I've been reading over the "Two Voices" controversy, and thinking about
the poem that phrase alludes to. It comes, I assume, from Tennyson's
early dialogue "The Two Voices." The voices are those of Hope and
Despair, Life and Death ("Were it not better not to be"). The poem ends
with the speaker going outdoors:
And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature’s living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
I wonder’d at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
I wonder’d, while I paced along:
The woods were fill’d so full with song,
There seem’d no room for sense of wrong;
And all so variously wrought,
I marvell’d how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said, ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’
This doesn't stop Tennyson from hearing voices. As he will observe in
"In Memoriam," nature is not consistently kindly; she is "red," rather,
"in tooth and claw," careless of individuals and even of whole species.
What does Virgil think of nature, specifically in the Aeneid? There's a
lot of writing about this in the Georgics, but what about Virgil's epic?
The gods in that poem are pretty beastly. Are the fields and floods any
more benign?
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Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org david@virgil.org
English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
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