Published 1885. Written 1882–4, judging from MSS in H. Nbks 52 and 68 and from its probably being occasioned by J. A. Froude’s frank revelations about Carlyle’s private life (1882–4). In a letter to Watts, 10 Dec. 1885, H. T. said that it was one of ‘the old ones’ that he had made T. touch up, and that it was ‘written ten or twelve years ago’ (Letters iii); but this is unlikely and may be protective. T. said it was ‘about no particular prophet’, but H. T.’s note goes on: ‘At this time he said of Mr and Mrs Carlyle: “I am sure that Froude is wrong. I saw a great deal of them. They were always ‘chaffing’ one another, and they could not have done that if they had got on so ‘badly together’ as Froude thinks.”’ Froude’s Preface (1882) had spoken of Carlyle as a ‘teacher and a prophet in the Jewish sense of the word’, and in 1884 his introductory note described Carlyle as ‘a man who could thus take on himself the character of a prophet’. Cp. the beldam’s argument in ll. 44–56 with Froude:
‘When a man has exercised a large influence on the minds of his contemporaries, the world requires to know whether his own actions have corresponded with his teaching, and whether his moral and personal character entitles him to confidence. This is not idle curiosity; it is a legitimate demand. In proportion to a man’s greatness is the scrutiny to which his conduct is submitted.’
Froude’s introductory note spoke too of vague biographies as leaving great men ‘a prey to be torn in pieces’. Moreover M. D. Conway (who himself had preceded Froude with a study of Carlyle) wrote of this controversy: ‘Tennyson’s main trouble seemed to be that the bones of Carlyle should be flung about’ (Autobiography, 1904, ii 192) – note the metaphor. Froude protested, 20 March 1882, at T.’s having said Froude ‘had sold [his] Master for thirty pieces of silver’; H. T. placated him, denying the rumour since T. had said no more than that ‘it would have been better if you had omitted 3 or 4 pages’ (Lincoln).
The poem does not appear in No. 1 of the British Museum trial editions of 1885. No. 2 followed the poem with By a Darwinian (III 10), entitled Reversion, which is on the same subject. The fact that Reversion was, in this trial edition, on the same page is probably due to the printer; in the earlier trial edition (Lincoln), Reversion is in MS on the verso of the last page of the MS of The Dead Prophet. No. 3 added the note: ‘It may be as well to state that this allegory is not in any way personal. The speaker in it is as imaginary as the prophet’. The false date ‘182-’ does not appear in the BM trial editions; when T. first added a date to a Lincoln trial edition, he put ‘17–’. (Like Aylmer’s Field, ‘1793’, this suggests the French Revolution.) Cp. the veiling of To——, After Reading a Life and Letters (II 297), which is on the same theme of the intrusive biography, and which includes the germ of The Dead Prophet: ‘For whom the carrion vulture waits / To tear his heart before the crowd!’ Since this was about Keats, ‘182-’ may have been suggested by Keats’s death (1821). Cp. also T.’s poem of 1827, Come hither (I 165), on the mocked corpse of Henri IV: ‘There came a woman from the crowd and smote / The corpse upon the cheek.’ (See l. 25n.) Since Come hither is about the French Revolution, by 1882 it might have come to suggest Carlyle. T.’s source for Come hither (Quarterly Review xxi (1819) 376) included: ‘When the King is dead, his body was placed upon a carriage in such a position that the head hung down to the ground and the hair dragged upon the ground; a woman followed and with a besom threw dust upon the head of the corpse. At the same time, a cryer proclaimed, with a loud voice, O men! behold your King! he was your master yesterday, but the empire which he possessed is passed away.’ Cp. also the MS versions of Locksley Hall Sixty 134: ‘Pillory the dead face …’, ‘Pillory the dumb corpse …’ A Lincoln trial edition added as epigraph (slightly misquoted) Henry V IV i 229–31: ‘O hard condition, / Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath / Of every fool.’
Dead!
And the Muses cried with a stormy cry
‘Send them no more, for evermore.
Let the people die.’
II
Dead!
‘Is it he then brought so low?’
And a careless people flocked from the fields
With a purse to pay for the show.
III
Dead, who had served his time,
Was one of the people’s kings,
Had laboured in lifting them out of slime,
And showing them, souls have wings!
IV
Dumb on the winter heath he lay.
His friends had stript him bare,
And rolled his nakedness everyway
That all the crowd might stare.
V
A storm-worn signpost not to be read,
And a tree with a mouldered nest
On its barkless bones, stood stark by the dead;
And behind him, low in the West,
VI
With shifting ladders of shadow and light,
And blurred in colour and form,
The sun hung over the gates of Night,
And glared at a coming storm.
Then glided a vulturous Beldam forth,
That on dumb death had thriven;
They called her ‘Reverence’ here upon earth,
And ‘The Curse of the Prophet’ in Heaven.
VIII
She knelt – ‘We worship him’ – all but wept –
‘So great so noble was he!’
She cleared her sight, she arose, she swept
The dust of earth from her knee.
IX
‘Great! for he spoke and the people heard,
And his eloquence caught like a flame
From zone to zone of the world, till his Word
Had won him a noble name.
X
Noble! he sung, and the sweet sound ran
Through palace and cottage door,
For he touched on the whole sad planet of man,
The kings and the rich and the poor;
XI
And he sung not alone of an old sun set,
But a sun coming up in his youth!
Great and noble – O yes – but yet –
For man is a lover of Truth,
VII
And bound to follow, wherever she go
Stark-naked, and up or down,
Through her high hill-passes of stainless snow,
Or the foulest sewer of the town –
XIII
Noble and great – O ay – but then,
Though a prophet should have his due,
Was he noblier-fashioned than other men?
Shall we see to it, I and you?
XIV
For since he would sit on a Prophet’s seat,
As a lord of the Human soul,
We needs must scan him from head to feet
Were it but for a wart or a mole?’
XV
His wife and his child stood by him in tears,
But she – she pushed them aside.
‘Though a name may last for a thousand years,
Yet a truth is a truth,’ she cried.
XVI
And she that had haunted his pathway still,
Had often truckled and cowered
When he rose in his wrath, and had yielded her will
To the master, as overpowered,
XVII
She tumbled his helpless corpse about.
‘Small blemish upon the skin!
But I think we know what is fair without
Is often as foul within.’
XVIII
She crouched, she tore him part from part,
And out of his body she drew
The red ‘Blood-eagle’ of liver and heart;
She held them up to the view;
She gabbled, as she groped in the dead,
And all the people were pleased;
‘See, what a little heart,’ she said,
‘And the liver is half-diseased!’
XX
She tore the Prophet after death,
And the people paid her well.
Lightnings flickered along the heath;
One shrieked ‘The fires of Hell!’
¶400. 1] There lay a prophet [dead man 1st reading] on the heath, H. Nbk 68.
5–12] A prophet dead upon the heath MS.
14. friends had] best friend MS. The MS points to Froude.
15] Tore all the decent coverings off MS.
17–24] Not MS.
25] There came a beldam from the crowd MS. Cp. ‘There came a woman from the crowd’, Come hither 21. See headnote.
26. dumb death] dead flesh MS.
27. here] Not MS.
29–68] Not MS.
54] And preached of a deathless soul H. Nbk 52 1st reading. This MS has pages missing, and consists only of ll. 49–56, plus two stanzas on different pages:
He found his truth in an old shadow-land,
In a ghost-tale told us afresh.
We prize a truth that is closer at hand,
The Truth, my friends, in the flesh.’
And one of the People arose with a frown,
‘Will you help the People to be
By pulling the People’s leaders down
To the People’s level?’ but she,
69] She tore the Prophet’s hidden part Nbk 68.
71. Blood-eagle: 1885 note: ‘Old Viking term for lungs, liver, etc., when torn by the conqueror out of the body of the conquered.’
73] Her talons raked into the dead MS.
76 ^ 7] ‘The People! the People!’ a thin ghost-cry
Fled over the blasted tree,
Far away to be lost in a stormy sky,
‘I had lifted them up:’ but she, BM trial edition 2
80] They were the fires of Hell. MS. Perhaps suggested by Froude’s introductory note: ‘The fire in his soul burnt red to the end, and sparks flew from it which fell hot on those about him.’