Tennyson’s Suppressed Poems

XXXIX

A Dream of Fair Women

In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These FitzGerald considered made ’a perfect poem by themselves.’

Alfred Tennyson


AS when a man, that sails in a balloon,
    Downlooking sees the solid shining ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,
    Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:

And takes his flags and waves them to the mob
    That shout below, all faces turned to where
Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,
    Filled with a finer air:

So, lifted high, the poet at his will
    Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,
Higher thro’ secret splendours mounting still,
    Self-poised, nor fears to fall.

Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
    While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,
Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name
    Whose glory will not die.


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