Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Dream of Fair Women

Updated September 23, 2019 | Infoplease Staff

A Dream of Fair Women

In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect poem by themselves.'

As when a man, that sails in a balloon,
Downlooking sees the solid shining ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,
Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:
And takes his flags and waves them to the mob
That shout below, all faces turned to where
Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,
Filled with a finer air:
So, lifted high, the poet at his will
Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,
Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still,
Self-poised, nor fears to fall.
Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,
Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name
Whose glory will not die.
.com/t/poetry/tennyson-suppressed/a-dream-of-fair-women.html
Sources +