∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
‘THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.’
47, Connaught Street, W., November 15th, 1904.
My attention has been called by Mr. R. C. Heron Maxwell to the following variant of Tennyson's ‘Death of the Old Year,’ which he recently came across in an old volume of the World of Fashion (January-December, 1833): —
THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW ONE.
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are sighing,
Gently come and gently go,
Softly tread and whisper low,
For the Old Year lies a-dying.
He was full of joke and jest,
But his merry quips are o’er.
To see him die, across the waste,
His son-and-heir doth ride post-haste;
But he’ll be dead before.
Every one for his own.
The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New Year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.
Mr. Churton Collins does not give this version of the poem in his work on Tennyson's early poems, but states that ‘The Death of the Old Year’ was “first printed in 1833.” It was, however, not only printed but also published in December, 1832, and the above variant did not appear until some twelve months later. It will be noticed that the third and fourth lines differ from those of the poem as now printed, which read,
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low;
and this shorter version, fortunately, does not contain the rather prosaic line,
And the New-year will take ‘em away,
nor the somewhat unpleasantly realistic
Close up his eyes; tie up his chin.
It will be remembered that Poe's famous composition ‘The Bells’ originally consisted of only eighteen lines, and that he twice revised and enlarged it, until it finally became the long poem of over one hundred lines which we now possess. Is it possible that the fourteen lines above quoted were the original version of Tennyson's poem?
SAMUEL WADDINGTON.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - ALUK, 1904] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - The Death of the Old Year (S. Waddington, 1904)