Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated? `They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces,ĭid they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating? Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune, Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility, While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionariesīurnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,įar in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, (bibliography: The Literature Network) Read more → Eliot has called him 'the great master of metric as well as of melancholia' and that he possessed the finest ear of any English poet since Milton. Soon he became the favourite target of attacks of many English and American poets who saw him as a representative of narrow patriotism and sentimentality. Tennyson died at Aldwort on Octoand was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them poetic dramas Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876). However, the stupid mistake described in the poem honoured the soldier's courage and heroic action. Historically the fight during the Crimean war brought to light the incompetent organization of the English army. Later the poem about the Light Brigade inspired Michael Curtiz's film from 1936, starring Errol Flynn. The patriotic poem Charge of the Light Brigade, published in Maud (1855), is one of Tennyson's best known works, although at first Maud was found obscure or morbid by critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone. He was born in the same year as Darwin, but his view about natural history, however, was based on catastrophe theory, not evolution. Tennyson portrayed the Greek after his travels, longing past days: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"Īmong Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam (1850). Morte d'Arthur and Ulysses appeared in 1842 in the two-volume Poems, and established his reputation as a writer.
A revised volume of Poems, included, The Lady of Shalott and The Lotus-eaters. He began to write, In Memoriam, for his lost friend - the work took seventeen years. Hallam died suddenly on the same year in Vienna. His next book, Poems(1833), received unfavourable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. After his father's death in 1831, Tennyson returned to Somersby without a degree. By 1830, Hallam had become engaged to Tennyson's sister, Emily. He travelled with Hallam on the Continent. Encouraged by 'The Apostles', Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical in 1830, which included the popular Mariana. The undergraduate society discussed contemporary social, religious, scientific, and literary issues. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the literary club 'The Apostles' and met Arthur Hallam, who became his closest friend. After spending four unhappy years in school, he was tutored at home. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absent-minded. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic.Īlfred Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850 he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry.