TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ALFRED TENNYSON POETRY

                  TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ALFRED TENNYSON POETRY

                    Alfred Tennyson has been called a representative poet. He is one of those great writers who express in their works the very spirit of the age. Hence for an understanding of his poetry it is essential to form an idea of his age. It was at Cambridge that he first began to speak in poetry with his own voice. Before going up he had published, conjointly with Charles Tennyson, a volume entitled poems by two Brothers, but these are mere echoes of his Byron-Worship. The volume of 1830 bring out of its treasure house things new as well as old. The songs, the love-poems, are still of little account, but in Mariana, in the Ode to Memory, and in Recollection of the Arabian Nights, he already indicates his power of pictirial description; in The poet he gives a noble confession of the faith from which he never afterwards , of the matchless melody which sings in all his later verse. Tennyson began creating at the early age of seventeen and continued to write upto the very end of his days. His creative span covers a period of more than fifty years. He is a voluminous poet and it is not possible to deal with all his works in the limited space at our disposal. We give below a brief account of a few of his more important works, works with which student should have at least a passing acquaintance. Tennyson’s first volume of poems entitled poems by Two Brothers was published in 1827. It was followed by another volume of poems, Poems, Chifly Lyrical, in 1830. These early volumes are immature. They suffer from thinness of inspiration, and there is too much of sugar. However, even these early poems show signs of promise. They are the works of a talented, but immature school boy.
                  Alfred Tennyson is a notable poet of Victorian age who also studied Nature with minuteness of detail and an accuracy of observation. Although Tennyson handles Nature in his poems but he can not acquire the prominence like Wordsworth and Keats as a poet of Nature. Wordsworth explores the spiritual significance in Nature while Keats's dealing of Nature is purely sensuous but Tennyson has drawn and colored Nature -pictures with the conscious care of pictorial artist. Tennyson believes with Coleridge that that we interpret the mood of Nature according to our mood and that Nature is happy or otherwise. During the Romantic Movement Nature was regarded as a phenomenon to which one could turn for guidance, spiritual sustenance and psychic restoration. Tennyson's belief often led him to describe and develop a human in terms of natural phenomena. For instance, in "The Lotos Eaters"the indolence of the sailor is elaborated with reference to the pausing of streams, the lingering of sun, the swooning of the languid air, etc.
                  Tennyson, Browning and Arnold lost an all-embracing enthusiasm for Nature like the Romantic poets. In the most cases the influence of Nature was on them wholesome and salutary, and symptomatic of spiritual unity of the universe. The Victorians were not able to maintain the confidence and optimist possible for the Romantics. On the one hand, as we shall see, science natured a love for Nature in some ways as intense, as anything that one can recognize in previous centuries, but on the other hand, by stressing the mechanical and chemical aspects of natural process, it look away the magic and left no room for spiritual direction. However now we can channelize the poems of Tennyson where he takes great interest for Nature. "In Memorium"is one of the most outstanding poem that serves immense evidence of Tennyson's great interest in and love for Nature. In this poem there is calm and tranquil morning with the faded leaves, silvery gossamers, the crowded farms, ambrosial air, towering sycamore, bats went round in fragrant skies, the trees laid their dark arms about the field, the grey old orange, the lonely field, the ship walk up the windy wold etc. the pictures of Nature in this poem give pleasure and sorrow, because the poet shows that moonlight not only falls upon the poet's bed but also on the dead friends grave in the church. Often the natural objects evoke a mood of sadness rather than joy because they emphasize human morality. In a famous passage (85) for instance, the classical procession of Nature underlines human sorrow.
                         ‘The Lotos Eaters’ is a noted poem by Tennyson. In it the poet tries to convey the mood of lethargy and drowsiness. The poem is about the feelings of a group of soldiers who are returning home with their leader Ulysses after the war of Troy. They come to a land where its inhabitants eat a fruit called lotos and lead a life of melancholy. The poet describes the landscape as a reflection of this mood. There ‘it seemed always afternoon’. In this poem the poet shows his skill in describing nature. He marks every detail of a wood, its trees, fruits, flowers and the colour they assume in different parts of the year. Such description provides setting of the poem adorns the piece and helps to reflect the feelings. It appears that the whole poem is a painted picture. But it is more than a picture. It is a speaking picture. Here the description of nature more detailed. It creates monotony in the reader’s mind. But the poet’s intention is to make such a feeling in the reader’s mind.

                  Similarly, in ‘Locksley Hall’, he describes great Orion, the curlew and the moor land to give an impression that Locksley Hall stands in the lap of nature. The poet excellently describes the beauty of nature in the following lines:

‘In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets another crest.’

