l. 309 with three lines added. This would be a feasible ending, and conceivably a better one. The published ending was developed later; Edmund Lushington says that T. ‘left it for some time unfinished…. The termination … I first heard him read’ in 1837 or early 1838 (Mat. i 246). Miss M. J. Donahue quotes FitzGerald’s note on l. 453: ‘Composed as he walked about the Dulwich meadows’; she remarks that T. was there in 1835 (Studies in the 10 Years’ Silence, Yale thesis, 1946, p. 142). T.Nbk 15 includes two drafts (T.MS A); the first ends with l. 96, and the second runs from l. 229–321. (But sheets are missing from this notebook.) T.Nbk 26 (T.MS B) has a fragment beginning at l. 298, and breaking off with l. 393. T.Nbk 22 also has a draft (T.MS C). The Hn MS (HM 1320) ends with l. 174; all its variants that differ from Heath MS are given below.
H.T. says that the poem, ‘describing the conflict in a soul between Faith and Scepticism, was begun under the cloud of his overwhelming sorrow after the death of Arthur Hallam, which, as my father told me, for a while blotted out all joy from his life, and made him long for death’. Thoughts of a Suicide is the title in Heath MS, as in Kemble’s letter and in T.Nbk 15; Martin (P. 76) relates the poem to Arthur Hallam’s impulse to suicide. T.’s later title may owe something, as Miss Donahue suggests, to Wordsworth’s sonnet Two voices are there, which T. read in spring 1835 (Mem. i 151). In his handling of the theme, T. was indebted to Lucretius’s discussion of death (iii 830–1094); to the solicitations of Despair in Faerie Queene I ix; and to Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be …’ T.’s tone was influenced by Job, as Carlyle suggested in 1842 (Mem i 213), Psalms, and Ecclesiastes. There are many similarities, in idea and phrasing, to In Memoriam, especially xliii–xlvii: and to On a Mourner, on Hallam’s death (p. 135). The triplet had been used by T.’s brother Charles in 1827 in Ode on the Death of Lord Bryon. T. used it in Stanzas (1833, I 536), and The Eagle (p. 96). R. Pattison argues that T. adapts the pastoral contest (amoeban idyll) of Virgil’s seventh eclogue; this, which had been often changed by Christian writers into a debate between body and soul (as in Marvell), is here ‘turned into an interior debate between the logic of despair and the assertion of hope’ (Tennyson and Tradition, 1979, p. 58).
A still small voice spake unto me,
‘Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?’
Then to the still small voice I said;
‘Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.’
To which the voice did urge reply;
‘Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
‘An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
‘He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Through crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.’
I said, ‘When first the world began,
Young Nature through five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.
‘She gave him mind, the lordliest
Proportion, and, above the rest,
Dominion in the head and breast.’
Thereto the silent voice replied;
‘Self-blinded are you by your pride:
Look up through night: the world is wide.
‘This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
‘Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres?’
It spake, moreover, in my mind:
‘Though thou wert scattered to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind.’
Then did my response clearer fall:
‘No compound of this earthly ball
Is like another, all in all.’
To which he answered scoffingly;
‘Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who’ll weep for thy deficiency?
‘Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference
Is cancelled in the world of sense?’
I would have said, ‘Thou canst not know,’
But my full heart, that worked below,
Rained through my sight its overflow.
Again the voice spake unto me:
‘Thou art so steeped in misery,
Surely ’twere better not to be.
‘Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,
Nor any train of reason keep:
Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.’
I said, ‘The years with change advance:
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.
‘Some turn this sickness yet might take,
Even yet.’ But he: ‘What drug can make
A withered palsy cease to shake?’
I wept, ‘Though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;
‘And men, through novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not.’
‘Yet,’ said the secret voice, ‘some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.
‘Not less swift souls that yearn for light,
Rapt after heaven’s starry flight,
Would sweep the tracts of day and night.
‘Not less the bee would range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells.’
I said that ‘all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.
‘Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Though watching from a ruined tower
How grows the day of human power?’
‘The highest-mounted mind,’ he said,
‘Still sees the sacred morning spread
The silent summit overhead.
‘Will thirty seasons render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain,
Just breaking over land and main?
‘Or make that morn, from his cold crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town?
‘Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge, dreamed not yet.
‘Thou hast not gained a real height,
Nor art thou nearer to the light,
Because the scale is infinite.
‘’Twere better not to breathe or speak,
Than cry for strength, remaining weak,
And seem to find, but still to seek.
‘Moreover, but to seem to find
Asks what thou lackest, thought resigned,
A healthy frame, a quiet mind.’
