“Post haec egressus occulte perrexit
in montem non longe a monasterio,
ibique sibi clausulam de sicca petra fecit,
et stetit sic annos
tres.”]
[Footnote 3: In accurate accordance with the
third life, ‘Acta’, i., 277:
“Primum quidem columna ad sex erecta
cubitos est, deinde ad duodecim,
post ad vigenti extensa est”;
but for the thirty-six cubits which is assigned as
the height of the last column Tennyson’s authority,
drawing on another account (’Id’., 271),
substitutes forty:
“Fecerunt illi columnam habentem
cubitos quadraginta".]
[Footnote 4: For the miracles wrought by him
see all the lives.]
[Footnote 5: These details seem taken from the
well-known stories about Luther and Bunyan. All
that the ‘Acta’ say about St. Simeon is
that he was pestered by devils.]
[Footnote 6: The ‘Acta’ say nothing
about the crown, but dwell on the supernatural fragrance
which exhaled from the saint.]
[Footnote 7: Tennyson has given a very poor substitute
for the beautifully pathetic account given of the
death of St. Simeon in ‘Acta’, i., 168,
and again in the ninth chapter of the second Life,
’Ibid’., 273. But this is to be explained
perhaps by the moral purpose of the poem.]
First published in 1842, and republished in all subsequent
editions with only two slight alterations: in
line 113 a mere variant in spelling, and in line 185,
where in place of the present reading the editions
between 1842 and 1848 read, “For, ah! the Dryad-days
were brief”.
Tennyson told Mr. Aubrey de Vere that the poem was
an experiment meant to test the degree in which it
is in the power of poetry to humanise external nature.
Tennyson might have remembered that Ovid had made the
same experiment nearly two thousand years ago, while
Goethe had immediately anticipated him in his charming
’Der Junggesett und der Muehlbach’.
There was certainly no novelty in such an attempt.
The poem is in parts charmingly written, but the oak
is certainly “garrulously given,” and
comes perilously near to tediousness.
Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder’d Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.
Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.
For when my passion first began,
Ere that, which in me burn’d,
The love, that makes me thrice a man,
Could hope itself return’d;
To yonder oak within the field
I spoke without restraint,
And with a larger faith appeal’d
Than Papist unto Saint.
For oft I talk’d with him apart,
And told him of my choice,
Until he plagiarised a heart,
And answer’d with a voice.
Tho’ what he whisper’d, under
Heaven
None else could understand;
I found him garrulously given,
A babbler in the land.
