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Andromeda, and Other Poems — A Reader’s Guide

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Authors: Kingsley, Charles, 1819-1875 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: English poetry -- 19th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 31,371

Reading time 137 min

Text sections 5

For Andromeda, and Other Poems — A Reader’s Guide, the stored edition analysis reports 31,371 words, 2 hr 17 min estimated reading time, and 5 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 24.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “English poetry -- 19th century,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #11064

Charles Kingsley's collection blends classical myth, medieval legend, and Victorian social commentary. The title poem retells the Andromeda story with vivid natural description, while shorter pieces range from dramatic monologues to ballads, revealing a poet attentive to landscape, faith, and historical conflict.

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Text length15 pts
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Weak was the queen, and rebelled: but the king, like a shepherd of people, Willed not the land should waste; so he yielded the life of his daughter. Deep in the wane of the night, as the moon sank low to the westward, They by the shade of the cliffs, with the horror of darkness around them, Stole, as ashamed, to a deed which became not the light of the sunshine, Slowly, the priests, and the queen, and the virgin bound in the galley, Slowly they rowed to the rocks: but Cepheus far in the palace Sate in the midst of the hall, on his throne, like a shepherd of people, Choking his woe, dry-eyed, while the slaves wailed loudly around him. They on the sea-girt rock, which is washed by the surges for ever, Set her in silence, the guiltless, aloft with her face to the eastward. Under a crag of the stone, where a ledge sloped down to the water; There they set Andromeden, most beautiful, shaped like a goddess, Lifting her long white arms wide-spread to the walls of the basalt, Chaining them, ruthless, with brass; and they called on the might of the Rulers. 'Mystical fish of the seas, dread Queen whom AEthiops honour, Whelming the land in thy wrath, unavoidable, sharp as the sting-ray, Thou, and thy brother the Sun, brain-smiting, lord of the sheepfold, Scorching the earth all day, and then resting at night in thy bosom, Take ye this one life for many, appeased by the blood of a maiden, Fairest, and born of the fairest, a queen, most priceless of victims.' Thrice they spat as they went by the maid: but her mother delaying Fondled her child to the last, heart-crushed; and the warmth of her weeping Fell on the breast of the maid, as her woe broke forth into wailing. 'Daughter! my daughter! forgive me! Oh curse not the murderess! Curse not! How have I sinned, but in love? Do the gods grudge glory to mothers? Loving I bore thee in vain in the fate-cursed bride-bed of Cepheus, Loving I fed thee and tended, and loving rejoiced in thy beauty, Blessing thy limbs as I bathed them, and blessing thy locks as I combed them; Decking thee, ripening to woman, I blest thee: yet blessing I slew thee! How have I sinned, but in love? Oh swear to me, swear to thy mother, Never to haunt me with curse, as I go to the grave in my sorrow, Childless and lone: may the gods never send me another, to slay it! See, I embrace thy knees--soft knees, where no babe will be fondled-- Swear to me never to curse me, the hapless one, not in the death-pang.' Weeping she clung to the knees of the maid; and the maid low answered-- 'Curse thee! Not in the death-pang!' The heart of the lady was lightened. Slowly she went by the ledge; and the maid was alone in the darkness. Watching the pulse of the oars die down, as her own died with them, Tearless, dumb with amaze she stood, as a storm-stunned nestling Fallen from bough or from eave lies dumb, which the home-going herdsman Fancies a stone, till he catches the light of its terrified eyeball. So through the long long hours the maid stood helpless and hopeless, Wide-eyed, downward gazing in vain at the black blank darkness. Feebly at last she began, while wild thoughts bubbled within her-- 'Guiltless I am: why thus, then? Are gods more ruthless than mortals? Have they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them? Even as I loved thee, dread sea, as I played by thy margin, Blessing thy wave as it cooled me, thy wind as it breathed on my forehead, Bowing my head to thy tempest, and opening my heart to thy children, Silvery fish, wreathed shell, and the strange lithe things of the water, Tenderly casting them back, as they gasped on the beach in the sunshine, Home to their mother--in vain! for mine sits childless in anguish! O false sea! false sea! I dreamed what I dreamed of thy goodness; Dreamed of a smile in thy gleam, of a laugh in the plash of thy ripple: False and devouring thou art, and the great world dark and despiteful.' Awed by her own rash words she was still: and her eyes to the seaward Looked for an answer of wrath: far off, in the heart of the darkness, Blight white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean Glimmered and glowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the maiden Trembled and sunk in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight, Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-maids. Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their coming, Watching the bliss of the gods, as they wakened the cliffs with their laughter. Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the surges Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked marble, Awed; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the mountain were silent. Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs, Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus, Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean. Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which they scattered, Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tritons Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship Hovered the terns, and the seagulls swept past them on silvery pinions Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens, Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming, Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen. Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness, Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others, Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys, Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus; Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless Sleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids. Onward they passed in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor anger; Self-sufficing, as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden. She would have shrieked for their mercy: but shame made her dumb; and their eyeballs Stared on her careless and still, like the eyes in the house of the idols. Seeing they saw not, and passed, like a dream, on the murmuring ripple. Stunned by the wonder she gazed, wide-eyed, as the glory departed. 'O fair shapes! far fairer than I! Too fair to be ruthless! Gladden mine eyes once more with your splendour, unlike to my fancies; You, then, smiled in the sea-gleam, and laughed in the plash of the ripple. Awful I deemed you and formless; inhuman, monstrous as idols; Lo, when ye came, ye were women, more loving and lovelier, only; Like in all else; and I blest you: why blest ye not me for my worship? Had you no mercy for me, thus guiltless? Ye pitied the sea-boys: Why not me, then, more hapless by far? Does your sight and your knowledge End with the marge of the waves? Is the world which ye dwell in not our world?'

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The title poem of this collection, Andromeda, opens not with the heroine but with a detailed portrait of the "dark-haired Æthiop people" who "know not the lords of Olympus." Kingsley devotes the first thirty lines to their geography, crafts, and fears—earthquake, flood, and a monster "bred of the slime." This slow, ethnographic buildup is characteristic of his method: he grounds myth in physical and social particularity before the heroic action begins.

The volume as a whole moves between such classical narrative and a range of shorter lyrics, many of which share a preoccupation with endurance under duress. Several poems take the form of dramatic monologues spoken by figures in extremis—a martyr on a cross, a wife who has betrayed her husband under torture—and these interior voices often carry more emotional weight than the mythological set pieces.

Myth as Ethnographic Description

In Andromeda, Kingsley delays the expected rescue plot to dwell on the customs of the "Æthiop people." They are "skilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver," but also "feeble of heart" because they lack knowledge of the Olympian gods. The monster is not a sudden intrusion but a recurring consequence of natural disaster: "the floods came yearly; and after the waters a monster." This cause-and-effect framing treats the myth as an explanatory story for a real landscape of earthquakes and sea-floods.

The poem's opening thus functions less as a prelude to Perseus's arrival than as a self-contained cultural portrait. Kingsley's hexameters accumulate concrete details—barley, flax, hillside vines, pastures—before the monster appears. The effect is to make the supernatural threat feel like a product of the physical world rather than a violation of it.

Voices Under Pressure

Several poems in the collection are dramatic monologues spoken by characters facing death or moral crisis. Saint Maura. A.D. 304 is the most extended example: a woman crucified beside her husband recounts her temptation to apostasy and her husband's rebuke. The poem's power comes from its specific, almost domestic details—"Only three months—short months—your wedded wife / Only three months within the cottage there"—and from the speaker's shifting registers of guilt, defiance, and love.

Other poems use a similar first-person intensity. The Bad Squire and The Outlaw give voice to social outsiders, while The Three Fishers compresses a tragedy of drowned fishermen into a ballad refrain. Kingsley is most effective when he lets a single speaker's situation generate the poem's moral weight, rather than when he editorializes directly.

Landscape and the Supernatural

Kingsley's settings are often precise and physically immediate. In Andromeda, the coast is described with a geologist's eye: "the gulf in the rocks, where of old the world-wide deluge / Sank to the inner abyss." The Ballad of Earl Haldan's Daughter uses a stark northern seascape, and Dartside evokes a specific Devon valley. Even when the subject is legendary, the landscape feels observed rather than imagined.

This concreteness extends to supernatural beings. In The Longbeards' Saga, Odin and Freya appear as characters in a wry dialogue about the naming of the Lombards. Freya's cunning and Odin's grudging admiration are rendered in brisk, almost colloquial lines: "Cunning are women all, / Bold and importunate!" The gods are not awe-inspiring but shrewd, and the poem's humor undercuts any solemnity.

Readers coming to this collection expecting a unified mythological epic will find instead a miscellany of voices and forms. The most rewarding approach is to treat each poem on its own terms, attending to Kingsley's handling of meter and his eye for physical detail. The dramatic monologues reward rereading, while the ballads and songs offer a lighter counterpoint. The catalog subject "English poetry -- 19th century" accurately describes the book's range, but the excerpts show a poet more interested in specific crises than in general themes.

Reading Andromeda stirred something—that ache of old stories held against a quiet shore. It reminds me of sitting with Georgian Poetry 1911-1912 — Reading Companion last winter, when a single line about rain made me pause, the way Kingsley’s sea does. Both feel like finding a familiar voice in a half-lit room.