Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Source of book: I own this. 

I think I came to Thomas Hardy somewhat backwards. The husband of my longtime violin teacher gave me his extra hardback of Jude the Obscure when I was a teen (along with a bunch of other stuff - including my introduction to Anthony Trollope and P. G. Wodehouse), and I put it on my shelf, hoping to eventually read it. I kind of knew in advance that it was Hardy’s last novel, and was so scandalous for its time that it caused an outcry, which then hurt Hardy’s feelings, causing him to never write another novel, instead focusing on increasingly pessimistic and bitter poetry. At least, that’s how I learned it in high school English Lit class. It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, of course. What was left out was that Hardy had some circumstances in his life which directly influenced the novel. (I summarized them in my post on his final poetry collection, Winter Words.) In any event, Jude the Obscure rather traumatized me with its bitter pessimism and vicious misogyny. The “scandal” of its day, the pointed mocking of the hypocrisy of puritanical religion and classism of higher education actually aged really well. I would say that those parts of the book resonate well in our own day. But the misogyny, driven by the catastrophic breakdown of his marriage, is so nasty that it taints the whole book. The psychological place he was in at the time led him to portray women as inherently untrustworthy, nay, as scheming snakes out to ruin men for their own reasons, and the book thus denies its female characters any humanity worthy of sympathy. As I found out later, Hardy regretted his break with his wife, and rather deified her after her death. So the whole thing is, to say the least, complex. 

After that, I avoided Hardy for years. I did, however, find a paperback copy of Under the Greenwood Tree, and gave it a chance. That book was his second published work (published anonymously), and the first of his “Wessex” novels. I really enjoyed that one, in large part because of its story about village musicians (hey, that’s my sort of thing!) and the “worship wars” - the generational difference between musical styles - which dominated my own church experience for years. 

I mentioned Winter Words, above. I own Hardy’s complete poetry, and decided to start from the back, just to be different. His poetry is enjoyable, I would say, and often more subtle than his novels. 

I decided last year to make an effort to read one of Hardy’s mature Wessex novels. I own the four best known: Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I went with Far From the Madding Crowd mostly because of the use of the word “madding,” which is often misread as “maddening.” Now, for an introvert like myself, crowds can become rather maddening (as in driving one insane), but the word “madding” refers to movement. A “madding crowd” is a large group of people milling around in a swarm, so to speak. Whether that drives you mad, or exhilarates you depends on personality. 

Written in 1874, Far From the Madding Crowd was Hardy’s first true commercial hit, and enabled him to give up his day job (as an architect) and write full time. The title was taken from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a poem 125 years old at that point, but which captured Hardy’s vision of portraying a rural England which was, but which was fading away. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way

This idea of the sequestered life, rigid roles and types, is key to understanding the book, in my view. The characters aren’t so much people as they are metaphors, archetypes rather than individuals, expressions of the land and culture in which they live. This is pretty obvious in the minor characters, which are practically purchased in bulk from the bin of minor rural English characters. Although 150 years ago, the characters were far more novel than now, it is impossible not to imagine Hardy shopping at Hackney’s Novel Shop, the delightful invention of my friend Sara. (“Need a simple yet goodhearted farmhand, given to getting ‘double vision’ after a nip in the local pub? You’ve come to the right place. I’ll throw in a rakish soldier and the girl he knocks up for free...”) Even the major characters do not seem to be full human characters so much as they are representations of facets of the rural English character. Don’t get me wrong: there is quite a bit of psychological depth to the three main actors. But even this depth is driven by their type. It is hard to explain this sensation, but if you read the book, I think it is easy enough to feel. 

Whatever the “idyllic” character of the fictional “Wessex” - essentially rural Southwestern England - the plot is anything but that. It is pretty dang sensational and scandalous. If you want to be surprised, I recommend stopping here, reading the book, and then coming back, because spoilers are necessary from this point on. 

I would say that the plot centers on a combination of a love triangle and a “love pyramid” - as far as I know, I coined that term. This is not to be confused with a love quadrilateral, where there are four points which connect to two others, but not to all three. In this case, there is one person (the female) at the pinnacle, with the three men at the base vying for her. With, as might be expected, tragic results. 

First, the pyramid. At the apex is Bathsheba Everdene (um, definitely no metaphorical names in this book, no sir…) She is an attractive young woman who starts off fairly poor, but suddenly inherits a farm from a relative, and becomes the most eligible bachelorette for miles around. Three men desire her. First is Gabriel Oak, the solid, stolid, steadfast, reliable young shepherd, fallen on hard times after a doofus dog ruins his flock. Second is Farmer Boldwood, an older gentleman who has never really related well to women, but who is suddenly smitten with Bathsheba after she plays a spurious joke on him. (She sends him a valentine saying “marry me” despite having no interest in him.) The third is Sergeant Troy, the son of a nobleman who has taken military orders, and who is a rake in every sense of the word. So, sense the theme with these names yet? As go the names, so go the personalities. All three of these desire Bathsheba, but take completely different approaches to this desire. 

Then, we get to the love triangle. Before meeting Bathsheba, Troy has already loved Fanny Robin, a young servant girl who used to work for Bathsheba’s predecessor. Due to a mixup, she fails to go to the right church, and doesn’t end up marrying Troy. This is the heart of the tragedy that dominates the book. 

The triangle is necessary to the plot, but it is really the pyramid which drives the psychological drama. 

