Poetical allusions Tennyson 177 



This suggests that they do flower, but, in the 

 absence of the pollen-bearing tree, without result. 



It is very possible that Lord Tennyson felt that 

 the original lines seemed to imply an absence of 

 flower in the yew, and hence the alteration to make 

 his meaning more obvious. 



The alteration in Canto xxxiv. runs as follows : 



' Old warden of these buried bones, 



And answering now my random stroke 

 With fruitful cloud and living smoke 

 Dark yew that graspest at the stones, 



And dippest towards the dreamless head, 

 To thee too comes the golden hour 

 When flower is feeling after flower 



But sorrow fixed upon the dead, 



And darkening the dark graves of men 

 What whispered from her dying lips ? 

 Thy gloom is kindled at the tips x 



And passes into gloom again.' 



We find the same smoke-like dust doing duty 

 again in The Holy Grail (line 13) : 



* Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half 

 The cloisters, on a gustful April morn, 

 That puff d the swaying branches into smoke.' 



It is the pollen arising in clouds from the staminal 

 flowers of the tree which appears as smoke 

 'living smoke,' Tennyson truly calls it, 



1 The young shoots in spring being a brighter green and becoming darker 

 with age. 



M 



