∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The Poems of Alfred Tennyson. Two vols. 12mo. Boston, William D. Ticknor. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
Of the works of cotemporary English poets of the second class, perhaps none have been more commented upon or lees read in America than thoae of Alfred Tennyson-The chief reason may be that never until now having been reprinted here, and a very small number only of th first English impression having been imported, they have not been accessible to many whom the praises of the reviewers would have led to examine into their pretensions. The Cardinal de Richelieu, it is said, fancying himself as skilled in poetry as in diplomacy, wrote a tragedy, which having been damned on its anonymous presentation to the critics, he tore into atonal and burned. For like cause Mr. Tennyson, soon after the publication of his “Poems, chiefly Lyrical,” committed all the copies of them he could regain to the fire, But the cardinal and our co-temporary erred. Time, not fire, is the trier of verse. Upon the surface of the stream of ages the good will at some period rise to float forever, the middling for a while live in the under current of the waters, and in the end, with the utterly worthless, sink into the oblivious mire at the bottom. To this conclusion Mr. Tennyson seems now to have been brought, for he has this summer republished his early poems, with many new ones which, though free from some of the more conspicuous faults of his first productions, generally lack their freshness, beauty and originality. We look in vain in the second volume of the edition before us for pieces surpassing his Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, Adeline, Margaret, The Death of the Old Year, or parts of The Dream of Fair Women. He excels most in his female portraitures; but while delicate and graceful they are indefinite ; while airy and spiritual, are intangible. As we read Byron or Burns, beautiful forms stand before us, we see the action of their breathing, read the passionate language of their eyes, involuntarily throw out our arms to embrace them; but we have glimpses only of the impalpable creations of Tennyson, as far away on gold-fringed clouds they bend to listen to dreamlike melodies which go up from fairy lakes and enchanted palaces.
Tennyson has been praised as a strikingly original poet. He has indeed a bold and affluent fancy, whereby he tricks out common thoughts in dresses so unique that it is not always easy to identify them; but we have not aeon is his works proofs of an original mind. He certainly is not an inventor of incidents, for most of those he uses were familiar in the last century. Dora he acknowledges was suggested by one of Miss Mitford's portraits, and the Lady Clare by Mrs. Farrar's Inheritance; The Day Dream, The Lady of Shalott, and Godiva, are versions of old tales, skilfully made, but showing no creative power. There is a statue-like definiteness and warmth of coloring about the following stanzas from the first of these poems which we have not elsewhere observed in his writings:
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Year after year onto her feet,
She lying on her couch alone)
Across the purpled coverlet,
The maiden's jet-black hair has grown.
On either side her tranced form
Forth summing from a braid of pearl
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl, [column 2:]
The silk star-broider’d coverlid
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid
The full black ringlets downward roll’d,
Glows forth each softly-shadow’d arm
With bracelets of the diamond bright;
Her constant beauty doth inform
Stillness with love, and day with light.
She sleeps! her breathing's are not heard
In palace chambers far apart,
The fragrant tresses are not stirr’d
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly press:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.
There is also a beautiful passage in Godiva, which we cannot forbear to quote:
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The Brim earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half dipt in cloud; anon she shook her head
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on, and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar until she reached
The gateway.
A specimen of description, graphic, but not very poetical. is the following from the Miller's Daughter:
I see the wealthy miller yet,
His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget
The busy wrinkles round hie eyes!
The slow, wise smile, that round about
His dusty forehead daily curled,
Seemed half within and half without,
And full of dealings with the world.
In The Day Dream, from which we have already quoted, the following lines will suggest to the reader's mind the story of Rip Van Winkle, of Sleepy Hollow:
And lain of all the king awoke,
And in his chair himself uprear’d,
And yawn’d, and rubb’d his face and spoke,
“By holy rood, a royal beard .
How say you! we have slept, my lords.
My beard has grown into my lap.”
The barons swore, with many words,
‘Twas but an after-dinner's nap.
Tennyson frequently exhibits a rare sense of the beautiful, “a spirit awake to fun issues,” and, in his own language,
does love Beauty only
In all varieties of mould and mind,
And Knowledge for its beauty, or if Good,
Good only for its beauty.
