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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
I mean of verse (for so we held it then),
What came of that?' 'You know,' said Frank, 'he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books'?
And then to me demanding why: 'O, sir,
30 He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 'twas nothing?that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day;
God knows; he has a mint of reasons; ask.
It pleased me well enough.' 'Nay, nay,' said Hall,
35 'Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes,3 nothing-worth, 40 Mere chaff and draff,0 much better burnt.' 'Rut I,' bits of
Said Francis, 'picked the eleventh from this hearth,
And have it; keep a thing, its use will come.
I hoard it as a sugarplum for Holmes.'
He laughed, and I, though sleepy, like a horse
45 That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears;
For I remembered Everard's college fame
When we were Freshmen. Then at my request
He brought it; and the poet, little urged,
But with some prelude of disparagement,
50 Read, mouthing out his hollow o's and a's,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.'1 fc * a Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long
325 Had winked and threatened darkness, flared and fell;
At which the parson, sent to sleep with sound,
And waked with silence, grunted 'Good!' but we
Sat rapt: it was the tone with which he read?
Perhaps some modern touches here and there
330 Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness?
Or else we loved the man, and prized his work;
I know not; but we sitting, as I said,
The cock crew loud, as at that time of year
The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn.5
335 Then Francis, muttering like a man ill-used, 'There now?that's nothing!' drew a little back,
And drove his heel into the smoldered log,
That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue.
And so to bed, where yet in sleep I seemed
340 To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point; till on to dawn, when dreams
Begin to feel the truth and stir of day,
To me, methought, who waited with the crowd,
3. After reading 'Morte d'Arthur' in manuscript, pp. 1205-11). 'The Epic' then continued as Walter Savage Landor commented: 'It is more lows. Homeric than any poem of our time, and rivals 5. See Shakespeare's Hamlet 1.1.138^11, on some of the nohlest parts of the Odyssey.' legend of the cock's crowing 'all night long' in 4. Here followed the 271 lines of 'Morte d'Arthur' season of Jesus' birth. in 1842 (see The Passing of Arthur, lines 1 70- 440,
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LOCKSLEY HALL / 112 9 There came a bark? that, blowing forward, bore345 King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port;0 and all the people cried, 'Arthur is come again: he cannot die.' Then those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated?'Come again, and thrice as fair'; 350 And, further inland, voices echoed?'Come
