Tennyson

Tennyson is, to my mind, one of the greatest poets - if not the greatest poet - England has ever had! What a fascinating character - so loved by Queen Victoria, to whom he was a neighbour on the Isle of Wight (his home, Farringford, now a hotel, not far from beautiful Osborne House). His poetry speaks of enchantment and of that idyll of England: the age of Arthur captured at the same time by the Pre-Raphaelite artists. But it is more than an escape into some Victorian folly or a Golden Age that never was. It speaks directly to that dream within us all - the dream of our own real reality of nobility and all that is finest in humanity.

Tennyson lived with a horror of mental illness, which had sorely affected his family, and perhaps he resonated with Queen Victoria in the sense of sorrow that they both shared deeply. It's interesting that when one of his books received damning responses from the critics, he didn't publish again for 10 years. When dear, beautiful Prince Albert passed on, Queen Victoria barely emerged from her isolation for almost a decade. Tennyson met Queen Victoria and there was an immediate rapport. Oh! To have been a fly on the wall in that meeting! I think for all of Tennyson's wonderful poems, there is a short message in this quotation, which, though written unpoetically, is beautiful....

"No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself"