There is the same versatility
displayed
in the
trifles.
trifles.
Tennyson
In 1843 it was altered to "Robert," and in
1845 and subsequent editions back to "Robin".
Compare, again, the old stanza in 'The Miller's Daughter':--
How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill;
The black and silent pool above,
The pool beneath it never still,
with what was afterwards substituted:--
I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still.
Another most felicitous emendation is to be found in 'The Poet',
where the edition of 1830 reads:--
And in the bordure of her robe was writ
Wisdom, a name to shake
Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit.
This in 1842 appears as:--
And in her raiment's hem was trac'd in flame
Wisdom, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power--a sacred name.
Again, in the 'Lotos Eaters'
_Three thunder-cloven thrones of oldest snow_
Stood sunset-flushed
is changed into
_Three silent pinnacles of aged snow_.
So in 'Will Waterproof' the cumbrous
Like Hezekiah's backward runs The shadow of my days,
was afterwards simplified into
Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days.
Not less felicitous have been the additions made from time to time. Thus
in 'Audley Court' the concluding lines ran:--
The harbour buoy,
With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself.
But what vividness is there in the subsequent insertion of
"Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm. "
between the first line and the second.
So again in the 'Morte d'Arthur' how greatly are imagery and rhythm
improved by the insertion of
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
between
Then went Sir Bedivere the second time,
and
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought.
There is an alteration in ? none which is very interesting. Till 1884
this was allowed to stand:--
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, _and the cicala sleeps_.
No one could have known better than Tennyson that the cicala is loudest
in the torrid calm of the noonday, as Theocritus, Virgil, Byron and
innumerable other poets have noticed; at last he altered it, but at the
heavy price of a cumbrous pleonasm, into "and the winds are dead".
He allowed many years to elapse before he corrected another error in
natural history--but at last the alteration came. In 'The Poet's Song'
in the line--
The swallow stopt as he hunted the _bee_,
the "fly" which the swallow does hunt was substituted for what it does
not hunt, and that for very obvious reasons. But whoever would see what
Tennyson's poetry has owed to elaborate revision and scrupulous care
would do well to compare the first edition of 'Mariana in the South',
'The Sea-Fairies', 'OEnone', 'The Lady of Shalott', 'The Palace of Art'
and 'A Dream of Fair Women' with the poems as they are presented in
1853. Poets do not always improve their verses by revision, as all
students of Wordsworth's text could abundantly illustrate; but it may be
doubted whether, in these poems at least, Tennyson ever made a single
alteration which was not for the better. Fitzgerald, indeed, contended
that in some cases, particularly in 'The Miller's Daughter', Tennyson
would have done well to let the first reading stand, but few critics
would agree with him in the instances he gives. We may perhaps regret
the sacrifice of such a stanza as this--
Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent, Whose round leaves hold the
gathered shower, Each quaintly folded cuckoo pint, And silver-paly
cuckoo flower.
II
Tennyson's genius was slow in maturing. The poems contributed by him to
the volume of 1827, 'Poems by Two Brothers', are not without some slight
promise, but are very far from indicating extraordinary powers. A great
advance is discernible in 'Timbuctoo', but that Matthew Arnold should
have discovered in it the germ of Tennyson's future powers is probably
to be attributed to the youth of the critic. Tennyson was in his
twenty-second year when the 'Poems Chiefly Lyrical' appeared, and what
strikes us in these poems is certainly not what Arthur Hallam saw in
them: much rather what Coleridge and Wilson discerned in them. They are
the poems of a fragile and somewhat morbid young man in whose temper we
seem to see a touch of Hamlet, a touch of Romeo and, more healthily, a
touch of Mercutio. Their most promising characteristic is the
versatility displayed. Thus we find 'Mariana' side by side with the
'Supposed Confessions', the 'Ode to Memory' with Greek['oi rheontes'],
'The Ballad of Oriana' with 'The Dying Swan', 'Recollections of The
Arabian Nights' with 'The Poet'. Their worst fault is affectation.
Perhaps the utmost that can be said for them is that they display a fine
but somewhat thin vein of original genius, after deducing what they owe
to Coleridge, to Keats and to other poets. This is seen in the magical
touches of description, in the exquisite felicity of expression and
rhythm which frequently mark them, in the pathos and power of such a
poem as 'Oriana', in the pathos and charm of such poems as 'Mariana' and
'A Dirge', in the rich and almost gorgeous fancy displayed in 'The
Recollections'.
The poems of 1833 are much more ambitious and strike deeper notes. Here
comes in for the first time that Greek[spondai_otaes'], that high
seriousness which is one of Tennyson's chief characteristics--we see it
in 'The Palace of Art', in '? none' and in the verses 'To J. S. ' But in
intrinsic merit the poems were no advance on their predecessors, for the
execution was not equal to the design. The best, such as '? none', 'A
Dream of Fair Women', 'The Palace of Art', 'The Lady of Shalott'--I am
speaking of course of these poems in their first form--were full of
extraordinary blemishes. The volume was degraded by pieces which were
very unworthy of him, such as 'O Darling Room' and the verses 'To
Christopher North', and affectations of the worst kind deformed many,
nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect lay in
the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod, sometimes
quaintly affected, and we can never go far without encountering lines,
stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file. The power and charm
of Tennyson's poetry, even at its ripest, depend very largely, often
mainly, on expression, and the couplet which he envied Browning,
The little more, and how much it is,
The little less, and what worlds away,
is strangely applicable to his own art. On a single word, on a subtle
collocation, on a slight touch depend often his finest effects: "the
little less" reduces him to mediocrity, "the little more" and he is with
the masters. To no poetry would the application of Goethe's test be, as
a rule, more fatal--that the real poetic quality in poetry is that which
remains when it has been translated literally into prose.
Whoever will compare the poems of 1832 with the same poems as they
appeared in 1842 will see that the difference is not so much a
difference in degree, but almost a difference in kind. In the collection
of 1832 there were three gems, 'The Sisters', the lines 'To J. S. ' and
'The May Queen'. Almost all the others which are of any value were, in
the edition of 1842, carefully revised, and in some cases practically
rewritten. If Tennyson's career had closed in 1833 he would hardly have
won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present century. The
nine years which intervened between the publication of his second volume
and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him, and transformed a mere
dilettante into a master. Much has been said about the brutality of
Lockhart's review in the 'Quarterly'. In some respects it was stupid, in
some respects it was unjust, but of one thing there can be no doubt--it
had a most salutary effect. It held up the mirror to weaknesses and
deficiencies which, if Tennyson did not care to acknowledge to others,
he must certainly have acknowledged to himself. It roused him and put
him on his mettle. It was a wholesome antidote to the enervating
flattery of coteries and "apostles" who were certainly talking a great
deal of nonsense about him, as Arthur Hallam's essay in the 'Englishman'
shows. During the next nine years he published nothing, with the
exception of two unimportant contributions to certain minor
periodicals. [1] But he was educating himself, saturating himself with
all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece and Rome, of modern
Italy, of Germany and of his own country, studying theology,
metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy and travels, observing
nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a naturalist. Nor was he a
recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life of his time, following
with the keenest interest all the great political and social movements,
the progress and effects of the Reform Bill, the troubles in Ireland,
the troubles with the Colonies, the struggles between the Protectionists
and the Free Traders, Municipal Reform, the advance of the democracy,
Chartism, the popular education question. He travelled on the Continent,
he travelled in Wales and Scotland, he visited most parts of England,
not as an idle tourist, but as a student with note-book in hand. And he
had been submitted also to the discipline which is of all disciplines
the most necessary to the poet, and without which, as Goethe says, "he
knows not the heavenly powers": he had "ate his bread in sorrow". The
death of his father in 1831 had already brought him face to face, as he
has himself expressed it, with the most solemn of all mysteries. In 1833
he had an awful shock in the sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam,
"an overwhelming sorrow which blotted out all joy from his life and made
him long for death". He had other minor troubles which contributed
greatly to depress him,--the breaking up of the old home at Somersby,
his own poverty and uncertain prospects, his being compelled in
consequence to break off all intercourse with Miss Emily Selwood. It is
possible that 'Love and Duty' may have reference to this sorrow; it is
certain that 'The Two Voices' is autobiographical.
Such was his education between 1832 and 1842, and such the influences
which were moulding him, while he was slowly evolving 'In Memoriam' and
the poems first published in the latter year. To the revision of the old
poems he brought tastes and instincts cultivated by the critical study
of all that was best in the poetry of the world, and more particularly
by a familiarity singularly intimate and affectionate with the
masterpieces of the ancient classics; he brought also the skill of a
practised workman, for his diligence in production was literally that of
Sir Joshua Reynolds in the sister art--'nulla dies sine linea'. Into the
composition of the new poems all this entered. He was no longer a
trifler and a Hedonist. As Spedding has said, his former poems betrayed
"an over-indulgence in the luxuries of the senses, a profusion of
splendours, harmonies, perfumes, gorgeous apparel, luscious meals and
drinks, and creature comforts which rather pall upon the sense, and make
the glories of the outward world to obscure a little the world within".
Like his own 'Lady of Shalott', he had communed too much with shadows.
But the serious poet now speaks. He appeals less to the ear and the eye,
and more to the heart. The sensuous is subordinated to the spiritual and
the moral. He deals immediately with the dearest concerns of man and of
society. He has ceased to trifle. The the [Greek: spondai_otaes,] the
high seriousness of the true poet, occasional before, now pervades and
enters essentially into his work. It is interesting to note how many of
these poems have direct didactic purpose. How solemn is the message
delivered in such poems as 'The Palace of Art' and 'The Vision of Sin',
how noble the teaching in 'Love and Duty', in 'Oenone', in 'Godiva', in
'Ulysses'; to how many must such a poem as 'The Two Voices' have brought
solace and light; how full of salutary lessons are the political poems
'You ask me, why, though ill at ease' and 'Love thou thy Land', and how
noble is their expression! And, even where the poems are less directly
didactic, it is such refreshment as busy life needs to converse with
them, so pure, so wholesome, so graciously human is their tone, so
tranquilly beautiful is their world. Who could lay down 'The Miller's
Daughter, Dora, The Golden Year, The Gardener's Daughter, The Talking
Oak, Audley Court, The Day Dream' without something of the feeling which
Goethe felt when he first laid down 'The Vicar of Wakefield? ' In the
best lyrics in these volumes, such as 'Break, Break', and 'Move
Eastward', 'Happy Earth', the most fastidious of critics must recognise
flawless gems. In the two volumes of 1842 Tennyson carried to perfection
all that was best in his earlier poems, and displayed powers of which he
may have given some indication in his cruder efforts, but which must
certainly have exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine of his
rational admirers. These volumes justly gave him the first place among
the poets of his time, and that supremacy he maintained--in the opinion
of most--till the day of his death. It would be absurd to contend that
Tennyson's subsequent publications added nothing to the fame which will
be secured to him by these poems. But this at least is certain, that,
taken with 'In Memorium', they represent the crown and flower of his
achievement. What is best in them he never excelled and perhaps never
equalled. We should be the poorer, and much the poorer, for the loss of
anything which he produced subsequently, it is true; but would we
exchange half a dozen of the best of these poems or a score of the best
sections of 'In Memoriam' for all that he produced between 1850 and his
death?
[Footnote 1: In 'The Keepsake', "St. Agnes' Eve"; in 'The Tribute',
"Stanzas": "Oh! that 'twere possible". Between 1831 and 1832 he had
contributed to 'The Gem' three, "No more," "Anacreontics," and "A
Fragment"; in 'The Englishman's Magazine', a Sonnet; in 'The Yorkshire
Literary Annual', lines, "There are three things that fill my heart with
sighs"; in 'Friendship's Offering', lines, "Me my own fate". ]
III
The poems of 1842 naturally divide themselves into seven groups:--
1. STUDIES IN FANCY.
'Claribel'.
'Lilian'.
'Isabel'.
'Madeline'.
'A Spirit Haunts'.
'Recollections of the Arabian Nights'.
'Adeline'.
'The Dying Swan'.
'A Dream of Fair Women'.
'The Sea-Fairies'.
'The Deserted House'.
'Love and Death'.
'The Merman'.
'The Mermaid'.
'The Lady of Shalott'.
'Eleanore'.
'Margaret'.
'The Death of the Old Year'.
'St. Agnes. '
'Sir Galahad'.
'The Day Dream'.
'Will Waterproof's Monologue'.
'Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere'.
'The Talking Oak'.
'The Poet's Song'.
2. STUDIES OF PASSION
'Mariana'.
'Mariana in the South. '
'Oriana'.
'Fatima'.
'The Sisters'.
'Locksley Hall'.
'Edward Gray'.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
'A Character'.
'The Poet'.
'The Poet's Mind'.
'The Two Voices'.
'The Palace of Art'.
'The Vision of Sin'.
'St. Simeon Stylites'.
4. IDYLLS
(a) Classical.
'? none'.
'The Lotos Eaters'.
'Ulysses'.
(b) English
'The Miller's Daughter'.
'The May Queen'.
'Morte d'Arthur'.
'The Gardener's Daughter'.
'Dora'.
'Audley Court'.
'Walking to the Mail'.
'Edwin Morris'.
'The Golden Year'.
5. BALLADS
'Oriana'.
'Lady Clara Vere de Vere'.
'Edward Gray'.
'Lady Clare'.
'The Lord of Burleigh'.
'The Beggar Maid'.
6. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
'Ode to Memory'.
'Sonnet to J. M. K'.
'To---------with the Palace of Art'.
'To J. S. '
'Amphion'.
'To E. L. on his Travels in Greece'.
'To--------after reading a Life and Letters'.
'"Come not when I am Dead'. "
'A Farewell'.
"'Move Eastward, Happy Earth'. "
"'Break, Break, Break'. "
7. POLITICAL GROUP
'"You ask me. "'
'"Of old sat Freedom. "'
'"Love thou thy Land. "'
'The Goose. '
In surveying these poems two things must strike every one--their very
wide range and their very fragmentary character. There is scarcely any
side of life on which they do not touch, scarcely any phase of passion
and emotion to which they do not give exquisite expression. Take the
love poems: compare 'Fatima' with 'Isabel', 'The Miller's Daughter' with
'Locksley Hall', 'The Gardener's Daughter' with 'Madeline', or 'Mariana'
with Cleopatra in the 'Dream of Fair Women'. When did love find purer
and nobler expression than in 'Love and Duty? ' When has sorrow found
utterance more perfect than in the verses 'To J. S '. , or the passion for
the past than in 'Break, Break, Break', or revenge and jealousy than in
'The Sisters? ' In 'The Two Voices', 'The Palace of Art' and 'The Vision
of Sin' we are in another sphere. They are appeals to the soul of man on
subjects of momentous concern to him. And each is a masterpiece. What is
proper to philosophy and what is proper to poetry have never perhaps
been so happily blended. They have all the sensuous charm of Keats, but
the prose of Hume could not have presented the truths which they are
designed to convey with more lucidity and precision. In that superb
fragment the 'Morte d'Arthur' we have many of the noblest attributes of
Epic poetry. '? none' is the perfection of the classical idyll, 'The
Gardener's Daughter' and the idylls that follow it of the romantic. 'Sir
Galahad' and 'St. Agnes' are in the vein of Keats and Coleridge, but
Keats and Coleridge have produced nothing more exquisite and nothing so
ethereal. 'The Lotos* Eaters' is perhaps the most purely delicious poem
ever written, the 'ne plus ultra' of sensuous loveliness, and yet the
poet who gave us that has given us also the political poems, poems as
trenchant and austerely dignified in style as they are pregnant with
practical wisdom.
There is the same versatility displayed in the
trifles.
But all is fragmentary. No thread strings these jewels. They form a
collection of gems unset and unarranged. Without any system or any
definite scope they have nothing of that unity in diversity which is so
perceptible in the lyrics and minor poems of Goethe and Wordsworth.
