THE NEW YORK: PUBLIC LIFRAKY

ABTOR, LENOX ANN
TILDEN FOUNDATIC.N.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

1809

[BORN at Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, 1809, being the third of the seven sons of Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, D.D., rector of Somersby; entered Trinity College, Cambridge, about 1827, together with his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles. A small anonymous volume of Poems by Two Brothers (1827) contained the earliest published verses of Charles and Alfred; in 1825 the eldest brother, Frederick, gained the medal for a Greek poem, and in 1829 Alfred obtained the Chancellor's medal for an English poem (Timbuctoo) of 250 lines. One of his chief competitors for this prize was his most intimate college friend, Arthur H. Hallam (d. 1833), to whose memory, in later years, the poem In Memoriah was dedicated. In 1830 he published a small volume of Poems Chiefly Lyrical; in 1832 his third volume of poems appeared, containing the Lady of Shalott, Enone, The May Queen, and The Lotos Eaters. In 1842 a new edition of his poems, in two volumes, was issued, which contained Morte d'Arthur, Locksley Hall, and other noted pieces. The Princess was given to the public in 1847, In Memoriam in 1850. In 1851 he succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate. Maud and other poems appeared in 1855. The Idyls of the King was issued in 1858, and has been generally accepted as his greatest poetical effort. The Holy Grail and other poems, published in 1869, completed the Arthurian legend. His other principal works include Enoch Arden (1864), Gareth and Lynette (1872), Queen Mary, a drama (1875), Harold (1877). He has lived for the most part a retired life in the Isle of Wight, not much caring to cultivate society, but greatly beloved by his intimate friends. Wordsworth pronounced him to be" decidedly the first of our living poets," an opinion which has been accepted by critics and reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. In December, 1883, Mr. Tennyson was appointed a Baron of the United Kingdom.]

MARIANA.

"Mariana in the moated grange."

Measure for Measure.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the peach to the garden-
wall.

The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:

Unlifted was the clinking latch:
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were
dried;

She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the
sky,

She drew her casement-curtain by,

And glanced athwart the glooming

flats.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl

crow:

The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her without hope of change,

In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed

morn

About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary;
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarled bark: