"When I Set Out for Lyonnesse" (A Poem)

The legend of Lyonnesse, a fabled land off the Cornish coast which sank below the sea in ancient times, has been the inspiration for multiple works of art, from Thomas Hardy’s poem “When I Set Out for Lyonnesse” (1870) to Don Marquis’ play Out of the Sea (1927).[1] While countless artists, Marquis among them, utilize the myth as a haunting fantasy (in Out of the Sea, for instance, residents of a coastal community hear the ghostly sounds of Lyonnesse’s drowned victims), Hardy uses the mythical tale as a metaphor for love, with the narrator venturing off to Lyonnesse (love’s unknown reaches) and returning with magic.[2]

When I set out for Lyonnesse,

A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,

And starlight lit my lonesomeness

When I set out for Lyonnesse

A hundred miles away.

 

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

 

When I returned from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance rare and fathomless,

When I returned from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes.[3]

 

Works Referenced

 

Hardy, Thomas. “When I Set Out for Lyonnesse.” The Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan and Company, 1920. 293-294.

 

Lupack, Alan. “Acting Out an Old Story: Twentieth-Century Tristan Plays.” Popular Arthurian Traditions. Ed. Sally K. Slocum. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992. 162-172.

 

Patil, Mallikarjun. Thomas Hardy, The Poet: A Critical Study. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1997. 

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[1] Lupack, 170.

[2] Patil, 38.

[3] Hardy, 293-294.