with its moments of mental wandering and self-bewilderment. Here is a brief specimen :

"But yet,

Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints
Enjoy themselves in Heaven, and men on earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs,

Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,
I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the saints;
Or in the night, after a little sleep,

I wake; the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.
I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross,
And strive and wrestle with thee till I die :
O mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.

'O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,
That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!
They think that I am somewhat. What am I?
The silly people take me for a saint,

And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers,
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here),
Have all in all endured as much, and more
Than many just and holy men, whose names
Are register'd and calendar'd for saints.

'Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
I am a sinner viler than you all.
It may be I have wrought some miracles,
And cured some halt and maim'd.

But what of that?

It may be, no one, even among the saints,
May match his pains with mine. But what of that?
Yet do not rise: for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd ?-

I think you know I have some power with Heaven
From my long penance : let him speak his wish.'

We willingly turn from this gloomy portraiture to something of a gayer strain, which we shall not have long to seek for amongst the poems of this author. The Talking Oak is a charming production. If the trees should take to talking in this style, mere human tongues may give up the trade. But we feel

that if we meddle with this discourse of the talking oak, we must quote it all. There are some poems the merit of which cannot be made known by any extracts, however partially selected; so little does the charm lie in this or that verse, but in the grace diffused over the whole. If any one, after having been delighted by a piece of this description, wishes to make his friend participate in his admiration, he is surprised at the difficulty he finds in fixing upon a passage which will justify his applause. The beauty of the poem seems to evaporate when he reviews it verse by verse. He begins to suspect that he himself had strangely overrated its merit. Just such a piece is The Talking Oak. Therefore we will pass it by, and select in preference some passages from The Day Dream.

This is an elegant recital of a fairy legend, which tells how a king, with all his court, and all the inmates of his palace, were drowned in deep slumber for a hundred years-how a thick tall hedge grew round the palace, and hid it from all intruders— how his daughter, the princess, lay in her apartment alone in the same deep sleep-and how at the end of the hundred years, a prince, led by a benevolent fairy to the spot, dissolves the charm by imprinting a kiss on the fair sleeper, whom he thereupon, as in due course of all such narratives, claims for his bride. Here is the picture of the hall, where the king and his court hold perforce their permanent sitting.'

'Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:

In these, in those, the life is stay'd.
The mantles from the golden pegs
Droop sleepily: no sound is made,

Not even of a gnat that sings.

More like a picture seemeth all

Than those old portraits of old kings,

That watch the sleepers from the wall.

'Here sits the butler, with a flask

Between his knees half-drain'd; and there

The wrinkled steward, at his task ;

The maid of honour blooming fair :

The page has caught her hand in his :
Her lips are sever'd as to speak :

His own are pouted to a kiss:

The blush is fix'd upon her cheek.

Till all the hundred summers pass,
The beams, that thro' the oriel shine,
Make prisms in every carven glass,

And beaker brimm'd with noble wine.

Each baron at the banquet sleeps,
Grave faces gather'd in a ring.
His state the king reposing keeps,
He must have been a jolly king.'

Alone in an inner apartment sleeps the princess:

'Year after year unto 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 streaming from a braid of pearl:
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl.
'She sleeps her breathings 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 pressed:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.'

But at length the prince and the good fairy arrive. 'A touch, a kiss! the charm was snapt.

There rose a noise of striking clocks,
And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,
And barking dogs, and crowing cocks.
A fuller light illumed all,

A breeze through all the garden swept,
A sudden hubbub shook the hall,

And sixty feet the fountain leapt.

'The hedge broke in, the banner blew,

The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd,

The fire shot up, the martin flew,

The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife,

The palace bang'd, and buzz'd, and clackt, And all the long pent stream of life

Dash'd downward in a cataract.

'And last 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.

"Pardy,' returned the king, "but still
My joints are something stiff or so.
My lord, and shall we pass the bill
I mention'd half an hour ago?'
The chancellor, sedate and vain,
In courteous words return'd reply;
But dallied with his golden chain,

And smiling put the question by.'

Then the prince and the princess whom he has released from her trance by a ceremonial so much more simple and agreeable than dealers in magic usually prescribe, leave the palace in great happiness together. To this little tale is appended, by way of 'moral,' some lines which are worth quoting, as well for the meaning they convey, as for the felicity with which that meaning is expressed. It is undoubtedly true, as the fact intimates, and should be held in remembrance by all critics, especially of the severer order, that the exposition of the beautiful alone, without further object, is a distinct and legitimate aim of the art of poetry as well as of sculpture or painting, and is not without its beneficent influence.

MORAL.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And if you find no moral there,
Go, look in any glass, and say,
What moral is in being fair.
Oh, to what uses shall we put

The wild-weed flower that simply blows?

And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose?

'But any man that walks the mead

In bud, or blade, or bloom may find,
According as his humours lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend ;
So 'twere to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

Mr. Tennyson has been much complimented by his critics on his descriptive powers. He is frequently, without a doubt, extremely happy in his expressions. He has very many lines and phrases of remarkably graphic power. But at the risk of being deemed fastidious, we will venture on this objection, that the circumstances which he seizes upon in his descriptions often appear to have been sought after with effort; they are not such as would spontaneously suggest themselves to the imagination; and consequently the reader has a similar effort to make, in

putting these materials together to form a picture for himself. They have the air of having been torn and wrenched from their place; they could not be described in the language of another poet as being

The harvest of a quiet eye.'

Mariana has often been quoted as a remarkable instance of Mr. Tennyson's power to paint a scene. Without denying its merits, we confess it does not altogether please us. To us the description is marred by the violent effort to describe. The writer does not appear to stand in singleness of mind before his object, and looking at it with his heart in his eyes, as is the manner of poets, record what he sees; he rather seems to pry curiously about it in quest of poetic circumstance. Here is the commencement of the poem, and we do not think we could make a more favourable extract.

MARIANA.

• Mariana in the moated grange.'—Measure for Measure.
"With blackest moss the flower-plots

Were thickly crusted, one and all,
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach to the garden-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange,
Unlifted was the clinking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!''

In this there are, without doubt, very graphic touches, but we feel ourselves abruptly plunged amongst details, which we have to put together for ourselves in the best manner we are able. An effect is produced as if the several objects had been cut out of a picture; and the brilliant fragments were thrown at hap-hazard before us.

The Lady of Shalott is another poem often cited with great applause by the professed admirers of Mr. Tennyson, and which we like still less. Together with a series of descriptions which have the same air of abruptness, and which bring with them the same uncomfortable feeling of effort, we have a story so obscurely told, that we would on no account take upon ourselves the responsibility of giving the briefest summary of it. We confess ourselves simple and prosaic enough, wherever there is anything like a story, to wish, like the children, to know what it is about.