1. Poems between 1832 and Hallam’s death

Abstract

The poems which Tennyson wrote in 1832 but did not then pub lish, together with those which he wrote between Poems (De cember 1832) and Hallam’s sudden death in September 1833, show that serenity was feasible but fitful. It is true that this period saw the lightheartedness of “The Goose” and “Early Spring,” and the buoyancy of “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” ( “a companion to The Lady of Shalott,’ ” and a forerunner of Tennyson’s Arthurian enterprise). But the glow of such verses is biographically deceptive.