Some Respite!

Tennyson's schooldays were unhappy, and the future laureate was once heard to declare “How I did hate that school! The only good I ever got from it was the memory of the words ‘sonus desilientis aquae’ [which translates to the poet’s longing for still water], on an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the school windows.”

He later left the school to be educated at home and found the peace he desired, continuing to write and recalled making a line he regarded as ‘grander than Campbell, Byron or Scott’. Entering Cambridge in 1827 and being awarded the University Chancellor’s Gold Medal for one of his early pieces, the poet’s solo debut in 1830 entitled Juvenilia – ..."