Touched by Tennyson (by Peter Elliott)

Return to "The Circus" Index Page

This poem is copyright (1997) - See end of poem

My spell of becoming under the influence
Of the nineteenth century,
Having begun with Guiseppe Mazzini
And hovered around Charles Dickens
In September has moved over
To Lord Alfred Tennyson and his companions.

After a day - a couple of days -
Of inner dialogues
I find myself willing
To go to the State Library
And learn a bit about him.

Surprise number one
(I had an image of a very proper person
- perhaps the elderly Tennyson?)
Is the discovery of the thirty year old 
Bohemian
Abuser of port
And tobacco
(the writer of "Rust unburnished, not to shine in use"?
Rather the author of "I will drink life to the lees"!)

Even more startling
Is the twenty year old Cambridge student
Heading off to Spain
To take part in a revolution
Against that country's monarch.

Tennyson the poet starts small;
Tennyson the poet receives critical reviews;

But by the time Tennyson is fifty
Bingo!
He is Poet Laureate
With a growing reputation.

Tennyson has perhaps always been linked with me
Since the day I chose "Ulysses:
As a poem to learn by heart
For an English class at high school.

"Yet all experience is an arch
Wherethrough gleams the untravelled world"
Despite having liked that line
It is with amazed delight
That I find Tennyson's "untravelled world"
As he grows older
Crosses over into my own New Age sense of exploration.

I peruse the summaries
At the start of the chapters
Of a nineteen-fifty biography
Written by his grandson Charles Tennyson.

I dig deeper every so often.

I discover
That he knew the history of the development
Of all the sects of Buddhism.

But I really 
Know
I have found a soul-mate
When I learn
That he was one of the founders
Of the Society for Psychical Research
In eighteen eighty two.

Interested in poetry?
Interested in metaphysics?

Lord Alfred Tennyson
Should have felt right at home
Had he wandered
One Friday night
Into a Coreys Cafe
Round table open-mike
Night
of poetry reading.

But oops!
No port would have been allowed!
And he would have had
To smoke
Outside.

   ---(Peter Elliott)---

Return to "The Circus" Index Page