And see the children sport upon the shore, X. Then sing, ye birds! sing, sing a joyous song! As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that through your hearts to-day What though the radiance which was once so bright I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they." Though nothing can bring back the hour Strength in what remains behind; Which, having been, must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, XI. And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; TENNYSON'S "IDYLLS OF THE KING." EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN (b. 1833). We come at last to Tennyson's master-work, so recently brought to a completion after the labor of twenty years, during which period the separate Idylls* of the King had appeared from time to time. Nave and transept, aisle after aisle, the Gothic minster has extended, until, with the addition of a cloister here and a chapel yonder, the structure stands complete. I hardly think that the poet at first expected to compose an epic. It has grown insensibly, under the hands of one man, who has given it the best years of his life; but somewhat as Wolf conceived the Homeric poems to have grown, chant by chant, until the time came for the whole to be welded together in heroic form. Yet in other great epics the action rarely ceases, the links are connected, and the movement continues from day to day until the * Idyll (from eidullion, a little form or image), a short, highly-wrought, descriptive poem, usually, but not necessarily, pastoral in subject. Theoc'ritus, the Sicilian Greek poet, used the term to describe his dramatic poems in which are pictured the everyday life of the common people of Sicily." end. Here we have a series of idylls, like the tapestry-work illustrations of a romance, scene after scene, with much change of actors and emotions, yet all leading to one solemn and tragic close. It is the epic of chivalry-the Christian ideal of chivalry which we have deduced from a barbaric source our conception of what knighthood should be, rather than what it really was; but so skilfully wrought of high imaginings, faëry spells, fantastic legends, and medieval splendors, that the whole work, suffused with the Tennysonian glăm'or of golden mist, seems like a chronicle illuminated by saintly hands, and often blazes with light like that which flashed from the holy wizard's book when the covers were unclasped. And, indeed, if this be not the greatest narrative poem since Paradise Lost, what other English production are you to name in its place? Tennyson early struck a vein in the black-letter compilation of Sir Thomas Malory.* A tale was already fashioned to his use, from which to derive his legends and exalt them with whatsoever spiritual meanings they might require. The picturesque qualities of the old Anglo-Breton romance fascinated his youth, and found lyrical expression in the weird, melodious, pre-Raphael. itet ballad of The Lady of Shalott. The young poet here attained great excellence in a walk which Rossetti and his pupils have since chosen for their own, and his early studies are on a level with some of their masterpieces. Until recently, they have made success in this direction a special aim, while Tennyson would not be restricted even to such attractive work, but went steadily on, claiming the entire field of imaginative research as the poet's own. His strong allegorical bent, evinced in that early lyric, was heightened by analysis of the Arthurian legends. The English caught this tendency long since from the Italians; the Elizabethan era was so charged with it that the courtiers of the Virgin Queen hardly could speak without a mystical double meaning for an illustration of which read the dialogue in certain portions of Kingsley's Amyas Leigh. From Sidney and Spenser down to plain John Bunyan, and even to Sir Walter * Sir Thomas Malory--The Byrth, Lif, and Actes of Kyng Arthur. London, 1485. Printed by R. Caxton. "Sir Thomas Malory compiled from various French authorities his celebrated Morte d'Arthur, indisputably the best prose romance the language can boast" (Sir Walter Scott). + See note, page 282. Amyas Leigh is the hero of Kingsley's novel Westward Ho the scene of which is laid at the time of the Spanish Armada. Scott, allegory is a natural English mode; and, while adopted in several of Tennyson's pieces, it finds a special development in the Idylls of the King. The name thus bestowed upon the early instalments of this production seems less adapted to its complete form. Like the walls of Troy, it "Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed; A cloud that gathered shape." The shape no longer is idyllic, and doubt no longer exists whether a successful epic can be written in a mature period of national literature. We have one here, but subdivided into ten distinct poems, each of which suits the canonical requirement, and may be read at a single sitting. To my mind, there is a marked difference in style between the original and later portions of this work. The Morte d'Arthur of 1842 is Homeric to the farthest degree possible in the slow, Saxon movement of the verse; grander, with its "hollow oes and aes,” than any succeeding canto, always excepting Guinevere. Nor do I think the later idylls equal to those four which first were issued in one volume, and which so cleared the Laureate's fame from the doubt suggested by Maud and other Poems. Vivien is a bold and subtle analysis, a closer study of certain human types than Tennyson is wont to make. Elaine still remains, for pathetic sweetness and absolute beauty of narrative and rhythm, dearest to the heart of maiden, youth, or sage. Enid, while upon the lower level of Pelleas and Ettare and Gareth and Lynette, is clear and strong, and shows a freedom from mannerism characteristic of the author's best period. It would seem that his creative vigor reached its height during the composition of these four idylls; certainly, since the production of Enoch Arden, at an early subsequent date, he has not advanced in freshness and imagination. His greatest achievement still is that noblest of modern episodes, the canto entitled Guinevere, surcharged with tragic pathos and high dramatic power. He never has so reached the passio vera of the early dramatists as in this imposing scene. There is nothing finer in modern verse than the interview between Arthur and his remorseful wife, nothing loftier than the passage beginning, "Lo! I forgive thee as Eternal God : Forgives do thou for thine own soul the rest. * Quoted from Tennyson's Enōnë, 40. O golden hair, with which I used to play THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. (Conclusion of the "Idylls of the King.") ALFRED TENNYSON (b. 1809). "But now farewell! I am going a long way Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood But when that moan had passed for evermore, Whereat he slowly turned and slowly clomb Thence marked the black hull moving yet, and cried, And after healing of his grievous wound *Usually spelled Avalon-the poetical name of Glastonbury, Somersetshire. In Arthurian romance it is described as an island, and at certain seasons it does seem to have been hemmed in by floods. At present the site is a low peninsula formed by the Brue, which here flows between the Poldew and Mendip Hills. |