The Poetry of Tennyson - 5 - Sea Poems

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

In Tennyson, beneath the long persistent note of melancholy, the extremes of subjectivity, sloughs of abysmal meaninglessness, anxious vertigos and trance-like states, there is a region of dread and doubt . Deep, buried emotion, like the Kraken, threatens to burst the dark, dissembling surface.
This is a BBC feature with readings of The Kraken, Sea-Fairies, Enoch Arden, (Sam Dale) The Voyage of Maeldune and Crossing the Bar, all accompanied by an atmospheric soundscape. The reading of Enoch Arden is first-rate.