A disproportioned marriage becomes beautified and raised for ever on a pedestal, even as the sculptor's hand takes a common block of marble and turns it into a Venus de Medicis, or a Greek Slave.

Let us select another every day fact, the desertion of a trusting girl by her lover, and the revenge of her friend or sister; the magic garment is on, and it is transfigured to an admiring posterity: we shall allude again to this poem as elucidating or illustrating another phase of the poet's mind.

THE SISTERS.

"We were two daughters of one race,

She was the fairest in the face:

The wind is blowing in turret and tree-
They were together and she fell-
Therefore revenge became me well-
O the Earl was fair to see.

She died-she went to burning flame,
She mixed her ancient blood with shame :
The wind is howling in turret and tree-
Whole weeks and months, and early and late,
To win his love, I lay in wait-

O the Earl was fair to see.

I made a feast, I bade him come,

I won his love, I brought him home:

The wind is roaring in turret and tree

And after supper, on a bed,

Upon my lap he laid his head-
O the Earl was fair to see.

I kissed his eyelids into rest-
His ruddy cheek upon my breast:

The wind is raging in turret and tree

I hated him with the hate of hell,
But I loved his beauty passing well-
O the Earl was fair to see.

I rose up in the silent night,

I made my dagger sharp and bright:

The wind is raging in turret and tree-
As half asleep his breath he drew,

Three times I stabbed him through and through—
O the Earl was fair to see.

I curled and combed his comely head,

He looked so grand when he was dead:
The wind is blowing in turret and tree-
I wrapt his body in the sheet,

And laid him at his mother's feet!

O the Earl was fair to see."

MARGARET.

"O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,

What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight in a falling shower?
Who lent you love, your mortal dower?
Of pensive thought and aspect pale.
Your melancholy sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo flower?"

The opening to Ænone is a fine chaunt—

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier far

Than all the valleys of Ionian Hills,

The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters slowly down. On either hand
The lawns and meadow ledges, mid-way down,
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook, falling through the cloven ravine,
In cataract after cataract, to the sea."

In "Locksley Hall," we have the indignant rebuke which a young poet pours out to the world, occasioned by the lady of his love marrying another-a dull every-day sort of husband. The hopeless desolation of the abandoned lover is finely expressed.

The sufferer, invoking his betrayer, her loveliness and her falsehood, by the memory of their former happiness, says that such a memory is a crown of sorrow

"Drug thy memories lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,

In the dead unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof,

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,

6

To thy widowed marriage pillow, to the tears that thou shalt weep.
Thou shalt hear the never, never,' whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears."

In no poem has Tennyson displayed more the peculiarity of his genius than in the lotos-eaters: the truth of the picture is heightened by the fascinations thrown round it; like a supernatural portrait, you know it to be such by the light of its halo. There is a haunting music in the lines, which seem to droop beneath the weight of their drowsy perfume.

"Where all things always seemed the same,
The mild-eyed melancholy lotos-eater came.

IV.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each; but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores! and if his fellow spoke,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave.
And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

V.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon, upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, We will return no more;'
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"

CHORIC SONG.

I.

"There is sweet music here, that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-news on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep.

And through the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leav'd flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II.

Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone?
We only toil, who are the first of things,

And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown:

Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings,

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,-
There is no joy but calm!'

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.

Death is the end of life; ah! why

Should life all labor be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?"

As a specimen of a great poet, in another phase, we have that wonderful condensation of the suggestive, (already referred to.)

In this, the matter is darkly hinted, and shadowed forth, giving a force and awe to it far beyond the most literal description. The enunciation is in hieroglyphics, but full of meaning.

"We were two daughters of one race," &c.

The madness of the narrator is subtlely announced by the refrain,

"The wind is blowing in turret and tree:"

And the poet then throws a wonderful interest over the scene by the parallel line,

"Oh the Earl was fair to see."

This is done with the intention of first suggesting it as a doubt to the reader, and then taking it for granted, and insisting upon it as a truth, that the madness was produced by the struggle in the maiden's bosom between revenge and love.

The common opinion as to the story is, that a young lady to revenge the seduction and death of her sister by a young nobleman, resolves to have vengeance: she therefore affects a great love for the seducer, inspires him with a passion, and in a moment of dalliance stabs him to the heart: she then has his dead body taken to his mother's feet.

The more poetical version appears to us to be, that she did not actually commit the self-abandonment and murder, but went mad in the contemplation of the proposed vengeance, and imagines in her delirium all that is described: it is still heightened by the possibility that her love for her sister's betrayer, interfering with her vengeance, precipitates her insanity. With these preliminary suggestions we leave the poem to the understanding of our readers.

We must not conclude our sketch without offering as a triumph of poetical skill the exquisite poem of Godiva: the opening lines, however, seem in bad taste:

"I lounged with grooms and parties on the bridge," &c.