WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson cover

The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Chapter 10: Claribel
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A scholarly edition assembles the poet's early lyrical, narrative, and occasional pieces alongside juvenilia and poems later suppressed, presenting a critical introduction, commentary, and extensive notes. The editor compares editions, records textual variants, and provides a transcript of poems omitted or revised, plus a full bibliography. Organized both chronologically and thematically, the volume traces the emergence of recurring motifs—memory, loss, love, art and myth—and illuminates the poet's evolving technique through careful collation and explanatory annotation.

Claribel

a melody

First published in 1830.

In 1830 and in 1842 edd. the poem is in one long stanza, with a full stop in 1830 ed. after line 8; 1842 ed. omits the full stop. The name “Claribel” may have been suggested by Spenser (F. Q., ii., iv., or Shakespeare, Tempest).

1

Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.

2

At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee
[1] hummeth
About the moss’d headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle[2] lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.

[1] 1830. “Wild” omitted, and “low” inserted with a hyphen before “hummeth”.

[2] 1851 and all previous editions, “fledgling” for “callow”.