Ah, that's very funny, Alison, that 'thousand years of Tennyson' and that "we all
thought he was a golfer."
Well, there are 7 stanzas in "Mariana" all ending with the 'a-weary, a-weary
lament' and perhaps at the age of 12 that would seem a near-infinitude of
wearisomeness.
Though I wonder this morning if it may be not just two poems that were
confused but three? For the Maud of "Come into the Garden, Maud," isn't
neurasthenic; she just never shows up, being in the house, dancing with all the
guests, we never see her in the poem, though the speaker conversing with the
flowers may be neurasthenic. So perhaps the neurasthenic you were thinking of
is in Tennyson's "Maud: A Monodrama" that long sequence in three parts which
begins
I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers ‘Death.’.
Enough to convey what follows, haha, well, perhaps it is very difficult to keep
these Victorian ladies and poems straight, a thousand years of blur,
Best,
Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 20:44:18 +1100
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Something (was Re: The suckability of contemporary American poetry)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Thanks for complementing my laziness, Rebecca, and actually looking them
up:
>yes, I remember now: Maude and Mariana, exemplary neurasthenic Victorian
>ladies...no wonder I confused them. Interesting how my memory drew out
>those weary weary laments, but they're still fairly wearisome.
>
>While I'm rummaging through my dusty attic, I remember also a poem by
Adrian
>Mitchell (?), The Oxford History of English Poetry or somesuch, in which the
>verse on Tennyson goes something like
>
>And then there were about a thousand years of Tennyson.
>Funny, really.
>We all thought he was a golfer.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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