Capricious as the gyrations of a sea-gull seem the poet's moods and
movements. We have now the reveries of a love-sick maiden, now the
picture of a soul wrestling with despair and death; here a study from
rural life, or a study in character, there a sermon on politics, or a
descent into the depths of psychological truth, or a sketch from nature.
But nothing could be more concentrated than the power employed to shape
each fragment into form. What Pope says of the 'Aeneid' may be applied
with very literal truth to these poems:--
Finish'd the whole, and laboured every part
With patient touches of unwearied art.
In the poems of 1842 we have the secret of Tennyson's eminence as a poet
as well as the secret of his limitations. He appears to have been
constitutionally deficient in what the Greeks called 'architektonike',
combination and disposition on a large scale. The measure of his power
as a constructive artist is given us in the poem in which the English
idylls may be said to culminate, namely, 'Enoch Arden'. 'In Memoriam'
and the 'Idylls of the King' have a sort of spiritual unity, but they
are a series of fragments tacked rather than fused together. It is the
same with 'Maud', and it is the same with 'The Princess'. His poems have
always a tendency to resolve themselves into a series of cameos: it is
only the short poems which have organic unity. A gift of felicitous and
musical expression which is absolutely marvellous; an instinctive
sympathy with what is best and most elevated in the sphere of ordinary
life, of ordinary thought and sentiment, of ordinary activity with
consummate representative power; a most rare faculty of seizing and
fixing in very perfect form what is commonly so inexpressible because so
impalpable and evanescent in emotion and expression; a power of catching
and rendering the charm of nature with a fidelity and vividness which
resemble magic; and lastly, unrivalled skill in choosing, repolishing
and remounting the gems which are our common inheritance from the past:
these are the gifts which will secure permanence for his work as long as
the English language lasts.
In his power of crystallising commonplaces he stands next to Pope, in
subtle felicity of expression beside Virgil. And, when he says of Virgil
that we find in his diction "all the grace of all the muses often
flowering in one lonely word," he says what is literally true of his own
work. As a master of style his place is in the first rank among English
classical poets. But his style is the perfection of art. His diction,
like the diction of Milton and Gray, resembles mosaic work. With a touch
here and a touch there, now from memory, now from unconscious
assimilation, inlaying here an epithet and there a phrase, adding,
subtracting, heightening, modifying, substituting one metaphor for
another, developing what is latent in the suggestive imagery of a
predecessor, laying under contribution the most intimate familiarity
with what is best in the literature of the ancient and modern world, the
unwearied artist toils patiently on till his precious mosaic work is
without a flaw. All the resources of rhetoric are employed to give
distinction to his style and every figure in rhetoric finds expression
in his diction: Hypallage as in
_The pillard dusk_ Of sounding sycamores.
--_Audley Court_.
Paronomasia as in
The seawind sang _Shrill, chill_ with flakes of foam.
--_Morte d'Arthur_.
Oxymoron as
_Behold_ them _unbeheld, unheard Hear_ all.
--'? none'.
Hyperbaton as in
The _dew-impearled_ winds of dawn.
--'Ode to Memory'.
Metonymy as in
The _bright death_ quiver'd at the victim's throat.
--'Dream of Fair Women'.
or in
For some three _careless moans_ The summer pilot of an empty heart.
--'Gardener's Daughter'.
No poet since Milton has employed what is known as Onomatopoeia with so
much effect. Not to go farther than the poems of 1842, we have in the
'Morte d'Arthur':--
So all day long the noise of battle _rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea_;
or
_Dry clashed_ his harness in the icy caves
And _barren chasms_, and all to left and right
The _bare black cliff clang'd round_ him, as he bas'd
His feet _on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels_--
or the exquisite
I heard the _water lapping on the crag_,
And the _long ripple washing in the reeds_.
So in 'The Dying Swan',
And _the wavy swell of the soughing reeds_.
See too the whole of 'Oriana' and the description of the dance at
the beginning of 'The Vision of Sin. '
Assonance, alliteration, the revival or adoption of obsolete and
provincial words, the transplantation of phrases and idioms from the
Greek and Latin languages, the employment of common words in uncommon
senses, all are pressed into the service of adding distinction to his
diction. His diction blends the two extremes of simplicity and
artificiality, but with such fine tact that this strange combination has
seldom the effect of incongruity. Longinus has remarked that "as the
fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing
rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light round the sophistries
of rhetoric they become invisible". [1] What Longinus says of "sublimity"
is equally true of sincerity and truthfulness in combination with
exquisitely harmonious expression. We have an illustration in Gray's
'Elegy'. Nothing could be more artificial than the style, but what poem
in the world appeals more directly to the heart and to the eye? It is
one thing to call art to the assistance of art, it is quite another
thing to call art to the assistance of nature. And this is what both
Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from
shocking us, "passes in music out of sight". But this cannot be said of
Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give
distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led
him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth that
fringed his lips" for a moustache, "azure pillars of the hearth" for
ascending smoke, "ambrosial orbs" for apples, "frayed magnificence" for
a shabby dress, "the secular abyss to come" for future ages, "the
sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue" for the life of
Christ, "up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye" for a gesture of
surprise, and the like. One of the worst instances is in 'In Memoriam',
where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should
do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to
collapse into the falsetto of strained artificiality in the second:--
To rest beneath the clover sod
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
_Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God_.
An illustration of the same thing, almost as offensive, is in 'Enoch
Arden', where, in an otherwise studiously simple diction, Enoch's wares
as a fisherman become
Enoch's _ocean spoil_
In ocean-smelling osier.
But these peculiarities are less common in the earlier poems than in the
later: it was a vicious habit which grew on him.
But, if exception may sometimes be taken to his diction, no exception
can be taken to his rhythm. No English poet since Milton, Tennyson's
only superior in this respect, had a finer ear or a more consummate
mastery over all the resources of rhythmical expression. What colours
are to a painter rhythm is, in description, to the poet, and few have
rivalled, none have excelled Tennyson in this. Take the following:--
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
_On the bald street strikes the blank day_.
--'In Memoriam'.
See particularly 'In Memoriam', cvii. , the lines beginning "Fiercely
flies," to "darken on the rolling brine": the description of the island
in 'Enoch Arden'; but specification is needless, it applies to all his
descriptive poetry. It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by
such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it,
as here:--
No gray old grange or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple style from mead to mead,
Or sheep walk up the windy wold.
--'In Memoriam', c.
Or here:--
The meal sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.
--'The Miller's Daughter'.
His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless
variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare's, it has not the
massiveness and majesty of Milton's, it has not the austere grandeur of
Wordsworth's at its best, it has not the wavy swell, "the linked
sweetness long drawn out" of Shelley's, but its distinguishing feature
is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge
said of Claudian's style may be applied to it: "Every line, nay every
word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is
seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or
more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for
ever.
In his description of nature he is incomparable. Take the following from
'The Dying Swan':--
Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
or the opening scene in '? none' and in 'The Lotos Eaters', or the
meadow scene in 'The Gardener's Daughter', or the conclusion of 'Audley
Court', or the forest scene in the 'Dream of Fair Women', or this stanza
in 'Mariana in the South':--
There all in spaces rosy-bright
Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears,
And deepening through the silent spheres,
Heaven over Heaven rose the night.
A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as
here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:--
The _wrinkled_ sea beneath him _crawls_.
--'The Eagle'.
Or here of a ship at sea, in the distance:--
And on through zones of light and shadow
_Glimmer away to the lonely deep_.
--'To the Rev. F. D. Maurice'.
Or here of waters falling high up on mountains:--
Their thousand _wreaths of dangling water-smoke_.
--'The Princess'.
Or of a water-fall seen at a distance:--
And _like a downward smoke_ the slender stream
Along the cliff _to fall and pause and fall_ did seem.
Or here again:--
We left the dying ebb that _faintly lipp'd
The flat red granite_.
Or here of a wave:--
Like a wave in the wild North Sea
_Green glimmering toward the summit_ bears with all
_Its stormy crests that smoke_ against the skies
Down on a bark.
--'Elaine'.
That beech will _gather brown_,
This _maple burn itself away_.
--'In Memoriam'.
The _wide-wing'd sunset_ of the misty marsh.
