The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When I was a kid, I had a book called The Children's Treasure House.  It was published by Odhams Press in 1935 and has over 750 pages of stories and poems chosen for a young readership.  This book was a marvellous companion during my childhood.  I still have it even though, lamentably, it is now falling to pieces.

There are two odd things about that book.  First, it contains Tennyson's poem 'The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls' twice - once under its shorter title 'The Splendour Falls' and once under the title 'Echo Song'.  Secondly, someone decided this was a poem fit for children.

I went through a Tennyson phase in primary school and could recite this poem, 'Break, Break, Break', and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by heart. No such luck nowadays.  Those circuits have long since been over-written  Of course, at that time, I didn't really understand what the poem was about.  I was taken by the imagery of castles, mountains and lakes, and of the sound of the horns of Elfland.  I liked that kind of thing then, and I still do; however, upon re-reading the poem in my much later life, I realised - if I may invert St Paul's metaphor - I no longer see it through a glass, darkly.

What do we have then?  The narrator, presumably a  man, is standing where he can see the slanting evening sun (or is it the morning sun?) shining on an old castle and its surrounding mountains and lakes.  He can also see a waterfall.  He hears a bugle (or does he order a bugle to be blown?) and imagines it to be the distant horns of Elfland (or is it really the Elves having a toot?), and the sound of it echoes in the valleys and dies away.  He then addresses a person - we do not know who it is, or whether they are present - and draws a metaphor between the echoes and ourselves.  The narrator then repeats the refrain about bugles and dying echoes.

I think the poem is a meditation on mortality, and immortality through posterity.  

The castle is old, the day is drawing to a close; and while the cataract leaps, it can only leap downwards; the echo of the bugle's sound dies away: all metaphors for mortality.

On the other hand, our own echoes 'roll from soul to soul' and 'grow for ever and for ever'.  Did Tennyson mean the echoes of our words and deeds and the effect we have on others, either personally or through the works we leave behind; or did he mean we echo in our children and their descendants?  Both interpretations suggest a kind of immortality through posterity.

There is a tension between hope and despair in the poem.  While we may suspect the narrator is feeling his age and his mortality, he still exhorts the bugle - an instrument actuated by the breath of life - to blow; but eventually it will cease to sound and its echo will die away. He then asserts our own echoes, unlike the bugle's, will go on forever; and again the narrator exhorts the bugle to blow, perhaps calling for the cycle to echo ad infinitum.  Or so it seems to me.

On a lighter note (toot), if Tennyson were alive today and knew HTML coding, he almost certainly would have written a poem called '<br>, <br>, <br>'.  Boom! Tish!

The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls

The splendour falls on castle walls
       And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
       And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hear, O hear! how thin and clear,
       And thinner , clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
       The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
       They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
       And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Reaper Man is the second Discworld novel to features Death as the central character (the previous one being Mort).  Always good for a giggle, Pratchett does not disappoint with this one.

For one reason or another, Death suddenly finds himself unemployed. When the office of Death is vacated, an imbalance between the forces of life and death has unforeseen consequences, as the 130 year old wizard Windle Poons will soon find out.

As is usual with Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man is a clever and inventive tale full of puns, gags and pop-culture references (the title itself being a play of words on the film Repo Man).

Thematically, the novel examines the importance of caring for and about human beings:  it is what life (and Death) is all about.  In addition, Pratchett introduces the Fresh Start Club, and is the beginning of the movement towards Ankh-Morpork becoming an increasingly inclusive and cosmopolitan city, a theme he returns to subsequent Discworld novels.

Such a nice way to fill in a lazy weekend.

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

I remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) came out at exactly the same time as when I was asking myself the great questions about life, the universe and everything.  How improbable is that?

It was a sad day when I heard about Douglas Adams' death in 2001.  At that time, I had already read all five volumes of the H2G2 trilogy and the two Dirk Gently novels.  Although I loved the original radio series of H2G2, I was more than underwhelmed by the Dirk Gently novels and the last two installments of H2G2.  So when this posthumously published volume came out in 2002, I had no desire to read it.  Fifteen years later, at the prompting of a 

sweet nostalgic twinge for Douglas Adams, I tracked down The Salmon of Doubt.

I am glad I did, because I became acquainted with a side of Douglas Adams I did not know: Adams the non-fiction writer.  This book contains a large selection of essays and writings on various matters, such as science, technology, religion and education.  Each is written with a great deal of clarity and varying amounts of seriousness and humour, and each demonstrates that Adams was a man capable of deep thought. 

The The Salmon of Doubt also includes some short fiction as well as a draft of the unfinished Dirk Gently novel from which this volume derives its name.  These are less successful works.

Overall verdict: Mostly Serious.

The Thief of Bagdad by Achmed Abdullah

Another trip down memory lane.  I picked up a hardback copy of this novel at a school fete.  Maybe I was nine or ten.   Adventure, romance, quests and magic in mediaeval Baghdad: this book was my cup of tea.

On re-reading it over forty years later, I found that there was still a large part of me that is receptive to what this book has to offer.  Not that it is the greatest  literature - it is not -  but it is literate and intelligent.

Abdullah is a natural storyteller.  How easy it would be to imagine him in the markets of old Baghdad, holding his audience spell-bound as he weaves his tale.  His diction is purple, and perfectly so for this purpose; the action has its climaxes and respites in good measure; and the hero is sufficiently well-drawn to make him interesting (he is a Muslim who moves increasingly from a mercenary life towards an awakening spirituality).

The Thief of Bagdad began life as a script for the Douglas Fairbanks movie of the same name (1924).  Abdullah turned it into a novel in the same year.  While one suspects that a lot of what we are told in the tale is pure Hollywood, there are enough domestic details in the book to evoke (with what feels like some degree of verisimilitude) a time and a way of life that no longer exist. Didactic without being overly so; and best of all, the book is highly enjoyable.