The captain of my dreams

Ruled in the eastern sky.

Venus, the star of morning.

P. 60, col. 1, lines 14, 15.

her, who clasp'd in her last trance Her murder'd father's head.

Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More, who is said to have transferred his ! headless corpse from the Tower to Chelsea Church. Sir Thomas More's head had remained for fourteen days on London Bridge after his execution, and was about to be thrown into the Thames to make room for others, when she claimed and bought it. For this she was cast into

prison. She died nine years after her father, and was buried at St. Dunstan's, Canterbury, but in the year 1715 the vault was opened, and it is stated that she was found in her coffin, clasping the small leaden box which inclosed her father's head.

P. 60, col. 1, lines 17-20.

Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death,

Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,

Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,

Sweet as new buds in Spring.

Eleanor, wife of Edward I., went with him to the Holy Land (1269), where he was stabbed at Acre with a poisoned dagger. She sucked the poison from the wound.

P. 60. THE BLACKBIRD. [Written about 1833 and published in 1842. — ED.]

P. 60, line 12. jenneting, an early apple, ripe in June. Juneting, i.e. June-eating. P. 60, line 17.

And in the sultry garden-squares

was in the original MS.

I better brook the drawling stares, i.e. starlings.

P. 60, lines 19, 20.

I hear thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.

Charles Kingsley confirmed this.

P. 60. THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. [First published in 1832. ED.]

P. 61, col. 1, line 41. rue for you, mourn for you. Cf. intransitive use of "rue": "Nought shall make us rue."

King John, v. vii. 117.

P. 61. To J. S. [First published in 1832. ED.] Addressed to James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon. His brother was Edward Spedding, a friend of mine, who died in his youth.

P. 61, line 19. Once thro' mine own doors. The death of my father. [Charles Tennyson Turner writes (March 1831): "He suffered little, and after death his

countenance, which was strikingly lofty and peaceful, was, I trust, an image of the condition of his soul, which on earth was daily racked by bitter fancies, and tossed about by stormy troubles." ED.]

P. 62. ON A MOURNER. [Written early, but first published in Selections, 1865. See Memoir, vol. ii. p. 19. — ED.] P. 62, line 9. humm'd the dropping snipe. The snipe makes a humming noise as it drops toward earth.

P. 62, line 10. marish-pipe, marestail. (Originally the paddock-pipe.)

P. 63, col. 1, lines 7, 8.

while all the fleet

Had rest by stony hills of Crete.

[Cf. Aeneid, iii. 135, 147-177. — ED.

P. 63. YOU ASK ME WHY, THO' ILL AT EASE. [Written about 1833, and first published in 1842. — ED.]

This and the two following poems, Of old sat Freedom and Love thou thy land, are said to have been versified from a speech by my friend Spedding at the Cambridge Union. I am reported as having gone home and written these three poems during the night and shown them to him in the morning. The speech is purely mythical; at least I never heard it, and no poem of mine was ever founded upon it.

In the first, You ask me why, etc., there is a similarity to a note by Spedding [which Sir Henry Taylor has introduced at the close of one of his plays], and why not, for I thoroughly agreed with him about politics. Aubrey de Vere showed these poems to Wordsworth; they were the first poems of mine which he read. [Cf. Memoir, vol. i. p. 126. — ED.]

P. 63, line 11.

[Where Freedom slowly broadens down. has been repeatedly misprinted "broadens slowly." My father never, if he could help it, put two s's together, and the original MS. stood as it stands now. ED.]

P. 63. OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS. [First published in 1842, written about 1833. - ED.]

P. 63, line 15.

Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks. Like Zeus with his "trisulca fulmina," the thunderbolts. [Ovid, Met. ii. 848, "trisulcis ignibus"; Ovid, Ib. 471, “telo trisculco." ED.]

P. 63. LOVE THOU THY LAND, WITH LOVE FAR-BROUGHT. [First published in 1842, written about 1833. - ED.]

P. 64, col. 2, line 12. [the rising wind of revolutionary change. ED.]

P. 65. ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1782. First published in a New York paper in 1874.

P. 65, line 8.

Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught. Copy of part of a letter of mine to Walt Whitman: Nov. 15, '87.

"The coming year should give new life to every American, who has breathed the breath of that soil which inspired the great founders of the American constitution, whose work you are to celebrate. Truly the mother-country, pondering on this, may feel that howmuchsoever the daughter owes to her, she the mother has something to learn from the daughter. Especially I would note the care taken to guard a noble constitution from rash and unwise innovators."

P. 65. THE Goose. [First published in 1842. - ED.]

P. 66. THE EPIC. Mrs. Browning wanted me to continue this: she has put my answer in Aurora Leigh.

P. 66, col. 2, line 24. mouthing out his hollow oes and aes. "Morte

[Edward FitzGerald writes: d'Arthur when read to us from manuscript in 1835 had no introduction or epilogue; which were added to anticipate or excuse the faint Homeric echoes,' etc. Mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, deep-chested music, this is something as A. T. read, with a broad north country vowel.. His voice, very deep and deep-chested, but rather murmuring than mouthing, like

1 As in The Day-Dream, to give a reason for telling an old-world tale.

the sound of a far sea or of a pine-wood, This voice, I remember, greatly struck Carlyle when he first came to know him." - ED.]

P. 67. MORTE D'ARTHUR. [First written in 1835, and published in 1842. My father was fond of reading this poem aloud. At the end of May 1835 he repeated some of it to FitzGerald while in a boat on Windermere. FitzGerald notes the two lines:

Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps

Upon the hidden bases of the hills.

"That is not bad, I think,' (A. T) said to me while rowing on Windermere with him, in May 1835, when this Poem was in MS."

In Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales there are four primitive poems naming Arthur which my father often quoted: 1. Vol. i. p. 259. Welsh in vol ii. p. 155.

(1) is by Taliessin, named Kadeir Teyrnon (Sovereign's Chair), where Arthur is called "the blessed Arthur."

(2) only names Arthur.

(3) is also by Taliessin, named Preidden Annwfn (the Spoils of Hades), and appears to relate to one of Arthur's expeditions.

(4) on Geraint and Llongborth, where Arthur is called "Amheraúdyr llauur". "Imperator laboris."

Arthur's unknown grave is mentioned in No. XLIV. of the Verses on the Graves of Warriors (Englynnionn y Bedef) (Skene, vol. i. 315 and ii. 28):

"A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur."

In the Triads of Arthur and his Warriors (Skene, vol. ii, pp. 456-7), Arthur's name is mentioned in No. 1. as chief lord of three tribe thrones, and occurs again in Nos. XVIII., XXIII.

The seventh stanza of the Apple song about Arthur, as printed in Stephens' Literature of the Kymry, 1876 (which my father considered an excellent book), prophesies the return of Arthur and Med

rawd, and renewal of the battle of Camlan. - ED.]

P. 67, line 4. Lyonnesse. The country of legend that lay between Cornwall and the Scilly Islands and included part of Cornwall.

P. 67, col. 1, line 31. samite, a rich silk stuff inwrought with gold and silver threads. (éžárov, woven with six kinds of thread.)

P. 67, col. 2, line 21. topaz-lights. The topaz is a precious stone of varying colours (perhaps from root "tap," to shine. Skeat).

P. 67, col. 2, line 21. jacinth is the hyacinth stone, blue and purple. Cf. Rev. xxi. 20.

P. 67, col. 2, line 24.

This way and that dividing the swift mind. A translation of Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 285: Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc.

ἐν δέ οἱ ἦτορ . . . διάνδιχα μερμήριξεν. Il. i. 188.

P. 68, col. 1, line 12. lief, beloved. Alder-liefest (2 Hen. VI. 1. i. 28), most beloved of all.

P. 69, col. 1, line 1, a streamer of the northern morn, Aurora Borealis.

P. 69, col. 1, line 2. the moving isles of winter, icebergs.

P. 69, col. I, line 17. three lives of mortal men. Nestor was called τριγέρων. Anthol. P. vii. 144. Cf. Od. iii. 245:

τρὶς γὰρ δή μίν φασιν ἀνάξασθαι γένε ἀνδρῶν.

