The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Fatima

First printed in 1833.

The 1833 edition has no title but this quotation from Sappho prefixed:--

_'Phainetai moi kaenos isos theoisin Emmen anaer'_--SAPPHO.

The title was prefixed in 1842; it is a name taken from 'The Arabian Nights' or from the Moall***. The poem was evidently inspired by Sappho's great ode. 'Cf.' also Fragment I. of Ibycus. In the intensity of the passion it stands alone among Tennyson's poems.

[Footnote 1: 1833. At.]

[Footnote 2: This stanza was added in 1842.]

[Footnote 3: 'Cf.' Byron, 'Occasional Pieces':--

[Footnote 4: 'Cf,' Achilles Tatius, 'Clitophon and Leucippe', bk. i., I:

[Greek: '** (psyche) tarachtheisa tps philaemati palletai, ei de mae tois splagchnois in dedemenae aekolouthaesen an elkaetheisa ano tois philaemasin.']

(Her soul, distracted by the kiss, throbs, and had it not been close bound by the flesh would have followed, drawn upward by the kisses.)]