Published 1889, written 26 May (Mat. iv 214). H.Nbk 55 has an epigrammatic version, a draft of ll. 9–12, 15–16; likewise, as Fame, in the Trinity trial edition or proofs. As Fame, it is in a Lincoln trial edition of 1889, where it consisted of ll. 1–4, 7–8. But other Harvard drafts suggest an earlier date. Lpr 165 (A below) is on the back of part of Becket (printed 1879) and The Northern Cobbler (1880); and Lpr 45 (B) is on the back of De Profundis (1880). Both these versions consist of section II only; T. extended and revised this in 1889, as is clear from another Lincoln trial edition of 1889, where ll. 5–8 had the title Fame and where furthermore section III is shown to be a late addition. The poem’s theme is common in T.; cp. the Epilogue to The Charge of the Heavy Brigade (III 96): ‘Old Horace… Earth passes, all is lost… The man remains’. Also Little Aubrey (III 637). Jowett wrote to T., Dec. 1858, suggesting topics for poems: ‘Have not many sciences such as Astronomy or Geology a side of feeling which is poetry?’ (Mem. i 433). Herbert Warren (Tennyson and His Friends, pp. 136–8) compares a letter by FitzGerald to E. B. Cowell in 1847, and remarks on the ‘extraordinarily close’ parallel. Since this letter was published in July 1889 in FitzGerald’s Letters and Literary Remains (ed. W. A. Wright, i 181–2), it may have influenced T. in his final drafting of the poem:
‘Yet, as I often think, it is not the poetical imagination, but bare Science that every day more and more unrolls a greater Epic than the Iliad; the history of the World, the infinitudes of Space and Time! I never take up a book of Geology or Astronomy but this strikes me. And when we think that Man must go on to discover in the same plodding way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold his hands, or turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon the march of discovery will distance all his imaginations, [and] dissolve the language in which they are uttered…. It is not only that this vision of Time must wither the Poet’s hope of immortality; but it is in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton.’
On Astronomy and the Muses, M. Millhauser comments: ‘It seems an ungracious quibble that Astronomy – Urania – was one of the original Muses; T. is presumably thinking of the difference in tone and human implications between the modern science… and the Greek identification of constellations’ (Fire and Ice, 1971, p. 25).
Epigraph: Horace prophesies his work’s immortality, epilogue to Odes iii (‘I have finished a monument… that the countless chain of years and the ages’ flight cannot destroy’).
Exegi monumentum…
Quod non…
Possit diruere…
… innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum.
HORACE
What be those crowned forms high over the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither!
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,
And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever through Earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great Sphere-music of stars and of constellations.
II
What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,
Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?
On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening;
Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning!
Look, in their deep double shadow the crowned ones all disappearing!
Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope for a deathless hearing!
‘Sounding for ever and ever?’ pass on! the sight confuses –
These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses!
III
If the lips were touched with fire from off a pure Pierian altar,
Though their music here be mortal need the singer greatly care?
Other songs for other worlds! the fire within him would not falter;
Let the golden Iliad vanish, Homer here is Homer there.
[1889. Crossing the Bar – see p. 665]
¶430. 1. The Castalian fountain on Mount Parnassus, sacred to the Muses.
4. The superstition that laurels are proof against lightning; cp. Marvell, Horatian Ode 23–4: ‘And Caesars head at last/Did through his Laurels blast.’ Section II] A begins:
O little poet who fain would be fussy, and bristle, and rave
Of the glory implied in the slander that even follows the grave –
O little poet, of all little poets the least and the latest,
One little solace is thine, that thou wilt die with the greatest.
9. those two] the two vast A; the two great B.
11. On those] There on the A–B.
12. Poet… is] Look, little poet, thy laurels are A–B.
13–14] Not A, Notebook 45; B has here the third and fourth of the introductory lines in A (see Section IIn).
15. ‘Sounding… ever?’] Look no more, little poet! A–B.
17. Pieria: a haunt of the Muses. Cp. Milton, Nativity Ode 28. ‘From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow’d fire’. Hence Pope, Messiah 6: ‘Who touch’d Isaiah’s hallow’d Lips with Fire!’ Based on the seraph, Isaiah vi 6–7. The link with the mountain may be a reminiscence of The Lover’s Tale i 315–17: ‘and touched far-off/His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame/Milder and purer.’