(For Music)
Published 1889. Recited Aug. 1888 (Mem. ii 346), though H.T. also says that it was written after T.’s severe illness, which began Sept. 1888. T. presumably revised it. ‘The words “far, far away” had always a strange charm for me’ (T. on his early childhood). He made many changes to the drafts in H.Nbks 54 and 87 (A and B below), including the change from ‘I’, to ‘he’ throughout. He altered the sequence of lines and stanzas, and the poem cost him great difficulty. Stanzas that found no place in 1889 are given below, l. 18n. A trial edition of 1889 (Virginia) has only four stanzas. T. rewrote the poem in the Trinity trial edition or proofs (T.Nbk 27).
What sight so lured him through the fields he knew
As where earth’s green stole into heaven’s own hue,
Far – far – away?
What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far – far – away.
What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,
Through those three words would haunt him when a boy,
Far – far – away?
A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death
Far – far – away?
Far, far, how far? from o’er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,
Far – far – away?
What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live
Far – far – away?
¶426. 1] What field so witched him in the land he knew Harvard B 1st reading.
2. hue] blue Harvard B 1st reading.
5. Sir Charles Tennyson (1931, p. 78) compares ‘lin, lan, lone’, New Year’s Eve, from c. 1837.
7–8] That strange world-whisper came to me, a boy,
A haunting notice, neither grief, nor joy, Harvard A
14] And all the faint horizons of the earth, Harvard A; Beyond the faint horizons of his earth, Harvard B 1st reading.
17. dying] poor dead Harvard B 1st reading.
18] The following stanzas appear in the MSS (the sequences of which are quite different from 1889):
(i) That weird soul-phrase of something half-divine,
In earliest youth, in latest age is mine,
Far – far – away. Harvard A
(ii) Ghost, do the men that walk this planet seem
[Ghost, can you see us, hear us? do we seem 1st reading]
Far, far away, a truth and yet a dream,
Far – far – away? Harvard B
(iii) What whisper? whence? from summers long gone by
And twilight times when I was growing I,
Far – far – away? T.MS
Cp. ll. 10–12.