Victorian Verse - Maud II iv - Tennyson

There is a break in the narrative between sections I and II.  We left the narrator waiting for Maud in the garden.  The opening of Part II makes it clear that something unfortunate has happened:

II i

“THE FAULT was mine, the fault was mine”—
Why am I sitting here so stunn’d and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill?—
It is this guilty hand!—

Maud did meet with the narrator in the garden - but as soon as she arrives, they are discovered by the brother and the "babe-faced lord".  A row ensues and the brother strikes the narrator and challenges him to a duel.  In the duel, the narrator kills the brother.  Dying, the brother claims "the fault was mine" and urges him to flee.  The narrator flees to Brittany, from where he recalls and regrets his action, in spite of being absolved from blame by the brother.  Soon after he arrives, he hears that Maud, too, has died - presumably from grief.  This canto comes just after he has heard the news. 

The canto is written in a fairly regular ballad metre of iambic tetrametres and iambic trimetres with an irregular rhyme scheme. The poem is propelled forward by the use of enjambment, which gives the whole canto, although reflective in subject matter, an underlying urgency, reflecting the pain of his loss - and also his desperation.  He is a "murderer", he lives in self-imposed exile and his beloved is dead.  This is not a happy situation. 

II iv

i

O that 'twere possible 

After long grief and pain 

To find the arms of my true love 

Round me once again! 

There is a clear echo here of an anonymous16th century poem called "The Lover in Winter Plaineth for the Spring" which begins:

O Western wind, when wilt thou blow

That the small rain down can rain?   

Christ, that my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!                         

The exclamatory tone continues in the third stanza - "Ah, Christ..."  as he recalls his secret meetings with Maud:

ii

When I was wont to meet her 

In the silent woody places 

By the home that gave me birth, 

We stood tranced in long embraces 

Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter 

Than anything on earth. 

iii

A shadow flits before me, 

Not thou, but like to thee: 

Ah Christ, that it were possible 

For one short hour to see 

The souls we loved, that they might tell us 

What and where they be. 

He imagines an image of Maud and wishes that she (and other dead people) could tell him the mysteries of the afterlife.  This is a recurring theme in Tennyson - curiosity about what happens when we die, whether souls meet again, the power of memory to recapture the dead and the possibility of communion between them - no doubt engendered by the death of Hallam. Victorians, although still adhering to the established Church, were shaken by the findings of Darwin and others that called into question the absolute authority of the Bible and this extended to questioning the existence of an afterlife.  It was an age in which Spiritualism - attempts to contact the dead "on the other side" - became very popular.  There is a good introduction to the topic here.  

iv

It leads me forth at evening, 

It lightly winds and steals 

In a cold white robe before me, 

When all my spirit reels 

At the shouts, the leagues of lights, 

And the roaring of the wheels. 

He contrasts the unearthly vision of Maud, cold and pale, with the clamour of the living world around him - a world which has lost its meaning, being reduced to light and noise.

v

Half the night I waste in sighs, 

Half in dreams I sorrow after 

The delight of early skies; 

In a wakeful doze I sorrow 

For the hand, the lips, the eyes, 

For the meeting of the morrow, 

The delight of happy laughter, 

The delight of low replies. 

He recalls the pleasures of his meeting with Maud, which he dreams about at night. Notice the focus on the physical, which is similar to that expressed in In Memoriam, and the use of repetition.

vi

'Tis a morning pure and sweet, 

And a dewy splendour falls 

On the little flower that clings 

To the turrets and the walls; 

'Tis a morning pure and sweet, 

And the light and shadow fleet; 

She is walking in the meadow, 

And the woodland echo rings; 

In a moment we shall meet; 

She is singing in the meadow, 

And the rivulet at her feet 

Ripples on in light and shadow 

To the ballad that she sings. 