--'Last Tournament'.
But illustrations would be endless. Nothing seems to escape him in
Nature. Take the following:--
Like _a purple beech among the greens
Looks out of place_.
--'Edwin Morris'.
Or
Delays _as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green_.
--'The Princess'.
As _black as ash-buds in the front of March_.
--'The Gardener's Daughter'.
A gusty April morn
That _puff'd_ the swaying _branches into smoke_.
--'Holy Grail'.
So with flowers, trees, birds and insects:--
The fox-glove _clusters dappled bells_.
--'The Two Voices'.
The sunflower:--
_Rays round with flame its disk of seed_.
--'In Memoriam'.
The dog-rose:--
_Tufts of rosy-tinted snow_.
--'Two Voices'.
A _million emeralds_ break from the _ruby-budded lime_.
--'Maud'.
In gloss and hue the chestnut, _when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within_.
--'The Brook'.
Or of a chrysalis:--
And flash'd as those
_Dull-coated_ things, _that making slide apart
Their dusk wing cases, all beneath there burns
A Jewell'd harness_, ere they pass and fly.
--'Gareth and Lynette'.
So again:--
Wan-sallow, as _the plant that feeds itself,
Root-bitten by white lichen_.
--'Id'.
And again:--
All the _silvery gossamers_
That _twinkle into green and gold_.
--'In Memoriam'.
His epithets are in themselves a study: "the _dewy-tassell'd_ wood,"
"the _tender-pencill'd_ shadow," "_crimson-circl'd_ star," the "_hoary_
clematis," "_creamy_ spray," "_dry-tongued_ laurels". But whatever he
describes is described with the same felicitous vividness. How magical
is this in the verses to Edward Lear:--
Naiads oar'd
A _glimmering shoulder_ under _gloom_
Of _cavern pillars_.
Or this:--
She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
--'A Dream of Fair Women'.
But if in the world of Nature nothing escaped his sensitive and
sympathetic observation,--and indeed it might be said of him as truly as
of Shelley's 'Alastor'
Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,
--he had studied the world of books with not less sympathy and
attention. In the sense of a profound and extensive acquaintance with
all that is best in ancient and modern poetry, and in an extraordinarily
wide knowledge of general literature, of philosophy and theology, of
geography and travel, and of various branches of natural science, he is
one of the most erudite of English poets. With the poetry of the Greek
and Latin classics he was, like Milton and Gray, thoroughly saturated.
Its influence penetrates his work, now in indirect reminiscence, now in
direct imitation, now inspiring, now modifying, now moulding. He tells
us in 'The Daisy' how when at Como "the rich Virgilian rustic measure of
'Lari Maxume'" haunted him all day, and in a later fragment how, as he
rowed from Desenzano to Sirmio, Catullus was with him. And they and
their brethren, from Homer to Theocritus, from Lucretius to Claudian,
always were with him. I have illustrated so fully in the notes and
elsewhere [1] the influence of the Greek and Roman classics on the poems
of 1842 that it is not necessary to go into detail here. But a few
examples of the various ways in which they affected Tennyson's work
generally may be given. Sometimes he transfers a happy epithet or
expression in literal translation, as in:--
On either _shining_ shoulder laid a hand,
which is Homer's epithet for the shoulder--
[Greek: ana phaidimps omps]
--'Od'. , xi. , 128.
It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,
exactly the
[Greek: heos eboaesen alektor] (Until the cock _shouted_).
--'Batrachomyomachia', 192.
And all in passion utter'd a 'dry' shriek,
which is the 'sicca vox' of the Roman poets. So in 'The Lotos Eaters':--
His voice was _thin_ as voices from the grave,
which is Theocritus' voice of Hylas from his watery grave:--
[Greek: araia d' Iketo ph_ona]
(_Thin_ came the voice).
So in 'The Princess', sect. i. :--
And _cook'd his spleen_,
which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'. , iv. , 513:--
[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]
(At the ships he cooks his heart-grieving spleen).
Again in 'The Princess', sect. iv. :--
_Laugh'd with alien lips_,
which is Homer's ('Od'. , 69-70)--
[Greek: did' aedae gnathmoisi gelps_on allotrioisi]
So in 'Edwin Morris'--
All perfect, finished _to the finger nail_,
which is a phrase transferred from Latin through the Greek; 'cf. ',
Horace, 'Sat'. , i. , v. , 32:--
_Ad unguem_ Factus homo
(A man fashioned to the finger nail).
"The _brute_ earth," 'In Memoriam', cxxvii. , which is Horace's
_Bruta_ tellus.
--'Odes', i. , xxxiv. , 9.
So again:--
A bevy of roses _apple-cheek'd_
in 'The Island', which is Theocritus' [Greek: maloparaeos].
The line in the 'Morte d'Arthur',
This way and that, dividing the swift mind,
is an almost literal translation of Virgil's 'Aen'. , iv. , 285:--
Atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc
(And this way and that he divides his swift mind).
Another way in which they affect him is where, without direct imitation,
they colour passages and poems as in 'Oenone', 'The Lotos Eaters',
'Tithonus', 'Tiresias', 'The Death of Oenone', 'Demeter and Persephone',
the passage beginning "From the woods" in 'The Gardener's Daughter',
which is a parody of Theocritus, 'Id. ', vii. , 139 'seq. ', while the
Cyclops' invocation to Galatea in Theocritus, 'Id. ', xi. , 29-79, was
plainly the model for the idyll, "Come down, O Maid," in the seventh
section of 'The Princess', just as the tournament in the same poem
recalls closely the epic of Homer and Virgil. Tennyson had a wonderful
way of transfusing, as it were, the essence of some beautiful passage in
a Greek or Roman poet into English. A striking illustration of this
would be the influence of reminiscences of Virgil's fourth 'Aeneid' on
the idyll of 'Elaine and Guinevere'. Compare, for instance, the
following: he is describing the love-wasted Elaine, as she sits brooding
in the lonely evening, with the shadow of the wished-for death falling
on her:--
But when they left her to herself again,
Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field,
Approaching through the darkness, call'd; the owls
Wailing had power upon her, and she mix'd
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening and the moanings of the wind.
How exactly does this recall, in a manner to be felt rather than exactly
defined, a passage equally exquisite and equally pathetic in Virgil's
picture of Dido, where, with the shadow of her death also falling upon
her, she seems to hear the phantom voice of her dead husband, and "mixes
her fancies" with the glooms of night and the owl's funereal wail:--
Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis
Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret;
Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo
Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.
--'Aen'. , iv. , 460.
(From it she thought she clearly heard a voice, even the accents of
her husband calling her when night was wrapping the earth with
darkness; and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains kept oft
complaining, drawing out into a wail its protracted notes. )
Similar passages, though not so striking, would be the picture of
Pindar's Elysium in 'Tiresias', the sentiment pervading 'The Lotos
Eaters' transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the scenery in
'? none' so crowded with details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus.
Sometimes we find similes suggested by the classical poets, but enriched
by touches from original observation, as here in 'The Princess':--
As one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore.
. . .
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world,
which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv. , 275:--
[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer
erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa
pollaen. ]
(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across
the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being
as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the
deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind. )
So again the fine simile in 'Elaine', beginning
Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,
is at least modelled on the simile in 'Iliad', xv. , 381-4, with
reminiscences of the same similes in 'Iliad', xv. , 624, and 'Iliad',
iv. , 42-56. The simile in the first section of the 'Princess',
As when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,
reminds us of Homer's
[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]
(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with
furious blast, and it bows with all its ears. )
Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following--
Ever fail'd to draw
The quiet night into her blood,
from Virgil, 'Aen'. , iv. , 530:--
Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem
Accipit_.
(And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or
bosom),
or than the following (in 'Enid') from Theocritus:--
Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.
[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais. ]
--'Idyll', xxii. , 48 'seq. '
(And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out
like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with
the mighty eddies. )
But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and
intimate acquaintance with the classics. It lay in developing what was
suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their
imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient classical poetry than its
pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be
expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole
scene or a whole position. Where in 'Merlin and Vivian' Tennyson
described
The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall
In silence_,
he was merely unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"dumb
wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus
nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I. , xix.
