Alfred, Lord Tennyson was poet laureate in Britain from 1850 (when he succeeded William Wordsworth) until his death in 1892. His writings are where we get several common phrases, including “‘tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” And if you’re interested in his life, historical context, and publications, check out the entry on Wikipedia to get started. You don’t have to know a poet’s context in order to enjoy his poetry, but it can certainly enrich your understanding and appreciation.

Many of Tennyson’s poems rely heavily upon medieval and classical myths and legends, which is why they are probably doomed to falling increasingly out of rotation in our educational system. Most students don’t learn nearly as much anglocentric history and culture as they would have even 50 years ago. And, like much poetry from the 18th and 19th century, if you don’t know what would have been common for people to know at the time (i.e., Greek myths, the Bible, European history) some poems will be a bit bewildering. One poem that does not seem to rely on this tradition, however, caught my fancy as I read it a few nights ago—“The Poet’s Mind.”

Tennyson has been accused, in his own time and ours, of being a bit too sentimental. And I guess I see this poem as a response to his critics (though I have no idea of the circumstances of its first publication, so I may just be making that up). Here it is in its entirety for you, and I’ll do my best to retain the correct formatting despite Blogger’s limitations:


THE POET’S MIND.

I.
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
For thou canst not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,
Flowing like a crystal river;
Bright as light, and clear as wind.

II.
Dark-brow’d sophist, come not anear;
All the place is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.
In your eye there is death,
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
Where you stand you cannot hear
From the groves within
The wild-bird’s din.
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants,
It would fall to the ground if you came in.
In the middle leaps a fountain
Like sheet lightning
Ever brightening
With a low melodious thunder:
All day and all night it is ever drawn
From the brain of the purple mountain
Which stands in the distance yonder:
It springs on a level of bowery lawn,
And the mountain draws it from Heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love;
And yet, tho’ its voice be so clear and full,
You never would hear it; your ears are so dull;
So keep where you are: you are foul with sin;
It would shrink to the earth if you came in.


In these verses we see that the poet’s mind, like a wild bird or a sacred fountain in a lush garden, cannot abide the presence of the “sophist.” A sophist, in this case, would have been a rhetorician or philosopher who claimed that the answers to all questions could be logically ascertained. Reason would be the highest virtue, emotion the greatest vice. To the poet’s mind, the sophist is like a poison. And to the sophist, the poet and his poetry are incomprehensible. The sophist lacks the ability to understand the emotion of poetry or the impetus to write it.

Now, I am not generally a sentimentalist, though I think I tend that way when it comes to talking or writing about the natural world. But I think Tennyson is right. There are some people who cannot abide poetry, and poetry cannot abide them. And these two worlds, at their most extreme, should not be allowed to collide. Some people straddle the line between absolute allegiance to science and reason and absolute devotion to faith and feeling (though truly I think this is a false dichotomy in some ways) and are able to appreciate the poet for who he is and the sophist for who he is. But to Tennyson’s mind, it would seem, logicians had no business messing around with poetry (or criticizing poets, perhaps).

My very favorite lines are the first four:

Vex not thou the poet’s mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
For thou canst not fathom it.

And I think these lines could be applied to all kinds of critics who do not take the time to appreciate where an artist is coming from and what he or she is trying to accomplish.