I would go so far as to consider Sergeant Troy a more minor character in this sense: while he is a major character as far as importance to the plot, we get very little of his inner life. He comes and goes, but he is a protean force, not a complex human. He loves, or better, lusts, like an animal, and reacts without thinking through the implications. 

In contrast, the motivations and struggles of Bathsheba, Gabriel, and Boldwood are all examined at length, and it is their fates which truly matter. (Anyone who isn’t relieved to some degree when Troy finally meets his quietus is someone I wouldn’t recommend dating.) 

If I were to describe the three archetypes represented here, I would do it as follows. Bathsheba is kind of the facets of the “feminine” rolled into one. She is, on the one hand, competent and strong. On the other, she is (in the irritating Victorian stereotype) vulnerable to emotion, and thus unable to keep to a steady purpose in love. Is she an inspiration or a cautionary tale? That isn’t clear. But Hardy definitely seems to adopt the attitude of the Victorian Male and assume that she will be at her best when taken well in hand by the right sort of man. (An idea which, ironically, is undermined by the way he portrays her before her unfortunate adventures in love…) 

Boldwood, on the other hand, is the unstable masculine. Hardy seems almost oblivious to the way that Boldwood is even more emotional and unstable than Bathsheba - he insists on using feminine ideas of “weakness” to describe her, while explaining his excesses as, well, excesses of passion and spirits. It isn’t that he candy-coats Boldwood’s issues - rather the contrary - it is just that the gendered way in which these are described hasn’t aged all that well. 

Gabriel Oak, in contrast to the others, is a man for all times, perhaps. After the initial catastrophe that overtakes him, and renders him (in his own mind, at least) as an utterly unsuitable suitor for Bathsheba, he takes on the “stiff upper lip, stout fellow” British archetype, and proceeds with his life and his looking out for Bathsheba despite knowing he has no chance. Although almost superhuman in his stoicism (he is an archetype, not a realistic character), he does represent an ideal of goodness. An earthy, everyday, simple goodness. He has his emotional struggles, of course. And he is relatable in many ways. But he never really slips up and becomes a full human with genuine weakness. 

That isn’t really the point, though. Far From the Madding Crowd is neither a novel of manners nor a coming of age story. It’s drama is as much between forces as humans. The protean and the rooted, bold and the patient. And, I might add, the three-fold choice that Bathsheba faces. Does she want the financially and socially obvious choice, that is, Boldwood? Or does she want the dashing and romantic Troy? Or will she eventually go with the gentle friendship of Oak? All three represent compromise in some way, alas. 

In my opinion, Hardy isn’t my favorite Victorian novelist, although this book was indeed good. That place remains Anthony Trollope’s to lose, followed by George Eliot. But reading this book at least helped me understand why he has the reputation he does. This is a compelling book, and his writing is better than I remember in either of the others I read. 

Here are some examples of passages or phrases which stood out to me. 

On the first page, there is a description of Gabriel Oak, the first character we meet. 

On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. 

This might be a description of Hardy himself, who was never a particularly devoted churchgoer, and became increasingly agnostic as he aged. I love the phrase “Laodicean neutrality” thought. 

I also loved the line after Bathsheba rejects Oak’s clumsy proposal, and leaves the neighborhood. 

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.

I know this is a variant on the old joke, but I still like the delightful twist of phrase that Hardy uses. 

Another pithy distillation of an age-old thought comes when Bathsheba contemplates Boldwood’s offer of marriage. She thinks he is disinterested. (Not to be confused with uninterested - although the two are conflated all the time these days.) But Hardy points out that this isn’t the case. 

Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.

I really had to think about this one for a while, but I think Hardy is right. Sit with that thought a while, and think about those you know who consider themselves the most pure...trust me on this. 

Without a doubt, the most brilliant scene in the book comes about two thirds of the way through. Bathsheba has (spoiler!) married the dissolute Troy, and he has thrown a party and made most of the town drunk as hell. Oak realizes from his knowledge of nature that a huge storm is coming in, and the harvest is sitting out and vulnerable. He works most of the night by himself before Bathsheba joins him. The two of them work together in the gathering lightning until the storm hits in its fury. I could literally quote several pages here, the writing is so good, and the scene so unforgettable. Here is just a taste:

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the mature of a shout than of anything else earthly.  

I have been through some wicked electrical storms over the years. I particularly think of one where we watched the lightning roll in at Encino Park when I was a kid. Or the one on the Navajo Reservation. Or that one out at Arches National Park (where I got my best ever lightning photo), or several in the Sierras while hiking or camping. Although the craziest still has to be getting caught in a squall in Grand Staircase Escalante with the kids, where we literally wondered if we needed to lay flat on the ground or risk a strike. Hardy does a great job here in evoking the feeling. 

Hardy also uses meteorological conditions as metaphors for the plot as well. After Fanny dies in childbirth, he uses the term “atmospheric fungi” to describe the building clouds, and then the fog which incites Joseph Poorgrass to get drunk out of his skull at the pub rather than do his duty and return the bodies to the town. 

The final line I want to mention, though, is pretty devastating. Although not nearly as nasty as Hardy would get in Jude, there is already a foreshadowing of his distrust of feminine wiles. After the culminating tragedy of the plot, Oak gives notice that he will leave Bathsheba’s employ, and perhaps seek his fortune in California. She finds herself unexpectedly devastated. Now, fine enough to acknowledge that the two of them love each other, and that she is sad to lose a friend. But this little twist of the knife by Hardy is brutal. 

She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way. 

I regard this as a misstep on Hardy’s part. Don’t get me wrong. I know and have known women (and men!) like this, who get their rocks off on knowing that someone hopelessly desires them one way or another. (Either romantically, as a friend, or as a status symbol. See, for example, the mean girls who want everyone jealous of them. Or The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named and his need to be the center of attention at all times.) For that matter, I have had a personal experience of someone who was pissed as hell when my wife and I decided to cut this person out of our lives rather than put up with the abuse any longer. I think [s]he did regard the ability to inflict drama on us to be his/her inalienable right for life. 

But this is an injustice to Bathsheba, who, for whatever weaknesses she has, isn’t a narcissist like that. Rather, it is her own conscience that leads her to commit more to Boldwood than she should, because she feels guilty at having pranked him and given him the wrong impression that she loves him. I think Hardy slips a bit of his distrust of women into this line, and misses that he is contradicting his carefully constructed characterization. It also undermines the final resolution. If Bathsheba is really this manipulative and self-absorbed, she is hardly the soulmate for Oak that Hardy then endeavors to portray her as being. If she is this way, she will make Oak - and anyone else foolish enough to marry her - miserable. But the rest of the portrayal of her personality undercuts this. She is flawed, but she isn’t even close to cruel. A better way to understand her is to realize that she is very young, and thrust into responsibility she was not trained or expected to assume. She was not prepared either for the relentless pursuit by a wealthy older man or for infatuation with a charming rake. It isn’t really that she believes she is entitled to use Oak as she wishes. Rather, she just unthinkingly takes his loyal friendship for granted. She doesn’t really appreciate what she has until it is gone. Which is a rather different thing. 

Far From the Madding Crowd is a compelling book, I will say. It has its flaws, primarily Hardy’s inability to really understand women. I would contrast both Anthony Trollope, who can be both a conservative Victorian and make all his characters, male and female, nuanced and recognizably human; and George Eliot, who, being female herself, sees no need to indulge the Victorian male-driven stereotypes in the first place. 

But Hardy has his strengths too. His observation and description of a time and place are compelling, and his analysis of the tension between the expectations of society and the need to be true to one’s own self and conscience are as timeless as ever. Of the novels of his I have read, I think this one is the best, although the other two have their strengths. I hope to eventually read his other major works, including more of his poetry. 

Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

Source of book: I own this.

Regular readers of my blog know that my favorite Victorian author is Anthony Trollope. I try to read one of his books every year. Past reads since I started writing about them are:

Barsetshire Chronicles:

The Barchester Chronicles (BBC miniseries based on the first two books, The Warden and Barchester Towers)

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Other books:

He Knew He Was Right

Cousin Henry

The Claverings

These are not, of course, the only Trollope novels I have read. These are the ones I have read since I started blogging in 2010. I should mention Castle Richmond and The Bertrams as particularly excellent books.

***

Orley Farm is one of Trollope’s stand-alone novels, and the last of the set of Dover paperbacks I was given in my teens by the husband of my violin teacher. Along with some Wodehouse and a few hardback Dickens, he gave me five Trollopes - I had never heard of him, but fell in love.

While Orley Farm had its moments, it was not my favorite of Trollope’s books. In large part, this stems from two factors. First, while Trollope is usually fairly gentle with his characters, writing few true villains, and making everyone human; in this case, he seemed more to dislike his characters than like them. For the most part, they are rather unlikeable, and it is difficult to really be in sympathy with them, the way one is in most of Trollope’s novels. It isn’t the presence of unpleasant characters so much as it is the lack of humanizing traits which are the problem. I found it uncharacteristically difficult to understand the motivations, and thus found many of the characters to be caricatures rather than the truly three dimensional inhabitants of the typical Trollopean world.

The second factor is somewhat related to the first. I feel that Trollope wrote this book more to complain about lawyers and the British legal system than to explore the psychology of his characters. Whatever Trollope is as an author, he isn’t Charles Dickens, and he isn’t particularly adept at the use of caricature in satire. Rather, Trollope’s strength as a satirical and social writer is his ability to humanize the victims of injustice - and especially injustice inflicted with good, reforming motivations. Thus, we can sympathize with Mr. Harding even as we may agree that he is the recipient of a sinecure that probably should be reformed. We can feel for Carrie Brattle, whose status as a “fallen woman” gives her no real chance at a decent life. We can even understand the loathsome Mrs. Proudie and her attempts to further her religious beliefs, even as we hate her methods - and even perhaps the substance of those beliefs. She is all the more real for being humanly understandable.

This was my biggest problem with Orley Farm. I had a hard time finding a character who was really fleshed out, particularly for the first half of the book.

A bit of background might help here. Trollope was the son of a failed barrister. His father never really made a good go of it in law, and was forever in debt. His mother, however, was a skilled writer. Her books aren’t much read today, and she wasn’t a world class author, but she was financially successful, and her books were indeed influential. Domestic Manners of the Americans was her most successful, and many of her observations about American arrogance and hypocrisy still ring true. She also wrote an anti-slavery novel which inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe, and an “industrial novel,” about class injustice in the age of the Industrial Revolution - another book which inspired more famous later authors. So, with her husband failing to make a living, it fell to Frances Trollope to support the family with writing.

Young Anthony eschewed the law, and went to work for the Postal Service, where he invented the pillar letter box, and found time to write. While he never studied law, he absorbed a large amount of knowledge about it, and his books generally get the legal details right. Although the British legal system of the Victorian Era is much different from the 21st Century American legal system. (I could write a whole post about all of the differences…)

What Anthony never seems to have understood about the law was the idea that the criminal law system is supposed to be biased in favor of the accused - in large part to counteract the power of the State. In theory (although not as often in practice), this should result in a very small number of false convictions - but should, by design, allow a number of guilty persons to go free. That this isn’t necessarily the case in practice is beside the point. Yes, money still tends to get one off, and impoverished people of color tend to be falsely convinced more often than wealthy whites. But the problem isn’t that we make it too easy for those horrid criminal defense lawyers to get people off.

But that is precisely the point Trollope wants to make. He honestly seems to believe that guilty people shouldn’t be defended, and that neutral witnesses shouldn’t ever have their credibility attacked. As a lawyer, this is an offensive idea. And in general, Trollope is so much more subtle than this, which is why I was disappointed.

The plot is basically this. (Spoiler alert!)

 

 My Dover paperback edition has the original J. E. Millais illustrations.

Sir Joseph Mason the elder was a wealthy man, with two major estates. After his first wife died, leaving a grown son, Sir Joseph remarried a young woman barely out of her teens - a woman who was beautiful but under challenging financial circumstances. She marries him out of need and pressure from her family, not love. They have a child together, and soon thereafter, Sir Joseph dies.

A last minute codicil to his will leaves Orley Farm - the lesser estate - to the infant. The previous will would have left everything, except for the small allowance to the widow required by law, to the older son. The question was, did young Lady Mason forge the codicil?

The first trial - the probate - takes place after the death, and is alluded to in the book. The real action occurs twenty-one years later, when the infant, Lucious, comes of age. He angers the son-in-law of the lawyer who worked for Sir Joseph. Said son-in-law, himself a lawyer, goes through the old documents and discovers evidence which may be in favor of a finding of forgery. He contacts Joseph Jr., the older son, and incites him to seek a prosecution of Lady Mason for perjury and forgery. That trial is the centerpiece of the story.

This being Trollope, the book is roughly 650 pages long, and pretty dense. It also has a number of subplots involving the periphery players. Lady Mason’s lawyer has domestic troubles because his neglected wife assumes he is having an affair with Lady Mason. Lady Mason’s neighbor and old friend, Sir Peregrine Orme, falls in love with her, while his son unsuccessfully pursues the daughter of a judge - she instead falls in love with an idealistic young barrister who ends up working on Lady Orme’s case. Even the witnesses have their own little dramas going. Everyone connected with the case is somehow involved in the story.

As usual with Trollope, the question isn’t really if Lady Mason is guilty. Rather, it is how each of the characters response to the situation. Including her. There is the legal question, of course: will a jury find her guilty? There is the moral case: what would real justice look like? And there is the social question: guilty or not, will she and her son lose their reputations?

So much about this is good. The book had some great moments in it. If only Trollope had allowed himself to actually understand how a lawyer could - and should - defend a guilty client. I think he was a bit blinded by his own upbringing. I wasn’t able to find out much of the circumstances of his father’s failure, but it is entirely possible that the idealistic Felix Graham is meant to be a stand-in for the elder Mr. Trollope. He is hopeless at the task of doing his best even when he doesn’t believe in his case. And he is advised that maybe he should pursue his writing instead. (Of course, in this particular world, he also is able to marry a wealthy woman.)

I think another factor here is that Trollope was by nature and inclination, a conservative. He preferred the High Church to the Low Church, was suspicious of reforms of all kinds, and staunchly supported the existing class system, even though he wasn’t a winner in that system. Thus, I think that he couldn’t - despite really making an effort - see the moral injustice inherent in giving property to one child while leaving the other destitute. Hey, Primogeniture has a long and storied history, even if it was brutal to younger children, and undoubtedly fed the unending wars of the last, well, millennia. After all, a bunch of younger sons without money, whose class meant they couldn’t make a living by working, with few prospects...hey, might as well go to war and try to win an award from the king, right? Trollope really does try. But he can’t quite go there. Rules is rules.

I think this is ultimately why I had a hard time feeling the characters. Lady Mason is a great character, for the most part. But Trollope’s conservatism can’t allow her to truly stick to her guns. In a later (or earlier) era, she could have been the hero of the book. Likewise, Lucious is a real prick, and it is impossible to like him. I suspect Trollope didn’t want him to be a sympathetic victim - he somehow had to deserve tragedy. Thus, of the main players in the central drama, the most believable are those I would call the true villains. Mr. Dockwrath, the lawyer who stirs everything up in retaliation for losing his lease, ignores the advice of his much wiser wife, grubs for as much as he can get, and ultimately loses everything. He thoroughly deserves it. But he is also believable: I know people like that, and they often end the same way. Likewise, I know people like Joseph Mason the younger, consumed with a thirst for revenge because he feels cheated out of what he “deserves,” namely everything. But again, he is believable. He is still, 25 years later, pissed off at his father for refusing to “act his age” and remain a widower. Instead, he fell for the charming young lady (who he blames entirely for his father’s actions), with the result being an unwanted younger brother who might get some of the inheritance.

Some of the minor characters are really good. I liked Judge Stavely and his family - of all the people, I would most like to meet them in person. Faced with the fact that his daughter has fallen in love with a poor, unattractive, but intelligent man, he supports her, remembering his own courtship. I also liked the lawyer, Mr. Furnival. He is very imperfect, clearly, but very human - and a rather conscientious lawyer. I’d want to hire someone like him: aware of his limitations, devoted to seeing his clients’ cases through, quietly competent, and in no need of self-aggrandizement.

As in any Trollope novel, there is much good writing, and a number of memorable lines. Here are a few that stood out to me.

From the first chapter, where Trollope introduces the book:

It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story ‘The Great Orley Farm Case.’ But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, - Orley Farm.

I say so much at commencing in order that I may have an opportunity of explaining that this book of mine will not be devoted in any special way to rural delights. The name might lead to the idea that new precepts were to be given, in the pleasant guise of a novel, as to cream-cheeses, pigs with small bones, wheat sown in drills, or artificial manure. No such aspirations are mine.

Or, Mr. Furnival, giving the common - and true - lament of us lawyers:

‘We lawyers are very much abused now-a-days,’ said Mr. Furnival… ‘but I hardly know how the world would get on without us.’

There is a great scene involving Sir Joseph the younger and his wife. While he is extravagantly rich, she is a penny-pinching shrew. Their food is almost inedible, and they really can’t entertain, because she refuses to have proper and sufficient provender for the spread. Trollope describes their attempt at a Christmas dinner, and what followed.

And then they all went to church. Mrs. Mason would not on any account have missed church on Christmas-day or a Sunday. It was a cheap duty, and therefore rigidly performed.

There is another extended musing which is quite fun. I am reading a book on the intentional “moulding” of a wife - I wonder if Trollope was familiar with the facts or not - so this quote seems apropos. It also is percipient on a few timeless questions: is trying to turn a spouse into what you wish they were ever a good idea? And what is the real reason creeps like Roy Moore want to find much younger girls? Anyway, here is the quote, which comes after we are introduced to Felix Graham, and the “engagement” he is in with his ward - at the insistence of her father, when she was a mere child. She was not, in any meaningful sense, consulted.

In speaking of the character and antecedents of Felix Graham I have said that he was moulding a wife for himself. The idea of a wife thus moulded to fit a man’s own grooves, and educated to suit matrimonial purposes according to the exact views of the future husband was by no means original with him. Other men have moulded their wives, but I do not know that as a rule the practice has been found to answer. It is open, in the first place, to this objection, - that the moulder does not generally conceive such idea very early in life, and the idea when conceived must necessarily be carried out on a young girl. Such a plan is the result of much deliberate thought, and has generally arisen from long observation, on the part of the thinker, of the unhappiness arising from marriages in which there has been no moulding. Such a frame of mind comes upon a bachelor, perhaps about his thirty-fifth year, and then he goes to work with a girl of fourteen. The operation takes some ten years, at the end of which the moulded bride regards her lord as an old man. On the whole I think that the ordinary plan is the better, and even the safer. Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music - about affairs masculine and feminine - then take the leap in the dark. There is danger, no doubt; but the moulded wife is, I think, more dangerous.

Don’t get hung up on the Victorian nonsense - Trollope was a product of his time. Just enjoy the gentle snark.

My final quote is about Judge Stavely, after he has essentially opened the door to the possibility of Felix Graham marrying his daughter Madeleine.

But the judge was an odd man in many of the theories of his life. One of them, with reference to his children, was very odd, and altogether opposed to the usual practice of the world. It was this, - that they should be allowed, as far as was practicable, to do what they liked. Now the general opinion of the world is certainly quite the reverse - namely this, that children, as long as they are under the control of their parents, should be hindered and prevented in those things to which they are most inclined. Of course the world in general, in carrying out this practice, excuses it by an assertion, - made to themselves or others - that children customarily like those things which they ought not to like. But the judge had an idea quite opposed to this. Children, he said, if properly trained, would like those things which were good for them. Now it may be that he thought his daughter had been properly trained.

I am somewhat of this mindset. Coming from a religious tradition which is fundamentally authoritarian - and increasingly so - I have had my own bit of pressure (as an adult, by the way) to order my life, not according to what I want and believe is best for my family, but according to the preferences of others. Or, to be more accurate, I have been pressured to pressure my wife to conform to the expectations of others. Because in a patriarchal religious tradition, women face most of the expectations. I think Judge Staveley was ahead of his time in this idea that children are, when it comes to decisions about their future, entitled to choose their own lives.

I don’t want this review to sound too negative. While this isn’t my favorite Trollope book, it still is good, just flawed. If you haven’t discovered Trollope, I wouldn’t recommend this as a first book, because it lacks the best traits of his writing: psychological subtlety, sympathetic characters, and a wry distrust of convention even as he defends it. I’d go with the Barchester Chronicles, or perhaps with The Bertrams or Castle Richmond as starters.

Under the Willows and Other Poems by James Russell Lowell

Source of book: I own this

Back in my high school days, I had to memorize a poem by James Russell Lowell. I do not remember which one, honestly; just the impression that it was the sort of poem that old-fashioned teachers make high school students memorize. That is not a compliment. As a result, I kind of had a poor impression of Lowell, and never really went back to read more of his works. I did, however, pick up a nice used hardback anthology at some point.

I decided to revisit Lowell, and see if my earlier impression was justified. Fortunately, it appears that he was indeed better than that one selection.

Lowell was one of the “Fireside Poets,” that group of 19th Century American poets who were the first to rival the poets of Europe in popularity. They were, at the time, rather superstars. However, in the 20th Century, their reputation declined as taste in poetry changed. Their traditionalism in form and themes does seem quaint now, and none of them ever rose to the pinnacle of artistic achievement that Tennyson did - and really, who did? That said, they still hold their charms, and I found a number of Lowell’s poems to speak to me.

I also wrote about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline, a few years ago. Like Longfellow, Lowell was an ardent abolitionist, and was generous with his time and money to the cause - he wasn’t wealthy, but still assisted escaped slaves with financial help. Lowell was an interesting character, and a rather admirable person. 

 Epic Victorian Hipster look, and a great quote.

Under the Willows and Other Poems was published in 1868, and contained primarily poems published in magazines previously.

How about the poems? Here are the ones which stood out to me.

To Charles Eliot Norton - Agro Dolce

The wind is roistering out of doors,

My windows shake and my chimney roars;

My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me,

As of old, in their moody, minor key,

And out of the past the hoarse wind blows,

As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes.

'Ho! ho! nine-and-forty,' they seem to sing,

'We saw you a little toddling thing.

We knew you child and youth and man,

A wonderful fellow to dream and plan,

With a great thing always to come,--who knows?

Well, well! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes.

'How many times have you sat at gaze

Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze,

Shaping among the whimsical coals

Fancies and figures and shining goals!

What matters the ashes that cover those?

While hickory lasts you can toast your toes.

'O dream-ship-builder: where are they all,

Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall,

That should crush the waves under canvas piles,

And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles?

There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes,

While you muse in your arm-chair, and toast your toes.'

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore,

My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar;

If much be gone, there is much remains;

By the embers of loss I count my gains,

You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows

In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes.

Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships,

To send a child's armada of chips!

Instead of the great gun, tier on tier,

A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere!

'Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes,'

I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes.

If that isn’t the quintessential Fireside Poem, I don’t know what is.

Many of the poems in this collection have nature as a theme. The rather long (and good) title poem has these interesting lines I figured I might quote.

I care not how men trace their ancestry,

To ape or Adam: let them please their whim;

But I in June am midway to believe

A tree among my far progenitors,

Such sympathy is mine with all the race,

Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet

There is between us.

Written in an era when Darwin had turned our understanding of natural history on its head, that little dig at the controversy is a nice touch. Kind of like how George Strait handled it for his own audience later.

Lowell’s life included the tragic. Of his four children, three died by age two. His wife died of tuberculosis a few years later. This poem is in response to one of those deaths. In the letter he wrote, submitting the poem to The Anti-Slavery Standard, he said, “May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you.”

The First Snow-Fall

The snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway

With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree

Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara

Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down,

And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window

The noiseless work of the sky,

And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,

Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn

Where a little headstone stood;

How the flakes were folding it gently,

As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, 'Father, who makes it snow?'

And I told of the good All-father

Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,

And thought of the leaden sky

That arched o'er our first great sorrow,

When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience

That fell from that cloud like snow,

Flake by flake, healing and hiding

The scar that renewed our woe.

And again to the child I whispered,

'The snow that husheth all,

Darling, the merciful Father

Alone can make it fall!'

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her:

And she, kissing back, could not know

That my kiss was given to her sister,

Folded close under deepening snow.

A friend of mine recently lost his son, and I see in his pain the emotion that Lowell shows in every line. I won’t quote it here, but “After the Burial” is also a lacerating response to a child’s death.

Also on the theme of the brevity of life, here is a short one, to be used in a yearbook these days, perhaps.

For An Autograph

Though old the thought and oft exprest,

'Tis his at last who says it best,--

I'll try my fortune with the rest.

Life is a leaf of paper white

Whereon each one of us may write

His word or two, and then comes night.

'Lo, time and space enough,' we cry,

'To write an epic!' so we try

Our nibs upon the edge, and die.

Muse not which way the pen to hold,

Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,

Soon come the darkness and the cold.

Greatly begin! though thou have time

But for a line, be that sublime,--

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Ah, with what lofty hope we came!

But we forget it, dream of fame,

And scrawl, as I do here, a name.

Lowell was (I suppose like most poets), a bit of a mystic in his way. One of the more interesting things about my particular collection is that it has introductions to many of the poems, indicating the circumstances in which they were written. In the introduction to “The Dead House,” Lowell opines that “I have a notion that the inmates of a house should never be changed. When the first occupants go out it should be burned, and a stone set up with ‘Sacred to the Memory of a Home’ on it. Suppose the body were eternal, and that when one spirit went out another took the lease.”

Here is another one which struck me as interesting. In our own times, when Muslims are vilified, it is interesting to find a more favorable mention. This poem also has a great message about our own idols.

Mahmood the Image-Breaker

Old events have modern meanings; only that survives

Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.

Mahmood once, the idol-breaker, spreader of the Faith,

Was at Sumnat tempted sorely, as the legend saith.

In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous and abhorred,

Granite on a throne of granite, sat the temple's lord,

Mahmood paused a moment, silenced by the silent face

That, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed the ancient place.

Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by his doubt made bold,

Pledging for their idol's ransom countless gems and gold.

Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmood, but of precious use,

Since from it the roots of power suck a potent juice.

'Were yon stone alone in question, this would please me well,'

Mahmood said; 'but, with the block there, I my truth must sell.

'Wealth and rule slip down with Fortune, as her wheel turns round;

He who keeps his faith, he only cannot be discrowned.

'Little were a change of station, loss of life or crown,

But the wreck were past retrieving if the Man fell down.'

So his iron mace he lifted, smote with might and main,

And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, burst in twain.

Luck obeys the downright striker; from the hollow core,

Fifty times the Brahmins' offer deluged all the floor.

Another one of religious theme is this one. The opening stanza is fantastic, with its tribute to the unknown and unsung heroes of everyday life.

