Selected Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

‘The lucid outline forming round thee;’ – ‘lucid’ simply means clear, but Tennyson is thinking of its original connection with ‘lux’ – light.

‘Changed with thy mystic change,’ – the point here is that Tithonus, in his youth, still had the power to respond to Aurora’s luminous passion. Here, her change is seen as ‘mystic,’ in that it affects him, and indeed the whole world. That Tennyson was fully aware of the sensual and passionate elements of certain types of mysticism can be seen in his St Agnes’ Eve .

‘…and felt my blood/Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all’ – He remembers when he could respond to her sensual awakening and share in it. The language here has an obvious dimension of physical passion.

‘Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm/With kisses balmier than half-opening buds/Of April,…’ – a balm is a soothing ointment.

‘…and could hear the lips that kiss'd/Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,’ – Now, there is only silence for Tithonus. As the excitement builds, Tennyson employs frequent enjambment. Note the beautiful sound of ‘lips that kiss’d/Whispering,’ combining sibilance and assonance on the short /i/.

‘Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,/While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.’ – Alluding to the story of the magical raising of the walls of Troy, and probably suggestive of physical arousal.

‘Yet hold me not for ever in thine East;’ – A beautiful line: to desire the West is to desire the dissolution and death associated with the sunset.

‘Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold/Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet’ – a superb image, contrasting with the warmth of the preceding lines. The reader’s imaginative gaze is diverted from the ‘Mouth, forehead, eyelids…’ of the young Tithonus down to the ‘wrinkled feet’ of the old man, cold upon the marble floors of Aurora’s palace.

‘Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:’ –because the sun sees all the world.