Victorian Verse - Maud - I.xviii - Tennyson

I.xviii

This canto is similar to the first in the absence of the decoration often expected of Tennyson.  It has a loose, conversational rhythm, irregular rhyme scheme - although there is rhyme throughout - and stanzas of varying length.  There is much repetition and rephrasing of ideas and images.  This structure, and the conversational syntax, seems to reflect the narrator's thought processes as he switches from Maud to reflections on the nature of Life, Love and Death, and back to Maud.  It may reflect the chaotic, even psychotic, mind-set of the narrator that some critics have commented on.  The narrator also uses a wealth of allusion to the Bible, in particular, as he seeks for images to define his beloved.

The narrator has taken advantage of Maud's brother's absence in town to declare his love to her in the garden where they meet.  She seems to reciprocate.  However, there is something in his actions of lurking in the garden that we might see as “stalking”.  She seems unaware of his presence.  This canto idolises the girl and reflects on the transcendence of Love over Death and how Love can bring meaning into the world.

I

I have led her home, my love, my only friend, 

There is none like her, none. 

And never yet so warmly ran my blood 

And sweetly, on and on 

Calming itself to the long-wished-for end, 

Full to the banks, close on the promised good. 

"Home" refers to himself - he has brought her to where he believes she should be - with him.  He likens his blood, his passion, to a river, almost overflowing its banks, running full to the sea, - the "long-wished-for end", which is reciprocated love.

II

None like her, none. 

Just now the dry-tongued laurels’ pattering talk 

Seem’d her light foot along the garden walk, 

And shook my heart to think she comes once more; 

But even then I heard her close the door, 

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. 

The repetition in the first line emphasises his passion.  The personification of the laurels is typical Tennyson (see also comments on “In Memoriam”).  It hints at the chattering tongues of others, as if he is aware that this love is illicit - or at least, not exactly being encouraged by her brother.  He is excited that the sound might have been her footsteps, but disappointed when he hears the door slam and realises she has gone into the house.  In likening the door of her house to "Heaven" he transitions to a comparison of Maud with Eve, in the next stanza.

The whole of the next two stanzas are addressed to a spreading Cedar of Lebanon - a tree with wide-spreading branches which can grow to an immense size - under which the narrator is lying and where he seems to be spending the night.  The syntax is confusing.  The main clause starts as a question, but there is no question mark and the subordinate clauses, which describe the tree and its location, make up most of the stanzas.  So the main clause is: "O, art thou sighing for Lebanon...Dark Cedar (?)".

III

There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho’ thy limbs have here increased, 

Upon a pastoral slope as fair, 

And looking to the South, and fed 

With honeyed rain and delicate air, 

And haunted by the starry head 

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, 

And made my life a perfumed altar-frame; 

And over whom thy darkness must have spread 

With such delight as theirs of old, thy great 

Forefathers of the thornless garden, there 

Shadowing the snow-limbed Eve from whom she came. 

The narrator is asking the tree if it is longing for its homeland, when it seems to be “sighing” as the breeze blows through it, even though it has grown here in southern England where the air and rain is just as sweet as in Lebanon, because (by inference) Maud lives here (the "starry head").  The "perfumed altar-frame" suggests that he is going to spend his life in devotion to her from now on.  He is sure that the tree must have been as happy to spread its branches over Maud as its ancestors were to spread theirs over Eve in the Garden of Eden, and makes a direct link between "snow-limbed Eve" and Maud, who is of course a “daughter of Eve”.  Note the economy of the phrase "thornless garden" to describe Eden.  Before the Fall, of course, the plants had no thorns, and all was peaceful and harmless.  This is reminiscent of John Milton's phrase "faded roses" which is the first reference to death in his epic poem "Paradise Lost", where Adam brings back a bouquet to Eve and sees that she has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge:

"From his slack hand the Garland wreath'd for Eve

Down drop'd, and all the faded Roses shed:"

In those two words, all the horror and sorrow of the Fall is encapsulated. 

IV

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, 

And you fair stars that crown a happy day 

Go in and out as if at merry play,

Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seemed far better to be born

To labour and the mattock-hardened hand

Than nursed at ease and brought to understand

A sad astrology, the boundless plan

That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,

Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand

His nothingness into man. 

Now that he knows that Maud reciprocates his love, the narrator can look upon the world more positively.  He can lie under the tree, looking up at stars that now twinkle merrily, as if to celebrate this happy day.  When he was “forlorn”, he had wondered whether it would have been better to have been brought up without an education, as a working man with hands hardened by manual labour, rather than be educated and learn that the stars and the universe ("sad astrology") were indifferent to Man and these "cold fires" (oxymoron) merely emphasised Man's ("His") insignificance.  The imagery here is of the new technology – furnaces to smelt iron – and recalls William Blake’s poem “Tyger, tyger” with the lines:

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain? 

This is a controversial point to make in Victorian times - the universe is the work of God and should reflect his Creation.  This is indicative of the narrator's state of mind - but also a recurring theme in Tennyson's poetry, which questions the nature of faith and God.

V

But now shine on, and what care I,

Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl

The countercharm of space and hollow sky,

And do accept my madness, and would die

To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

Now the stars seem cheerful and he can choose to ignore their nihilistic message as he has Maud (“a pearl”, precious and a symbol of purity) to live for and protect, which gives meaning to the world.

VI

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give

More life to Love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet ’tis sweet to live.

Let no one ask me how it came to pass;

It seems that I am happy, that to me

A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,

A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

The narrator is now not afraid to die in the service of Maud; indeed, he suggests that the possibility of Death makes Love, and hence life, even sweeter.  It is a mystery how it happened, but it brightens the whole world, the green of grass and the blue of the sea.  These images are equated with Maud elsewhere - her feet in the grass and the blue of her eyes.

VII

Not die; but live a life of truest breath,

And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.

Oh, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,

Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?

He does not want to dwell on Death, but live his life fully and justly.  He is prepared to fight for what he now believes in and dismiss fears of death.  “Spice" here means to be aware that in the midst of life, we are in death, as it says in the Bible.  The "drinking-songs" refer to songs sung before going into battle - there is a similar reference to men singing and drinking in Tennyson's great poem "Ulysses".

Make answer, Maud my bliss,

Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss,

Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?

“The dusky strand of Death inwoven here

With dear Love’s tie, makes love himself more dear.”

It is clear from this stanza that the two have exchanged kisses, which has convinced him of her love for him and that she is now “his”.  He seems to be urging her to commit to more - a very improper suggestion to make to a young Victorian girl who is under the protection of her family, possibly betrothed to another and only seventeen!  His argument is again that the presence of Death makes Love even sweeter.  

VIII

Is that enchanted moan only the swell

Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?

And hark the clock within, the silver knell

Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,

And die to live, long as my pulses play;

But now by this my love has closed her sight

And given false death her hand, and stol’n away

To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell

Among the fragments of the golden day. 

May nothing there her maiden grace affright!

The "enchanted moan" has sexual connotations and he goes on to refer to "bridal white" - her virginity - which has already wasted "twelve sweet hours.  He refers to the clock chiming as a "knell", which is the tolling of a bell at a death.  Rather, these sweet hours should have been spent making love, in response to the passion in his blood - his "pulses".  The oxymoronic "die to live" is a pun, as used in Shakespeare, on orgasm.  However, alas for him, it is late and Maud has gone to sleep and is dreaming, still innocent.

Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.

My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart’s heart, my ownest own, farewell;

It is but for a little space I go:

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell

Beat to the noiseless music of the night!

Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow

Of your soft splendour that you look so bright?

I have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell.

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell.

Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe

That seems to draw—but it shall not be so:

Let all be well, be well.

This final stanza is a farewell to the sleeping Maud, who has retained her virginity - her "maiden grace", - at least for now!  The intensity of his passion is evident in the repetition and rephrasing, “heart’s heart/ownest own”, as he struggles to articulate his desire.  The idea of possessing her is also present in the repeated “My”.  But he too is becoming sleepy, and decides to leave, or maybe sleep, for “a little space”.

The “ye” in the next line could be addressed to Maud, but it is more likely to be to the stars, which he had seen as “pitiless”, but which now he believes are in tune with the world below them and which beat in time to the "music of the spheres" ("the noiseless music") which was a classical, philosophical concept about the harmony of proportions between the celestial bodies.  He wonders whether the earth itself has moved nearer to them, as they look so bright.  Certainly, he feels that he has come nearer to them, now his love has dispelled his loneliness, and, perhaps, the sorrow of his father’s death.  He and the stars (and Maud) are united in a joyous unity of the soul. 

There is a momentary twinge of doubt that everything is going to end happily-ever-after, in the "dark undercurrent of woe" and the hyphenated break in the next line, but he rallies and prays that all will be well with his love and their life together.