To II
To II - fact Summary
Public Treatment After Death
Tennyson defends the poet’s quiet integrity and criticises the public’s posthumous appetite for scandal. He contrasts the steady, unrecorded life of a friend with the exposed fate of poets, whose reputations are torn open after death. The poem condemns those who pry and gloat over a dead poet’s faults, arguing the true gift is the poet’s best work given to the people despite private sacrifices.
Read Complete AnalysesYou might have won the Poet’s name If such be worth the winning now, And gain’d a laurel for your brow Of sounder leaf than I can claim; But you have made the wiser choice, A life that moves to gracious ends Thro’ troops of unrecording friends, A deedful life, a silent voice: And you have miss’d the irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet’s crown: Hereafter, neither knave nor clown Shall hold their orgies at your tomb. For now the Poet cannot die Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry: “Proclaim the faults he would not show: Break lock and seal: betray the trust: Keep nothing sacred: ’tis but just The many-headed beast should know”. Ah, shameless! for he did but sing. A song that pleased us from its worth; No public life was his on earth, No blazon’d statesman he, nor king. He gave the people of his best: His worst he kept, his best he gave. My Shakespeare’s curse on clown and knave Who will not let his ashes rest! Who make it seem more sweet to be The little life of bank and brier, The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree, Than he that warbles long and loud And drops at Glory’s temple-gates, For whom the carrion vulture waits To tear his heart before the crowd!
Originally published in the Examiner for 24th March, 1849; then in the sixth edition of the poems, 1850, with the second part of the title and the alterations noted. When reprinted in 1851 one more slight alteration was made. It has not been altered since.
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