All-Saints

One feast, of holy days the crest,

I, though no Churchman, love to keep,

All-Saints,--the unknown good that rest

In God's still memory folded deep;

The bravely dumb that did their deed,

And scorned to blot it with a name,

Men of the plain heroic breed,

That loved Heaven's silence more than fame.

Such lived not in the past alone,

But thread to-day the unheeding street,

And stairs to Sin and Famine known

Sing with the welcome of their feet;

The den they enter grows a shrine,

The grimy sash an oriel burns,

Their cup of water warms like wine,

Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.

About their brows to me appears

An aureole traced in tenderest light,

The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears

In dying eyes, by them made bright,

Of souls that shivered on the edge

Of that chill ford repassed no more,

And in their mercy felt the pledge

And sweetness of the farther shore

One final poem I will mention is a more humorous one. The occasion was that John Bartlett (yes, of the famous book of quotations!), a neighbor of Lowell’s, sent him a seven pound trout as a gift. There is so much that is fun about this poem, from the idea that Death is an angler, to the hope that the trout will weigh in Bartlett’s favor at the Last Judgement.

To Mr. John Bartlett - Who Had Sent Me a Seven-Pound Trout

Fit for an Abbot of Theleme,

For the whole Cardinals' College, or

The Pope himself to see in dream

Before his lenten vision gleam.

He lies there, the sogdologer!

His precious flanks with stars besprent,

Worthy to swim in Castaly!

The friend by whom such gifts are sent,

For him shall bumpers full be spent,

His health! be Luck his fast ally!

I see him trace the wayward brook

Amid the forest mysteries,

Where at their shades shy aspens look.

Or where, with many a gurgling crook,

It croons its woodland histories.

I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend

Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude

To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,--

(Oh, stew him, Ann, as 'twere your friend,

With amorous solicitude!)

I see him step with caution due,

Soft as if shod with moccasins,

Grave as in church, for who plies you,

Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew

From all our common stock o' sins.

The unerring fly I see him cast,

That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,

A flash! a whirl! he has him fast!

We tyros, how that struggle last

Confuses and appalls us oft.

Unfluttered he: calm as the sky

Looks on our tragi-comedies,

This way and that he lets him fly,

A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die

Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease.

The friend who gave our board such gust,

Life's care may he o'erstep it half,

And, when Death hooks him, as he must,

He'll do it handsomely, I trust,

And John H---- write his epitaph!

Oh, born beneath the Fishes' sign,

Of constellations happiest,

May he somewhere with Walton dine,

May Horace send him Massic wine,

And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest!

And when they come his deeds to weigh,

And how he used the talents his,

One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay

(If trout had scales), and 'twill outsway

The wrong side of the balances.

I enjoyed Lowell more than I expected. He was much more of an emotional and thoughtful guy than the one poem would indicate. I am glad I gave him another chance.

English Idyls and Other Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Source of book: I own a complete collection of Tennyson’s poetry

Along with the general decline of interest in poetry has come a certain disdain for poets of the Romantic and Victorian Eras, of which Tennyson is one of the greatest. Perhaps it is the unabashed emotion, the love of beauty, the optimism? If it were merely an objection to the sexism and colonialism of the era, then other genres should have suffered too, and yet the novels are not so roundly mocked as the poetry. This is all a real shame, as some of the most beautiful, evocative, and perceptive poetry in the English language was written during the 19th Century.

Since I have the complete Tennyson (in a Modern Library hardback), I have been reading the poems roughly in order. I skipped the juvenalia, and started with the 1833 collection that made his reputation. Later, in 1842, Tennyson issued the first collection along with a new collection in a two-part Poems. It is the second half of that collection that forms the subject of this review.

As I alluded to above, reading Tennyson is, well, complicated. He was a man of his time. But also one who transcended his time. He was, perhaps by his nature, a conservative. At least in many ways. But he also was troubled by his times too, and to put him down as another jingoist and sexist Victorian is an oversimplification. In his religion too, he was...complicated. So many of his poems seem an affirmation of the typical Christian doctrines of his time and place, but he also expressed some fairly shocking sentiments about religion. I find that this actually fits well. Artists - particularly poets - live in the spaces in between. They deal with a part of life that cannot be easily divided into black and white. Poets speak of a reality that is more felt than seen, and truth that is more true because it is evoked, not stated outright. Tennyson struggled with debilitating depression for his entire life, and felt his personal tragedies deeply. It is only one who could feel and hurt as he did who could really grasp the truth in his line, “"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." That line comes from In Memoriam, his long lament for the death of his close friend.

So, for me, even as I wince at some of his lines, I find I am carried along in the beauty of his language, and recognize him as a true kindred spirit speaking across a century and a half.

The collection starts off with a series of what he terms “English Idyls.” These are narrative poems in blank verse, many on historical themes. After a brief introduction where the narrator (not necessarily, but possibly Tennyson himself) discusses the old versus the new with some friends. Eventually, he is coaxed into sharing his own tribute to the old days - namely, an epic poem about King Arthur. The result is “Morte D’Arthur,” which would eventually become the closing section of Idylls of the King. I still haven’t read all of Idylls yet, and it has been some years since I read any of it. (This is a shame, because I have a gorgeous hardback of Idylls. I have, however, read Malory’s version...) The language is just so gorgeous, it is hard to even describe it. It is just such that when you read it (as when you read or hear Shakespeare), you just feel the music of the poetry. I’ll quote just a bit of it - one of my favorite passages.

