The Poems of Tennyson

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... to the height of some heroical fable," as Bacon says, which is here glorified in imperishable verse. The free movement of the metre follows every turn of narration and description. The normal line is the six-stress (Tennyson's favourite ballad-measure), frequently halved by a pause and a middle rhyme (e.g., 1. 20). The last strophe is composed almost altogether in an anapaestic cadence of five stresses, a metre slow and deliberate. It has been admirably analyzed by Mr. Sidney Colvin. (Macmillan's Magazine, January 1881.) 87 1. Flores: the most westerly of the Azores. Both words sound the e, as in Spanish. Bideford (1. 17) is a trisyllable, and Seville (1. 30) is accented on the first syllable. 88 26. Tell us now replaced in 1880 let us know (1878), for the rhyme's sake. 88 31. Froude: "To the English he was a goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned his back upon an enemy." 88 39 ff. Raleigh (the main source; he was Grenville's cousin): -- "The great San Philip being in the winde of him, and comming towards him, becalmed his sailes ... so huge and high carged was the Spanish ship, being of a thousand and fiue hundreth tuns. . . . The said Philip carried three tire of ordinance on a side . . . After the Reuenge was intangled with this Philip, foure other boorded her; two on her larboord, and two on her starboord. . . . But the great San Philip hauing receyued the lower tire of the Reuenge, . . . shifted hir selfe with all diligence from her sides, vtterly misliking hir first entertainment." The phrase "the wombe of Phillip" is in Markham, who also speaks of the ship's "mountain hugenes." 89 57. According to Bacon, only fifteen ships were actually engaged with the Revenge. 89 58. Froude: "Ship after ship of the Spaniards came on...