describe the beautiful scene painted by the poet in the first verse. what is the splendour referred to in the first line
Answers
The poem celebrates the beauty of a sunset in Ireland in a ancestral setting equipped with a castle and a lake.
"There is a magical quality about the scene, suggested by the castle and the mountains “old in story,” and further emphasized by a reference to the “horns of Elfland,” a fairy kingdom. Highly romanticized, the sunset scene evokes moods of elation, wonder, and even excitement."
The poet praises the eternal nature of the this beautiful place, filled with life and with memories of death.
"The splendor 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." (Tennyson)
This place should be heralded with the blowing bugle, it is a place where life and death coexist, it is a place to focus on the meaning of existence.
"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 forever and forever." (Tennyson)
The poet tells us that this place will go on forever, it is eternal, and is an inheritance that is passed from soul to soul, generation to generation and must be honored and preserved.