ABSTRACT
THE POEMS STUDIED IN THIS CHAPTER, EXCEPT FOR “THEBALLAD OF ORIANA,” are attributed to Tennyson as part of hiscontribution to the Poems by Two Brothers volume of 1827. Tennyson wrote forty-nine pieces for this collection, including four which Hallam Tennyson said were omitted from the 1827 volume “for some forgotten reason” (Ricks, The Poems of Tennyson 1.xxi). Of these forty-nine, sixteen are about battle, while several others, especially “Time: An Ode,” and “Mithridates Presenting Berenice with the Cup of Poison,” are heroic in tone and theme. The most recognized of Tennyson’s perennial themes, the elegiac and the erotic, are represented here as well, with nine poems on loss and five on love. Interestingly, many of the battle poems have a strong element of the elegiac, but the themes of love and war, which Tennyson interweaves to great effect in Maud and the Idylls of the King, are treated discretely in the Poems by Two Brothers collection, with war as the preponderant subject matter. Robert Bernard Martin writes of these early efforts, “Their most noticeable aspect is that the majority derive directly from his reading” (45). The relatively high incidence in these poems of heroic themes reflects Tennyson’s high degree of exposure to such themes throughout his formative years. The Homeric influence of Tennyson’s early reading became one of the permanent features of his genius, and the artistry with which the mature Tennyson handled martial material is foreshadowed by this group of early poems.
