Poems
The Boy
The Boy from his bedroom-window
Look’d over the little town,
And away to the bleak black upland
Under a clouded moon.
The moon came forth from her cavern,
He saw the sudden gleam
Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland;
Or perhaps the whole was a dream.
For I never could find that water
In all my walks and rides:
Far-off, in the Land of Memory,
That midnight pool abides.
Many fine things had I glimpse of,
And said, “I shall.find them one day.”
Whether within or without me
They were, I cannot say.
Look’d over the little town,
And away to the bleak black upland
Under a clouded moon.
The moon came forth from her cavern,
He saw the sudden gleam
Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland;
Or perhaps the whole was a dream.
For I never could find that water
In all my walks and rides:
Far-off, in the Land of Memory,
That midnight pool abides.
Many fine things had I glimpse of,
And said, “I shall.find them one day.”
Whether within or without me
They were, I cannot say.
Analysis (ai): The poem presents a nocturnal landscape filtered through a child’s uncertain perception, merging external scenery with internal speculation, a technique recurring in the author’s other lyrical works that often center on Irish rural settings and liminal states.
- Ambiguity and Perception: The shift from observation to doubt—whether the tarn is real or imagined—introduces epistemological uncertainty, which stands out in the author’s generally more concrete depictions of nature and memory.
- Memory and Temporality: The poem positions memory not as nostalgic reconstruction but as a persistent, unresolved echo, aligning with late-Victorian psychological introspection while diverging from the era’s tendency toward moral certainty or resolution.
- Form and Structure: Using a simple ABAB quatrain with alternating tetrameter and trimeter, the poem adheres to conventional ballad meter, making its departure from narrative clarity more striking within the author’s formal consistency.
- Relation to Later Poetry: Unlike post-1900 works that might fracture syntax or abandon meter to express cognitive dissonance, this poem uses restraint to suggest unreliability, prefiguring modernist concerns while remaining formally traditional.
- Author’s Lesser-Known Works: Among the author’s shorter lyrics, this piece stands for its metaphysical hesitation—most of his poems resolve emotionally or pictorially, but this one sustains doubt about perception’s reliability.
- Thematic Originality: While often read as a recollection of childhood vision, a less-discussed reading sees the “midnight pool” as a metaphor for artistic inspiration—glimpsed briefly, never recovered, and indistinguishable between inner and outer worlds.
- Cultural Context: In an era favoring didactic clarity or romantic idealization, this poem’s refusal to confirm the realness of experience subtly challenges realism’s dominance in late-nineteenth-century literature.
William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem “The Faeries” was much anthologised. But he is better known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known artist, watercolourist and illustrator.
