Somersby Brook
see [page 1]
He always spoke with affectionate remembrance of his early home: of the woodbine trained round his nursery window; of the mediæval-looking dining-hall, with its pointed stained-glass casements; of the pleasant drawing-room, lined with bookshelves and furnished with yellow upholstery. The lawn in front of the house, where he composed his early poem, “A Spirit Haunts the Year’s Last Hours,” was overshadowed on one side by wych-elms, on the other by larch and sycamore trees. On the south was a path bounded by a flower-border, and beyond “a garden bower’d close” sloping gradually to the field at the bottom of which ran the Somersby Brook
That loves
To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn
In every elbow and turn,
The filtered tribute of the rough woodland.
The charm and beauty of this brook haunted the poet throughout his life, and to it he especially dedicated, “Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea.” Tennyson did not, however, attribute his famous poem, “The Brook,” to the same source of inspiration, declaring it was not addressed to any stream in particular.
Tennyson’s Mother
see [page 6]
Tennyson was exceedingly fortunate in the environment of his childhood and the early influence exercised by his parents. His mother was of a sweet and gentle disposition, and devoted herself entirely to the welfare of her husband and her children. Her son is said to have taken her as a model in “The Princess”; and he certainly gave a more or less truthful description of this “remarkable and saintly woman” in his poem “Isabel”:—
Locks not wide-dispread,
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity.