Poems I Like: To the Rev. F.D. Maurice by Lord Alfred Tennyson

This has never been one of my all-time favourite poems, or even one of my favourite Tennyson poems, but it's always appealed to me since I originally encountered it in my teens. Some of its lines recur to my mind regularly.

I like that it's such a subdued poem. It's very far from ecstasy, rhapsody, tragedy, or any of the blazing moods of human life. It's an invitation to a friend to visit. That in itself gives it a delicious mellowness. (The easy camaraderie between old friends is one of the most beautiful things in the world-- especially, if I dare say it, the friendship between middle-aged or elderly male friends. Tennyson was forty-four when he wrote this. Rev. Maurice was four years older.)

It's one of two memorable "visiting" poems that I can think of. The other is the sonnet "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son" by John Milton, which is remarkably similar.

Tennyson's relationship with Christianity was complex. He famously wrote that there was "more faith in honest doubt" than in "half the creeds". But his Idylls of the King is shot through with Christian imagery, and he apparently died a good Christian death. Anyway, it's no surprise that his clergyman friend was someone whose orthodoxy was apparently questioned, as the poem suggests-- one of the founders of Christian Socialism, it seems. He seems to have been a very good and pious man, according to his lights.

For all the calm tone and lack of intense emotion in this poem, it frequently brings me to tears (even thinking about it)-- especially the verse that ends: "How to gain, as life advances, valour and charity more and more." The line: "Dear to the man that is dear to God" also moves me.

Some of the flashes of nature poetry in the poem are particularly beautiful, for instance: "Hear the magpie gossip, garrulous under a roof of pine." That garrulous...

At the risk of sounding self-pitying, there's a certain pathos attached to this poem for me, since there are few (if any) hearths that welcome my arrival in the manner that Tennyson's hearth awaited the arrival of Reverend Maurice. My own fault, no doubt.

To The Rev F.D. Maurice

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Come, when no graver cares employ,

Godfather, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy,

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty thousand college-councils
Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight.

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-ordered garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine.

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And farther on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;

Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,
And on through zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin;
Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:

Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.

Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;
But when the wreath of March has blossomed,
Crocus, anemone, violet,

Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.