I said, ‘When I am gone away,
“He dared not tarry,” men will say,
Doing dishonour to my clay.’
‘This is more vile,’ he made reply,
‘To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh,
Than once from dread of pain to die.
‘Sick art thou – a divided will
Still heaping on the fear of ill
The fear of men, a coward still.
‘Do men love thee? Art thou so bound
To men, that how thy name may sound
Will vex thee lying underground?
‘The memory of the withered leaf
In endless time is scarce more brief
Than of the garnered Autumn-sheaf.
‘Go, vexèd Spirit, sleep in trust;
The right car, that is filled with dust,
Hears little of the false or just.’
‘Hard task, to pluck resolve,’ I cried,
‘From emptiness and the waste wide
Of that abyss, or scornful pride!
‘Nay – rather yet that I could raise
One hope that warmed me in the days
While still I yearned for human praise.
‘When, wide in soul and bold of tongue,
Among the tents I paused and sung,
The distant battle flashed and rung.
‘I sung the joyful Pæan clear,
And, sitting, burnished without fear
The brand, the buckler, and the spear –
‘Waiting to strive a happy strife,
To war with falsehood to the knife,
And not to lose the good of life –
‘Some hidden principle to move,
To put together, part and prove,
And mete the bounds of hate and love –
‘As far as might be, to carve out
Free space for every human doubt,
That the whole mind might orb about –
‘To search through all I felt or saw,
The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And reach the law within the law:
‘At least, not rotting like a weed,
But, having sown some generous seed,
Fruitful of further thought and deed,
‘To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor in a merely selfish cause –
‘In some good cause, not in mine own,
To perish, wept for, honoured, known,
And like a warrior overthrown;
‘Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears,
When, soiled with noble dust, he hears
His country’s war-song thrill his ears:
‘Then dying of a mortal stroke,
What time the foeman’s line is broke,
And all the war is rolled in smoke.’
‘Yea!’ said the voice, ‘thy dream was good,
While thou abodest in the bud.
It was the stirring of the blood.
‘If Nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?
‘Then comes the check, the change, the fall,
Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.
There is one remedy for all.
‘Yet hadst thou, through enduring pain,
Linked month to month with such a chain
Of knitted purport, all were vain.
‘Thou hadst not between death and birth
Dissolved the riddle of the earth.
So were thy labour little-worth.
‘That men with knowledge merely played,
I told thee – hardly nigher made,
Though scaling slow from grade to grade;
‘Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind,
Named man, may hope some truth to find,
That bears relation to the mind.
‘For every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late and soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.
‘Cry, faint not: either Truth is born
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,
Or in the gateways of the morn.
‘Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope
Beyond the furthest flights of hope,
Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope.
‘Sometimes a little corner shines,
As over rainy mist inclines
A gleaming crag with belts of pines.
‘I will go forward, sayest thou,
I shall not fail to find her now.
Look up, the fold is on her brow.
‘If straight thy track, or if oblique,
Thou know’st not. Shadows thou dost strike,
Embracing cloud, Ixion-like;
‘And owning but a little more
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,
Calling thyself a little lower
‘Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl!
Why inch by inch to darkness crawl?
There is one remedy for all.’
‘O dull, one-sided voice,’ said I,
‘Wilt thou make everything a lie,
To flatter me that I may die?
‘I know that age to age succeeds,
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,
A dust of systems and of creeds.
‘I cannot hide that some have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with Heaven:
‘Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream;
‘But heard, by secret transport led,
Even in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head –
‘Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forbore, and did not tire,
Like Stephen, an unquenchèd fire.
‘He heeded not reviling tones,
Nor sold his heart to idle moans,
Though cursed and scorned, and bruised with stones:
‘But looking upward, full of grace,
He prayed, and from a happy place
God’s glory smote him on the face.’
The sullen answer slid betwixt:
‘Not that the grounds of hope were fixed,
The elements were kindlier mixed.’
I said, ‘I toil beneath the curse,
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse.
One riddle, and to find the true,
I knit a hundred others new:
‘Or that this anguish fleeting hence,
Unmanacled from bonds of sense,
Be fixed and frozen to permanence:
‘For I go, weak from suffering here:
Naked I go, and void of cheer:
What is it that I may not fear?’
‘Consider well,’ the voice replied,
‘His face, that two hours since hath died;
Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride?
‘Will he obey when one commands?
Or answer should one press his hands?
He answers not, nor understands.
‘His palms are folded on his breast:
There is no other thing expressed
But long disquiet merged in rest.
‘His lips are very mild and meek:
Though one should smite him on the cheek,
And on the mouth, he will not speak.
‘His little daughter, whose sweet face
He kissed, taking his last embrace,
Becomes dishonour to her race –
‘His sons grow up that bear his name,
Some grow to honour, some to shame, –
But he is chill to praise or blame.
‘He will not hear the north-wind rave,
Nor, moaning, household shelter crave
From winter rains that beat his grave.
‘High up the vapours fold and swim:
About him broods the twilight dim:
The place he knew forgetteth him.’
‘If all be dark, vague voice,’ I said,
‘These things are wrapt in doubt and dread,
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.
‘The sap dries up: the plant declines.
A deeper tale my heart divines.
Know I not Death? the outward signs?
‘I found him when my years were few;
A shadow on the graves I knew,
And darkness in the village yew.
‘From grave to grave the shadow crept:
In her still place the morning wept:
Touched by his feet the daisy slept.
‘The simple senses crowned his head:
“Omega! thou art Lord,” they said,
“We find no motion in the dead.”
‘Why, if man rot in dreamless ease,
Should that plain fact, as taught by these,
Not make him sure that he shall cease?
‘Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?
‘He owns the fatal gift of eyes,
That read his spirit blindly wise,
Not simple as a thing that dies.
‘Here sits he shaping wings to fly:
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.
‘That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself on every wind.
‘He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And through thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.
‘The end and the beginning vex
His reason: many things perplex,
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.
‘He knows a baseness in his blood
At such strange war with something good,
He may not do the thing he would.
‘Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn,
Vast images in glimmering dawn,
Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.
‘Ah! sure within him and without,
Could his dark wisdom find it out,
There must be answer to his doubt,
‘But thou canst answer not again.
With thine own weapon art thou slain,
Or thou wilt answer but in vain.
‘The doubt would rest, I dare not solve.
In the same circle we revolve.
Assurance only breeds resolve.’
As when a billow, blown against,
Falls back, the voice with which I fenced
A little ceased, but recommenced.
‘Where wert thou when thy father played
In his free field, and pastime made,
A merry boy in sun and shade?
‘A merry boy they called him then,
He sat upon the knees of men
In days that never come again.
‘Before the little ducts began
To feed thy bones with lime, and ran
Their course, till thou wert also man:
‘Who took a wife, who reared his race,
Whose wrinkles gathered on his face,
Whose troubles number with his days:
‘A life of nothings, nothing-worth,
From that first nothing ere his birth
To that last nothing under earth!’
‘These words,’ I said, ‘are like the rest:
No certain clearness, but at best
A vague suspicion of the breast:
‘But if I grant, thou mightst defend
The thesis which thy words intend –
That to begin implies to end;
‘Yet how should I for certain hold,
Because my memory is so cold,
That I first was in human mould?
‘I cannot make this matter plain,
But I would shoot, howe’er in vain,
A random arrow from the brain.
‘It may be that no life is found,
Which only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.
Some draught of Lethe might await
The slipping through from state to state.
‘As here we find in trances, men
Forget the dream that happens then,
Until they fall in trance again.
‘So might we, if our state were such
As one before, remember much,
For those two likes might meet and touch.
‘But, if I lapsed from nobler place,
Some legend of a fallen race
Alone might hint of my disgrace;
‘Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height,
Some yearning toward the lamps of night;
‘Or if through lower lives I came –
Though all experience past became
Consolidate in mind and frame –
‘I might forget my weaker lot;
For is not our first year forgot?
The haunts of memory echo not.
‘And men, whose reason long was blind,
From cells of madness unconfined,
Oft lose whole years of darker mind.
‘Much more, if first I floated free,
As naked essence, must I be
Incompetent of memory:
‘For memory dealing but with time,
And he with matter, could she climb
Beyond her own material prime?
‘Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams –
‘Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.’
The still voice laughed. ‘I talk,’ said he,
‘Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee
Thy pain is a reality.’
‘But thou,’ said I, ‘hast missed thy mark,
Who sought’st to wreck my mortal ark,
By making all the horizon dark.
‘Why not set forth, if I should do
This rashness, that which might ensue
With this old soul in organs new?
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
‘’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.’
I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,
‘Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.’
And I arose, and I released
The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.
Like softened airs that blowing steal,
When meres begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church bells began to peal.
On to God’s house the people prest:
Passing the place where each must rest,
Each entered like a welcome guest.
One walked between his wife and child,
With measured footfall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.
The prudent partner of his blood
Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.
And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walked demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.
I blest them, and they wandered on:
I spoke, but answer came there none:
The dull and bitter voice was gone.
