Published 1864 Written 6–8 Sept. 1861, visiting ‘a valley in the Pyrenees, where I had been with Arthur Hallam’ (T.) in 1830. Hallam wrote to T.’s brother Charles, 12 Sept. 1830: ‘we remained at Cauterets, and recruited our strength with precipitous defiles, jagged mountain tops, forests of solemn pine, travelled by dewy clouds, and encircling lawns of the greenest freshness, waters, in all shapes, and all powers, from the clear runnel bubbling down over our mountain paths at intervals, to the blue little lake whose deep, cold waters are fed eternally from neighbouring glaciers, and the impetuous cataract, fraying its way over black, beetling rocks’ (AHH, p. 375). Also Hallam’s letter to T.’s sister Emily, from Salzburg, 24 Aug. 1833: ‘waters flashing into white foam along the rocky channel… & seeming, as I stopped to listen, like the voices of the eternal hills’ (AHH, p. 773).
J. C. Hixson notes the word ‘life’ in E. T.’s Journal entry, Sept. 1861: ‘It is pleasant to see Ally absorbed as he is by the beauty of the scene where the green Pau river dashes by, breaking into little joyous-looking fountains, seemingly fuller of life than any river I have ever seen’ (TRB ii, 1975, 146). T. sent the poem to the Duchess of Argyll, 11 March 1863: ‘This is a little lyrical flash, an impromptu which I sent to the Queen and for which she returned me the warmest thanks’ (Letters ii 323). ‘After hearing the voice of the torrent seemingly sound deeper as the night grew’ (T., Mem. i 474–5). T. said in 1863: ‘Altogether I like the little piece as well as anything I have written’ (Letters ii 327, 12 May; Mem. i 492). Cp. the elegy In the Garden at Swainston (p. 619). All variants from H.Lpr 113 are below.
All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walked today,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.
¶326. 1] Brook that runnest madly, brook that flashest white, H.MS.
3. waters flow] mad waters go MS.
4. one I loved] Arthur Hallam MS. ‘My father was vexed that he had written “two and thirty years ago”… instead of “one and thirty years ago,” and as late as 1892 wished to alter it since he hated inaccuracy. I persuaded him to let his first reading stand, for the public had learnt to love the poem in its present form: and besides “two and thirty” was more melodious’ (Mem. i 475). Martin (pp. 439–41) quotes T.’s complaint, ‘A brute of a – has discovered that it was thirty-one years and not thirty-two’. Martin adds: ‘But it was not true. Clough’s letters [in 1861] prove that T. had known all along how many years it had been since his first visit.’ (Clough: ‘T. was here with Arthur Hallam 31 years ago’; and again: ‘… of which he retained a recollection from his visit of 31 years ago’.)
5–7] All along the valley thou ravest down thy bed, MS.
8. was] is MS, as in l. 10.
9. And all] All MS.