                    The poet seems to say that the rejuvenation of spring itself arouses love in the heart of the speaker and his cousin Amy. This same sense of the interaction between man and nature is evident in ‘The Lotos Eater’. The lotos fruit, itself an object of nature, intoxicates the sailors. The mariners are so much impressed by the beauty of the island that they intend to stop their journey and live in the island permanently. The poet here very skilfully portrays the beauty of nature with a few words, such as ‘A land of streams’, ‘a slumberous sheet of foam’, ‘the charmed sunset’ etc.
                  As a poet Tennyson’s greatness lies in his skill as a poetic artist. For musical quality and descriptive vividness he has hardly any equal. He has been acclaimed as a painter in words. A thing or an object of nature appears in his poetry with its exact shape and colour. If we examine his major poetry we will notice this aspect of Tennyson’s poetic fame.

                  ‘The Lotos Eaters’ is a noted poem by Tennyson. In it the poet tries to convey the mood of lethargy and drowsiness. The poem is about the feelings of a group of soldiers who are returning home with their leader Ulysses after the war of Troy. They come to a land where its inhabitants eat a fruit called lotos and lead a life of melancholy. The soldiers eat this fruit. As a result they become as ‘mild-eyed’ and melancholy as the Lotos-eaters. In this poem the poet shows his skill in describing nature. He marks every detail of a wood, its trees, fruits, flowers and the colour they assume in different parts of the year. Such description provides setting of the poem adorns the piece and helps to reflect the feelings.

                     In ‘Locksley Hall’ Tennyson’s skill in describing objects of nature and the surroundings is also marked. In this poem the poet creates striking imagery in which he compares love to a musician and the life of lovers to a cup. To convey the satisfaction and the feeling of joy in the initial period of his love-making the speaker says that love played on their lives and produced a sweet and harmonious music. As a result all discordant and jarring notes in their minds disappeared. In their mind there was no conflict. It was free from any doubt or selfishness. It was completely pure. To convey the idea that it was a time of rare happiness the poet compares it to a scene of revelry where time takes a glass full of joy and gives it to the lovers. This description is suggestive of the intensity of the speaker’s passion.

                     In ‘Ulysses’ Tennyson portrays the character of Ulysses through imagery and language. The initial imagery of the poem, of an ‘idle king’, and the ‘barren crags’ of his kingdom of Ithaca, sets up  a tone of monotony, suggesting ‘Ulysses’ lack of passion for his duties. He describes his own people as a ‘savage race,/ That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me’. But the tone of the imagery changes upon his reference to his son, Telemachus who will inherit his title of King. He describes him as ‘blameless’ and ‘decent not to fail’, ending the reference to his son with ‘He works his work, I mine’.

                  Thus we see that in all of his poetry Tennyson displays his descriptive skill. He describes human figure, passion, natural sights and objects. Everywhere his keenness of observation is marked.
                     Reviewing "In Memorium" Charles Kingsley thought that the idea of "dignity of nature in all her manifestations" was the root idea of the whole poetry of his generation. The Nature description of this poem gives us the idea that it plays an important part in the emotional development of the poem. In this poem Tennyson does not seek in Nature any underlying associative principle to which a permanent reference could be made. However Tennyson's poem "Ooeone" begins with the description of a valley in Ida where swimming vapor creeps from pine to pine. On either side of the current are lawns and meadow ledges rich in flowers. Far below them roars the long brook, falling in cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley stands the topmost peak of Gargarus:

"........the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract of the sea.
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus."

                  The subject matter of this poem concentrates by miserable experience of "Oeone" when she is being deserted by her husband Paris. Addressing mother Ida, and addressing the earth, the hills, the caves and the mountain brooks, Oeone began to narrate her sorrowful story in song. Further the poem "Tithonus" starts by the description of Nature as "The woods decay, the woods decay and fall." In this poem there is the weeping of vapor and the description of swan's death after many a summer. The poet describes the gradual appearance of dawn in the person of Aurora. We have a richly sensuous picture of Aurora showering her kisses upon Tithonus's mouth, eye-lids, kisses that were, "balmier than half-opening buds of April."

                   The study of Nature in Victorian poetry is inextricably bound up with the study of religion and science, since the revolution that took place in religious and scientific thought, inevitably had a direct effect and attitude to Nature. Nature must always loom large in any study of Victorian poetry, since it was one of the three or four most important poetic themes. For successful foundation of Tennyson's poems Nature serves as one of basic functions. In "The Lotos Eaters" the landscape and scenery are symbolic of inner feelings of the mariners. There is description of ample Nature-pictures like lingering sunset, the crimson light of setting sun, the snow of the peaks, the leaf, the apple and the flower grow, ripen and fall silently. In fact, Nature, like the inhabitants of this island has eaten of the indolent forgetfulness of lotos fruit. In the "Locksley Hall" the poet addresses the nostalgic feeling by expressing the natural pictures. The poet used to wander about the sea-shore and saw the great Orion and Pleiades at night through the window. In fine, we cannot consider Tennyson in terms of the Romantic poets as a poet of Nature but we see that certainly he treats Nature by his close scientific and minute observation. Very often he anticipates Nature to describe and develop the human in general.