Published 1842; among ‘English Idyls’. It was written autumn 1838 at Torquay (Mem. i 165), ‘partially suggested by Abbey Park at Torquay in the old time’ ( T.). In T.Nbk 26, it opens with a description of Francis’s arrival by boat; see below. There are two early drafts in the FitzGerald MS at Trinity (MS below). J. S. Hagen discusses T.’s revisions of ll. 73–88, using and reproducing 1842proofs with T.’s changes (Costerus n.s. iv, 1975, 39–49). In form and mood, the poem is based on Theocritus’s 7th Idyll, where Simichidas’s song (ll. 96–127) resembles Francis’s. Cp. the setting of The Princess with its picnic and songs, especially the swallow-song (iv). On T.s modernizing and anglicizing of Theocritus, see Turner (p. 82). Culler (p. 264) ‘wonders whether the title of the poem was not suggested by the well-known country house of Lord Braybrooke, Audley End, at Saffron Walden near Cambridge. In 1836, just two years before the poem was published [read written], Richard Lord Braybrooke published The History of Audley End … in which William Whewell and J. S. Henslow of Cambridge assisted.’
‘The Bull, the Fleece are crammed, and not a room
For love or money. Let us picnic there
At Audley Court.’
I spoke, while Audley feast
Hummed like a hive all round the narrow quay,
To Francis, with a basket on his arm,
To Francis just alighted from the boat,
And breathing of the sea. ‘With all my heart,’
Said Francis. Then we shouldered through the swarm,
And rounded by the stillness of the beach
To where the bay runs up its latest horn.
We left the dying ebb that faintly lipped
The flat red granite; so by many a sweep
Of meadow smooth from aftermath we reached
The griffin-guarded gates, and passed through all
The pillared dusk of sounding sycamores,
And crossed the garden to the gardener’s lodge,
With all its casements bedded, and its walls
And chimneys muffled in the leafy vine.
There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid
A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,
Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,
And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied; last, with these,
A flask of cider from his father’s vats,
Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and eat
And talked old matters over; who was dead,
Who married, who was like to be, and how
The races went, and who would rent the hall:
Then touched upon the game, how scarce it was
This season; glancing thence, discussed the farm,
The four-field system, and the price of grain;
And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split,
And came again together on the king
With heated faces; till he laughed aloud;
And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung
To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang –
‘Oh! who would fight and march and countermarch,
Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field,
And shovelled up into some bloody trench
Where no one knows? but let me live my life.
‘Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk,
Perched like a crow upon a three-legged stool,
Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints
Are full of chalk? but let me live my life.
‘Who’d serve the state? for if I carved my name
Upon the cliffs that guard my native land,
I might as well have traced it in the sands;
The sea wastes all: but let me live my life.
‘Oh! who would love? I wooed a woman once,
But she was sharper than an eastern wind,
And all my heart turned from her, as a thorn
Turns from the sea; but let me live my life.’
He sang his song, and I replied with mine:
I found it in a volume, all of songs,
Knocked down to me, when old Sir Robert’s pride,
His books– the more the pity, so I said–
Came to the hammer here in March– and this–
I set the words, and added names I knew.
‘Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me:
Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister’s arm,
And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine.
‘Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia’s arm;
Emilia, fairer than all else but thou,
For thou art fairer than all else that is.
‘Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast:
Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip:
I go tonight: I come tomorrow morn.
‘I go, but I return: I would I were
The pilot of the darkness and the dream.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me.’
So sang we each to either, Francis Hale,
The farmer’s son, who lived across the bay,
My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,
And in the fallow leisure of my life
A rolling stone of here and everywhere,
Did what I would; but ere the night we rose
And sauntered home beneath a moon, that, just
In crescent, dimly rained about the leaf
Twilights of airy silver, till we reached
The limit of the hills; and as we sank
From rock to rock upon the glooming quay,
The town was hushed beneath us: lower down
The bay was oily calm; the harbour-buoy,
Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm,
With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.
¶274. T.Nbk 26 has a version of the beginning of the poem:
It was the Autumn-feast at Oxley quay,
And I expected Francis by the boat:
And while I paced the quay the boat came round
The headland trailing half a league of smoke.
The plashing paddlewheels and overhead
The snoring funnel whizzed her silver steam.
The plank was laid and breathing of the sea
Came Francis with a basket in his hand –
A dash of colour on his cheeks and nose
Won from the wind: and up the hill we went
Across the wake but all the causeway swarmed;
The showman ranted: thrice as large as truth
The black-barred tiger glared upon the poles,
The quack was roaring nostrums: all the street
Buzzed like a hive and over hollowed tubes
Purselipt the swarthy piper moved his beard.
‘O come’ said Francis ‘I am dinned to death.
The Bull, the Fleece are crammed and not a room
For love of money. Come ’tis not so far.
We two will picnic there at Oxley hall;
See here’, and lifting up the basket lid
He showed me lapt in cloth two pullets trusst
With liver-wings and stowed with these a flask
Of cyder from his father’s vats at home,
Prime, which I knew: and even while he spoke
We came on John the storyteller, John
The talker, steering downward with a thumb
In either armhole
She made her way with power up and stilled
3. Audley Court] Oxley-Hall FitzGerald MS.
4] Hummed like a hive, and over hollowed tubes
Purse-lipt the swarthy piper moved his beard. MS
The last line and a half were incorporated from The Gardener’s Daughter 185–208, MS.
10. runs … horn] scoops out its latest curve MS.
13. aftermath: after-mowing.
15. Cp. Paradise Lost ix 1106: ‘Pillard shade’.
18. leafy vine: traditional, as in Shelley.
19] We found a slope of thyme where Francis laid MS.
28–9. over … Who], who was dead, and who / Was MS.
34–5. There was Corn-Law agitation in 1837, the year in which William IV was gravely ill for a month and then died.
37–8] He clapt his hand in mine: he cleared his pipes
And while the blackbird on the rennet hung
To hear him, sang me out a random song. MS
41. some] 1872; a 1842–70.
47. carved] wrote MS.
51. love] wed MS.
56–60] Not MS.
73–7] So sang we couch’t in thyme while overhead
The large peach fattened and the waxen plum
Pampered his luscious cheek: tall hollyoaks
Clustered their largest roses: orchard boughs
Dragged earthward overburdened: every gust
Tumbled the mellowing pear and at our feet
Through two round stones, two cushions of dark moss,
A pebbly runlet bubbled from the mound. MS
This adapts The Gardener’s Daughter 216–20, MS.
77] 1855; not 1842–53.
78–80] There sat we till night fell, and rose at last
Returning home beneath a quarter-moon
That dimly rained about the lisping leaf MS
81. airy] showery MS.
82–3] The latest limit of the seaward hill.
Then as we stept down toward the glooming quay MS
86] 1869; not 1842–68. ‘The little buoy appearing and disappearing in the dark sea’ (T.).
88. Cp. the image of moon and stars ending Iliad viii, as in T.’s Specimen of a Translation: ‘and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart’.