Eleventh Meeting – Later 19Eleventh Meeting – Later 19thth century century poetspoets

• Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Poems (1833): Here, Tennyson’s musical lyrics started to appear,

although they were not deep yet.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson(known for his musical poems)

• The Lotos Easter: a rythmical poem on the wanderings of Ulysses and his men.

• Morte D’Arthur: a blank verse poem version of Sir Thomas Malory(Middle English writer)’s story.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• The Idylls of the King: a set of poems about King Arthur’s story, including Morte D’Arthur, Enid, Vivien,

Elaine, Guinevere, and The Passing of Arthur.

• In Memoriam (1833-50): an elegy for Tennyson’s friend Hallam, who died in Vienna at the age of 22.

• Ulysses (1842): expresses the famous lines of Ulysses’ decision to: ‘sail beyond the sunset and the

baths of all the western stars until I die’.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• The Princess (1847 and 1853): contains fine lyrics:Sweet and low, sweet and low,

wind of the western sea,Low, low, breathe and blow,

wind of the western sea!Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon and blow,Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• Becket (1884): his best play, about the quarrel of King Henry II and Thomas Becket who was murdered in Canterbury in 1170. (Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’

pilgrims went to Becket’s grave)

NOTE: Tennyson’s influence in his time was immense but at the beginning of the 20th century, his

popularity fell.

Robert Browning(known for: his belief that intellect is more important than music, and for his marriage to Elizabeth Barret.)

• Pauline (1833) : more than 1000 lines, is only a part of a much longer poem he planned but not wrote.

• Sordello (1840) : his most difficult poem, about a story of events in 1200 with complicated details.

• Pippa Passes (1841) : a dramatic poem about a girl, Pippa, who wanders through the town singing, and her

song influences people who hear it.

Robert Browning

• Dramatic Lyrics (1842): the poems within are a great advance on Browning’s drama.

• Dramatic Romances (1845): contains a narrative poem which is well-known as children story entitled

The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

• Dramatis Personae (1864) : the poem within Rabbi ben Ezra shows his difficult style as a result of his

knowledge of words and his bold sentence building.‘Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-

crammed beast’

Meeting at Night (Robert Browning)

The grey sea and the long black land;And the yellow half-moon large and low;And the startled little waves that leapIn fiery ringlets from their sleep,As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;Three fields to cross till a farm appears;A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratchAnd blue spurt of a lighted match,And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning

• The Ring and the Book (1868-9): a poem based on a book that he found in Florence about a husband

commiting a murder to his wife.

Examples of Browning’s neat way of expressing ideas:

That shall be tomorrow, not tonight.I must bury sorrow, out of sight. (A Woman’s Last

Word)Never the time and the place and the loved one all

together (Never the Time and the Place)

Matthew Arnold

• Rugby Chapel (1867): a poem on Rugby, the school where his father became the headmaster.

• Thyrsis (1867): a lament for his friend, Clough.

• The Scholar Gipsy (1853): a narrative poem about an Oxford man who wanders with a band of gipsies.

• Memorial Verses(1850): a lament for Wordsworth’s death and for the deaths of other noteworthy poets.

• Empedocles on Etna: a highly praised poem, probably because it is not altogether sad.

Arthur Hugh Clough(Arnold’s friend)

• Easter Day, Naples (1849): a poem containing a famous cry of encouragement: ‘Say not the struggle

naught availeth’.

• Amours de Voyage (1849): a poem with the taste of modern poetry, written in conversational way.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti(He is a musical poet and a painter. His poems was

criticized as the ‘Fleshly School’ poems.)

Below are some of his lines, try to find the significance of underlined words:

• A Last Cofession: ‘She had a mouth made to bring death to life’.

• Sudden Light: ‘But just when at the swallow’s soar, your neck turn so’.

• Soul’s Beauty: ‘By flying hair and fluttering hem - the beat, following her daily in thy heart and feet.

Elizabeth Barret Browning(Robert Browning’s wife)

• Sonnets from the Portuguese(1850): contains much of her best work.

She pretended that the sonnets were translated from the Portuguese, but they were entirely original

expression of her love for her husband.

Note: Her marriage to Robert Browning is the subject of Besier’s play, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930).

Algernon Charles Swinburne

• Poems and Ballads (1866): is much blamed for moral reasons, so he redid it in 1878, giving less offence.

• Tristram of Lyonesse (1882): his best work, about the famous story of Tristram and Iseult in his version.

Edward Fitzgerald(One of the greatest poetic translators)

He translated:• Six of Calderon’s plays (1853)• Aeschylus’ Agememnon (1876)• Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (1859)

Meredith (a novelist)

• Juggling Jerry: a poem on a brave old man’s view of the nearness of death.• The Lark Ascending

Rudyard Kipling (a novelist)

• Mandalay: a poem describing the thought of British soldier when he left the East and gone back to London.

• Hound of Heaven

Francis Thompson

See You next week!