A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, ‘Be of better cheer’.
As from some blissful neighbourhood,
A notice faintly understood,
‘I see the end, and know the good’.
A little hint to solace woe,
A hint, a whisper breathing low,
‘I may not speak of what I know’.
Like an Æolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes:
Such seemed the whisper at my side:
‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried.
‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied:
So heavenly-toned, that in that hour
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,
To feel, although no tongue can prove,
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.
And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature’s living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
I wondered at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
I wondered, while I paced along:
The woods were filled so full with song,
There seemed no room for sense of wrong;
And all so variously wrought,
I marvelled how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said, ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’
¶209.1. Contrast 1 Kings xix 12, where the ‘still small voice’ is the Lord’s. Arthur Hallam’s essay on Cicero (written 1831, published 1832), said: ‘The voice of the critical conscience is still and small, like that of the moral’ (Motter, p. 153). T. wrote, 11 Nov. 1832: ‘it is a hope which is only whispered in a still small voice, though it may be returned to me realized in tones as musically clear as those of a trumpet’ (Letters i 82–3).
2–3. Cp. Remorse 42–4: ‘yet I cling / To life, whose every hour to me / Hath been increase of misery.’
5] I will not die and cast in shade Heath MS 1st reading.
5–6. Psalm cxxxix 11–14: ‘If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. … I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’
8–15. T. adapts a traditional emblem, found in Jacob Bryant’s New System of Ancient Mythology (1807 edn iii 247–8). Bryant’s work was at Somersby (Lincoln). His Plate xx is of ‘The Chrysalis … and other emblems relating to the renewal of life, and the immortality of the soul’. Bryant: ‘The Aurelia, after its first stage as an Eruca, or worm, lies for a season in a manner dead; and is inclosed in a sort of a coffin. In this state of darkness it remains all the winter: but at the return of spring it bursts its bonds, and comes out with new life, and in the most beautiful attire. The Egyptians thought this a very proper picture of the soul of man, and of the immortality, to which it aspired.’ Cp. Olinthus Gregory, On the Evidences of the Christian Religion (1811, often reprinted): ‘On the Resurrection of the Body’ uses the example of the dragonfly (described in detail) to support the likelihood of resurrection. Cp. Timbuctoo 146–54 (I 195), where the change from worm to dragonfly is T.’s simile for the lifting of his thoughts from the earthly to the infinite. Also From the East of life 20–24 (I 508): ‘The dragonfly is born from damps. // The quickwinged gnat doth make a boat / Of his old husk wherewith to float / To a new life: all low things range / To higher but I cannot change.’
9. Come] Rise Heath MS 1st reading.
10. An inner] An inward Heath MS; A sudden T.MSS A, C.
12] Burst blazing plates of crimson mail. Heath MS; Burst burnisht [burning T.MS C] plates of sapphire mail. HnMS, T.MS C.
14. crofts] holts Heath MS, T.MS A.
16–18. Invoking science as well as religion, ‘the “creative eras” which Buffon and his English followers equated with the 6 creative days of Genesis’. M. Millhauser, PMLA lxix (1954) 337.
19–21] Added in margin T.MS A.
21. head] heart Heath MS. Psalm viii 6: ‘Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.’
23. by] with Heath MS, T.MS A.
24. up through] through the Heath MS 1st reading.
29. statelier] higher T.MS A 1st reading.
32–3. Cp. In Memoriam lv–lvi (pp. 396–400).
34–6] And then my answer clearer came.
‘Be hushed, still voice: no soul or frame
In all the world is just the same.’ T.MS A 1st reading
39. thy deficiency: ‘the want of thee’ (T.).
40–2] Added in margin T.MS A.
45. Cp. The Lover’s Tale i 23, 1832 text: ‘for fear the mind / Rain through my sight’.
50. Nor] Or Heath MS.
52–7] Not T.MSS A, C, Heath MS; added in margin HnMS. T.MS A has, deleted, ll. 229–31.
52–3. Cp. Job xiv 20: ‘Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.’
59–60] That through green lanes the thorn will blow
In spicy tufts of vernal snow; Heath MS, T.MSS A, C
66. thy] your T.MS A 1st reading.
67–9] Transposed with ll. 70–2 in T.MSS A (1st reading), C, Heath MS; emended HnMS.
67] And spirits seeking truth and light, T.MS A 1st reading. that] would HnMS 1st reading.
70] Yet flies will weave their tinsel cells, T.MS A 1st reading; The umber sea will strow her shells, 2nd reading. Cp. 1st reading with In Memoriam l 10–12: ‘And men the flies of latter spring … And weave their petty cells and die’.