1845 and subsequent editions back to "Robin".
Compare, again, the old stanza in 'The Miller's Daughter':--
How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill;
The black and silent pool above,
The pool beneath it never still,
with what was afterwards substituted:--
I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still.
Another most felicitous emendation is to be found in 'The Poet',
where the edition of 1830 reads:--
And in the bordure of her robe was writ
Wisdom, a name to shake
Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit.
This in 1842 appears as:--
And in her raiment's hem was trac'd in flame
Wisdom, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power--a sacred name.
Again, in the 'Lotos Eaters'
_Three thunder-cloven thrones of oldest snow_
Stood sunset-flushed
is changed into
_Three silent pinnacles of aged snow_.
So in 'Will Waterproof' the cumbrous
Like Hezekiah's backward runs The shadow of my days,
was afterwards simplified into
Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days.
Not less felicitous have been the additions made from time to time. Thus
in 'Audley Court' the concluding lines ran:--
The harbour buoy,
With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself.
But what vividness is there in the subsequent insertion of
"Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm. "
between the first line and the second.
So again in the 'Morte d'Arthur' how greatly are imagery and rhythm
improved by the insertion of
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
between
Then went Sir Bedivere the second time,
and
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought.
There is an alteration in ? none which is very interesting. Till 1884
this was allowed to stand:--
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, _and the cicala sleeps_.
No one could have known better than Tennyson that the cicala is loudest
in the torrid calm of the noonday, as Theocritus, Virgil, Byron and
innumerable other poets have noticed; at last he altered it, but at the
heavy price of a cumbrous pleonasm, into "and the winds are dead".
He allowed many years to elapse before he corrected another error in
natural history--but at last the alteration came. In 'The Poet's Song'
in the line--
The swallow stopt as he hunted the _bee_,
the "fly" which the swallow does hunt was substituted for what it does
not hunt, and that for very obvious reasons. But whoever would see what
Tennyson's poetry has owed to elaborate revision and scrupulous care
would do well to compare the first edition of 'Mariana in the South',
'The Sea-Fairies', 'OEnone', 'The Lady of Shalott', 'The Palace of Art'
and 'A Dream of Fair Women' with the poems as they are presented in
1853. Poets do not always improve their verses by revision, as all
students of Wordsworth's text could abundantly illustrate; but it may be
doubted whether, in these poems at least, Tennyson ever made a single
alteration which was not for the better. Fitzgerald, indeed, contended
that in some cases, particularly in 'The Miller's Daughter', Tennyson
would have done well to let the first reading stand, but few critics
would agree with him in the instances he gives. We may perhaps regret
the sacrifice of such a stanza as this--
Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent, Whose round leaves hold the
gathered shower, Each quaintly folded cuckoo pint, And silver-paly
cuckoo flower.
II
Tennyson's genius was slow in maturing. The poems contributed by him to
the volume of 1827, 'Poems by Two Brothers', are not without some slight
promise, but are very far from indicating extraordinary powers. A great
advance is discernible in 'Timbuctoo', but that Matthew Arnold should
have discovered in it the germ of Tennyson's future powers is probably
to be attributed to the youth of the critic. Tennyson was in his
twenty-second year when the 'Poems Chiefly Lyrical' appeared, and what
strikes us in these poems is certainly not what Arthur Hallam saw in
them: much rather what Coleridge and Wilson discerned in them. They are
the poems of a fragile and somewhat morbid young man in whose temper we
seem to see a touch of Hamlet, a touch of Romeo and, more healthily, a
touch of Mercutio. Their most promising characteristic is the
versatility displayed. Thus we find 'Mariana' side by side with the
'Supposed Confessions', the 'Ode to Memory' with Greek['oi rheontes'],
'The Ballad of Oriana' with 'The Dying Swan', 'Recollections of The
Arabian Nights' with 'The Poet'. Their worst fault is affectation.
Perhaps the utmost that can be said for them is that they display a fine
but somewhat thin vein of original genius, after deducing what they owe
to Coleridge, to Keats and to other poets. This is seen in the magical
touches of description, in the exquisite felicity of expression and
rhythm which frequently mark them, in the pathos and power of such a
poem as 'Oriana', in the pathos and charm of such poems as 'Mariana' and
'A Dirge', in the rich and almost gorgeous fancy displayed in 'The
Recollections'.
The poems of 1833 are much more ambitious and strike deeper notes. Here
comes in for the first time that Greek[spondai_otaes'], that high
seriousness which is one of Tennyson's chief characteristics--we see it
in 'The Palace of Art', in '? none' and in the verses 'To J. S. ' But in
intrinsic merit the poems were no advance on their predecessors, for the
execution was not equal to the design. The best, such as '? none', 'A
Dream of Fair Women', 'The Palace of Art', 'The Lady of Shalott'--I am
speaking of course of these poems in their first form--were full of
extraordinary blemishes. The volume was degraded by pieces which were
very unworthy of him, such as 'O Darling Room' and the verses 'To
Christopher North', and affectations of the worst kind deformed many,
nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect lay in
the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod, sometimes
quaintly affected, and we can never go far without encountering lines,
stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file. The power and charm
of Tennyson's poetry, even at its ripest, depend very largely, often
mainly, on expression, and the couplet which he envied Browning,
The little more, and how much it is,
The little less, and what worlds away,
is strangely applicable to his own art. On a single word, on a subtle
collocation, on a slight touch depend often his finest effects: "the
little less" reduces him to mediocrity, "the little more" and he is with
the masters. To no poetry would the application of Goethe's test be, as
a rule, more fatal--that the real poetic quality in poetry is that which
remains when it has been translated literally into prose.
Whoever will compare the poems of 1832 with the same poems as they
appeared in 1842 will see that the difference is not so much a
difference in degree, but almost a difference in kind. In the collection
of 1832 there were three gems, 'The Sisters', the lines 'To J. S. ' and
'The May Queen'. Almost all the others which are of any value were, in
the edition of 1842, carefully revised, and in some cases practically
rewritten. If Tennyson's career had closed in 1833 he would hardly have
won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present century. The
nine years which intervened between the publication of his second volume
and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him, and transformed a mere
dilettante into a master. Much has been said about the brutality of
Lockhart's review in the 'Quarterly'. In some respects it was stupid, in
some respects it was unjust, but of one thing there can be no doubt--it
had a most salutary effect. It held up the mirror to weaknesses and
deficiencies which, if Tennyson did not care to acknowledge to others,
he must certainly have acknowledged to himself. It roused him and put
him on his mettle. It was a wholesome antidote to the enervating
flattery of coteries and "apostles" who were certainly talking a great
deal of nonsense about him, as Arthur Hallam's essay in the 'Englishman'
shows. During the next nine years he published nothing, with the
exception of two unimportant contributions to certain minor
periodicals. [1] But he was educating himself, saturating himself with
all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece and Rome, of modern
Italy, of Germany and of his own country, studying theology,
metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy and travels, observing
nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a naturalist. Nor was he a
recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life of his time, following
with the keenest interest all the great political and social movements,
the progress and effects of the Reform Bill, the troubles in Ireland,
the troubles with the Colonies, the struggles between the Protectionists
and the Free Traders, Municipal Reform, the advance of the democracy,
Chartism, the popular education question. He travelled on the Continent,
he travelled in Wales and Scotland, he visited most parts of England,
not as an idle tourist, but as a student with note-book in hand. And he
had been submitted also to the discipline which is of all disciplines
the most necessary to the poet, and without which, as Goethe says, "he
knows not the heavenly powers": he had "ate his bread in sorrow". The
death of his father in 1831 had already brought him face to face, as he
has himself expressed it, with the most solemn of all mysteries. In 1833
he had an awful shock in the sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam,
"an overwhelming sorrow which blotted out all joy from his life and made
him long for death". He had other minor troubles which contributed
greatly to depress him,--the breaking up of the old home at Somersby,
his own poverty and uncertain prospects, his being compelled in
consequence to break off all intercourse with Miss Emily Selwood. It is
possible that 'Love and Duty' may have reference to this sorrow; it is
certain that 'The Two Voices' is autobiographical.
Such was his education between 1832 and 1842, and such the influences
which were moulding him, while he was slowly evolving 'In Memoriam' and
the poems first published in the latter year. To the revision of the old
poems he brought tastes and instincts cultivated by the critical study
of all that was best in the poetry of the world, and more particularly
by a familiarity singularly intimate and affectionate with the
masterpieces of the ancient classics; he brought also the skill of a
practised workman, for his diligence in production was literally that of
Sir Joshua Reynolds in the sister art--'nulla dies sine linea'. Into the
composition of the new poems all this entered. He was no longer a
trifler and a Hedonist. As Spedding has said, his former poems betrayed
"an over-indulgence in the luxuries of the senses, a profusion of
splendours, harmonies, perfumes, gorgeous apparel, luscious meals and
drinks, and creature comforts which rather pall upon the sense, and make
the glories of the outward world to obscure a little the world within".
Like his own 'Lady of Shalott', he had communed too much with shadows.
But the serious poet now speaks. He appeals less to the ear and the eye,
and more to the heart. The sensuous is subordinated to the spiritual and
the moral. He deals immediately with the dearest concerns of man and of
society. He has ceased to trifle. The the [Greek: spondai_otaes,] the
high seriousness of the true poet, occasional before, now pervades and
enters essentially into his work. It is interesting to note how many of
these poems have direct didactic purpose. How solemn is the message
delivered in such poems as 'The Palace of Art' and 'The Vision of Sin',
how noble the teaching in 'Love and Duty', in 'Oenone', in 'Godiva', in
'Ulysses'; to how many must such a poem as 'The Two Voices' have brought
solace and light; how full of salutary lessons are the political poems
'You ask me, why, though ill at ease' and 'Love thou thy Land', and how
noble is their expression! And, even where the poems are less directly
didactic, it is such refreshment as busy life needs to converse with
them, so pure, so wholesome, so graciously human is their tone, so
tranquilly beautiful is their world. Who could lay down 'The Miller's
Daughter, Dora, The Golden Year, The Gardener's Daughter, The Talking
Oak, Audley Court, The Day Dream' without something of the feeling which
Goethe felt when he first laid down 'The Vicar of Wakefield? ' In the
best lyrics in these volumes, such as 'Break, Break', and 'Move
Eastward', 'Happy Earth', the most fastidious of critics must recognise
flawless gems. In the two volumes of 1842 Tennyson carried to perfection
all that was best in his earlier poems, and displayed powers of which he
may have given some indication in his cruder efforts, but which must
certainly have exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine of his
rational admirers. These volumes justly gave him the first place among
the poets of his time, and that supremacy he maintained--in the opinion
of most--till the day of his death. It would be absurd to contend that
Tennyson's subsequent publications added nothing to the fame which will
be secured to him by these poems. But this at least is certain, that,
taken with 'In Memorium', they represent the crown and flower of his
achievement. What is best in them he never excelled and perhaps never
equalled. We should be the poorer, and much the poorer, for the loss of
anything which he produced subsequently, it is true; but would we
exchange half a dozen of the best of these poems or a score of the best
sections of 'In Memoriam' for all that he produced between 1850 and his
death?
[Footnote 1: In 'The Keepsake', "St. Agnes' Eve"; in 'The Tribute',
"Stanzas": "Oh! that 'twere possible". Between 1831 and 1832 he had
contributed to 'The Gem' three, "No more," "Anacreontics," and "A
Fragment"; in 'The Englishman's Magazine', a Sonnet; in 'The Yorkshire
Literary Annual', lines, "There are three things that fill my heart with
sighs"; in 'Friendship's Offering', lines, "Me my own fate". ]
III
The poems of 1842 naturally divide themselves into seven groups:--
1. STUDIES IN FANCY.
'Claribel'.
'Lilian'.
'Isabel'.
'Madeline'.
'A Spirit Haunts'.
'Recollections of the Arabian Nights'.
'Adeline'.
'The Dying Swan'.
'A Dream of Fair Women'.
'The Sea-Fairies'.
'The Deserted House'.
'Love and Death'.
'The Merman'.
'The Mermaid'.
'The Lady of Shalott'.
'Eleanore'.
'Margaret'.
'The Death of the Old Year'.
'St. Agnes. '
'Sir Galahad'.
'The Day Dream'.
'Will Waterproof's Monologue'.
'Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere'.
'The Talking Oak'.
'The Poet's Song'.
2. STUDIES OF PASSION
'Mariana'.
'Mariana in the South. '
'Oriana'.
'Fatima'.
'The Sisters'.
'Locksley Hall'.
'Edward Gray'.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
'A Character'.
'The Poet'.
'The Poet's Mind'.
'The Two Voices'.
'The Palace of Art'.
'The Vision of Sin'.
'St. Simeon Stylites'.
4. IDYLLS
(a) Classical.
'? none'.
'The Lotos Eaters'.
'Ulysses'.
(b) English
'The Miller's Daughter'.
'The May Queen'.
'Morte d'Arthur'.
'The Gardener's Daughter'.
'Dora'.
'Audley Court'.
'Walking to the Mail'.
'Edwin Morris'.
'The Golden Year'.
5. BALLADS
'Oriana'.
'Lady Clara Vere de Vere'.
'Edward Gray'.
'Lady Clare'.
'The Lord of Burleigh'.
'The Beggar Maid'.
6. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
'Ode to Memory'.
'Sonnet to J. M. K'.
'To---------with the Palace of Art'.
'To J. S. '
'Amphion'.
'To E. L. on his Travels in Greece'.
'To--------after reading a Life and Letters'.
'"Come not when I am Dead'. "
'A Farewell'.
"'Move Eastward, Happy Earth'. "
"'Break, Break, Break'. "
7. POLITICAL GROUP
'"You ask me. "'
'"Of old sat Freedom. "'
'"Love thou thy Land. "'
'The Goose. '
In surveying these poems two things must strike every one--their very
wide range and their very fragmentary character. There is scarcely any
side of life on which they do not touch, scarcely any phase of passion
and emotion to which they do not give exquisite expression. Take the
love poems: compare 'Fatima' with 'Isabel', 'The Miller's Daughter' with
'Locksley Hall', 'The Gardener's Daughter' with 'Madeline', or 'Mariana'
with Cleopatra in the 'Dream of Fair Women'. When did love find purer
and nobler expression than in 'Love and Duty? ' When has sorrow found
utterance more perfect than in the verses 'To J. S '. , or the passion for
the past than in 'Break, Break, Break', or revenge and jealousy than in
'The Sisters? ' In 'The Two Voices', 'The Palace of Art' and 'The Vision
of Sin' we are in another sphere. They are appeals to the soul of man on
subjects of momentous concern to him. And each is a masterpiece. What is
proper to philosophy and what is proper to poetry have never perhaps
been so happily blended. They have all the sensuous charm of Keats, but
the prose of Hume could not have presented the truths which they are
designed to convey with more lucidity and precision. In that superb
fragment the 'Morte d'Arthur' we have many of the noblest attributes of
Epic poetry. '? none' is the perfection of the classical idyll, 'The
Gardener's Daughter' and the idylls that follow it of the romantic. 'Sir
Galahad' and 'St. Agnes' are in the vein of Keats and Coleridge, but
Keats and Coleridge have produced nothing more exquisite and nothing so
ethereal. 'The Lotos* Eaters' is perhaps the most purely delicious poem
ever written, the 'ne plus ultra' of sensuous loveliness, and yet the
poet who gave us that has given us also the political poems, poems as
trenchant and austerely dignified in style as they are pregnant with
practical wisdom.
There is the same versatility displayed in the
trifles.
But all is fragmentary. No thread strings these jewels. They form a
collection of gems unset and unarranged. Without any system or any
definite scope they have nothing of that unity in diversity which is so
perceptible in the lyrics and minor poems of Goethe and Wordsworth.
Capricious as the gyrations of a sea-gull seem the poet's moods and
movements. We have now the reveries of a love-sick maiden, now the
picture of a soul wrestling with despair and death; here a study from
rural life, or a study in character, there a sermon on politics, or a
descent into the depths of psychological truth, or a sketch from nature.
