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The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson cover

The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Chapter 11: Lilian
By Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson
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British LiteraturePoetry

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.

Lilian

First printed in 1830.

1

Airy, fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She’ll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.

2

When my passion seeks
Pleasance in love-sighs
She, looking thro’ and thro’[1] me
Thoroughly to undo me,
Smiling, never speaks:
So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple,
From beneath her gather’d wimple[2]
Glancing with black-beaded eyes,
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The baby-roses in her cheeks;
Then away she flies.

3

Prythee weep, May Lilian!
Gaiety without eclipse
Wearieth me, May Lilian:
Thro’[3] my very heart it thrilleth
When from crimson-threaded[4] lips
Silver-treble laughter[5] trilleth:
Prythee weep, May Lilian.

4

Praying all I can,
If prayers will not hush thee,
Airy Lilian,
Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee,
Fairy Lilian.

[1] 1830. Through and through me.

[2] 1830. Purfled.

[3] 1830. Through.

[4] With “crimson-threaded” cf. Cleveland’s Sing-song on Clarinda’s Wedding, “Her lips those threads of scarlet dye”; but the original is Solomons Song iv. 3, “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet”.

[5] 1830. Silver treble-laughter.