ABSTRACT
Published 1842. HnMS (HM 1320) is watermarked 1835. Not completed till after 1839. The fountain (ll. 8–32) was ‘partly suggested by Turner’s “Fountain of Fallacy”’ (F. T. Palgrave’s note from T.; see C. Ricks, MP lxii (1964) 139–40). This was exhibited in 1839, and J. M. W. Turner’s verse-fragment in the catalogue spoke of ‘its rainbow-dew’ (cp. ll. 32, 42). Turner (p. 97) quotes contemporary descriptions of the Turner picture, which has not survived, and speculates on what it is likely to have given to T.T. comments: ‘This describes the soul of a youth who has given himself up to pleasure and Epicureanism. He at length is worn out and wrapt in the mists of satiety. Afterwards he grows into a cynical old man afflicted with the “curse of nature”, and joining in the Feast of Death. Then we see the landscape which symbolizes God, Law and the future life.’ In a letter (Brotherton Collection), T. described it as ‘one of my poems, which I confess has always been a favourite with myself’. Allingham quotes Patmore, 18 Aug. 1849: ‘“Tennyson perhaps likes the Vision of Sin best of his own poems. He said it was suggested to him by a line rejected from another poem.” (This line is, I afterwards learned, “A little grain of conscience made him sour”.)’ (Diary, 1907,p. 54). FitzGerald remarks that ‘Johnson’s “Long-expected one-and-twenty” has the swing, and something of the spirit of the old sinner’s lyric.’ Cp. section iv with the drinking-song at the end of Burns’s The Jolly Beggars: ‘What is title? what is treasure? / What is reputation’s care? / If we lead a life of pleasure, /’Tis no matter, how or where!’ J. H. Buckley (p. 72) tentatively compares Keats’s Lamia ii, ‘purple-lined palace of sweet sin’. A few details suggest Shelley’s The Triumph of Life. All variants from HnMS (HM 1320) are given below. The use of the heroic couplet is very unusual for T.
