Published Cornhill Magazine, Feb. 1860; then 1864.
In 1859 Thackeray importuned T. for a poem to be published in his Cornhill (first number, Jan. 1860; Letters, ed. G. N. Ray, iv (1946) 168). T. says: ‘My friend Thackeray and his publishers had been so urgent with me to send them something, that I ferreted among my old books and found this Tithonus, written upwards of a quarter of a century ago.… It was originally a pendent to the Ulysses in my former volumes, and I wanted Smith to insert a letter, not of mine, to the editor stating this, and how long ago it had been written, but he thought it would lower the value of the contribution in the public eye’ (Mem. i 459; see Letters ii 605, 26 Dec. 1859). At the end of a proof of 1860, T. added the date ‘1833’ and then deleted it (Lincoln). The poem was originally written in a shorter form, Tithon, in 1833 (p. 992); all the revisions from the Heath MS are below, given as Tithon. There is a discussion of them by M. J. Donahue, PMLA lxiv (1949) 400–16, where Tithon was first printed, and by L. K. Hughes, PQ lviii (1979) 82–9. There are two earlier drafts in T. Nbk 20 (1833; T.MS A and B). T. Nbk 21 is as Heath MS except for the variants given at l. 4. T. revised it in Nov.-Dec. 1859 (Mem. i 443, Mat. ii 240), which suggests that T.’s mind may have been turned to the poem by a letter, 10 April 1859, from Jowett who had just visited the grave of Arthur Hallam: ‘It is a strange feeling about those who are taken young that while we are getting old and dusty they are as they were’ (Lincoln). T. wrote to Sarah Prinsep, late March or early April 1859, in terms which are like a comic counterpart to the poem’s sorrow: ‘And O princess, with respect to the Heavens and the Earth, have regard to me, a silverheaded many wrinkled man, if you that are everblooming, always believed to be your own daughter, and know no touch of time, can sympathize with decadence and infirmity’ (Letters ii 220). For the delay in publication, cp. On a Mourner (p. 135), which is also on the death of Hallam, written 1833 but not published till 1865.
Written after the shock of Hallam’s death, the poem is a companion to Ulysses (p. 138) and Tiresias (I 622), begun at the same time. T. turned to a classical story for an insight into mortality, and here explores the possibility that immortality would not simply in itself be a blessing. Cp. Ulysses (the need for the courage of life), and Tiresias (the courage of self-sacrifice). The theme may have been influenced by the grief of T.’s sister Emily (Hallam’s betrothed); she wrote to T., 12 July 1834: ‘What is life to me! if I die (which the Tennysons never do)’ (Mem. i 135, cited by Miss Donahue). As Miss Donahue says, ‘It is not that anything so obvious and simple as the identification of Eos [Aurora] with Hallam is possible or that the emotional relationship between Tennyson and Hallam is wholly clarified by Tithonus. But it is clear that, in choosing the mask of Tithonus, Tennyson reached out to two of the most basic symbols, those of love between man and woman and the frustration of love by age, to express the peculiar and individual nature of his own emotional injury.’ Moreover Tithonus is as much a fear as to the nature of Hallam’s immortality (a fear which recurs in In Memoriam) as a mask for T. Robert Monteith wrote to T., ?14 Dec. 1833: ‘Since Hallam’s death I almost feel like an old man looking back on many friendships as something bygone’ (Letters i 103).
Tithonus, as T. remarks, was ‘beloved by Aurora [goddess of the dawn], who gave him eternal life but not eternal youth. He grew old and infirm, and as he could not die, according to the legend, was turned into a grasshopper.’ Cp. The Grasshopper 5, 28 (1830): ‘No Tithon thou as poets feign… / No withered immortality.’ The story is told in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite where it ends (l. 239 ff.) with words that are apt to T.’s feelings: ‘I would not have you be deathless among the deathless gods and live continually after such sort. Yet if you could live on such as now you are in look and in form, and be called my husband, sorrow would not then enfold my careful heart.’ Also apt to T.’s feelings were two appearances of Tithonus in Horace’s Odes. I xxviii is on the universality of death, apparently the dramatic monologue of a ghost: nec quicquam tibi prodest // aërias temptasse domos animoque rotundum / percurrisse polum morituro. / occidit et Pelopis genitor, conviva deorum, / Tithonusque remotus in auras… // sed omnes una manet nox, / et calcanda semel via leti. (‘Nor doth it aught avail thee that thou didst once explore the gods’ ethereal homes and didst traverse in thought the circling vault of heaven. For thou wast born to die! Death befell also Pelops’ sire, though once he sat at the table of the gods; Tithonus, too, translated to the skies.… But a common night awaiteth every man, and Death’s path must be trodden once for all.’) II xvi is on patience in adversity: nihil est ab omni / parte beatum. // abstulit clarum cita mors Achillem, / longa Tithonum minuit senectus; / et mihi forsan, tibi quod negarit, / porriget hora. (‘Nothing is happy altogether. Achilles for all his glory was snatched away by an early death; Tithonus, though granted a long old age, wasted to a shadow; and to me mayhap the passing hour will grant what it denies to thee.’) T.’s translations of some of the Odes, written at school, are at Lincoln. For the theme of the danger of loving a deity, cp. Semele, written c. 1833 (I 630).
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man –
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed
To his great heart none other than a God!
I asked thee, ‘Give me immortality.’
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant worked their wills,
And beat me down and marred and wasted me,
And though they could not end me, left me maimed
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, though even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch – if I be he that watched –
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimsoned all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kissed
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
¶324. 1. The woods decay,] 1864; Ay me! ay me! 1860. The revision suggests the influence of one of T.’s favourite passages of Wordsworth (Mem. i 151), the account of the Simplon Pass, The Preludevi 624–5 (published 1845): ‘The immeasurable height / Of woods decaying, never to be decayed’. This is apt to Tithonus’s immortal decay.
1 ^ 2] The stars blaze out and never rise again, T.MS A, del.
2. burthen] substance Tithon, T.MSS.
3. field] 1864; earth 1860.
4] And after many summers dies the rose. Tithon. T.MS A revised ‘rose’ to ‘swan’, as did T.Nbk 21 which also revised to ‘many a summer’. The swan was noted for its longevity, and was taken as a type of white-haired age (F. L. Lucas, Tennyson, 1957, p. 27). Its singing too is suggested; cp. The Dying Swan (p. 15).
5. cruel] fatal Tithon, T.MSS.
7. Adapted from a fragment of The Lover’s Tale, Heath MS (I 325): ‘Down to the quiet limit of the world’. Cp. the Hymn to Aphrodite 225–7: ‘He lived rapturously with golden-throned Eos, the early-born, by the streams of Ocean, at the ends of the earth.’
8. shadow] T.MS A 1st reading; shade yet T.MS A. Euripides, Phoenissae 1543–5: ‘A white-haired shape, like a phantom that fades / On the sight, or a ghost from the underworld shades, / Or a dream that hath wings.’ A. Day (TRB iii, 1981, 206) notes that T. glossed Euripides’ lines, in a copy of the Pentalogia inscribed ‘Somersby / July 6th 1825’: ‘grey-headed, an obscure phantom of air – a dead body beneath the earth – a flitting dream’.
11–23] Ay me! ay me! what everlasting pain,
Being immortal with a mortal heart,
To live confronted with eternal youth:
To look [gaze T.MS A] on what is beautiful nor know
Enjoyment save through memory. Can thy love, Tithon,
T.MSS
21. Cp. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound III iii 88–9: ‘And through my withered, old, and icy frame / The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down.’
23. The image was suggested by the comparable tragedy in Semele: ‘When I am ashes’.
25. star: ‘Venus’ (T.).
