Ay me! Ay me! the woods decay & fall
The jtau blaiL uut 0. ULULI liji ii^uim ?
the
Th e vapours weep their substance to ground Man ^ comes & tills the earth & lies beneath And after many summers dies the cooo swan Me only fatal immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms: Here at the quiet limit of the world
e yet
A white-haired shadewroaming like a dream Th e ever-silent spaces^)f the East Far-folded mists & gleaming halls of morn.
[HEATH MANUSCRIPT]
Tithon
Ay me! ay me! the woods decay and fall, Th e vapours weep their substance to the ground, Man comes and tills the earth and lies beneath, And after many summers dies the rose. Me only fatal immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream Th e ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
[AS PRINTED IN 1864]
Tithonus
Th e woods decay, the woods decay and fall, Th e vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Ma n comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.
2. Three manuscript drafts of 'Tithonus' are extant. Tw o are in Tennyson's Notebooks Nos. 20 and 21, at Trinity College, Cambridge; a third one, written 1 833, is in the Commonplace Book compiled by Tennyson's friend J. M. Heath, which is in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University. According to Tennyson's editor, Christopher Ricks, the Heath version is later than those in the Trinity Manuscripts. The transcriptions here of Tennyson's opening lines are from the first draft (Trinity College manuscript, Notebook 20), and from the Heath manuscript, where the poem is titled 'Tithon.' These are followed by the final version of 'Tithonus' Tennyson published in 1864. As late as in the edition of 1860, the opening words had remained 'Ay me! ay me!' and 'field' (line 3) had remained 'earth.'
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POEMS IN PROCESS / A15
Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream Th e ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
ELIZABETH BABBETT BBOWNING From The Bunaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point1 [From the British Library manuscript, 1846]
Why
An d in that single glance I had Of my child's face . . I tell you all . . I saw a look that made me mad?! Th e master's look, that used to fall On my soul like his lash . . or worse: An d so, to save it from my curse
I twisted it roun d in my shawl. Does this sound like a slave's article of clothing?'
trembled
And he moaned and-sLioggfa} from foot to head?
shivered
He-tremHrd from head to foot? Till after a time he lay instead Too suddenly still and mute . . And I felt, beside, a creeping cold? I dared to lift up just a fold, As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.
But my fruit . . . ha, ha?there, had been . . (I laugh to think on't at this hour . . ) Your fine white angels, (who have seen God's secrets nearest to His power) And plucked my fruit to make them wine, An d sucked the soul of that child of mine,
the soul of
As the hummingbird sucks the flower.
Ha, ha, for the trick of the angels white! 'They freed the white child's spirit so, I said not a word, but day and night
1. On e part of Barrett Browning's manuscript draft of her abolitionist poe m is in the British Library in London; another, fittingly, given the poem's initial publication by a Boston abolitionist society, is on the other side of the Atlantic, in the Baylor University's Armstrong Library; a third is in the hands of a private collector. We give six stanzas from the British Library manuscript, along with, first, their counterparts in the initial printed version of the poem in The Liberty Bell for 1848 (published in December 1847 for the National Anti-Slavery Bazaar), and, then, their counterparts in Barrett Browning's Poems of 1850. Barrett Browning added a stanza to the poem after 1847 (the seventh stanza of the 1850 version); stanza 20 in the Liberty Bell version corresponds accordingly to stanza 21 in Poems and so forth. For discussion of Barrett Browning's revision of the Liberty Bell version, see Andrew M. Stauffer, 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning's (Re)Vision of Slavery,' in English Language Notes 34 (1997): 29-48.
2. Written sideways in the right-hand margin of the manuscript, in Robert Browning's handwriting.
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A16 / POEMS IN PROCESS
I carried the body to and fro? And it lay on my heart like a stone . . as chill. The sun may shine out as much as he will.
month
