Published 1862. ‘To the Prince Consort’ (T.), who had died on 14 Dec. 1861. It was written by about Christmas 1861 (Tennyson and His Friends, p. 208), and sent 7 Jan. 1862 (Letters ii 291). On 23 Jan., T. wrote to the Duchess of Argyll: ‘I am altogether, I assure you, out of love with my Dedication – but I suppose as the Queen has approved of it it must stand as it is’ (Letters ii 294).
These to His Memory – since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself – I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears –
These Idylls.
Scarce other than my king’s ideal knight,
‘Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her –’
Her – over all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,
Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone:
We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but through all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot: for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his sons
Hope more for these than some inheritance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,
Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor –
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day –
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace –
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good.
Break not, O woman’s-heart, but still endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure
Remembering all the beauty of that star
Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Grown a lonely splendour.
May all love,
His love, unseen but felt, o’ershadow Thee
The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee,
The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee,
The love of all Thy people comfort Thee,
Till God’s love set Thee at his side again!
¶463. 1. Prince Albert had asked T. to inscribe a copy of the Idylls, 17 May 1860 (Mem. i 455).
4. Cp. Catullus, Fragmenta 2: tibi dedico consecroque. J. Ferguson says this ‘may have an echo of Landor’s Rose Aylmer: ‘A night of memories and of sighs / I consecrate to thee’ (English Studies in Africa xii, 1969, 48).
5. Idylls: ‘Regarding the Greek derivation, I spelt my Idylls with two l’s mainly to divide them from the ordinary pastoral idyls usually spelt with one l. These idylls group themselves round one central figure’ (T.). T. pronounced the word with an I as in ‘idle’.
6. king’s] 1882; own 1862–81. ‘The first reading … was altered because Leslie Stephen and others called King Arthur a portrait of the Prince Consort’ (H.T.).
12. ‘Owing to the Trent affair [1861], when two Southern Commissioners accredited to Great Britain and France by the Confederate States were taken off a British steamship, the Trent, by the captain of the Federal man-of-war San Jacinto. The Queen and the Prince Consort were said to have averted war by their modification of a dispatch’ (T.).
13. drew] 1863; moved 1862.
14. We … gone] That maiden-manly soul H. Lpr 95 2nd reading.
15 ∧ 16. The MS had included a reference to ‘The fume and babble of a petulant hour’. The Duke and Duchess of Argyll (to whom T. sent the Dedication in Jan. 1862; Letters ii 291) criticised this, and other lines: ‘Worthy the sacred name of gentleman’, and l. 25. The Duke thought it ‘expedient to omit all very direct allusion to Jealousies of the Prince’; ‘I would not advise the insertion of the line “The sudden fume and petulance of an hour” … Let it be forgotten, if possible’ (14, 18 Jan. 1862; Lincoln).
17. In his letter of 23 Jan. 1862, T. wrote: ‘I missed out the word “bounteous” in the lines I sent to the Queen and inserted “kindly” simply because I thought the line sounded better – some unhappy critic, possibly, would say that I struck out the word because the Prince had been called near (Letters ii 294–5).
36–7. ‘The Prince Consort’s work in the planning of the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862’ (H.T.).
40. thy land: ‘Saxe-Coburg Gotha’ (T.).
41] Worthy the great old name of gentleman. H. Lpr 96 1st reading; Loving the sacred name of gentleman. Yale MS. Cp. In Memoriam cxi 22: ‘The grand old name of gentleman’.
47. leaves] 1863; left 1862.
49. o’ershadow: OED 2, to protect. T. wrote to the Duchess of Argyll, 23 Jan. 1862: ‘1 added a line in the copy which I sent to Her [The Queen] – this – at the conclusion’ (Letters ii 294).