26. Shines] Gleams T.MS B. tears] tears? Tithon, T.MS B. tremulous] dewy T.MS A. tremulous eyes: as in The Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Buonaparte 58, and the song in The Miller’s Daughter (1832 text, I 416), which perhaps suggested ‘dewy’, l. 58 (T.MS A supports this). Cp. Keats, I stood tip-toe 146–7, on Cupid and Psyche: ‘And how they kist each other’s tremulous eyes: / The silver lamp, –’. Also Shelley, Revolt of Islam XII xiv 1–2: ‘The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear/ From many a tremulous eye’. The phrase occurs in Keble’s best-seller, The Christian Year (1827), xviii; T.’s copy is at Lincoln.
26–7. that… go] Not T.MS A.
27] Take back thy dreadful gift, immortal age. T.MS B. To hear me?] Release me: Tithon.
28. way] shape Tithon, T.MSS.
29] To vary from his kind, or beat the roads Tithon, T.MSS.
30. Or pass] Of life, Tithon, T.MSS. goal of ordinance: ‘appointed limit’ (T.).Cp. Cymbeline IV ii 145–6: ‘Let ordinance / Come as the gods fore-say it’.
31 ^ 2] Or [O T.MS A] let me call thy ministers, the hours,
To take me up, to wind me [not T.MS B, error] in their arms,
To shoot the sunny interval of day,
And lap me deep within the lonely west. Tithon, T.MSS
32. cloud… comes] curtained cloud apart T.MS A; curtained cloud: there comes T.MS B 1st reading.
33–6] Not T.MS A.
36] And bosom throbbing with a fresher heart. Tithon, T.MS B.
37. redden… gloom] to bloom a fuller [purer T.MS A] red Tithon, T.MSS.
39. Ere yet] As when T.MS A. the wild] 1864; that wild 1860; thy wild Tithon; thy swift T.MS B.
39–42. and…fire] ’Tis ever thus T.MS A.
40] Not Tithon, T.MSS.
41] Spreading a rapid glow [light T.MS B] with loosened manes, Tithon, T.MS B.
42. And beat the] Fly, trampling Tithon, T. MS B. Traditional for the dawn; cp. a poem which T. used for Boädicea, Catullus lxiii 41: pepulitque noctis umbras vegetis sonipedibus. Also The Coach of Death 128: ‘They broke the ground with hoofs of fire.’ Apparently also a reminiscence of Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge I ii 120, i 107–8; ‘flakes of fire’, ‘coursers of the morn / Beat up the light with their bright silver hooves’ (noted by C. R. Forker, Notes and Queries, Dec. 1959).
43] And when thou growest the most beautiful, T.MS A; ’Tis ever thus: thou growest more [not T.MS B] beautiful, Tithon, T.MS B.
44] Thou partest: when a little warmth returns Tithon, T.MSS.
45. Departest] Thou partest Tithon, T.MSS.
46–9] Not Tithon, T.MSS.
49. Paradise Lost ix 926–7: ‘But past who can recall, or don undoe? / Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate.’ John Churton Collins said that T.’s line ‘is, of course, from Agathon, as quoted by Aristotle (Eth.N. vi 2)’. Alongside this suggestion, T. wrote: ‘not known to me’ (Cornhill, Jan. 1880, Lincoln).
50–76] T.MS A has fragmentary drafts:
Release me lest I rise, go forth and call
From under yon dark fields that dream below
The Shape I seek – he thus implored invade
The Incorruptible and thou some time
Returning on thy silver wheels behold
Even on these cool and gleaming thresholds Him
Thou knowest not, the uncertain shadow feared
Of Gods and men.
Take back thy gift lest I go forth and call
From under yon still fields that dream below
[lacuna] he implored invade
The incorruptible and thou some time
Returning on thy silver wheels behold
Even on these glimmering thresholds, mute and dark
Him whom thou knowest not, the uncertain shape
Not loved of Gods.
Cp. ll. 58, 64. T.MS B has a torn draft of this. The top of the opposite page of T.MS A is torn away; it ends:
Not loved of Gods.
In vain: he would not [come?]
Why wilt thou keep me ever in the East?
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Take back thy fatal gift – so let me die.
Meanwhile thy dappled coursers without noise
Scaling the twilight to the morning star
Will draw thee and with dewy breast divide
The rosy shadows flowing either way.
Thou wilt renew thy beauty with the morn,
I earth in earth abide with easeful night.
Cp. ll. 39–42, 54–6, 62–3.
50 ^ 51] Drowned deep in rapturous trances, beating fast, T.MS B.
51–3] By thy divine embraces circumfused, Tithon, T.MS B.
53. forming] growing 1860 proof (Lincoln, but altered by T.).
54] Thy golden tresses shining more and more, T.MS B. The… kindle] Thy black curls burning Tithon. Cp. the final version with ‘My long tresses, run in sunny rings’, The Gardener’s Daughter 75–80, Heath MS.
55–7] I felt thy blood run quicker: felt and saw
These glows that gradually blooming flusht
All thy pale limbs: what time my mortal frame
Molten in thine immortal, I lay wooed T.MS B;
With thy change changed, I felt this wondrous glow
That, gradually blooming, flushes all
Thy pale fair limbs: what time my mortal frame
Molten in thine immortal, I lay wooed, Tithon
J. C. Maxwell compares Keats, Hyperion iii 124–5: ‘and made flush / All the immortal fairness of his limbs’.
58. Mouth] Lips Tithon, T.MS B.
59. half-opening buds] opening buds; Tithon, T.MS B. The change in this erotic image suggests the similarity in sound of the ‘half-awakened birds’ in Tears, idle tears – a poem which, as F. L. Gwynn says (PMLA lxvii (1952) 572–5), employs to a remarkable extent the same vocabulary as Tithon and Tithonus.
60–1] Anon the lips that dealt them moved themselves
In wild and airy whisperings more sweet Tithon;
… airy whispers sweeter far T.MS B
62. Like] Than Tithon, T.MS B. Cp. ll. 61–2 with Shelley, To Constantia, Singing 12: ‘Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange’. Also The Day-Dream: Prologue 3, MS: ‘I know not what of strange’.
63. Troy was built by the music of Apollo; see Ilion, Ilion (I 281), where it is ‘melody born’. Cp. T.’s translation from Horace (I 7): ‘that god-built wall’. Cp. Milton’s Pandaemonium, PL i 711–12: ‘Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound / Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet.’ The mythologist Jacob Bryant wrote of ‘towers’ in his New System of Ancient Mythology (1807 edn, ii 127–8): ‘Tithonus, whose longevity is so much celebrated, was nothing more than one of these structures, a Pharos, sacred to the sun, as the name plainly shews.’ There was a copy of Bryant at Somersby (Lincoln), and he influenced A Fragment (I 313) and Pierced through (I 513).
64] Ah! keep me not for ever in the East: Tithon.
68. thy] these Tithon.
69. dim… homes] still fields that dream below. Tithon.
70–1] Not Tithon.
72., and]! so Tithon.
74. morn by] with the Tithon.
75] T.MS A ended with this line; see ll. 50–76n. T. quotes ‘terra in terra (Dante)’. He wrote this alongside John Churton Collins’s observation that: ‘This happy Hellenism is in Stephen Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure, capit. xlv.: “When earth in earth hath ta’en his corrupt taste”’ (Cornhill, Jan. 1880, Lincoln). T.’s reference is to Paradiso xxv 124–6: In terra terra è’l mio corpo, e saràgli / tanto con li altri, che’l numero nostro / con l’etterno proposito s’agguagli. (‘My body is earth in the earth, and it will be there with the rest till our number tallies with the eternal purpose.’