Hanne's blog

- by Tennyson (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), Dover, Thrift Editions, 1992, ISBN 0-486-27282-6

Following references again, I found this little Tennyson volume in Waterstones a few years ago. It is Agatha Christie who quotes Tennyson in "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side":

The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.
(The Lady of Shalott)

so I wanted to find the "The Lady of Shalott" poem, but is is not in the Penguin book of English Poetry (or the English book of Penguin Poetry, as someone in this family likes to call it I also wanted the poem about "Enoch Arden" which she refers to in "Taken at the Flood". Therefore when I found them both in in a rather small book I immediately bought it.

I like it. I like Tennyson's style. A lot of it is worth reading more than once. And it's easier than most of the "penguin poetry",

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
rode the six hundred.
(The Charge of the Light Brigade)

Come, my friends.
'T is not to late to seek a newer world.

...

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, --
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
(Ulysses)

Go get!