P. 69, col. 2, line 26. Three Queens. In the original Morte D'Arthur one was King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgalis; the third was the Queen of the Waste Lands. Some say that the three Queens are Faith, Hope, and Charity.

[The Bishop of Ripon once asked my father whether they were right who interpreted the three Queens as Faith, Hope, and Charity. He answered: 'They are right, and they are not right. They mean that, and they do not. They are three of the noblest of women. They are also

those three Graces, but they are much more. I hate to be tied down to say, 'This means that,' because the thought within the image is much more than any one interpretation." - ED.]

P. 70, col. 1, line 11. greaves and cuisses, leg and thigh armour (coxa, thigh).

P. 70, col. 2, line 5.

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

E.g. chivalry, by formalism of habit or by any other means.

P. 70, col. 2, line 18. Bound by gold chains. [My father said that this passage was not, as has been said, suggested by Il. viii. 19:

σειρὴν χρυσείην ἐξ οὐρανόθεν κρεμάσαντες, πάντες δ ̓ ἐξάπτεσθε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι· ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ ἂν ἐρύσαιτ ̓ ἐξ οὐρανόθεν πεδίονδε Ζῆν ὕπατον μήστωρ', οὐδ ̓ εἰ μάλα πολλὰ κάμοιτε.

or by Plato, Theaetetus, 153. -— ED.]

P. 70, col. 2, line 22.

P. 71. THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER, OR, THE PICTURES. Written at Cambridge [and corrected in Spedding's chambers at 60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and published in 1842. ED.].

The centre of the poem, that passage describing the girl, must be full and rich. The poem is so, to a fault, especially the descriptions of nature, for the lover is an artist. but, this being so, the central picture must hold its place.

P. 72, col. 1, lines, 12, 13.

Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crown'd with the minster-towers.

Sir Henry Taylor used to quote this as a picture for a painter.

P. 72, col. 2, line 23.

The mellow ousel (pronounced oozel) fluted in the elm.

"The wooselcock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill."

Mid. Night's Dream, III. i. 128. The merry blackbird sang among the trees would seem quite as good a line to ninetenths of all English men and women. Who knows but that the Cockney may come to read it:

The meller housel fluted i' the helm. Who knows what English may come to?

P. 72, col. 2, line 24, redcap. Provincial for goldfinch.

[I remember my father's telling me that FitzGerald had guessed rightly that the autumn landscape, which in the first edition was described in the lines beginning "Her beauty grew," was taken from the background of a Titian (Lord Ellesmere's Ages of Man). My father said that perhaps in consequence they had been omitted. They ran thus:

Her beauty grew: till drawn in narrowing

arcs

The southing Autumn touch'd with sallower gleams

The granges on the fallows. At that time

Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm. This line was added afterwards. No reader seemed to have understood this allusion. A French translator has translated it une verte étincelle. Torquay was in the old days the loveliest sea-village in England, and is now a town. In those old days I, coming down from the hill over Torquay, saw a "star of phosphorescence" made by the little buoy appearing and disappearing in the dark sea, and was at first puzzled by it.

P. 79. WALKING TO THE MAIL. [First published in 1842. — ED.]

P. 83. ST. SIMEON STYLITES. [First published in 1842. To be read of in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, iv. 320 (Milman-Smith's), and Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. i. pp. 35-36. FitzGerald notes: "This is one of the Poems A. T. would read with grotesque Grimness, especially at such passages as 'Coughs, Aches, Stitches, etc.,' laughing aloud at times." See the pendant to this poem, St. Telemachus, p. 878. - ED.]

P. 86. THE TALKING OAK. [First published in 1842. My father told Aubrey de Vere that "the poem was an experiment meant to test the degree in which it was in his power as a poet to humanise external nature." - ED.]

P. 87, col. 1, line 31. Bluff Harry. Henry VIII. "the man-minded offset' of the next stanza being Elizabeth. Spence, the monks' buttery.

P. 87, col. 1, lines 39, 40.

In which the gloomy brewer's soul
Went by me, like a stork.

It is said that history "does not justify the poet in calling him a brewer." No, but that old Tory the oak calls him a brewer, as the old Cavaliers did.

Like a stork. The stork, a republican