ed a good many readers.
Stanza 23. "Yet it shall be." Yet "decline" thou certainly wilt.
Stanza 28. "He will answer," &c. With an oath, it may be--at the least with
a coarse rebuff.
Stanza 29. "The heart's disgrace." The disgrace, the injury, and
degradation the heart has suffered--its prostitution to a mercenary service
by a marriage of interest.
Stanza 34. "Never." Alas! I never can.
Stanza 35. "In division of the records of the mind." In dividing my
recollections of her into two groups, and erasing the one.
Stanza 38. "The poet is" (as I think has been already pointed out) Dante.
Stanza 40. "He hunts," &c. He--thy husband.
Stanza 42. "Never, never," &c. Never again! (joys never to return) sung by
the ghosts of years departed.
Stanza 51. "I have but an angry fancy"--my only _qualification_.
Stanza 53. "But the jingling of the guinea," &c. But there is no fighting
now: the nations get over their quarrels in another way--by the jingling of
the guinea, instead of the clang of arms.
Stanzas 54. "Mother-age."; 93. "Mother-age, for mine I know not."
This mother-age is a great difficulty. At first I took it for _the past of
history_, but now understand by it _the past of his own life_, at least its
earliest and brightest period--that age which had been as a mother, the
only mother he ever knew.
Stanza 70. "Youthful joys." The bright hopes of his youth. (?)
Stanza 75. "Blinder motions," Less rational, less well-guided emotions.
Stanza 91. "The distance." The distant future, the "good time coming."
There are some lines in _In Memoriam_ (I have not the book at hand, but any
reader thereof will instantly recollect them), which indicate Tennyson's
acquaintance with and appreciation of Jeremy Taylor, who thus expresses the
thoughts of the "wild fellow in Petronius," suggested by the sight of a
floating corpse.
"That peradventure this man's wife, in some part of the Continent, safe
and warm, looks next month for the good man's return or, it may be, his
son knows nothing of the tempest: or his father thinks of that
affectionate kiss which is still warm upon the good old man's cheek
ever since he took a kind farewell; and he weeps with joy to think how
blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his
father's arms."--_Holy Dying._
Compare with "Sure never moon to evening," &c., in the same poem, and I
think the same place: {320}
"Nec nox ulla
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