Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ah, Alfie, Lord Tenny (1809-1892), that uber-Victorian, that purveyor of Verse as Tome, author of the logorrheic “In Memoriam,” “Idylls of the King” and then came “Maud”—but also celebrated for his shorter chestnuts, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and “Flower in a Crannied Wall”! Though his technique remains study-worthy, his attitudes and sentiments have not weathered well. He’s one of those blokes who wrote excellent verse but bad poetry.

The poem featured this month, though minimal in length, is maximal in twee. Certainly the premises are promising. Tennyson’s brother had recently died, he was travelling in Italy, and he was reminded of a poem by the Roman poet Catullus, an elegy for his own dead brother. But instead of visceral grief or concord across the centuries, we find bromide and doggerel and travelogue.


”Frater Ave Atque Vale”

Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirimone row!
So they row’d, and there we landed—“O venusta Sirmio!”
There to me thro’ all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that “Ave atque Vale” of the Poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,
“Frater Ave atque Vale”—as we wander’d to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus’s all-but island, olive-silvery Sirmio!
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