or where in Locksley Hall a splendidly graphic touch of description is gained by the alteration of “droops the trailer from the crag” into “swings the trailer”.
So again in Love and Duty:—
Should my shadow cross thy thoughts
Too sadly for their peace, so put it back.
For calmer hours in memory’s darkest hold,
where by altering “so put it back” into “remand it thou,” a somewhat ludicrous image is at all events softened.
What great care Tennyson took with his phraseology is curiously illustrated in The May Queen. In the 1842 edition “Robin” was the name of the May Queen’s lover. In 1843 it was altered to “Robert,” and in 1845 and subsequent editions back to “Robin”.
Compare, again, the old stanza in The Miller’s Daughter:—
How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill;
The black and silent pool above,
The pool beneath it never still,
with what was afterwards substituted:—
I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still.
Another most felicitous emendation is to be found in The Poet, where the edition of 1830 reads:—