[In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect poem by themselves.']
As when a man, that sails in a balloon, Downlooking sees the solid shining ground Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon, Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:
And takes his flags and waves them to the mob That shout below, all faces turned to where Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe, Filled with a finer air:
So, lifted high, the poet at his will Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all, Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still, Self-poised, nor fears to fall.
Hearing apart the echoes of his fame. While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory, Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name Whose glory will not die.
=Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals= =1833-1868=
[This poem is written in pencil on the fly-leaf of a copy of _Poems_ 1833 in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington Museum. Reprinted with many alterations in _Life_, vol. I, p. 67.]
Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges, Your portals statued with old kings and queens, Your bridges and your busted libraries, Wax-lighted chapels and rich carved screens, Your doctors and your proctors and your deans Shall not avail you when the day-beam sports New-risen o'er awakened Albion--No, Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow Melodious thunders through your vacant courts At morn and even; for your manner sorts Not with this age, nor with the thoughts that roll, Because the words of little children preach Against you,--ye that did profess to teach And have taught nothing, feeding on the soul.
[There was published in 1837 in _The Tribute_, (a collection of original poems by various authors, edited by Lord Northampton), a contribution by Tennyson entitled 'Stanzas,' consisting of xvi stanzas of varying lengths (110 lines in all). In 1855 the first xii stanzas were published as the fourth section of the second part of 'Maud.' Some verbal changes and transpositions of lines were made; a new stanza (the present sixth) and several new lines were introduced, and the xth stanza of 1837 became the xiiith of 1855. But stanzas xiii-xvi of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edition of Tennyson's works, though quoted in whole or part in various critical studies of the poet. Swinburne refers to this poem as 'the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written, even by Mr Tennyson.' This poem in _The Tribute_ gained Tennyson his first notice in the _Edinburgh Review_, which had till then ignored him.]
