Godiva
251 Words
First published in 1842. No alteration was made in any subsequent edition.
The poem was written in 1840 when Tennyson was returning from Coventry to London, after his visit to Warwickshire in that year. The Godiva pageant takes place in that town at the great fair on Friday in Trinity week. Earl Leofric was the Lord of Coventry in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and he and his wife Godiva founded a magnificent Benedictine monastery at Coventry. The first writer who mentions this legend is Matthew of Westminster, who wrote in 1307, that is some 250 years after Leofric's time, and what authority he had for it is not known. It is certainly not mentioned by the many preceding writers who have left accounts of Leofric and Godiva (see Gough's edition of Camden's 'Britannia', vol. ii., p. 346, and for a full account of the legend see W. Reader, 'The History and Description of Coventry Show Fair, with the History of Leofric and Godiva'). With Tennyson's should be compared Moultrie's beautiful poem on the same subject, and Landor's Imaginary Conversation between Leofric and Godiva.
[Footnote 1: These four lines are not in the privately printed volume of 1842, but were added afterwards.]
[Footnote 2: St. Michael's, Trinity, and St. John.]
[Footnote 3: 1844. Archway.]
[Footnote 4: His effigy is still to be seen, protruded from an upper window in High Street, Coventry.]
[Footnote 5: A most poetical licence. Thirty-two towers are the very utmost allowed by writers on ancient Coventry.]
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