''The Miller's Daughter'' is a

narrative poem Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need to rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may ...

Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

, first printed in 1833 and significantly revised in 1842.

Textual history

The poem was first published in 1833. It was greatly altered when republished in 1842, and in some respects, so Edward Fitzgerald thought, not for the better. No alterations of much importance were made in it after 1842. The characters as well as the scenery were, it seems, purely imaginary. Tennyson said that if he thought of any mill it was that of

Trumpington Trumpington is a village in Cambridgeshire, England, mostly located in Cambridge, with a small southern area of the village extending into the South Cambridgeshire district. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 UK census, the village had ...

, near Cambridge, which bears a general resemblance to the picture here given.Collins 1900, p. 58. In the first edition the poem opened with the following stanza, which the ''

Quarterly A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

'' ridiculed:

Legacy

The narrative contains the following love lyric, which

Arthur Quiller-Couch Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a Cornish people, British writer who published using the pen name, pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication ''The Oxfor ...

included separately under the same title in the first (1900) and second (1939) editions of ''

The Oxford Book of English Verse ''The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900'' is an anthology of English poetry, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, that had a very substantial influence on popular taste and perception of poetry for at least a generation. It was published by ...

'':

Translation

An Arabic version of the extracted lyric above, translated by

Safa Khulusi Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi (; 1917–1995) was an Iraqi historian, novelist, poet, journalist and broadcaster. He is known for mediating between Arabic- and English-language cultures, and for his scholarship of modern Iraqi literature. Apart from ...

and entitled ابنة الطحان, was published in the ''Al-Risala Magazine'', Issue 475, on 10 August 1942.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* Collins, John Churton, ed. (1900). '' The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson''. London: Methuen & Co. pp. 58–68. * Tennyson, Hallam (1897). ''Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son''. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. pp. 117–118. {{Authority control Poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1833 poems 1842 poems