pictures which have so delicate an enchantment for the æsthetic sense, we pass onward and upward to the human portraits which have a story to tell, and the larger scenes in which the social life of man is illustrated; and from these we rise again to the region where divine philosophy becomes "musical as is Apollo's lute." The singer whose melodies charm us is a true poet. The bard whose message thrills, uplifts, and inspires us is a great poet.

VI

THE QUALITIES OF TENNYSON'S POETRY

"His music was the south-wind's sigh,
His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye,
And ever the spell of beauty came
And turned the drowsy world to flame.
By lake and stream and gleaming hall
And modest copse and the forest tall,
Where'er he went, the magic guide
Kept its place by the poet's side.

Saïd melted the days like cups of pearl,

Served high and low, the lord and the churl,
Loved harebells nodding on a rock,

A cabin hung with curling smoke,
Ring of axe or hum of wheel

Or gleam which use can paint on steel,
And huts and tents; nor loved he less

Stately lords in palaces,

Princely women hard to please,

Fenced by form and ceremony,

Decked by rites and courtly dress
And etiquette of gentilesse.

He came to the green ocean's brim
And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim,
Summer and winter, o'er the wave

Sphered and concentric with the whole."

EMERSON: The Poetic Gift.

If an unpublished poem by Tennyson-say an idyll of chivalry, a classical character-piece, a modern dramatic lyric, or even a little song were discovered, and given out without his name, it would be easy, provided it belonged to his best work, to recognize it as his. But it is by no means easy to define just what it is that makes his poetry recognizable. It is not the predominance of a single trait or characteristic. If that were the case, it would be a simple matter to put one's finger upon the hall-mark. It is not a fixed and exaggerated mannerism. That is the sign of the Tennysonians, rather than of their master. His style varies from the luxuriance of "A Dream of Fair Women" to the simplicity of "The Oak,” from the lightness of "The Brook" to the stateliness of “Guinevere." There is as much difference of manner between "The Gardener's Daughter" and " 'Ulysses," as there is between Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper" and his "Dion."

The most remarkable thing about Tennyson's poetry as a whole is that it expresses so fully and so variously the qualities of a many-sided and well-balanced nature. But when we look at the poems separately we see that, in almost every case, the quality which is most closely related to the subject of the poem plays the leading part in giving it colour and form. There is a singular fitness, a harmonious charm in his work, not unlike that which distinguishes the painting of Titian. It is not, indeed, altogether spontaneous and unstudied. It has the effect of choice, of fine selection. But it is inevitable enough

in its way.

The choice being made, it would be hard to better it. The words are the right words, and each stands in its

right place.

The one thing that cannot justly be said of it, it seems to me, is precisely what Tennyson says in a certain place :

I do but sing because I must,

And pipe but as the linnets sing.

That often seems true of Burns and Shelley, sometimes of Keats. But it is not true of Milton, of Gray, of Tennyson. They do not pour forth their song

"In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

I shall endeavour in the remaining pages of this introduction to describe and illustrate some of the qualities which are found in Tennyson's poetry.

I. His diction is lucid, suggestive, melodious. He avoids, for the most part, harsh and strident words, intricate constructions, strange rhymes, startling contrasts. He chooses expressions which have a natural rhythm, an easy flow, a clear meaning. He has a rare mastery of metrical resources. Many of his lyrics seem to be composed to a musical cadence which his inward ear has caught in some happy phrase.

He prefers to use those metrical forms which are free and fluent, and in which there is room for subtle modulations and changes. In the stricter modes of verse he is less happy. The sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, the heroic couplet, the swift couplet (octosyllabic), — these he seldom uses, and little of his best work is done in these forms. Even in four-stress iambic triplets, the metre in which "The Two Voices " is written, he seems constrained and awkward. He is at his best in the long swinging lines of "Locksley Hall" (eight-stress trochaic couplets); or in a free blank verse (five-stress iambic), which admits all the Miltonic liberty of shifted and hovering accents,

grace-notes, omitted stresses, and the like; or in mixed measures like "The Revenge" and the Wellington Ode, where the rhythm is now iambic and now trochaic; or in metres which he invented, like "The Daisy," or revived, like In Memoriam; or in little songs like " Break, break, break,” and “The Bugle Song," where the melody is as unmistakable and as indefinable as the feeling.

He said, "Englishmen will spoil English verses by scanning them when they are reading, and they confound accent with quantity." "In a blank verse you can have from three up to eight beats; but, if you vary the beats unusually, your ordinary newspaper critic sets up a howl." (Memoir, II, 12, 14.) He liked the "run-on" from line to line, the overflow from stanza to stanza. Much of his verse is impossible to analyze if you insist on looking for regular feet according to the classic models; but if you read it according to the principle which Coleridge explained in the preface to "Christabel," by "counting the accents, not the syllables," you will find that it falls into a natural rhythm. It seems as if his own way of reading it aloud, in a sort of chant, were almost inevitable.

This close relation of his verse to music may be felt in Maud, and in his perfect little lyrics like the autumnal "Song," "The Throstle," "Tears, idle tears," "Sweet and low," and "Far-far-away." Here also we see the power of suggestiveness, the atmospheric effect, in his diction. Every word is in harmony with the central emotion of the song, vague, delicate, intimate, mingled of sweetness and sadness.

The most beautiful illustration of this is "Crossing the Bar" (p. 314). Notice how the metre, in each stanza, rises to the long third line, and sinks away again in the shorter fourth line. The poem is in two parts; the first stanza corresponding, in every line, to the third; the second stanza, to the fourth. In each division of the song there is first, a clear, solemn, tranquil

-

note, a reminder that the day is over and it is time to depart. The accent hovers over the words "sunset" and "twilight," and falls distinctly on "star" and "bell." Then come two thoughts of sadness, the "moaning of the bar," the “sadness of farewell," from which the voyager prays to be delivered. The answer follows in the two pictures of peace and joy, the full, calm tide bearing him homeward, the vision of the unseen Pilot who has guided and will guide him to the end of his voyage. Every image in the poem is large and serene. Every word is simple, clear, harmonious.

The movement of a very different kind of music — martial, sonorous, thrilling — may be heard in "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade."

Up the hill, up the hill,

Gallopt the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade,

reproduces with extraordinary force the breathless, toilsome, thundering assault.

His verse often seems to adapt itself to his meaning with an almost magical effect. Thus, in the Wellington Ode, when the spirit of Nelson welcomes the great warrior to his tomb in St. Paul's,

Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd guest,

With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest,
With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest?

we can almost hear the funeral march and see the vast, sorrowful procession. In "Locksley Hall,"

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight,

what value there is in the word "trembling" and in the slight secondary pause that follows it; how the primary pause in the preceding bar, dividing it, emphasizes the word "Self."

In