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JOHN LUCASVoices of authority, voices of subversion:
poetry in the late nineteenth century
iWith the publication of Poems in 1842 Alfred Tennyson became not only
famous but also Poet Laureate in waiting. One poem in particular,
"Locksley Hall" (which he wrote in 1837-38), with its eager readiness to
imagine a future bright for "the Federation of the world" (AT 128),
endorsed the new industrial age as one of heady promise. "Let the great
world," says his speaker, "spin for ever down the ringing grooves of
change" (182). Although, as critics have often pointed out, the image that
Tennyson chose to embody this change was inaccurate - train wheels did
not run in "grooves" - the ardor with which he looked to the beaconing
distance seemed very much of a piece with the spirit of the age. As Thomas
Carlyle might well have observed, such ardor was only too plainly - and
betrayingly - a "sign of the times." 1
Almost half a century later in 1886, the aged Tennyson, who had been
Poet Laureate since 1850, decided to write a progress report on that early
optimistic vision. Had the intervening years lived up to his expectations?
The short answer is no. "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" comments
bleakly on the state of the nation as it appeared to Tennyson in the mid-
18 80s. The future that once flared so vigorously has turned into an ashy
present. Thanks to the malign influence of France, mass democracy has
become a terrible threat to order and to peace: "France had shown a light
to all men, preached a Gospel, all men's good; / Celtic Demos rose a
Demon, shrieked and slaked the light with blood" (89-90). And where in
1842 he heralded "the Parliament of man" (128), imminent anarchy looms:
"madness... massacre... Jacobinism and Jacquerie" (157) abound
because men, "yelling with the yelling street," threaten to "Set the feet
above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet" (135-36). In all
likelihood, this "yelling" mob will "Break the State, the Church, the
Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope" (138). Celtic Demos,
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