This was first printed in 1853. It has not been
altered since. The poem was addressed to Edward
Lear, the landscape painter, and refers to his travels.
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneian pass, [1]
The vast Akrokeraunian walls, [2]
Tomohrit, [3] Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:
And trust me, while I turn’d the
page,
And track’d you still on classic
ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever pour’d
And glisten’d—here and
there alone
The broad-limb’d Gods at random
thrown
By fountain-urns;-and Naiads oar’d
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
[Footnote 1: ‘Cf’. Lear’s
description of Tempe:
“It is not a vale, it is a narrow
pass, and although extremely beautiful on account
of the precipitous rocks on each side, the Peneus
flowing deep in the midst between the richest overhanging
plane woods, still its character is distinctly that
of a ravine.”
—’Journal’, 409.]
[Footnote 2: The Akrokeraunian walls: the
promontory now called Glossa.]
[Footnote 3: Tomohr, Tomorit, or Tomohritt is
a lofty mountain in Albania not far from Elbassan.
Lear’s account of it is very graphic:
“That calm blue plain with Tomohr
in the midst like an azure island in
a boundless sea haunts my mind’s
eye and varies the present with the
past".]
First published 1842. After 1851 no alterations
were made.
This poem was suggested by Miss Ferrier’s powerful
novel ’The Inheritance’. A comparison
with the plot of Miss Ferrier’s novel will show
with what tact and skill Tennyson has adapted the tale
to his ballad. Thomas St. Clair, youngest son
of the Earl of Rossville, marries a Miss Sarah Black,
a girl of humble and obscure birth. He dies, leaving
a widow and as is supposed a daughter, Gertrude, who
claim the protection of Lord Rossville, as the child
is heiress presumptive to the earldom. On Lord
Rossville’s death she accordingly becomes Countess
of Rossville. She has two lovers, both distant
connections, Colonel Delmour and Edward Lyndsay.
At last it is discovered that she was not the daughter
of Thomas St. Clair and her supposed mother, but of
one Marion La Motte and Jacob Leviston, and that Mrs.
St. Clair had adopted her when a baby and passed her
off as her own child, that she might succeed to the