Yet this sense is sometimes dead in him, and he exhibits as little taste as is possessed by ante-diluvian McHenry. A critic for whose judgment we have great respect, and who seems determined to believe Mr. Tennyson “the first original English poet since Keats, perhaps the only one of the present race of verse writers who carries with him the certain marks of being remembered hereafter with the classic authors of his language,” points to St. Simeon Stilnes as the finest of his productions. It is not his worst, but if be had not written better we should desire none of his companionship. in the opening lines a devotee prays, in the very language of old cloister legends — [page 153:]
Altho’ I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crest of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
Recounting his mortifications, he says —
O take the meaning, Lord : I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap’d ten hundredfold to this, were still
Less burthert, by ten hundredfold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like torn of sin, that crush’d
My spirit flat before thee
O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,
Who may be slaved? who is it may be saved?
Who may he made a saint, if I fail here ?
Show me the man hath suffer’d more than I.
For either they were atoned or crucified,
Or bum’d in fire, or boil’d in oil or sawn
In twain beneath the rib's ; but I die here
To-day, and whole years heig, a life of death.
Bear witness, ill could have found a way
(And heedfully 1 sifted all my thought}
More slowly painful to subdue this home
Of Bin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practice, O my God.
For not alone this pillar-punishment,
Not this alone I bore but while I lived
In the white convent down the valley there,
For many week! about my loins I wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the well,
Twisted as light as I could knot the noose,
And I spake not of it to a mingle soul,
Until the ulcer, eating through my akin,
Betray’d my secret penance, so that all
My brethren marve’d greatly. More than this
I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest
Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee
I lived up there on yonder mountain side.
My right leg chain’d into the crag, I lay
Pent to a roofless close of ragged stones,
Inswath’d sometimes in wandering mist, and twice
Black’d with thy branding thunder, and sometimes
Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not
Except the spare chance-gift of those that came
To touch my body and be heard, and live.
And they say then that I work’d miracles,
Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,
Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,
Knoweet alone whether this was or no.
Have mercy, mercy cover all my sin.
Then, that I might be more alone with thee,
Three years I lived upon a pillar, high
Six cubits, and three years On one of twelve;
And twice three parrs I crouch’d on one that rose
Twenty by measure last of alt, I grew,
Twice ten long weary, weary years to this,
That numbers forty cubits from the
I think that I have borne as much as this —
Or else I dreams — and for so long a time.
At length the miserable fool, with no rebuke for the heathen thought that God is moved by penances like these instead of active efforts to promote His cause and human happiness, working miracles such as the earliest saints performed, climbs up into his airy borne and there “receives the blessed sacrament.” Where is Mr. Tennyson's “high, spiritual philosophy,” and “transcendental light?” The ideas, imagery and style of expression in this poem are familiar to all readers of monkish stories, and from the beginning of it to the end there are not half a dozen lines to be remembered when the book is closed.
We cannot foretell to what degree of popularity these poems will attain in America. The fewness of the copies here, before the appearance of the present edition, enabled some persons to steal the author's livery and achieve great reputation among a class who will now transfer their admiration to trim who “stole at first hand from Keats.” That Tennyson has genius cannot be denied, but his chief characteristics pertaining to style, they will not long attract regard. We have better poets in our own country — Bryant, [column 2:] Longfellow, and others — who put “diamond thoughts in golden caskets;” and all true critics will prefer their simple majesty or beauty to the fantastic though often tasteful and brilliant displays of Tennyson. The difference between them is like that which distinguishes the sparkling frost that vanishes in the sun front ingots of silver that may be raked into heaps and will last forever.
Our attention has been directed to resemblances between the poems of Tennyson and those of our own quaint and felicitous humorist, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. We have not space fora parallel. The first is a man of fortune who has given twenty years to the poetic art; the last a young physician who, devoting all his time toe laborious profession, has little leisure for dalliance with the muse, and no ambition to win “ a poet's fame,” Yet even as a versifier Holmes is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient effort and care, he would in every way surpass him as an author.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - GM, 1842] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Criticism - Poems by Samuel Rogers (Sept. 1842)