opens to be inserted among the authentic " notes the work. George Brimley wrote a heartily apprecia review of it; but the most precious testimony in its fav was that of the author of Ionica in the beautiful ve inscribed After reading Maud. Tennyson appears to have been under the impress that Maud was not popularly appreciated because i was not understood, and he has therefore left an annotated analysis of it, which will be found in the Life, vol. i. pp. 402-405. Of that I have availed myself in the notes. The text of Maud as it now stands was practically settled in the second edition of 1856. The first edition was published in 1855, an important excision having been made in the proof-sheets, and in the same year in America. In a copy of the American edition now in the British Museum, Tennyson made a few alterations, some in pencil and some in ink, most of which appeared in the second edition. In the second edition what now form stanzas 14, 15, and 16 in section i., lines 34-35 and lines 53-59 and 67-68 of section x., the whole of sections xix. and xxv., and lines 54-59 in the last section, were added. Since then the alterations have been few and unimportant. In 1859 the poem was divided into two parts, and in or about 1872 into three. MAUD [PART I] I 1 I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, 2 For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, 5 His who had given me life- O father! O God! was it well? Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground: There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell. 3 Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast specula tion had fail'd, And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair, And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. I Introduces the hero and describes his position. 10 3. Cf. Eschylus, Agamemnon, 1280: póßov dóμoi xvéovo¡v aiμatoσrayn (all the palace reeks of blood-dripping horror). 4. Cf. Paradise Lost, ii. 787-89. 9. 1855. great speculation. 10. Cf. Hamlet, II. ii.: "from her working, all his visage wann'd." 4 I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright, And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. 5 Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he his honest fame should at least by me be main But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd. 15 20 6 Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone? 7 But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word? Is it peace or war? kind Civil war, as I think, and that of a The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. I 25 23 seqq. All that follows to the end of stanza 12 may be compared with Teufelsdröckh's soliloquy in Sartor Resartus, book i. chap. ii., which it follows so closely that it would seem to be something more than an accidental coincidence. 8 Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age-why not? I have neither hope nor trust; May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust. 30 9 Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; Peace in her vineyard-yes!-but a company forges the 35 wine. 10 And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 40 11 And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous centrebits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. 39. 1865. I "And" substituted for "While." 40. Later editions substitute comma for full stop at "life." 41. A centre-bit is an instrument used for drilling cylindrical holes, and is a common tool of burglars. Cf. Sikes in Dickens' Oliver Twist, ch. xix., Is there no help wanted?" "None 'cept a centre-bit and a boy," 12 When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea, War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. 13 For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam, That the smoothfaced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home. 14 What! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood? Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie? 45 50 55 15 Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek, Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave. I 60 46. A reference to the alleged brutalities of Timour, or Tamerlane, the great Mongolian conqueror, at the capture of Siwas, where he is said to have had a thousand children crushed under the feet of his horsemen. 53 seqq. Stanzas 14, 15, 16, added in 1856. |