At Tennyson’s Birthplace

by

Frank X. Roberts 

          

Some years back when my wife Dorothy and I were living and teaching in Leeds in the County of Yorkshire, England, we drove on one cold, damp day (as I recall) over to Somersby in the neighboring county of Lincolnshire, to visit the boyhood home of the poet Alfred Tennyson. Alas, when we arrived we found the house was in private hands and not open to the general public. We did, however, visit the church across the road from the poet’s birthplace. It was the church where Tennyson’s clergyman father had preached. The church, though apparently recently refurbished, was cold and empty. It contained the poet’s bust on a wooden plinth against the wall. The building was surrounded by a grassy graveyard with many old headstones. This scene in general was the motivation for the following poem. I also recall that our car was having brake trouble at the time, hence, no doubt, the “break/brake” analogy or pun in the poem.

We went over to the Tennysons’
But they wouldn't let us in!
The church is cold at Somersby,
Transferring neither heat nor light;
The breaks are failing us, our grip
Slips as the sun’s disc wears down.
 
People now in England, and elsewhere,
Feel time slip too, now and then,
Though they try to make it stand still;
The Great Time all grapple after
Proves itself empty, sooner or later.
 
In the damp, done-over church
Entropy surrounds the Poet’s bust;
In the eternal dream time a boy weeps;
His echo answers from the graveyard grass;
While elsewhere, and everywhere, a third
Fishes endlessly in worried dreams.
 
From our practical macrocosm, one substance;
In the flow, the electron, the mote and the beam;
Everything wearies but the weariness,
There, here, and at the Tennysons’ --
Then and now . . .


Frank is a semi-regular contributor to BiblioBuffet. His extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally  to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it m