71] And [The 2nd reading] thorny furze light up [inflame 2nd reading] the dells T.MS A 1st reading.
72. The] And T.MS A 1st reading.
73–5] Not T.MSS A, C, Heath MS;
I said that every month invents
And every various year presents
The world with new developments. HnMS
76–8] I murmured ‘Through the space between
New knowledge, shooting beams serene,
Might curve new boughs of haler green.’ Heath MS 1st reading T. revised l. [1] ‘Yet’ said I ‘On the … l. [2] shooting beams] dropping dew l. [3] curve new boughs] feed fresh shoots. He then further revised l. 76 ‘Were this not] I said ’twere l. 78 grows the day] creep the tides. T.MS A has the revised ll. [1, 2, 3] but with the last in 1st reading as ‘pamper shoots’. T.MS C revised into Heath MS 1st reading.
80. sees] views Heath MS, T.MS C. sacred] lonely T.MS A 1st reading.
82–4] The largest mind, his orb fulfilled,
All round him sees a boundless field;
What then would fifty winters yield?
Moreover if the gold of joy
In learning would not overbuy
Thy grief, ’twere better thou shouldst die.
Six thousand suns have failed to pour
Clear lustre on the boundless shore.
Will thirty seasons yield thee more?
T.MS A, deleted
‘Six thousand suns’, because of Archbishop Ussher’s Biblical archaeology, estimating the date of the Creation – as in ‘six thousand years of fear’ (The Princess iv 486). Cp. the first line with l. 138: ‘That the whole mind might orb about’; and the eighth line with In Memoriam lxx 12: ‘And lazy lengths on boundless shores’.
83] Ever those lonely lights remain T.MS A 1st reading. The Outcast 14: ‘lonely light’.
85. Or … his] That morning from his high T.MS A 1st reading.
87. Flood … daylight] To flood with daybeams T.MS A 1st reading.
88–93] Not T.MS C, Heath MS; added in Hn MS;
One step men mount into the air
But from the landing of the stair
Are equal-distant everywhere. T.MS A
96] T.MS A ends its first fragment here.
97–9] Added in T.MS C.
97] To enjoy the found, or seem to find Heath MS, T.MS C.
99] Strength, tempered will, a quiet mind. Heath MS, T.MS C.
106. Sick art thou] Thou sickenest T.MS C 1st reading.
107. the] thee Heath MS.
110. may] will Heath MS 1st reading.
111^2] Thou shrinkest from the probe of blame,
Yet out of all that owns a name
The vainest form is human fame. T.MS C; Heath MS, deleted
113. more] less Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C.
118–20] Not T.MS C, added in Heath MS.
119–20. Note the Miltonic ‘abyss’, and ‘waste wide Anarchie’, PL x 282–3.
121. Nay – rather yet] I groaned. ‘Yet oh Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C; Oh – rather yet Hn MS 1st reading.
122. One hope] Those hopes Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C. warmed me] flourished Heath MS, T.MS C.
124–45] Missing from HnMS.
124–56. On the moral certainties of battle, cp. Locksley Hall 103–4; Thy voice is heard (The Princess iv ^ v); and the conclusion of Maud.
126. distant] swaying Heath MS, T.MS C.
135. hate] hope Heath MS.
136–41] Not Heath MS, which has, deleted:
My purposed thought, at full to weave,
Then dying well all round to leave
The sunset of a splendid eve.
T.MS C has these MS lines, square-bracketed for deletion, after l. 135.
138. Cp. In Memoriam xxiv 15: ‘And orb into the perfect star’.
142] Not rotting like an idle weed, Heath MS, T.MS C 1st reading. Cp. Hamlet I v 32–3: ‘Duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed / That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.’ See l. 280.
145–7] Not Heath MS, T.MS C.
148. good] great Heath MS, T.MS C.
151. with] through Heath MS, T.MS C. tears] fears Heath MS (error).
152. Horace’s Odes II i 22: non indecoro pulvere sordidos, which T. had quoted as a note to ‘Your brows with noble dust defiled’, The Vale of Bones 88.
157. said] spake Heath MS, T.MS C.
166. enduring] long toil and T.MS C.
170. The Palace of Art 213: ‘The riddle of the painful earth’.
172–3] I told thee, men, like children, played / With science – hardly … Heath MS, T.MS C.
177 ^ 8] Where bides the false that thou would’st hate?
The true, thou would’st elaborate?
Meshed in the brazen toils of Fate.
T.MS C, del., which then substituted ll. 178–80
181–3] Added in T.MS C.