Tennyson has written about "splendour" (glowing light) elsewhere:

"The splendour falls on castle walls" - The Princess

It is used to contrast the light of the living world with the darkness of death. His dream takes on a more vivid reality - note the opening "''Tis" - it is and "She is walking ..."  The images of Maud are firmly lodged in the real world, which is described in minute detail - little flower that clings/To the turrets..."   In the language of flowers, this would signify constancy and if we take Maud herself as "the little flower" then we have an image of her clinging on to life, and by inference, the narrator.  There is a terrible poignancy in the vivid image of his Maud coming towards him in the repeated: "She is walking...", "She is singing..." 

vii

Do I hear her sing as of old, 

My bird with the shining head, 

My own dove with the tender eye? 

But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry, 

There is some one dying or dead, 

And a sullen thunder is roll'd; 

For a tumult shakes the city, 

And I wake, my dream is fled; 

In the shuddering dawn, behold, 

Without knowledge, without pity, 

By the curtains of my bed 

That abiding phantom cold. 

viii

Get thee hence, nor come again, 

Mix not memory with doubt, 

Pass, thou deathlike type of pain, 

Pass and cease to move about! 

'Tis the blot upon the brain 

That will show itself without. 

The narrator awakes from his dream as he hears her cry out at the death of her brother.  Her sweet image is replaced with one of horror - notice the hyperllage (transferred epithet) in "shuddering dawn".  Who or what this "abiding phantom" is, is unclear.  It may be Death itself or Guilt or the image of the dead brother.  Whichever, it is sufficiently unnerving to drive the narrator out of his room and into the streets.  The tone changes from blissful reminiscence to pushing away horrid images - note the commands "Get", the repeated "Pass".  

ix

Then I rise, the eave-drops fall, 

And the yellow vapours choke 

The great city sounding wide; 

The day comes, a dull red ball 

Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke 

On the misty river-tide. 

x

Thro' the hubbub of the market 

I steal, a wasted frame; 

It crosses here, it crosses there, 

Thro' all that crowd confused and loud, 

The shadow still the same; 

And on my heavy eyelids 

My anguish hangs like shame. 

The narrator goes out into the city.  The description matches his state of mind (pathetic fallacy) - dark, foggy, pestilent, shrouded, confused, where the former "splendour" of light in his dream has given way to the reality of "a dull red ball".  He is isolated in his guilt and shame from the everyday life of the people around him. 

xi

Alas for her that met me, 

That heard me softly call, 

Came glimmering thro' the laurels 

At the quiet evenfall, 

In the garden by the turrets 

Of the old manorial hall.

The narrator feels guilt also for Maud's death as he recalls their meetings. There is a blending of the past, living girl approaching him and the dead spirit of his dreams in the word "glimmering" as if she was/is a being of light.  Note how the stanzas move seamlessly between his two states - the idyllic, remembered past and his harsh reality.  

xii

Would the happy spirit descend 

From the realms of light and song, 

In the chamber or the street, 

As she looks among the blest, 

Should I fear to greet my friend 

Or to say "Forgive the wrong," 

Or to ask her, "Take me, sweet, 

To the regions of thy rest"? 

The first word "Would" means "Were ... to", so "Were the happy spirit to descend..."  He wonders what he would do were she to come down from heaven in reality.  Would he be too wracked with guilt to talk to her, or would he ask forgiveness, or would he ask her to take him with her up to heaven?  

xiii

But the broad light glares and beats, 

And the shadow flits and fleets 

And will not let me be; 

And I loathe the squares and streets, 

And the faces that one meets, 

Hearts with no love for me: 

Always I long to creep 

Into some still cavern deep, 

There to weep, and weep, and weep 

My whole soul out to thee.

In the light of day, there is to be no reconciliation between the living and the dead.  The shadow of his past actions haunts him and isolates him from the living.  He feels increasingly alienated from his fellow-man and wishes only to go and hide in a cave where he can pour out his grief to Maud.  It seems likely that this stanza is also a further homage to Hallam, as it shares much of the same heightened emotion.