Note 1 — Early Poems

Tennyson, as we learn from his Life (vol. i., p. 83), began Œnone while he and Arthur Hallam were in Spain, whither they went with money for the insurgent allies of Torrigos in the summer of 1830. He wrote part of it in the valley of Cauteretz in the Pyrenees, the picturesque beauty of which fascinated him and not only suggested the scenery of this Idyll, but inspired many years afterwards the poem All along the valley. The exquisite scene with which the Idyll opens bears no resemblance at all to Mount Ida and the Troad.