184] Thou seest not how the summits slope T.MS C.
187–9. Cp. The Vale of Bones 7–8: ‘At times her partial splendour shines / Upon the grove of deep-black pines.’
192. fold: ‘cloud’ (T.).
193. T. comments ‘I pronounce “oblique” oblīque’, on the analogy of ‘obleege’/ oblige. Wordsworth rhymed strike/oblique in the MS of An Evening Walk.
194. Shadows] Phantoms H.Lpr 254.
195. ‘Ixion embraced a cloud, hoping to embrace a goddess’ (T.).
196–9. Combining Ecclesiastes iii 19, ‘For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other’; with Psalm viii 4–5, ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.’
199. Cease to wail] Why complain Heath MS, T.MS C.
200. Why] And Heath MS, T.MS C.
205–7] Not Heath MS, T.MS C. Cp. the two deleted stanzas of The Vision of Sin 103–6, 114 ^ 5, beginning ‘Systems! …’ and ‘Creeds! …’ (p. 214).
210. Horace’s Odes I i 30: dis miscent superis.
211. Who, rowing] Which did row Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C; Which rowing Heath MS.
212–13] Making to one great light, nor seem / Ever to dream … Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C.
215. Even] Deep Heath MS, T.MS C.
222–5. Acts vii 55, ‘But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up sted-fastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God.’
228. Julius Caesar V v 73–5: ‘The elements / So mixed in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world “This was a man!”’ T. comments ‘Some have happier dispositions.’
228 ^ 9] For these two shadows stand afar –
One, cloakt with night, and looking war,
The other wears the morning star.
One urn they hold; o’er land and sea
They shake it, and disorderly
The lots leap out to thee and me’. Heath MS, T.MS C
229–31] See ll. 52–7n.
229. said] cried T.MS A.
232–40] Not T.MSS A, C, Heath MS.
236–7. The rhyme sense/permanence and ‘fixed’ recall Arthur Hallam’s sonnet On the Picture of the Three Fates, 1827 (Motter, p. 3).
239. Ecclesiastes v 15: ‘naked shall he return to go as he came’.
243. passion] pleasure Heath MS, T.MS C; hatred T.MS A. Cp. Pope, Epistle to Oxford 24: ‘Above all Pain, all Passion, and all Pride’.
244–6] Transposed with ll. 247–9 T.MS A.
245. should] if T.MS A.
247. palms] hands T.MS A.
248. There … thing] And there is nothing else T.MS A. A Dirge 2: ‘Fold thy palms across thy breast’.
251. As in Come hither (I 165).
253–8] Added in margin T.MS A.
254. kissed, taking] fondled in T.MS A.
256–7. Job xiv 21, on the dead man: ‘His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.’
259–61] Transposed with ll. 262–4 T.MS A.
259. north-wind] winds that T.MS A 1st reading.
260. Nor, moaning] Above nor T.MS A 1st reading.
262. High … and] Above the summit vapours T.MS A 1st reading.
263. broods] sleeps T.MS A 1st reading.
264. Psalm ciii 16, ‘the place thereof shall know it no more’ – man as a dead flower. Job vii 10: ‘He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.’
264 ^ 5] T.MS A has nine lines, following the deleted ll. 265–7 (which then undeleted follow the nine lines):
When thy best friend draws sobbing breath,
Plight thou a compact ere his death
And comprehend the words he saith.
Urge him to swear, distinct and plain,
That out of bliss or out of pain
He will draw nigh thee once again.
Is that his footstep on the floor?
Is this his whisper at the door?
Surely he comes. He comes no more.
The poem was in existence by June 1833, and this is an early draft. The strong probability is therefore that this passage on the death of ‘thy best friend’ preceded Hallam’s death; it would subsequently have struck T. as a hideous premonition. Cp. the first line with In Memoriam lix 8 ^ 9, MS: ‘Use other means than sobbing breath’.
265–6] Transposed T.MS A 1st reading.
265] These are the outward signs’ I said, T.MS A.
266. These] All T.MS A.
267. Nor canst thou] Thou canst not Heath MS, T.MS A.
268–318] Not T.MS A, which has:
A little space the voice was husht,
Then spake: ‘When first the firehill flusht
The midnight, and the torrent [fountain 1st reading] gusht—
When Mammoth, in the primal woods,
Wore, trampling to the fountain-floods,
Broad roads through blooming solitudes—
Where wert thou with the other souls?
Rolled where the equal tradewind rolls?
Or wheeled about the glimmering poles?
