WorkAlfred Tennyson

“The Mystic," in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical”

"The Mystic," in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (London: Effingham Wilson, 1830) Inferred

Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) · London: Effingham Wilson, 1830

InferredFuller quotes this passage from Tennyson's "The Mystic" while chiding Emerson for postponing his lecture on "Genius" due to lost sleep, ironically identifying him with the poem's mystical figure who lies "broad awake" yet transcends the body. Fuller quotes 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall' — this is from Tennyson's early poem 'The Mystic' (published in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830), line 19: 'Daughters of time, divinely tall, / Moving to melody.' Fuller cites only the phrase, not the poem title. The phrase 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall' is a direct quotation from Tennyson's 'The Mystic' (1830), line 19, which describes 'the silent congregated hours' as 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall, / Moving to melody.' (Compare also 'A daughter of the gods, divinely tall' in 'A Dream of Fair Women,' Poems, 1832/1842 — a related but distinct phrase.) Fuller uses the phrase to describe the Sybils in Raphael's fresco, applying Tennyson's image to the visual subject.

QuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1839

Letters • Manuscripts

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

AttestedConfirmed reading1842Evidence ↓

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

Dated
1842Poems (1842)Attested
“I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · August 1842
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re19 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-07b, line 17957, letter Aug 1842; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Explicit 'I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson'.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1839—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p32

quoted · read

“Lying broad awake and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect, and power, and will, To hear Time flowing in the middle of the night And all things creeping to the day of doom.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

On Michelangelo and Raphael

p16

quoted · readManuscript page

“Daughters of Time, divinely tall" &”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Michelangelo and Raphael." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Inferred Fuller quotes 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall' — this is from Tennyson's early poem 'The Mystic' (published in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830), line 19: 'Daughters of time, divinely tall, / Moving to melody.' Fuller cites only the phrase, not the poem title. The phrase 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall' is a direct quotation from Tennyson's 'The Mystic' (1830), line 19, which describes 'the silent congregated hours' as 'Daughters of Time, divinely tall, / Moving to melody.' (Compare also 'A daughter of the gods, divinely tall' in 'A Dream of Fair Women,' Poems, 1832/1842 — a related but distinct phrase.) Fuller uses the phrase to describe the Sybils in Raphael's fresco, applying Tennyson's image to the visual subject.