The bibliographical notes prefixed to the various poems give, in every case, the date and medium of first publication.

J.C.T.

=Timbuctoo=

A Poem Which Obtained The Chancellor’s Medal At The Cambridge Commencement MDCCCXXIX

By
A. Tennyson
Of Trinity College

[Printed in Cambridge Chronicle and Journal of Friday, July 10, 1829, and at the University Press by James Smith, among the Prolusiones Academicae Praemiis annuis dignatae et in Curia Cantabrigiensi Recitatae Comitiis Maximis, MDCCCXXIX.  Republished in Cambridge Prize Poems, 1813 to 1858, by Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, without alteration; and in 1893 in the appendix to a reprint of Poems by Two Brothers].

=Timbuctoo=

    Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies
    A mystic city, goal of high Emprize.[A]
      —­CHAPMAN.

  I stood upon the Mountain which o’erlooks
  The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
  Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
  Had fall’n below th’ Atlantick, and above
  The silent Heavens were blench’d with faery light,
  Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,
  Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue
  Slumber’d unfathomable, and the stars
  Were flooded over with clear glory and pale. 
  I gaz’d upon the sheeny coast beyond,
  There where the Giant of old Time infixed
  The limits of his prowess, pillars high
  Long time eras’d from Earth:  even as the sea
  When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
  Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves. 
  And much I mus’d on legends quaint and old
  Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
  Toward their brightness, ev’n as flame draws air;
  But had their being in the heart of Man
  As air is th’ life of flame:  and thou wert then
  A center’d glory-circled Memory,
  Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
  Have buried deep, and thou of later name
  Imperial Eldorado root’d with gold: 
  Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
  All on-set of capricious Accident,
  Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die. 
  As when in some great City where the walls
  Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng’d
  Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
  Among the inner columns far retir’d
  At midnight, in the lone Acropolis. 
  Before the awful Genius of the place
  Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
  Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
  Unto the fearful summoning without: 
  Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
  Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
  Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
  Her phantasy informs them.