Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson | Page 9

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