But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist, Like that which kept the heart of Eden green Before the useful trouble of the rain.' The second Idyll recounts the wiles of "lissome Vivien," coiled serpent-like at the feet of Merlin, and bent on drawing from the sage enchanter the secret of his spell. It is the story of Dalilah with a dif ference. The contrast of youth and age, of vanity and wisdom, of sly attack and dexterous rebutter, is admirably sustained. The style, the invention, and the music. are also wonderful, and the whole so linked together that extract seems impossible without fracture of the golden chain. Yet there is one lyric gem-one heart-shaped pendent-that may easily be detached. This is the song of Vivien : "In love, if love be love, if love be ours, Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers: Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all. "It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, "The little rift within the lover's lute, "It is not worth the keeping: let it go. We need hardly say that the wisdom and experience of the sage are not proof against the seductive wiles of Vivien. He parries her assaults for a time with equal skill and constancy; rebuts her slander of the knights, and rebukes her changing fits of vanity and spleen; but in all such cases to parley is to yield. Vivien is determined to have the wizard's secret. Taking advantage of a storm that breaks over their heads, and hurls its bolts at their feet, she affects terror and repentance, and clings to Merlin for safety and for pardon. "She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales: Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more For Merlin, overtalked and overworn, Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm Then crying, 'I have made his glory mine,' And shrieking out, O fool!' the harlot leapt Adown the forest, and the thicket closed Behind her, and the forest echoed 'fool.'" When so rare a thing as a new poem comes before us, it may be well to analyze it rather carefully. Perhaps we may learn from its texture some secret of its principle and growth. A close examination of the Idylls reminds us that the elements of poetic language are the simplest possible. The author never strives to be intensely poetical in phrase or simile. No word in his poem lays claim to separate notice, any more than a single flake of snow that contributes to the beauty of a winter landIt is the succession of words and scape. phrases that realizes the desired effect. Thus, in the commencement of a charming idyll, third of the present series— "Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine the lily maid of Astolat," each term is separately trite and simple; and taken together they suggest only a pleasing outline of youth and grace-but that is just the preparation most suited to the artist's further purpose. Then mark the filling up. Hereafter we have no minute description of personal features; but the outline is filled in with moral traits, and a quiet course of narrative completes the portrait and the picture together: "-High in her chamber up a tower to the east, Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot; Which first she placed where morning's ear liest ray Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam; Then, fearing rust or soilure, fashioned for it Leaving her household and good father, climbed That eastern tower, and entering barred her door, Stript off the case, and read the naked shield; That ten years back; this dealt him at That at Caerleon; this at Camelot : And ah, God's mercy, what a stroke was And here a thrust that might have killed, but Broke the strong lance and rolled the enemy down And saved him: so she lived in fantasy." And so the story proceeds, leisurely, quietly, as the dawn creeps on and widens into the richer beauty of day. In this case it is the old new story of unrequited love. We must not be tempted to enter on its merits or extract its beauties; for our space would hardly serve for either, and something still better lies before us. finest sort: every inch of it contains some portion of the legend, some web of homely stuff, some shreds of silver warp, and withal some lines of golden thread. It is honest, pure, and skillful workmanship throughout. Plain Saxon English is the artist's raw material. His words are the original names of the things for which they stand, and so appear to be thoroughly identified with them, needing no transCaer-lation in the reader's mind. Our author always calls a spade a spade-not in the sense of speaking coarse ideas, but in that of using plain and simple terms. There is also the utmost clearness and directness in the narrative- no strange inversions and other licenses of grammar so frequently employed as the privilege of poetry and the chief distinction of poetic language. Mr. Tennyson stands first upon the merit of his ideas, and then upon the simplicity and aptness of the terms by which they are conveyed. It is evident that he submits the merit of his poetry to the severest test by thus declining all extrinsic show. Accordingly, his style invites only the scholar, the moralist, the student of nature, and the man of pure Another feature may be traced in the and cultivated imagination; and to these verbal structure of this poem: it is the he yields up, without artifice or reserve, work of conscientious, laborious, and con- the chaste forms of truth and beauty summate art. We may learn from this and which it is his privilege to create. The other instances that it is the poets most poet who discards the aid of vulgar and favored by nature who fortify their genius conventional ornament relies thenceforth with the utmost resources at their com- on the power of more genuine attractions; mand. It