125 And, moved through life of lower phase, Result in man,3 be born and think, And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 130 On knowledge; under whose command Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute, For all we thought and loved and did, 135 And hoped, and suffered, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man that with me trod This planet was a noble type0 model, example
2. The 'Epilogue' describes the wedding day of Tennyson's sister Cecilia to Edmund Lushington. At the conclusion (printed here) the speaker reflects on the moonlit wedding night and the kind of offspring that will result from their union. 3. A child will be conceived and will develop in embryo through various stages. This development is similar to human evolution from the animal to the human level and perhaps to a future higher stage of development.
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Appearing ere the times were ripe, 140 That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
1833-50 1850
The Charge of the Light Brigade1
Half a league,2 half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
5 'Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!' he said. Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.3
2
'Forward, the Light Brigade!' io Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why,
15 Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
3 Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them,
20 Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Roldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death,
25 Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred.
1. During the Crimean War (1854?56), owing to confusion of orders, a brigade of British cavalry charged some entrenched batteries of Russian artillery. This blunder cost the lives of three- quarters of the six hundred horsemen engaged (see Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Reason Why, 1954). Tennyson rapidly composed his 'ballad' (as he called the poem) after reading an account of the battle in a newspaper.
2. About a mile and a half. 3. In the recording Tennyson made of this poem, 'hundred' sounds like 'hunderd'?a Lincolnshire pronunciation that reinforces the rhyme with 'thundered,' etc. 'Valley of Death': see Psalms 23.4 ('Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death').
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IDYLLS OF THE KING / 1189
4 Flashed all their sabers bare, Flashed as they turned in air Sab'ring the gunners there,
30 Charging an army, while
All the world wondered. Plunged in the battery smoke Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian
35 Reeled from the saber stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not, Not the six hundred.
5 Cannon to right of them, 40 Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell.
45 They that had fought so well Came through the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6 50 When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honor the charge they made! Honor the Light Brigade, 55 Noble six hundred!
1854 1854
Idylls of the King When John Milton was considering subjects suitable for an epic poem, one of those he entertained was the story of the British king Arthur, a semilegendary leader of about 500 c.E. who fought off the Saxon invaders who had swarmed into Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman legions. Tennyson likewise saw that the Arthurian story had epic potential and selected it for his lifework as 'the greatest of all poetical subjects.'