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May He within Himself make pure! but thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But now farewell. I am going a long way

With these thou seëst—if indeed I go—

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)

To the island-valley of Avilion;

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns

And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,

Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

Read that out loud. Let the words wash over you. And then re-read it, focusing on what an epic deathbed statement it really is. Arthur accepts the changing of the world, and releases his power with that combination of faith and doubt that characterizes the best of Tennyson.

(I was also reminded that books like The Buried Giant, which I just read, or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) make so much more sense if you have read the original Arthurian legends.)

“Morte D’Arthur” wasn’t the only poem in this collection that I had read before. In fact, there were a good number that are familiar enough that most of us have read them before in high school, college, and I hope in the years since. (Yeah, it’s depressing how many people haven’t really read poetry after graduation.)

One of those old friends was “Locksley Hall.” I read the whole thing in High School - we had to read excerpts, but I tend to like reading things in context. The plot is pretty simple. The young man returns to Locksley Hall, his college, and muses on his life. In particular, the woman that rejected him. The poem thus combines optimism for the future with the pain and bitterness of loss. Along the way, the poet condemns the materialism and classism that led to his rejection, and yet hopes that mankind will find a better way someday.

The poem is in rhymed couplets, in rather long lines of 15 syllables - really two sets of iambic tetrameter spliced together. If one were to split the lines, there would be a feminine ending on the first half, and a masculine ending on the second.

The poem is most famous, I suppose, for the line:

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

And thus, the poet commences a conversation with his former beloved. He recalls the joy of their love. But boy, does it turn bitter. Tennyson doesn’t shy away from the ugly side of his nature.

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him, it is thy duty, kiss him, take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand—

Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,

Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

It goes on for a good while, as he imagines her life to a dull fool. Tennyson also rails at the fact that wealth is all the world cares for. He isn’t wrong, alas. But then, he turns to a more optimistic tone, speaking of his youthful idealism for the future. In his vision, he foresees a league of nations, a decline (and eventual end) of war, the triumph of reason over hate, and a more egalitarian future. Alas, he also says some condescending things about non-whites, and (in his passion against the faithless Amy) some insulting things about women. Sour notes in an otherwise beautiful and emotionally perceptive poem. Tennyson (who wasn’t that old, actually) intentionally wrote to describe youthful passions, good and bad, so perhaps one shouldn’t confuse the narrator with the poet.

One more line is so good that I have to quote it. Also, I recognized it as the source of the title from a rather good book I read last year.

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Again, as I have so many times when reading Tennyson, I marveled at the music inherent in this line. It sings, it lives. Every word has both meaning in itself and in its context - it’s place in the constellation of sounds as the line rushes on.

The next poem intrigued me both because of its theme and because the person to whom it was dedicated was unnamed. Subsequent research indicated that it was probably a reference to Keats - whose scandalous (by Victorian standards) love letters were published after his death. It is even more true in our own age, when to be a celebrity of any sort means to have all one’s skeletons exposed.

To ——

After Reading a Life and Letters

‘Cursed be he that moves my bones.’

Shakespeare’s Epitaph.

YOU might have won the Poet’s name,

    If such be worth the winning now,

    And gain’d a laurel for your brow

Of sounder leaf than I can claim;

But you have made the wiser choice,

    A life that moves to gracious ends

    Thro’ troops of unrecording friends,

A deedful life, a silent voice:

And you have miss’d the irreverent doom

    Of those that wear the Poet’s crown;

    Hereafter, neither knave nor clown

Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die,

    Nor leave his music as of old,

    But round him ere he scarce be cold

Begins the scandal and the cry:

‘Proclaim the faults he would not show;

    Break lock and seal: betray the trust;

    Keep nothing sacred: ’tis but just

The many-headed beast should know.’

Ah, shameless! for he did but sing

    A song that pleased us from its worth;

    No public life was his on earth,

No blazon’d statesman he, nor king.

He gave the people of his best;

    His worst he kept, his best he gave.

    My Shakespeare’s curse on clown and knave

Who will not let his ashes rest!

Who make it seem more sweet to be

    The little life of bank and brier,

    The bird that pipes his lone desire

And dies unheard within his tree,

Than he that warbles long and loud

    And drops at Glory’s temple-gates,

    For whom the carrion vulture waits

To tear his heart before the crowd!

Again, Tennyson wears his heart on his sleeve, and says exactly what he thinks. A kindred spirit indeed.

I also wanted to quote what might be Tennyson’s shortest poem. It is pretty nice - but I quote it here primarily because it was the first Tennyson poem I read to my very small kids over a decade ago. It was the perfect illustration of the poetic art, from rhyme to meter to the use of repeated sounds to evoke a picture.

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

                                                

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

I want to end this with what I have to say is on my list of 10 favorite poems. I swear I have re-read this at least once a year since I started this blog. (And numerous times before that.) It really encapsulates a lot of my own feelings - and more and more as I have gone from youth to middle age. Sure, I am not burdened with a kingdom (and I definitely would prefer to have my lovely bride accompany me on any and all adventures), but I too know my time is limited. I really have no desire to waste it, particularly in trying to change people who have no incentive to change. I have indeed shaken the dust off my feet the last few years, to use another great line. Anyway, enjoy.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

         This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

         There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I really could analyze nearly every line. But why? A poem like that can stand without comment, as a monument to internal truth, and the drive I feel to live while I am alive. 

***

Not sure why “idylls / idyls” is spelled differently. I tried to find something online, and it appears to have been spelled both ways. If anyone has a guess, let me know…