Maud Part 1 17 - Analysis

Introduction and overall impression

This short lyric by Alfred Lord Tennyson radiates jubilant, almost ritualistic celebration. The tone is exultant and simple, with repeated refrains that create a mounting, communal joy. There is a slight shift from intimate description of the maiden to a widening call for the news to travel across seas and peoples, turning private happiness into public festival.

Contextual note

Composed in Victorian England, Tennyson often blends romantic feeling with expansive, mythic imagery; here the celebratory wedding or engagement motif fits his interest in personal emotion expressed as a larger social or even global event. Specific biographical ties are not necessary to appreciate the poem’s ceremonial quality.

Main theme: Celebration of love

The poem centers on the triumph of a mutual consent—the happy Yes—and the wish that the day not end until the maiden yields. Lines like Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth equate the beloved with natural beauty, framing love as life-affirming and sensorial. Repetition of the refrain insists on prolonging that joy.

Main theme: Communal rejoicing and transmission

The speaker urges that the news Pass and blush across ships and seas, transforming private assent into public celebration. The imperative verbs (Go not, Pass, Blush) and the maplike movement from West to East suggest inclusion: the world should partake in the bride’s happiness.

Imagery and symbolism: roses, blush, sea, and red

Roses and blush symbolize youth, beauty, and the physical manifestation of love. The sea and ships function as channels for spreading the news, turning natural elements into communicative forces. The repeated reference to the red man dancing beside his cedar and his babe leaping introduces an image of distant peoples joining the rejoicing; it universalizes the celebration while also reflecting Victorian-era exoticizing language.

Ambiguity and interpretive question

The poem’s refrain-driven insistence—blush from West to East, Blush from East to West—reads both as inclusion and as a desire to erase boundaries. One might ask whether the global rejoicing is genuinely egalitarian or shaped by the speaker’s imperial-era perspective that imagines bringing a single emotion across cultures.

Conclusion

Tennyson’s lyric compresses intimate romantic consent into a ritual chorus that seeks to make private joy public and universal. Through repeating images of roses, blush, and the sea, the poem celebrates love as a force that travels and transforms, while subtly reflecting its historical vantage point.