is necessary, but not enough, and it is nearly certain that greater ethical that a poet should be poet born. Nature purity will be the reward of his abstemihas often done her part when the result ous art. Poetry of the highest stamp, has been imperfect, partial, and sometimes though not expressly didactic, will always pitiful. The truth is, that moral qualities be distinguished by the dignity of its are quite as essential to the poet as intel- moral sentiments. The poem itself may lectual ones; and especially that moral not be shaped by some determined moral energy which is required to exert and to purpose-that would only be analogous to coördinate all the faculties before a pro- the act of a gardener who should trim his duct of the higher imagination is perfectly yew tree to the form of a funeral monumatured. It may seem strange to say soment; but just thoughts and noble sentiof a dainty poem, which reads like the inspiration of a quiet mood, and falls from the lips of beauty in her boudoir in an easy, natural strain, like the silk unwinding from her silver reel-but so it is: every line in this volume has been forged at a white heat, and every dented stroke has been given with steady, true, and deliberate aim. But this comparison serves only to illustrate the amount and not the kind of labor bestowed upon the work before us. We may rather compare the poem itself to ancient tapestry of the VOL. XLIX.-No. 1. ments will abound in his work like blossoms on the tree, not hiding its symmetry, but manifesting at once its vitality and character. This is seen in some of the choicest poems of our language. What so picturesque, so musical, so bright with images of fancy, as the Masque of Comus? Yet its finest passages-those that linger longest on the ear, because they have a charm for the listening heart-are tributes to the beauty and excellence of virtue. The last accents of the Attendant Spirit only betray the secret mission of the Muse, for all the images of loveliness in which it wiles of the "lissome Vivien," and premay please her to disport: "Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her." This volume of Mr. Tennyson is distinguished by a similar exalted purity of tone. The reader breathes an atmosphere of moral truth as well as of summer odors; and poetic aphorisms, glinting like dewdrops in the pure light of heaven, are scattered on all the flowers of fancy. Take a few gems: "O purblind race of miserable men! How many among us at this very hour "And that he sinned is not believable; For, look upon his face! but if he sinned, The sin that practice burns into the blood, And not the one dark hour which brings re morse, Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be: Or else were he, the holy King, whose hymns Are chanted in the minster, worse than all." But now we come to speak of the highest feature of this work, and that which gives harmonious expression to the whole. Mr. Tennyson has mastered the chief dif ficulty of his subject in combining its loose and scattered elements he has succeeded in imparting an almost epic unity and grandeur. Though not without separate interest and significance, the idylls of this volume are associated poems, and will be read to most advantage as a connected series. Nothing can exceed the effect of their advancing power and beauty when thus studied as a whole, and followed to their magnificent close in the idyll of "Guinevere." Three principal characters. are distinguished from the first; but it is only by degrees that their figures shine prominently out; then the group begins to absorb all interest and attention, and finally one prostrate but still queenly shape fixes the solemn moral on our minds for ever. All trial and disaster seem to spring; more or less directly, from the conduct of the Queen. It brings her favorite Enid under suspicion, prompts the artifices and vents the pure and tender passion of Elaine from meeting reciprocation in the breast of Lancelot; while to the Queen herself, her lord, and all his kingdom, it opens up all the sluices of ruin, misery, and rebellion. To many readers it may seem that this is a perilous theme for poetic treatment; but we are bound to say that the relations of Arthur, and his Queen, and Lancelot of the Lake, are indicated with the utmost purity and delicacy. There is no tampering for a moment with the principles of truth and honor; sin is nothing but blighting and degrading sin, and its ravages are all the more conspicuous from the exalted and shining qualities which it so fatally obscures. Sir Lancelot is the "flower of bravery," as Guinevere is "the pearl of beauty;" but a blot is on the escutcheon of the one, while passion, frailty, and remorse uncrown the other. Hear how the fallen knight, whose face is marred more with deep anguish than with wounds, soliloquizes in a moment of repentance: "Why did the King dwell on my name to me? Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach, Lancelot whom the lady of the lake As a king's son,' and often in her arms For what am I? what profits me my name I pray him, send a sudden Angel down To seize me by the hair, and bear me far, And fling me deep into that forgotten mere Among the tumbled fragments of the hills." We learn no more of Lancelot except incidentally; but some hint is here afforded of the reality and fruit of his contrition; "So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain, Not knowing he should die a holy man." The crime has been discovered before the dawning repentance of the lovers could take effect. Sir Lancelot has fled beyond the sea; Sir Modred rebelled against his uncle, the King; and Guinevere has hurried to a distant convent. The fugitive Queen comes unattended and unknown, and a young novice is set to wait upon her. The garrulity of this little maid, to whom all the rumors of King Arthur's trouble are known, cause infinite distress to the unhappy Queen. At length she begins to hum "an air the nuns had taught her; Late, so late!" and the new and sad inmate exclaims The character of Arthur is conceived in and sublime departure to a death no less the happiest manner. He is the blameless mysterious than his birth. King; the very type and model of restored humanity. If the poet had intended to set forth the person of Christ in relation to his faithless Church, he could hardly have chosen a better representative. But there is no hint of this occult allusion. We have to view King Arthur as a man, moving in a rude and sinful world; and in this point of view it is evident that his perfectness would have the stamp of unreality, but for one fatal drawback arising out of this very uniformity of excellence. His fault is too much meekness. In his public rule, and in his knightly character, the King is perfect; but a dash of strong humanity is wanting to make him lord of his own hearth. No infirmity of his nature awakens sympathy or calls for solace, and no warmth of passion flushes his statuesque repose. His figure throws no shadow; and so the tender partner of his throne finds no refuge from his glory in the congenial shelter of his side. The artistic value of this circumstance is very great. It provides the tragic elements of discord, error, and misfortune. It brings the impeccable and mighty King within the natural range of trouble. Above all, this feature of cold abstract perfection in the hero was necessary to protect the unhappy Queen from utter loathing and contempt. We can not withhold some human pity when she exclaims We must not conclude without showing the reader how this beautiful poem culminates to its conclusion. The idyll of Guinevere is "one entire and perfect chrysolite." We do not know in the whole compass of poetry any effort of equally sustained and brilliant flight, with no pause of dullness, and not even a momentary stoop of wing and perhaps no three passages in any literature are comparable to the description of the birth or finding of young Arthur, the relation by the King of all the glorious measures and triumphs which the crime of Guinevere had thwarted, and his solitary "Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep." Then the little novice sings: "Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. "No light had we; for that we do repent; And learning this the bridegroom will relent. "No light: so late! and dark and chill the Oh! let us in that we may find the light! "Have we not heard the bridegroom is so Oh! let us in, though late, to kiss his feet! The little song ceases, and the little maiden resumes her prattle, hoping to soothe "the noble lady," but in her ignorance wounding only. From rumor she relates the discovery of the infant Arthur, "A naked child upon the sands Of wild Dundagil by the Cornish sea;" and all the supernatural signs which were seen to herald and attend it; how a Knight of the Round Table, even the father of the little novice herself, heard strange music as he rode after sunset from Lyonnesse to Camelot, and turning, 2 Far on into the rich heart of the west; And sent a deep sea-voice through all the land, Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy These signs and many more are related as good omens, all falsified and thwarted by the future Queen. The little novice still runs garrulously on till interruption comes from without. Presently, when Guinevere has lapsed in memories of the past, "A murmuring whisper through the gallery ran, Then on a sudden a cry, 'The King.' She sat Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet Through the long gallery from the outer doors Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell And groveled with her face upon the floor: There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair She made her face a darkness from the King: And in the darkness heard his armed feet Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice, Monotonous and hollow like a ghost's Pronouncing judgment, but, though changed, the King's." The speech which follows is equal to the occasion and worthy the speaker"Britain's mighty King." It is too long for extraction; but we must make room for a few noble lines, embodying the sublime but qualified forgiveness of the injured Monarch. "Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee, laying there thy golden head, My pride in happier summers, at my feet. The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law, The doom of treason and the flaming death, (When first I learnt thee hidden here,) is past. The pang-which, while I weighed thy heart with one Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee, Let no man dream but that I love thee still. I am thine husband-not a smaller soul, leave. Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow: They summon me their King to lead mine hosts Far down to that great battle in the west Where I must strike against my sister's son, Leagued with the Lords of the White Horse, and Knights Once mine, and strike him dead, and meet myself Death, or I know not what mysterious doom." Enough this to show with what ease and power the poet rises with his argument; but we must continue the passage in a final extract. The departure of the King from that lone convent in the night all the realm of poetry. of ages, is one of the sublimest pictures in Arthur has said, "Farewell!" "And while she groveled at his feet, She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck, And in the darkness o'er her fallen head Perceived the waving of his hands that blest. Then listening till those armed steps were gone To which for crest the golden dragon clung |