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.
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