"In her ear he whispers gayly, If my heart by signs can tell, She replies in accents fainter "There is none I love like thee,' He to lips that fondly falter And they leave her father's roof. I can make no marriage present, Love can make our cottage pleasant, They by parks and lodges going, From deep thought himself he rouses, So she goes, by him attended, Lay betwixt his home and hers. Parks, with oak and chestnut shady, All he shows her makes him dearer, Evermore she seems to gaze On that cottage growing nearer, Where they twain will spend their days." Our space will not allow us to quote the entire ballad: we must, therefore, refer our readers to the volume. 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- She died-she went to burning flame, 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- I kissed his eyelids into rest- The wind is raging in turret and tree I hated him with the hate of hell, I rose up in the silent night, I made my dagger sharp and bright: The wind is raging in turret and tree- Three times I stabbed him through and through- I curled and combed his comely head, 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, What lit your eyes with tearful power, The opening to none 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, 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. 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, IV. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, V. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, CHORIC SONG. I. "There is sweet music here, that softer falls Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 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 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? IV. 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.) |