tongues, and transfused through invisible channels into the thoroughfares and byways of human thought and feeling.

It is best, no doubt, that we should not fully recognise our true prophets while they live, lest we make them our masters; but it is good that a people should recognise them when dead, at least, and praise the God who has sent them to enlighten and elevate the soul of the world; and how good and needful it is, and urgently incumbent on us, to see to it, that God spread not his light through them in vain to us, that he sow not the seed of his word through their hands into our hearts in vain, but that by all his light we be enlightened, and by all his sowings we be made fruitful in righteousness.

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TENNYSON'S POEMS.

MR. TENNYSON'S poetical fortunes have been singularly various. Some six or seven years ago he first became known, partly by his own extraordinary demerits, and chiefly by a stringent review in the London Quarterly. It was supposed that he was, poetically speaking, dead; he certainly was, theatrically speaking, though not theologically, damned. Strange to say, his poems found their way across the Atlantic, and gained favor in the eyes of a peculiar class of sentimentalists. Young ladies were known to copy them entire, and learn them by heart. Stanzas of most melodious unmeaningness passed from mouth to mouth, and were praised to the very echo. The man who possessed a copy was the envy of more than twenty persons, counting women and children; until at length Mr. Tennyson came into possession of a very considerable amount of reputation. His ardent admirers sent to England for copies; but singularly enough, not one was to be had. The poet had bought them all up and committed them to the flames; but moved by the transatlantic resurrection of his poetical character, he set about convincing people that he was alive too at home. He broke upon the world in the twofold splendor of a pair of volumes, published in Mr. Moxon's finest style. His former writings were clipped of many puerilities, and brought nearer the confines of common sense; to them were added many poems, never before printed, some of which are marked by a delicate frost-work kind of beauty. The London Quar

terly Journalists came out immediately with a long and highly laudatory critique, and ranked Mr. Tennyson among the foremost poets of the age, without an allusion to the homicidal attack they had made on him only a few short years before; and without the least apology for surrendering the doctrine of the infallibility of reviewers. The American reprint is page for page from the English, and in excellence of typography and luxury of paper, is not much inferior to the London edition. We understand also that the publishers have honorably agreed to let the author share in the profits, if any, of the American edition. This is as it should be. We hope the example may be imitated.

It does not require much depth to fathom Mr. Tennyson's genius. He certainly has genius. He looks on things with a poetical eye; but they are small things, and his eye is none of the largest. There is nothing wide and comprehensive in his intellectual range - nothing of

"the ample pinion

That the Theban eagle bare,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air,"

in his poetical flights. He has a remarkable alacrity at sinking. Quiet scenes, and soft characters, he delights to portray; and he portrays them with what the painters call a very soft touch. There is a very peculiar music in the flow of his lines and stanzas. It is generally pleasing, sometimes captivates the ear, but often overpowers us by its melting effeminacy. He is a dainty poet. We cannot help fancying him to be altogether finical in his personal habits. He is a sweet gentleman, and delights to gaze upon his image in a glass; his hair is probably long, and carefully curled; he writes in white kid gloves, on scented paper; perhaps he sleeps in yellow curl-papers. We are certain he lisps.

- ὡς ἠλίθιον ἐφθέγξατο Καὶ τοισι χέιλεσιν διεξ υηκόσιν.

He is deficient in manly thought and strong expression; but he has fancy and feeling. Instead of uttering what he has to say in a direct, unambiguous, and plain fashion, as the older and better poets did, he surrounds it with a haze of pretty words, bedecks it with sparkling conceits, and sweetens it with sugary sentimentalities. He is fond of "airy, fairy women," and has drawn a series of sketches, about as distinct and substantial as the forms on dying embers. He is a curious compound of the poet, the dandy, and the Della Cruscan. Affectation is his

prevailing intellectual vice; and it is the badge of a numerous tribe. Sometimes he puts on the simple; and then he outruns the simplicity of Mother Goose, or but we must deal gingerly with the names of the living, for "caparisons are odorous." He has certainly grown stronger during his disappearance from the world of letters. The trance he was thrown into by the Quarterly did him good. But something infinitely better than he has yet written is unquestionably within the range of his powWe shall illustrate our view of his character most clearly by giving a few extracts. For the Mother Goose style, we take the second poem in volume first.

ers.

Airy, fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,

When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She'll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.

When my passion seeks
Pleasance in love-sighs
She, looking thro' and thro' me
Thoroughly to undo me,

Smiling, never speaks:

So innocent-arch, so cunning simple,
From beneath her gather'd wimple,
Glancing with black-beaded eyes,
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The baby-roses in her cheeks;
Then away she flies.

Prythee weep, May Lilian!
Gaiety without eclipse
Wearieth me, May Lilian:
Thro' my very heart it thrilleth
When from crimson-threaded lips
Silver-treble laughter trilleth:
Prythee weep, May Lilian.

The "Song to the Owl" is another precious piece; we do not wonder at that respectable bird for "complaining to the moon," if his "ancient solitary reign" is often molested by such melodies. Dora has been much praised; but the concluding lines are not remarkably poetical.

So those four abode

Within one house together; and as years
Went forward, Mary took another mate;
But Dora lived unmarried till her death.

The "Talking Oak" is one of the best pieces in the book. The tree is a little sappy, to be sure, and discourses somewhat tenderly for an oak; but it was probably a very green one. We would give it, but it is too long for quotation. We have room only for the poem entitled "Locksley Hall."

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.
"T is the place, and round the gables, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. -
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the Robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung,
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
And she turn'd- her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs -
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes -
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, “I have loved thee

long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin shallow-hearted! O my Amy mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy? having known me

to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

Well- 't is well that I should bluster! - Hadst thou less unworthy

proved

Would to God · - for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root.

Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish'd: sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No-she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
VOL. XXXIII. -3D S. VOL. XV. NO. II.

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