Published Poems, 8th edn (1853). In praise of Edward Lear’s Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania and Illyria (1851). It was written 1851–2 (H.Nbk 26 has two drafts, the first of which is quoted below; the first has no title, the second: To – on his book about Greece). T.’s friend Lear is now best known for his nonsense verse, but he had a considerable reputation as a traveller and as a painter, especially of landscapes. (Poems by Tennyson Illustrated by Lear, 1889, is still of some interest.) T. was to use the In Memoriam stanza to congratulate another author on his travel-book, in To Ulysses (p. 651).
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:
And trust me while I turned the page,
And tracked you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever poured
And glistened – here and there alone
The broad-limbed Gods at random thrown
By fountain-urns; – and Naiads oared
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
¶301. 1. woodlands] olives H. MS. echoing] foaming MS 1st reading.
2. sheets] lakes MS.
3. Illustrated by Lear (facing p. 410).
4. From Horace, Odes I iii 20: scopulos Acroceraunia. Lear spoke of ‘the Acroceraunian range’ (p. 210).
6] So well with pencil and with pen, MS. T. courteously repudiates Lear’s self-depreciation: ‘No pen or pencil can do justice to the scenery of Metéora’ (p. 397).
8] I could but feel that I was there. MS.
9] And while [as 1st reading] I turned the [your 1st reading] storied page, MS.
10. tracked you still] mapped your course MS. classic ground: a classic phrase; cp. Addison’s Letter from Italy 11–12 (written 1701): ‘Poetic fields encompass me around, / And still I seem to tread on Classic ground.’
11. grew … till] grew so joyful that MS 1st reading; waxt in gladness till MS.
13] Through sacred clefts the torrent poured MS.
14. glistened] glittered MS.
15. broad-limbed] broad-browed MS. Cp. Samson Agonistes 118: ‘See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus’d’. In his earliest surviving letter (Oct. 1821?; Letters i 1), T. quoted this, and Newton on ‘this beautiful application of the word “diffused”’ from Horace.
16. urns] heads MS.
18. cavern pillars;] columned caves, as MS.
19. lily] lilies MS.
20] And all the region burst in bloom MS.
22. dancing] leaping MS.
23. who] that MS.