'A SIGN BETWIXT THE MEADOW AND THE CLOUD': THE IRONIC APOTHEOSIS OF TENNYSON'S ST. SIMEON STYLITES

Abstract

Alexander Macmillan, writing to Lady Tennyson in 1884, reported to her Rossetti's comment, "You never can open Tennyson at the wrong place." In this article, I wish to "open Tennyson" at a poem which, though relatively unknown, makes a strong claim to be one of the finest in the entire canon, and which is unquestionably the greatest of his dramatic monologues — St. Simeon Stylites. As a monologue, it compares favourably with any of Browning's, including The Bishop Orders his Tomb and Johannes Agricola in Meditation, with which it is most frequently associated. New to the 1842 volumes, St. Simeon reveals the poetic levels toward which Tennyson's "Ten Years' Silence" had led him, and it points to a dramatic power, seldom apparent in the poems of the 1830s, a power which would require the exercises of The Princess, In Memoriam, Maud, and Idylls of the King to bring to full maturity.