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and chilled by the access of morbid weakness, and the mannerisms of style which distinguish Keats, to much of the simplicity and the philosophic tone of Wordsworth, the peculiar rhythm and obscurity of Coleridge, and a portion of the quaintness and allegorizing tendency which were common with the Donnes, Withers, and Quarleses, of the seventeenth century. What is peculiar to himself is a certain carol, light in air and tone, but profound in burden. Hence his little lyrics such as "Oriana," " Mariana at the Moated Grange," the "Talking Oak," the "May Queen"--are among his most original and striking productions. They tell tales of deep tragedy, or they convey lessons of wide significance, or they paint vivid and complete pictures, in a few lively touches, and by a few airy words, as if caught in dropping from the sky. By sobs of sound, by half-hints of meaning, by light, hurrying strokes on the ruddy chords of the heart, by a ringing of changes on certain words and phrases, he sways us as if with the united powers of music and poetry. Our readers will, in illustration of this, remember his nameless little song, beginning

"Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray crags, O sea!"

which is a mood of his own mind, faithfully rendered into sweet and simple verse. It is in composition no more complicated or elaborate than a house built by a child, but melts you, as that house would, were you to see it after the dear infant's death. But than this he has higher moods, and nobler, though still imperfect aspirations. In his "Two Voices," he approaches the question of all ages.--Whence evil? And if he, no more than other speculators, unties, he casts a soft and mellow light around this Gordian knot. This poem is no fancy-piece, but manifestly a transcript from his own personal experience. He has sunk into one of those melancholy moods incident to his order of mind, and has become " aweary of the sun," and of all the sun shines upon -especially of his own miserable idiosyncrasy. slides in at that dark hour a still small voice: how different from that which thrilled on Elijah's ear in the caves of Horeb ! It is the voice of that awful lady whom De Quincey calls Mater tenebrarum, our lady of darkness. It hints at suicide as the only remedy for human woes.

There

"Thou art so full of misery,

Were it not better not to be!"

And then there follows an eager and uneasy interlocution between the "dark and barren voice," and the soul of the writer, half spurning and half holding parley with its suggestions. Seldom, truly, since the speech by which Despair in Spenser enforces the same sad argument, did misanthropy breathe a more withering blight over humanity and human hopes; seldom did unfortunate by a shorter and readier road reach the conclusion, "there is one remedy for all," than in the utterance of this voice. Death in it looks lovely; nay, the one lovely thing in the universe. Again and again the poet is ready to yield to the desire of his own heart, thus seconded by the mystic voice, and, in the words of one who often listened to the same accents, to "lie down like a tired child, and weep away this life of care." But again and again the better element of his nature resists the temptation, and beats back the melancholy voice. At length, raising himself from his lethargy, he rises, looks forth-it is the Sabbath morn, and, as he sees the peaceful multitudes moving on to the house of God, and as, like the Anciente Mariner, he "blesses them unaware," straightway the spell is broken, the "dull and bitter voice is gone," and, hark!

"A second voice is at his ear,

A little whisper, silver-clear."

and it gives him a hidden and humble hope, which spreads a quiet heaven within his soul. Now he can go forth into the fields, and

"Wonder at the bounteous hours,

The slow result of winter showers,

You scarce can see the grass for flowers."

All nature calls upon him to rejoice, and to the eye o his heart, at least, the riddle is read. Nay, we put it to every heart if this do not, more than many elaborate argumentations, touch the core of the difficulty. "Look up," said Leigh Hunt to Carlyle, when he had been taking the darker side of the question, and they had both come out

under the brilliance of a starry night-" look up, and find your answer there!" And although the reply failed to convince the party addressed, who, looking aloft at the sparkling azure, after a deep pause, rejoined, with a sigh, and in tones we can well imagine, so melancholy and far withdrawn, “Oh! it's a sad sight;" yet, apart from the divine discoveries, it was the true and only answer. The beauty, whether of Tennyson's fields-where we scarce can see the grass for flowers" or of Leigh Hunt's skies, "whose unwithered countenance is young as on creation's day," and where we find an infinite answer to our petty cavils-is enough to soothe, if not to satisfy, to teach us the perfect patience of expectancy, if not the full assurance of faith.

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Tennyson, in some of his poems as well as this, reveals in himself a current of thought tending towards very deep and dark subjects. This springs partly from the metaphysical bias of his intellect, and partly from the morbid emotions of his heart. And yet he seems generally to toy and trifle with such tremendous themes-to touch them lightly and hurriedly, as one might hot iron-at once eager and reluctant to intermeddle with them. Nevertheless, there is a perilous stuff about his heart, and upon his verse lies a "melancholy compounded of many simples." He is not the poet of hope, or of action, or of passion, but of sentiment, of pensive and prying curiosity, or of simple stationary wonder, in view of the great sights and mysteries of Nature and man. He has never thrown himself amid the heats and hubbub of society, but remained alone, musing with a quiet but observant eye upon the tempestuous pageant which is sweeping past him, and concerning himself little with the political or religious controversies of his age. There are, too, in some of his writings, mild and subdued vestiges of a wounded spirit, of a heart that has been disappointed, of an ambition that has been repressed, of an intellect that has wrestled with doubt, difficulty, and disease.

In "Locksley Hall," for instance, he tells a tale of unfortunate passion with a gusto and depth of feeling, which (unless we misconstrue the mark of the branding-iron) betray more than a fictitious interest in the theme. It is a poem breathing the spirit of, and not much inferior to, Byron's "Dream," in all but that clear concentration of misery

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which bends over it like a bare and burning heaven over a bare and burning desert. Locksley Hall," again, is turbid and obscure in language, wild and distracted in feeling. The wind is down, but the sea still runs high. You see in it the passion pawing like a lion who has newly missed his prey, not fixed as yet in a marble form of still and hopeless disappointment. The lover, after a season of absence, returns to the scene of his early education and hapless love, where of old he

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Wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time."

A feeling, cognate with, and yet more imperious than those of his high aspirations, springs up in his mind. It arises in spring like the crest of a singing-bird. It is the feeling of love for Amy his cousin, sole daughter of her father's house and heart. The feeling is mutual, and the current of their true love flows smoothly on, till interrupted by the interference of relatives. Thus far he remembers calmly; but here recollection strikes the fierce chord of disappointment, and he bursts impetuously forth

"O, my cousin, shallow-hearted. O, my Amy, mine no more.

O, the dreary, dreary moorland. O, the barren, barren shore."

Darting then one hasty and almost vindictive glance down her future history, he predicts that she shall lower to the level of the clown she has wedded, and that he will use his victim a little better than his dog or his horse. Nay, she will become

"Old and formal, suited to her petty part;

With her little hoard of maxims, preaching down a daughter's heart."

But himself, alas! what is to become of him? Live he must-suicide is too base an outlet from existence for his brave spirit. But what to do with this bitter boon of being? There follow some wild and half-insane stanzas expressive of the ambitions and uncertainties of his soul. It is the Cyclops mad with blindness, and groping at the sides of his cave. He will hate and despise all women, or, at least, all British maidens. He will return to the orient land, whose "larger constellations" saw a father die. He will, in his despair,

take some savage woman who shall rear his dusky race.
But no-
-the despair is momentary-he may not mate with a
squalid savage; he will rather revive old intellectual ambi-
tions, and renew old aspirations, for he feels within him that
the "crescent promise of his spirit has not set." It is re-
solved-but, ere he goes, let every ray of remaining love and
misery go forth in one last accusing, avenging look at the
scene of his disappointment and the centre of his wo.

"Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall.
Now, for me, the woods may wither; now, for me, the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt;
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain, or hail, or fire, or snow,
For a mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go."

And thus the ballad closes, leaving, however, with us the inevitable impression that the unfortunate lover is not done with Locksley Hall nor its bitter memories-that Doubting Castle is not down, nor giant Despair dead—that the calls of the curlews around it will still resound in his ears, and the pale face of its Amy, still unutterably beloved, will come back upon his dreams-that the iron has entered into his soul-and that his life and his misery are henceforth commensurate and the same.

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Among the more remarkable of Tennyson's poems, besides those already mentioned, are "The Poet," "Dora," "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "Enone," "The Lotos Eaters," Ulysses," "Godiva," and "The Vision of Sin." "The Poet" was written when the author was young, and when the high ideal of his heart was just dawning upon his mind. It is needless to say that his view of the powers and influences of poetry is different with what prevails with many in our era. Poetry is, with him, no glittering foil to be wielded gayly on gala days. It is, or ought to be, a sharp two-edged sword. It is not a baton in the hand of coarse authority-it is a magic rod. It is not a morning flush in the sky of youth, that shall fade in the sun of science-it is a consuming and imperishable fire. It is not a mere amusement for young love-sick men and women--it is as serious as death, and longer than life. It is tuned philosophy— winged science-fact on fire-" truth springing from earth" -high thought voluntarily moving harmonious numbers.

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