[Footnote 4: 1830. “’Long purples’,”
thus marking that the phrase is borrowed from Shakespeare,
‘Hamlet’, iv., vii., 169:—
and ‘long purples’
That liberal shepherds give a grosser
name.
It is the purple-flowered orchis, ’orchis
mascula’.]
[Footnote 5: 1830. Through.]
[Footnote 6: Balm cricket, the tree cricket;
‘balm’ is a corruption of ’baum’.]
First printed in 1830.
What time the mighty moon was gathering
light [1]
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll’d his lustrous
eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in
view
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his
sight:
“You must begone,” said Death,
“these walks are mine”.
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans [2]
for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, “This hour
is thine;
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the
tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death;
The shadow passeth when the tree shall
fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all”.
[3]
[Footnote 1: The expression is Virgil’s,
’Georg’., i., 427: “Luna revertentes
cum primum ‘colligit ignes’".]
[Footnote 2: Vans used also for “wings”
by Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’, ii., 927-8:—
His sail-broad ‘vans’
He spreads for flight.
So also Tasso, ’Ger. Lib’., ix.,
60:
“Indi spiega al gran volo ‘i
vanni’ aurati".]
[Footnote 3: ‘Cf. Lockley Hall Sixty
Years After’: “Love will conquer at
the last".]
First published in 1830, not in 1833.
This fine ballad was evidently suggested by the old
ballad of Helen of Kirkconnel, both poems being based
on a similar incident, and both being the passionate
soliloquy of the bereaved lover, though Tennyson’s
treatment of the subject is his own. Helen of
Kirkconnel was one of the poems which he was fond
of reciting, and Fitzgerald says that he used also
to recite this poem, in a way not to be forgotten,
at Cambridge tables. ‘Life’, i.,
p. 77.
My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana.
There is no rest for me below, Oriana.
When the long dun wolds are ribb’d
with snow,
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
Oriana,
Alone I wander to and fro, Oriana.
Ere the light on dark was growing, Oriana,
At midnight the cock was crowing, Oriana:
Winds were blowing, waters flowing,
We heard the steeds to battle going, Oriana;
Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, Oriana.
In the yew-wood black as night, Oriana,
Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana,
While blissful tears blinded my sight
By star-shine and by moonlight, Oriana,
I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana.
