Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) was perhaps the most prolific poet of his time: he wrote on almost all subjects the Victorians could think of and experimented with all available poetic forms, metres and styles. Chosen Poet Laureate after Wordsworth, he was acclaimed as one of the Victorian sages; a type of the wise man, prophet or seer who uttered words of wisdom and consolation for the whole of humanity. Referring to the speaking voice ‘I’ in one of his most known, and finest, of his poems, In Memoriam, an elegy written in 131 short lyrics, through 17 years, on the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson said that it was not an autobiographical voice, but the voice of whole humanity.

At the undergraduate level our introduction to Tennyson is through one of his most anthologised and most famous poems Ulysses, a dramatic monologue, which Tennyson informs ‘was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death and gave my feeling about the need for going forward, and braving the struggle of life more simply than anything in In Memoriam.’ For the Victorian at home, and in the colonies, the concluding lines of the poem — ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’ — became almost a creed.

The history of British Imperialism shows how a colony may be ruled not only politically but also culturally. Critics of the ‘post-colonial’ period and its literatures have shown how the growth of English as a privileged academic subject in the 19th century had helped in the process of cultural imperialism. English literary studies as it developed in India was given a special importance, and was useful, in terms of propaganda and in naturalising the British values or ideas such as ‘civilization’ or ‘humanity’.

When we read Ulysses from this perspective many lines seem to acquire an added significance. Why does Ulysses yearn to roam ‘with a hungry heart’, yearn ‘in desire /To follow knowledge like a sinking star, ...’? Didn’t Tennyson make a clear distinction between wisdom and knowledge in In Memoriam to warn readers of the dangers and limitations of the latter? Could the ‘untravelled world’ be the yet unconquered lands: the object of the ‘desire’ and ‘hunger’ of the European expansionist? Ulysses is all for ‘always roaming with a hungry heart (Emphases mine. Does Ulysses appear somewhat like a wolf on its prowl?)

The Victorian poets often used medieval and classical matter to accommodate their own desires, anxieties and dreams. The dramatic monologue was a suitable choice; the poets could speak through masks; they could express certain views without personally committing anything. Doubleness is one of the salient features of Victorian poetry. Ulysses is customarily supposed to be Tennyson's friendly picture of the insatiable craving for new experience, enterprise and adventurism under the control of reason and will. But Ulysses's account of his relation with his subjects, his complaints of having to administer law unto a savage race, and installing his son in his place ‘to make mild / A rugged people, through soft degrees / Subdue them to the useful and good’ have provoked modern critics to assume there is something more than class that distinguishes Ulysses from the people he refers to. He may be ‘but bizarrely’ imagining cultural and racial differences.

Ulysses's eagerness to leave his ‘aged’ wife and family and quit his job to sail west have suggested another colonial stereotype — ‘that of the retired adventurer, chafing at the domestic routine, and planning one last voyage to escape it’. Ulysses, however, stands in sharp contrast to much of Tennyson’s later writing in which he is more or less a crude apologist for an imperial policy.

Tennyson, along with two other Victorian ‘sages’, Carlyle and Ruskin, supported the repressive policies of the controversial colonial officer, Governor John Edward Eyre (1815-1901). He, as the Governor of Jamaica, used extreme measures to crush a black rebellion (1865) and took excessive reprisals. In all, there were about 400 executions. In the end, Jamaica became a crown colony. Prominent British intellectuals like John Stuart Mill, Thomas Henry Huxley and Herbert Spencer demanded his trial for murder. It can easily be guessed which side won.

For Indian readers The Defence of Lucknow (written March 1879) is an interesting poem. This ballad of ‘the deeds of English’ celebrating the victory of the British defenders of the Lucknow Residency is typically imperialistic in its point of view. The situation refers to the siege of the Lucknow Residency during the outbreak of the mutiny in the Indian army, more commonly known as the Sepoy Mutiny (1857). From the ruler's point of view the Indian mutiny brought out the treachery, the savage and cruel nature of the Indian, while, for eminent Indian historians like R. C. Mazumdar, it was the first great and direct challenge to the British rule in India which furnished a historical basis for the struggle for Independence.

Tennyson's The Defence of Lucknow is comparatively less known of his poems and is hardly ever anthologized. However, in its speed and rhythm, in its visuals and aural effects it is of equal, if not of higher, excellence to the more famous The Charge of the Light Brigade. This poem, a dramatic reconstruction of the siege, is highly charged with the poet's patriotic and national sentiments and racial pride which are so explicitly brought out through oppositions between ‘dark faces’ and ‘wholesome white faces’; ten thousand (Indian soldiers) and a handful (of British) and the proud declaration of the strength of the ‘race to command’. This is how the poem begins:

Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle-cry!

Never with mightier glory than when we had rear'd thee on high

Flying at the top of the roofs in the ghastly siege of Lucknow -

Shot thro' the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew, anew,

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.

Prior to this poem, in 1857, the year of the Mutiny, Tennyson had written a short poem celebrating the deeds of one of the British heroes of the defence of Lucknow, Henry Havelock. The first three of the four-lined stanzas begin with ‘Bold Havelock march’d’ and the concluding stanza is:

Bold Havelock died,

Tender and great and good,

And every man in Britain

Says ‘I am of Havelock’s blood!’

The voice of this ‘other’ Tennyson does not cancel the more often heard voice of the canonized, anthologized and sage-like poet of In Memoriam or Crossing the Bar. It only makes us conscious of the many voices of the poet, the patriarchal, the imperialistic, the humanistic and many others. It also helps us accept the authenticity of all these voices and accents which are all ultimately very human in their susceptibility to the social/cultural/political/racial environment and prejudices.