Godiva

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.

[1] _I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To match the three tall spires; [2] and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this:_ Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry: for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamouring, "If we pay, we starve!" She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve". Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, "You would not let your little finger ache For such as _these?_"--"But I would die," said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul; Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; "O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"--"Alas!" she said, "But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town, And I repeal it"; and nodding as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bad him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition; but that she would loose The people: therefore, as they loved her well, From then till noon no foot should pace the street, No eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.