|
|
🦋 Vanished Land
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
I don't have a lot of exposure to Tennyson, somewhere I picked up a vague idea that his poetry would not be worth my spending any time on, and I have not. But I sure like this image: it is from his poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." and James Hamilton-Paterson quotes it at the end of a chapter concerning the sea floor. According to Hamilton-Paterson, the subject of "In Memoriam A.H.H."* is the Dogger Bank, a section of sea floor off northern Britain which was discovered around the time Tennyson was writing to have been dry land during the last ice age; he visualizes Tennyson "fast in the grip of transience and loss" as he memorialized the lost land.I have not been blogging this book too much but it is just chock-full of memorable lines.
 * (If I am understanding correctly -- it's a very long poem, Hamilton-Paterson might well just be referring to the section he quotes.) -- No: I am misreading here. The poem's ostensible subject is Tennyson's departed friend Arthur Henry Hallam; Hamilton-Peterson must just be saying the discoveries regarding the Dogger Bank play a part in the imagery of the poem. Wikipædia calls the poem "one of the greatest poems of the 19th Century"; reckon I should take the time to read it and understand it.
posted afternoon of Saturday, June 6th, 2009
➳ More posts about Seven-Tenths
➳ More posts about Readings
| |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