Cp. the fourth and fifth lines with Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition 5–6: ‘Produce of your field and flood, / Mount and mine, and primal wood’.
271–3] He stands among the graves, the floods
Speak of him – and the winds: the woods
Whisper his name among the buds. Heath MS, T.MS C
274] He rises from unsounded deeps: Heath MS, T.MS C.
275. wept] weeps Heath MS, T.MS C.
276. slept] sleeps Heath MS, T.MS C.
277–9] Not Heath MS, T.MS C (bottom half of page cut away, lacking ll. 277–97). ‘The simple senses made death a king’ (T.). Contrast Revelation i 8: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.’
280–2] Yet if man find unconscious ease
Why should that glassy frame of peace
Fail to persuade him he shall cease? Heath MS
280. Hamlet I v 32–3: ‘the fat weed / That rots itself in ease’; see l. 142.
283. other] mightier Heath MS.
284. That heat] What heats Heath MS. Cp. In Memoriam cxxiv 13–14: ‘A warmth within the breast would melt / The freezing reason’s colder part.’ Wordsworth has two lines coincidentally, it seems, close to T. here: ‘Involved a history of no doubtful sense, / History that proves by inward evidence’ (Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837 (1842) v 2–3).
285. By which he doubts] That makes him doubt Heath MS.
292–4] Not Heath MS.
297. To be found verbatim in Youth 60; cp. In Memoriam cxxviii 24: ‘toil cöoperant to an end’.
300. Cp. the fragment, This Nature (III 620; T.Nbk 20, 1833); ‘this complex life / Of checks and impulses and counterchecks’. Also The Lover’s Tale i 736–43n, MS: ‘sundered and withdrawn / And broken – though a lovely scene, withdrawn – / To open and let inward’.
301–3] His faith, his fear in secret hours
Shock like the isles of ice – he cowers
Before uncomprehended powers. Heath MS, T.MS B
1st reading, T.MS C
Cp. Morte d’Arthur 140 (also on Hallam’s death): ‘where the moving isles of winter shock’.
301–3. Combining Romans vii 18–19: ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing’; with Galatians v 17: ‘For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.’
304] Stars shake – Heaven rolls in – chasms yawn, Heath MS, T.MS C. opens] rolleth T.MS B.
304–6. Cp. Paradise Lost ii 1035–9: ‘from the walls of Heav’n / Shoots farr into the bosom of dim Night / A glimmering dawn’ – making Chaos a ‘brok’n foe’. Cp. the end of The Vision of Sin: ‘And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn / God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.’
307. him]Heath MS, revised to me.
308. his]Heath MS, revised to my.
309. must be] is an Heath MS 1st reading, T.MS C. his] the Heath MS.
309 ^ 10] And every soul whatever wine
Of thought fermenteth, coarse or fine,
Infolds the elements of mine. Added to Heath MS which then ends.
T.MS C ends at l. 310 (bottom half of page cut away, then stubs).
313. CP. Youth 50: ‘Unvext by doubts I cannot solve’.
320. free field] own fields T.MS A.
321. merry] happy T.MS A. sun] light T.MS A.
321 ^ 2] When thy young mother placidly
Kneeled, praying at her mother’s knee,
She took but little thought of thee. T.MS A, which ends
328–30] Deleted in T.MS B but added later.
330 ^ 1] From when his baby pulses beat
To when his hands in their last heat
Pick at the deathmote on the sheet. T.MS B, del. H.T. says these were ‘omitted … as too dismal’ (Mem. i 109).
331–3] And rest for ever [Who passest also 2nd reading – nothing-worth
His [Thine 2nd reading essence, nothing ere his [thy 2nd reading] birth And nothing in the quiet earth. T.MS B 1st reading
334–9] Added to T.MS B.
340] I said ‘but can I justly hold T.MS B 1st reading.
342. first was] began T.MS B 1st reading.
347–9] H.Nbk 11 has these lines as the centre of an important unadopted passage of forty-five lines, of which ll. [28–9] became In Memoriam lxxxv 21–2:
The voice was something low and weak,
Replying ‘dost thou answer seek,
Put one thing clear that I may speak.’
And as a man that choosing draws
One thing from many, but because
He must choose one, I broke the pause.
‘That individual unity
Which each calls I, may never flee
To many parts and cease to be.’
‘Were this self-evident as seems,’
He answered, ‘who had flown to schemes
Of revelations and of dreams?’
Again he said in crafty words
‘And wilt thou grant it to the herds,
The fishes and the tribe of birds?’
‘Perchance’ I said ‘no life is found
That only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.’
‘And things’ he said ‘which thou mayst cleave
To many parts that each receive
Another life, dost thou believe
They feel thus one? So Nature spins
A various web and knowledge wins
No surety where this sense begins.
Nor whereabouts to fainter fades
Through tints and neutral tints and shades
Life and half-life, a million grades.
And those Intelligences fair,
That range above thy state, declare
If thou canst fathom what they are.’
‘This knowledge’ said I thereupon,
‘As self-inorbed and perfect, one
Derives not from comparison.’
He said ‘it should be always clear
And still the same, not but as mere
Result of parts made whole appear.
Yet step by step it grows, for can
The retrospection of the man
Remember when the child began?’
‘And step by step I cease to keep
My consciousness’ I said ‘and creep
In the long gradual cloud of sleep.
It fadeth likewise when I swoon,
It dips and darkens as the moon
And comes again
349. Pythagoras’s metempsychosis, and Plato’s myth of Er (Republic x).
351. Cp. In Memoriam lxxxii 6: ‘From state to state the spirit walks’.
355–7] Added to T.MS B.
355. we] he T.MS B 1st reading.
358. But] So T.MS B 1st reading.
364. G. R. Potter (PQ xvi (1937) 335–6) argues that T. ‘is writing about the transmigration of souls, and the lines refer not so much to material as to spiritual progress – a sort of semi-evolutionary idea that appears more than once in the writings of eighteenth-century thinkers’. The word frame ‘injects the idea of physical change into these speculations concerning the soul. But from the lines themselves we cannot be at all sure whether Tennyson was thinking of changes in species, or of the same idea that he reflects in his Cambridge discussion, that the human body in its embryonic stages has resemblances to lower organisms.’
365. Though] And T.MS B 1st reading.
366 ^ 7] In passing on from more to more
And up to higher out of lower
I might forget the things before. T.MS B, deleted
367. I might] As men T.MS B 1st reading. my] their T.MS B 1st reading.
370. And] As T.MS B 1st reading.
372. Oft lose] Forget T.MS B 1st reading.
373–8] Added in T.MS B.
377. he] Time T.MS B 1st reading.
378. Arthur Hallam spoke of ‘the material prime’, Written in View of Ben Lomond 14, 1829 (Motter, p. 52).
378 ^ 9] And after all it might transcend [descend 1st reading, error]
Thy little logic to defend
That since I was not, I must end. T.MS B, deleted
379. Moreover] Though sometimes T.MS B 1st reading.
395–6. Job iii 20–1, ‘Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; Which long for death but it cometh not.’
397–9. Cp. Life [Why suffers human life so soon eclipse?] 5: ‘Would I could pile fresh life on life’; and Ulysses 24–5: ‘Life piled on life / Were all too little’.
399. John × 10, ‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’
424. CP. the Ancient Mariner’s release from guilt when he ‘blessed them unaware. / The self-same moment I could pray’ (ll. 287– 8).
425. answer came there none: Scott, The Bridal of Triermain III x.
447. Cp. the unadopted lines for The Miller’s Daughter 189–98n: ‘Bless Love, for blest are all his ways – / The fluttering doubt, the jealous cares, / Transparent veils that drink his rays.’
453. John Churton Collins compared George Peele’s The Arraignment of Paris: ‘Ye may ne see for peeping flowers the grass’. Alongside this suggestion, T. wrote: ‘No – close as it seems. Made in the fields’ (Cornhill, Jan. 1880, Lincoln). FitzGerald says: ‘Composed as he walked about the Dulwich meadows.’
457] 1884; So variously seemed all things wrought, 1842–83.
462. Cp. In Memoriam cxxx 5–16, MS: ‘I walk the meadows and rejoice / And prosper, compassed by thy voice.’ Philippians iv 4: ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice’; Ecclesiastes xi 9: ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.’ Cp. Keats, Sleep and Poetry 37–9: ‘Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice, / And from the heart up-springs “Rejoice! rejoice!” / Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things.’ Also ‘Barry Cornwall’ (B. W. Procter), The Little Voice (English Songs, 1832): ‘Once there was a little Voice, / Merry as the month of May, / That did cry “Rejoice! Rejoice!” / Now ’tis flown away! // Sweet it was, and very clear, / Chasing every thought of pain …’ In Friendship’s Offering for 1833, to which T. contributed, there is R. F. Housman’s Away to the Greenwood: ‘And at every pause, the lute-like voice / Of the cuckoo sings – “Rejoice! rejoice!” ’ Edmund Blunden points out in his selection (1960) from T. that Coleridge’s Dejection ends with the word ‘rejoice’.