But nothing could be more concentrated than the power employed to shape
each fragment into form. What Pope says of the 'Aeneid' may be applied
with very literal truth to these poems:--
Finish'd the whole, and laboured every part
With patient touches of unwearied art.
In the poems of 1842 we have the secret of Tennyson's eminence as a poet
as well as the secret of his limitations. He appears to have been
constitutionally deficient in what the Greeks called 'architektonike',
combination and disposition on a large scale. The measure of his power
as a constructive artist is given us in the poem in which the English
idylls may be said to culminate, namely, 'Enoch Arden'. 'In Memoriam'
and the 'Idylls of the King' have a sort of spiritual unity, but they
are a series of fragments tacked rather than fused together. It is the
same with 'Maud', and it is the same with 'The Princess'. His poems have
always a tendency to resolve themselves into a series of cameos: it is
only the short poems which have organic unity. A gift of felicitous and
musical expression which is absolutely marvellous; an instinctive
sympathy with what is best and most elevated in the sphere of ordinary
life, of ordinary thought and sentiment, of ordinary activity with
consummate representative power; a most rare faculty of seizing and
fixing in very perfect form what is commonly so inexpressible because so
impalpable and evanescent in emotion and expression; a power of catching
and rendering the charm of nature with a fidelity and vividness which
resemble magic; and lastly, unrivalled skill in choosing, repolishing
and remounting the gems which are our common inheritance from the past:
these are the gifts which will secure permanence for his work as long as
the English language lasts.
In his power of crystallising commonplaces he stands next to Pope, in
subtle felicity of expression beside Virgil. And, when he says of Virgil
that we find in his diction "all the grace of all the muses often
flowering in one lonely word," he says what is literally true of his own
work. As a master of style his place is in the first rank among English
classical poets. But his style is the perfection of art. His diction,
like the diction of Milton and Gray, resembles mosaic work. With a touch
here and a touch there, now from memory, now from unconscious
assimilation, inlaying here an epithet and there a phrase, adding,
subtracting, heightening, modifying, substituting one metaphor for
another, developing what is latent in the suggestive imagery of a
predecessor, laying under contribution the most intimate familiarity
with what is best in the literature of the ancient and modern world, the
unwearied artist toils patiently on till his precious mosaic work is
without a flaw. All the resources of rhetoric are employed to give
distinction to his style and every figure in rhetoric finds expression
in his diction: Hypallage as in
_The pillard dusk_ Of sounding sycamores.
--_Audley Court_.
Paronomasia as in
The seawind sang _Shrill, chill_ with flakes of foam.
--_Morte d'Arthur_.
Oxymoron as
_Behold_ them _unbeheld, unheard Hear_ all.
--'? none'.
Hyperbaton as in
The _dew-impearled_ winds of dawn.
--'Ode to Memory'.
Metonymy as in
The _bright death_ quiver'd at the victim's throat.
--'Dream of Fair Women'.
or in
For some three _careless moans_ The summer pilot of an empty heart.
--'Gardener's Daughter'.
No poet since Milton has employed what is known as Onomatopoeia with so
much effect. Not to go farther than the poems of 1842, we have in the
'Morte d'Arthur':--
So all day long the noise of battle _rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea_;
or
_Dry clashed_ his harness in the icy caves
And _barren chasms_, and all to left and right
The _bare black cliff clang'd round_ him, as he bas'd
His feet _on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels_--
or the exquisite
I heard the _water lapping on the crag_,
And the _long ripple washing in the reeds_.
So in 'The Dying Swan',
And _the wavy swell of the soughing reeds_.
See too the whole of 'Oriana' and the description of the dance at
the beginning of 'The Vision of Sin. '
Assonance, alliteration, the revival or adoption of obsolete and
provincial words, the transplantation of phrases and idioms from the
Greek and Latin languages, the employment of common words in uncommon
senses, all are pressed into the service of adding distinction to his
diction. His diction blends the two extremes of simplicity and
artificiality, but with such fine tact that this strange combination has
seldom the effect of incongruity. Longinus has remarked that "as the
fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing
rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light round the sophistries
of rhetoric they become invisible". [1] What Longinus says of "sublimity"
is equally true of sincerity and truthfulness in combination with
exquisitely harmonious expression. We have an illustration in Gray's
'Elegy'. Nothing could be more artificial than the style, but what poem
in the world appeals more directly to the heart and to the eye? It is
one thing to call art to the assistance of art, it is quite another
thing to call art to the assistance of nature. And this is what both
Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from
shocking us, "passes in music out of sight". But this cannot be said of
Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give
distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led
him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth that
fringed his lips" for a moustache, "azure pillars of the hearth" for
ascending smoke, "ambrosial orbs" for apples, "frayed magnificence" for
a shabby dress, "the secular abyss to come" for future ages, "the
sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue" for the life of
Christ, "up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye" for a gesture of
surprise, and the like. One of the worst instances is in 'In Memoriam',
where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should
do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to
collapse into the falsetto of strained artificiality in the second:--
To rest beneath the clover sod
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
_Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God_.
An illustration of the same thing, almost as offensive, is in 'Enoch
Arden', where, in an otherwise studiously simple diction, Enoch's wares
as a fisherman become
Enoch's _ocean spoil_
In ocean-smelling osier.
But these peculiarities are less common in the earlier poems than in the
later: it was a vicious habit which grew on him.
But, if exception may sometimes be taken to his diction, no exception
can be taken to his rhythm. No English poet since Milton, Tennyson's
only superior in this respect, had a finer ear or a more consummate
mastery over all the resources of rhythmical expression. What colours
are to a painter rhythm is, in description, to the poet, and few have
rivalled, none have excelled Tennyson in this. Take the following:--
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
_On the bald street strikes the blank day_.
--'In Memoriam'.
See particularly 'In Memoriam', cvii. , the lines beginning "Fiercely
flies," to "darken on the rolling brine": the description of the island
in 'Enoch Arden'; but specification is needless, it applies to all his
descriptive poetry. It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by
such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it,
as here:--
No gray old grange or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple style from mead to mead,
Or sheep walk up the windy wold.
--'In Memoriam', c.
Or here:--
The meal sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.
--'The Miller's Daughter'.
His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless
variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare's, it has not the
massiveness and majesty of Milton's, it has not the austere grandeur of
Wordsworth's at its best, it has not the wavy swell, "the linked
sweetness long drawn out" of Shelley's, but its distinguishing feature
is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge
said of Claudian's style may be applied to it: "Every line, nay every
word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is
seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or
more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for
ever.
In his description of nature he is incomparable. Take the following from
'The Dying Swan':--
Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
or the opening scene in '? none' and in 'The Lotos Eaters', or the
meadow scene in 'The Gardener's Daughter', or the conclusion of 'Audley
Court', or the forest scene in the 'Dream of Fair Women', or this stanza
in 'Mariana in the South':--
There all in spaces rosy-bright
Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears,
And deepening through the silent spheres,
Heaven over Heaven rose the night.
A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as
here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:--
The _wrinkled_ sea beneath him _crawls_.
--'The Eagle'.
Or here of a ship at sea, in the distance:--
And on through zones of light and shadow
_Glimmer away to the lonely deep_.
--'To the Rev. F. D. Maurice'.
Or here of waters falling high up on mountains:--
Their thousand _wreaths of dangling water-smoke_.
--'The Princess'.
Or of a water-fall seen at a distance:--
And _like a downward smoke_ the slender stream
Along the cliff _to fall and pause and fall_ did seem.
Or here again:--
We left the dying ebb that _faintly lipp'd
The flat red granite_.
Or here of a wave:--
Like a wave in the wild North Sea
_Green glimmering toward the summit_ bears with all
_Its stormy crests that smoke_ against the skies
Down on a bark.
--'Elaine'.
That beech will _gather brown_,
This _maple burn itself away_.
--'In Memoriam'.
The _wide-wing'd sunset_ of the misty marsh.
--'Last Tournament'.
But illustrations would be endless. Nothing seems to escape him in
Nature. Take the following:--
Like _a purple beech among the greens
Looks out of place_.
--'Edwin Morris'.
Or
Delays _as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green_.
--'The Princess'.
As _black as ash-buds in the front of March_.
--'The Gardener's Daughter'.
A gusty April morn
That _puff'd_ the swaying _branches into smoke_.
--'Holy Grail'.
So with flowers, trees, birds and insects:--
The fox-glove _clusters dappled bells_.
--'The Two Voices'.
The sunflower:--
_Rays round with flame its disk of seed_.
--'In Memoriam'.
The dog-rose:--
_Tufts of rosy-tinted snow_.
--'Two Voices'.
A _million emeralds_ break from the _ruby-budded lime_.
--'Maud'.
In gloss and hue the chestnut, _when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within_.
--'The Brook'.
Or of a chrysalis:--
And flash'd as those
_Dull-coated_ things, _that making slide apart
Their dusk wing cases, all beneath there burns
A Jewell'd harness_, ere they pass and fly.
--'Gareth and Lynette'.
So again:--
Wan-sallow, as _the plant that feeds itself,
Root-bitten by white lichen_.
--'Id'.
And again:--
All the _silvery gossamers_
That _twinkle into green and gold_.
--'In Memoriam'.
His epithets are in themselves a study: "the _dewy-tassell'd_ wood,"
"the _tender-pencill'd_ shadow," "_crimson-circl'd_ star," the "_hoary_
clematis," "_creamy_ spray," "_dry-tongued_ laurels". But whatever he
describes is described with the same felicitous vividness. How magical
is this in the verses to Edward Lear:--
Naiads oar'd
A _glimmering shoulder_ under _gloom_
Of _cavern pillars_.
Or this:--
She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
--'A Dream of Fair Women'.
But if in the world of Nature nothing escaped his sensitive and
sympathetic observation,--and indeed it might be said of him as truly as
of Shelley's 'Alastor'
Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,
--he had studied the world of books with not less sympathy and
attention. In the sense of a profound and extensive acquaintance with
all that is best in ancient and modern poetry, and in an extraordinarily
wide knowledge of general literature, of philosophy and theology, of
geography and travel, and of various branches of natural science, he is
one of the most erudite of English poets. With the poetry of the Greek
and Latin classics he was, like Milton and Gray, thoroughly saturated.
Its influence penetrates his work, now in indirect reminiscence, now in
direct imitation, now inspiring, now modifying, now moulding. He tells
us in 'The Daisy' how when at Como "the rich Virgilian rustic measure of
'Lari Maxume'" haunted him all day, and in a later fragment how, as he
rowed from Desenzano to Sirmio, Catullus was with him. And they and
their brethren, from Homer to Theocritus, from Lucretius to Claudian,
always were with him. I have illustrated so fully in the notes and
elsewhere [1] the influence of the Greek and Roman classics on the poems
of 1842 that it is not necessary to go into detail here. But a few
examples of the various ways in which they affected Tennyson's work
generally may be given. Sometimes he transfers a happy epithet or
expression in literal translation, as in:--
On either _shining_ shoulder laid a hand,
which is Homer's epithet for the shoulder--
[Greek: ana phaidimps omps]
--'Od'. , xi. , 128.
It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,
exactly the
[Greek: heos eboaesen alektor] (Until the cock _shouted_).
--'Batrachomyomachia', 192.
And all in passion utter'd a 'dry' shriek,
which is the 'sicca vox' of the Roman poets. So in 'The Lotos Eaters':--
His voice was _thin_ as voices from the grave,
which is Theocritus' voice of Hylas from his watery grave:--
[Greek: araia d' Iketo ph_ona]
(_Thin_ came the voice).
So in 'The Princess', sect. i. :--
And _cook'd his spleen_,
which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'. , iv. , 513:--
[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]
(At the ships he cooks his heart-grieving spleen).
Again in 'The Princess', sect. iv. :--
_Laugh'd with alien lips_,
which is Homer's ('Od'. , 69-70)--
[Greek: did' aedae gnathmoisi gelps_on allotrioisi]
So in 'Edwin Morris'--
All perfect, finished _to the finger nail_,
which is a phrase transferred from Latin through the Greek; 'cf. ',
Horace, 'Sat'. , i. , v. , 32:--
_Ad unguem_ Factus homo
(A man fashioned to the finger nail).
"The _brute_ earth," 'In Memoriam', cxxvii. , which is Horace's
_Bruta_ tellus.
--'Odes', i. , xxxiv. , 9.
So again:--
A bevy of roses _apple-cheek'd_
in 'The Island', which is Theocritus' [Greek: maloparaeos].
The line in the 'Morte d'Arthur',
This way and that, dividing the swift mind,
is an almost literal translation of Virgil's 'Aen'. , iv. , 285:--
Atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc
(And this way and that he divides his swift mind).
Another way in which they affect him is where, without direct imitation,
they colour passages and poems as in 'Oenone', 'The Lotos Eaters',
'Tithonus', 'Tiresias', 'The Death of Oenone', 'Demeter and Persephone',
the passage beginning "From the woods" in 'The Gardener's Daughter',
which is a parody of Theocritus, 'Id. ', vii. , 139 'seq. ', while the
Cyclops' invocation to Galatea in Theocritus, 'Id. ', xi. , 29-79, was
plainly the model for the idyll, "Come down, O Maid," in the seventh
section of 'The Princess', just as the tournament in the same poem
recalls closely the epic of Homer and Virgil. Tennyson had a wonderful
way of transfusing, as it were, the essence of some beautiful passage in
a Greek or Roman poet into English. A striking illustration of this
would be the influence of reminiscences of Virgil's fourth 'Aeneid' on
the idyll of 'Elaine and Guinevere'. Compare, for instance, the
following: he is describing the love-wasted Elaine, as she sits brooding
in the lonely evening, with the shadow of the wished-for death falling
on her:--
But when they left her to herself again,
Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field,
Approaching through the darkness, call'd; the owls
Wailing had power upon her, and she mix'd
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening and the moanings of the wind.
How exactly does this recall, in a manner to be felt rather than exactly
defined, a passage equally exquisite and equally pathetic in Virgil's
picture of Dido, where, with the shadow of her death also falling upon
her, she seems to hear the phantom voice of her dead husband, and "mixes
her fancies" with the glooms of night and the owl's funereal wail:--
Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis
Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret;
Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo
Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.
--'Aen'. , iv. , 460.
(From it she thought she clearly heard a voice, even the accents of
her husband calling her when night was wrapping the earth with
darkness; and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains kept oft
complaining, drawing out into a wail its protracted notes. )
Similar passages, though not so striking, would be the picture of
Pindar's Elysium in 'Tiresias', the sentiment pervading 'The Lotos
Eaters' transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the scenery in
'? none' so crowded with details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus.
Sometimes we find similes suggested by the classical poets, but enriched
by touches from original observation, as here in 'The Princess':--
As one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore.
. . .
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world,
which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv. , 275:--
[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer
erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa
pollaen. ]
(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across
the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being
as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the
deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind. )
So again the fine simile in 'Elaine', beginning
Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,
is at least modelled on the simile in 'Iliad', xv. , 381-4, with
reminiscences of the same similes in 'Iliad', xv. , 624, and 'Iliad',
iv. , 42-56. The simile in the first section of the 'Princess',
As when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,
reminds us of Homer's
[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]
(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with
furious blast, and it bows with all its ears. )
Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following--
Ever fail'd to draw
The quiet night into her blood,
from Virgil, 'Aen'. , iv. , 530:--
Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem
Accipit_.
(And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or
bosom),
or than the following (in 'Enid') from Theocritus:--
Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.
[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais. ]
--'Idyll', xxii. , 48 'seq. '
(And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out
like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with
the mighty eddies. )
But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and
intimate acquaintance with the classics. It lay in developing what was
suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their
imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient classical poetry than its
pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be
expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole
scene or a whole position. Where in 'Merlin and Vivian' Tennyson
described
The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall
In silence_,
he was merely unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"dumb
wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus
nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I. , xix.
