ABSTRACT
Published 1832, with no title, but an epigraph from Sappho’s Fragment 2:φαίνεται µοι κη̂νος ἴσος θέοισιν / ἔµµεν ὤνηρ Especially in ll. 15–19, it closely imitates Sappho, the same poem adapted in Eleänore (I 401). Paden (p. 39) observes that Sappho merges with the story of Jemily from C.-E. Savary’s Letters on Egypt (the acknowledged source of Egypt; T. used the 1799 translation, Lincoln). She waits for her lover who dare not come because of her husband: ‘extending herself on the ground, [she] rolled among and crushed the tender flowers’ (ll. 11–12). Though this stanza did not appear till 1842, Paden (p. 132) points out that: ‘It is not safe to assume that the added stanza was written after 1832, for Tennyson often returned from the published to the manuscript version of a poem.’ The name ‘Fatima’ occurs in the poem of the Moâllakát which inspired Locksley Hall; in Savary; and in the Arabian Nights. See the fragment I sent no ambassador forward (III 621), with its reference to ‘Fatima, Selim’s daughter’. For the scheme of rhyme and metre, cp. The Lady of Shalott, which simply adds rhyming refrains.
