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The Bugle Song

In Chapter 21 of Anne of Avonlea, Miss Lavendar entertains Anne and Diana with at Echo Lodge. Charlotta the Fourth summons the echoes in the woods by blowing a little tin horn.

There was moment’s stillness… and then from the woods over the river came a multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the “horns of elfland” were blowing against the sunset.

In Chapter 9 of Emily of New Moon, Emily is taken out of herself when she hears Ms. Brownwell recite “The Bugle Song”, with disastrous consequences.

She had never heard the Bugle Song before–but now she heard it–and SAW it–the rose-red splendour falling on those storied, snowy summits and ruined castles–the lights that never were on land or sea streaming over the lakes–she heard the wild echoes flying through the purple valleys and the misty passes–the mere sound of the words seemed to make an exquisite echo in her soul–and when Miss Brownell came to “Horns of elf-land faintly blowing” Emily trembled with delight.

In Chapter 14 of Emily of New Moon, Teddy’s signal whistle for Emily is likened to the Bugle Song.

Emily always knew when Teddy was coming, for when he reached the old orchard he whistled his “call”–the one he used just for her–a funny, dear little call, like three clear bird notes, the first just medium pitch, the second higher, the third dropping away into lowness and sweetness long-drawn out–like the echoes in the Bugle Song that went clearer and further in their dying.

In Chapter 21 of The Golden Road, the King children have a May-time picnic.

When we finished our lunch the barrens were already wrapping themselves in a dim, blue dusk and falling upon rest in dell and dingle. But out in the open there was still much light of a fine emerald-golden sort and the robins whistled us home in it. “Horns of Elfland” never sounded more sweetly around hoary castle and ruined fane than those vesper calls of the robins from the twilight spruce woods and across green pastures lying under the pale radiance of a young moon.

In “The Third Year”, Chapter 8 of Anne of Windy Poplars/Willows, Anne goes to see Frank Westcott to break the news of his daughter’s Dovie’s elopement with Jarvis West. Anne confronts Frank Westcott about the rumour that he tossed Milton’s poems out into the pond.

“Milton’s poems? Oh, that! It wasn’t Milton’s poems . . . it was Tennyson’s. I reverence Milton but I can’t abide Alfred. He’s too sickly sweet. Those last two lines of Enoch Arden made me so mad one night, I did fire the book through the window. But I picked it up the next day for the sake of the Bugle Song. I’d forgive anybody anything for that. It DIDN’T go into George Clarke’s lily pond–that was old Prouty’s embroidery. You’re not going? Stay and have a bite of supper with a lonely old fellow robbed of his only whelp.”

In Chapter 23 of Jane of Lantern Hill, Jane discusses poetry with her father, and quotes from “The Bugle Song”

“I know,” said Jane. “‘On the road to Mandalay’… I read that in one of Miss Colwin’s books… and ‘horns of elfland faintly blowing.’ That gives me a beautiful ache.”

The Bugle Song
By Lord Alfred Tennyson

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.