"thou art lying, alas,/Low in the dust; and we admire thee now/As we admire the beautiful in death"

[larryhammer]

It's been a while since I got to use this tag, but I couldn't resist when I stumbled across this Tennyson sonnet:

Check every outflash, every ruder sally
    Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly
    Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy;
This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley
Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;
    But in the middle of the sombre valley
    The crispèd waters whisper musically,
And all the haunted place is dark and holy.
The nightingale, with long and low preamble,
    Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,
    And in and out the woodbine’s flowery arches
The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,
    And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above—
    When in this valley first I told my love.

And not just because it doesn't end well -- the truly astonishing bit is the rhymes on sally, alley, valley, and musically.

Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.

That would be bad enough in a standard-issue poet, but this is Tennyson, with one of the best ears in the language. Even when he's writing drivel, it SOUNDS good. And this isn't juvenilia, either -- it was printed in a magazine and then reprinted, but Tennyson never included it in any collection. For good reason.

(Fair is fair enough: I do like the effect of switching around the rhymes in the octave to be ABBA BAAB. Just, not with those rhymes.)

Valley and musically ... *shakes head*

---L.

Subject quote from "Italy," Samuel Rogers.

Comments

[sovay]

But in the middle of the sombre valley
The crispèd waters whisper musically

NO.

[larryhammer]

You are more succinct than I.

[sovay]

You are more succinct than I.

I dunno. I might have just briefly lost the capacity for rational speech.

[larryhammer]

I squawked when I got to that, er, “rhyme.”

[genarti]

You gotta admit, that couplet is amazing.

Amazingly what, I would not dare to say, but I was certainly amazed. (And sputtering with laughter.)

[larryhammer]

Amazing something, indeed.

[shewhomust]

What bothers me (even) more is the interlacing of the 'wholly / melancholy' rhymes with the 'sally / alley / valley' ones - that almost but not quite repetition just deaws attention to itself...

In fact, that may be my real problem, not that the rhymes are so bad as that the poet is at such pains to point them out!

[larryhammer]

You have a point there—the closeness of the neighboring rhymes highlights the truly off one.