Welsh Journals

Touched by the morning sun, great mountains glorying o'er it, Moel Hebog loom'd out, and Siabod tower'd up in æther: Liked Beddgelert much, flat green with murmur of waters, Bathed in a deep still pool not far from Pont Aberglaslyn- (Ravens croak'd, and took white, human skin for a lambkin). Then we returned.-What a day Many more if fate will allow it. When Tennyson came to write his tales of Arthur and his knights, the landscapes that he had seen in Wales would naturally rise before his eyes and form the background of some of his "Idylls." From Malory he had imbibed the ideal- ised conception of a feudal ruler whose fame for bravery and courtesy had spread through many lands and whose knights were devoted to his ser- vice. Tennyson, gazing upon the ruins of castles raised by Norman kings and nobles, peopled them with visions of the figures that he had come to love in mediaeval legend. It is conceivable that such a castle as is described in "The Marriage of Geraint" is a reminiscence of his Welsh tours. Then rode Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He look'd and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fallen a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers; And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. Whatever scene may have prompted this de- scription as a whole, we know definitely that the concluding lines were suggested bv the sight of the ivy-covered ruins of Tintern Abbey. In various ways this spot was of especial interest to Tennyson. In the first place it formed the back- ground of one of Wordsworth's greatest poems, for which, in spite of the fault that he found with its over-lengthy opening, Tennyson had a pro- found admiration. Again Tintern had a personal claim upon him. Not far away, on the opposite side of the Bristol Channel, was Clevedon, in whose lonely church on the hill overlooking the broad, flowing waters where the Severn joins the sea, lay the remains of Arthur Hallam. Inevita- bly, when the poet visited Tintern, his mind wan- dered to the friend whose body had been conveyed from Vienna to its final resting-place by this western shore, and he composed the beautiful lines which afterwards appeared in the nine- teenth canto of "In Memoriam." The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes haif the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, And hush'd my deepest grief of all, When fill'd with tears that cannot fall, I brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls; My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then. Another of Tennyson's poems inspired by Tin- tern Abbey was the famous lyric, "Tears, idle tears." At the sight of the magnificent ruins and of the golden cornfields stretching around him, he was seized with a feeling of wistful regret for the passing of all that is fair to look upon. Pos- sibly, the memory of Hallam, consciously or sub- consciously lent an added poignancy to this mood of tender longing. However, Tennyson informed Locker-Lampson that what moved him to write the poem was not real woe, but rather the yearn- ing that young people occasionally experience for that which seems to have departed for ever. This feeling, which was especially strong in Tennyson as a youth, finds expression in the lines Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields And thinking of the days that are no more. Tennyson's visit to the Welsh coast in 1839 gave rise to a beautiful simile in "The Princess." It occurs in the second part, in the description of Lady Blanche's daughter, the lovely Melissa, who has come with a message from her mother. She stands hesitating upon the threshold with her lips apart, And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, As bottom agates seen to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas. In reply to some wiseacres who would have it that the simile was taken, partly from Beaumont and Fletcher, partly from Shakespeare, Tenny- son stated that it was founded on his observa- tions while bathing in Wales. The place which suggested this passage might have been either Barmouth or Aberystwyth.