Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. What event in Tennyson's life called forth this poem? 2. Under what circumstances was it written? 3. What has made Tennyson's soul so responsive to the sea ? 4. Why does he now confide his grief to the sea? 5. What, to Tennyson, does the sea suggest? 6. With what do the words, "Break, break, break," keep time in fancy? 7. What in the poem shows the poet's heart mellowed, sensitized, but not embittered by grief? 8. For what does the soul of Tennyson most yearn? 9. In what delicate sense is the sentiment of this poem that of every sorrowing heart? REFERENCES TENNYSON: In Memoriam. Rizpah. In the Valley of Cauteretz. Crossing the Bar. Vastness. LONGFELLOW: The Bridge. BYRON: On the Common Lot. WORDSWORTH: Lucy. HALLECK: On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. MARY MAPES DODGE: The Two Mysteries. DICKINSON: If I Could Keep Some Heart From Breaking. O. E. L. HOLMES: You Put No Flowers on My Papa's Grave. Show me the man you honor. I know by that symptom, better than any other, what you are yourself. For you show me then what your ideal of manhood is, what kind of man you long inexpressibly to be. -Thomas Carlyle. THIS THE BUGLE SONG ALFRED TENNYSON HIS song is a perfect specimen of Tennyson's lyrical art. It was a great favorite with the poet for reading aloud, and no boast of Tennyson's living disciples is prouder than that they have heard the author himself read the Bugle Song. This song was suggested by an incident on Lake Killarney, which Tennyson visited in 1842 and again in 1848. He heard the clear notes of a boatman's bugle and listened intently as old Eagle's Nest and its neighboring peaks hurled back the strange music in sweet fairy echoes which seemed at last to die away 66 on hill or field or river." He saw beneath the distant hills, gilded by the sunset light, old Ross Castle on its picturesque island, and in hill and castle he read in imagination the tales of legendary heroes. Under the spell of Nature's enchantment, and charmed by the elfish music, the poet sees in the mountain peaks "snowy summits old in story," in Torc Cascade near by, "the wild cataract" which "leaps in glory," and the dying echoes become the low sweet music of “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing." In this charmed setting, Tennyson discerns higher meanings of life and influence. While the sweet echoes in nature become faint and fainter until they finally die away, "our echoes roll from soul to soul, and grow forever and forever." With this higher meaning, he now bids the bugle blow again, for the bugle call with its myriad sweet echoes has taught him one of life's profoundest truths. THE BUGLE SONG The splendor falls on castle walls And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. What pictures are given in the first stanza? 2. Explain "splendor falls," "old in story," "wild cataract." 3. Why speak of the echoes as wild? 4. Should the last two lines of each stanza be read so as to imitate or to suggest the bugle call and its answering echoes? 5. How has Tennyson made us eager to hear in fancy the dying echoes? 6. Explain "horns of Elfland." 7. To whom does the author seem to speak in the last stanza? 8. What strong contrast is presented in the stanza? 9. Is the influence of "our echoes" merely the reciprocal influence of love on two fond hearts? 10. What wider law is given as to the influence of one soul upon other souls? KIPLING: The Bell Buoy. TURNER: The Buoy Bell. POE: The Bells. THOMAS MOORE: Echoes. REFERENCES HOLMES: Chambered Nautilus. JEAN INGELOW: Echo. TENNYSON: The Flower. MACKAY: Song of Life. CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH: Thought. WORDSWORTH: Yes, it was a Mountain Echo. Solitary Reaper. LONGFELLOW: Arrow and Song. WHITTIER: The Three Bells of Glasgow. THE INFLUENCE OF MUSIC Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, There had made a lasting Spring. Every thing that heard him play, Hung their heads, and then lay by. Fall asleep, or, hearing, die! --William Shakespeare. |