The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 5

Oxymoron as

_Behold_ them _unbeheld, unheard Hear_ all.

--'?none'.

Hyperbaton as in

The _dew-impearled_ winds of dawn.

--'Ode to Memory'.

Metonymy as in

The _bright death_ quiver'd at the victim's throat.

--'Dream of Fair Women'.

or in

For some three _careless moans_ The summer pilot of an empty heart.

--'Gardener's Daughter'.

No poet since Milton has employed what is known as Onomatopoeia with so much effect. Not to go farther than the poems of 1842, we have in the 'Morte d'Arthur':--

So all day long the noise of battle _rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea_;

or

_Dry clashed_ his harness in the icy caves And _barren chasms_, and all to left and right The _bare black cliff clang'd round_ him, as he bas'd His feet _on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels_--

or the exquisite

I heard the _water lapping on the crag_, And the _long ripple was.h.i.+ng in the reeds_.

So in 'The Dying Swan',

And _the wavy swell of the soughing reeds_.

See too the whole of 'Oriana' and the description of the dance at the beginning of 'The Vision of Sin.'

a.s.sonance, alliteration, the revival or adoption of obsolete and provincial words, the transplantation of phrases and idioms from the Greek and Latin languages, the employment of common words in uncommon senses, all are pressed into the service of adding distinction to his diction. His diction blends the two extremes of simplicity and artificiality, but with such fine tact that this strange combination has seldom the effect of incongruity. Longinus has remarked that "as the fainter l.u.s.tre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompa.s.sing rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light round the sophistries of rhetoric they become invisible".[1] What Longinus says of "sublimity"

is equally true of sincerity and truthfulness in combination with exquisitely harmonious expression. We have an ill.u.s.tration in Gray's 'Elegy'. Nothing could be more artificial than the style, but what poem in the world appeals more directly to the heart and to the eye? It is one thing to call art to the a.s.sistance of art, it is quite another thing to call art to the a.s.sistance of nature. And this is what both Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from shocking us, "pa.s.ses in music out of sight". But this cannot be said of Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth that fringed his lips" for a moustache, "azure pillars of the hearth" for ascending smoke, "ambrosial orbs" for apples, "frayed magnificence" for a shabby dress, "the secular abyss to come" for future ages, "the sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue" for the life of Christ, "up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye" for a gesture of surprise, and the like. One of the worst instances is in 'In Memoriam', where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to collapse into the falsetto of strained artificiality in the second:--

To rest beneath the clover sod That takes the suns.h.i.+ne and the rains, _Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of G.o.d_.

An ill.u.s.tration of the same thing, almost as offensive, is in 'Enoch Arden', where, in an otherwise studiously simple diction, Enoch's wares as a fisherman become

Enoch's _ocean spoil_ In ocean-smelling osier.

But these peculiarities are less common in the earlier poems than in the later: it was a vicious habit which grew on him.

But, if exception may sometimes be taken to his diction, no exception can be taken to his rhythm. No English poet since Milton, Tennyson's only superior in this respect, had a finer ear or a more consummate mastery over all the resources of rhythmical expression. What colours are to a painter rhythm is, in description, to the poet, and few have rivalled, none have excelled Tennyson in this. Take the following:--

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain _On the bald street strikes the blank day_.

--'In Memoriam'.

See particularly 'In Memoriam', cvii., the lines beginning "Fiercely flies," to "darken on the rolling brine": the description of the island in 'Enoch Arden'; but specification is needless, it applies to all his descriptive poetry. It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it, as here:--

No gray old grange or lonely fold, Or low mora.s.s and whispering reed, Or simple style from mead to mead, Or sheep walk up the windy wold.

--'In Memoriam', c.

Or here:--

The meal sacks on the whitened floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.

--'The Miller's Daughter'.

His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare's, it has not the ma.s.siveness and majesty of Milton's, it has not the austere grandeur of Wordsworth's at its best, it has not the wavy swell, "the linked sweetness long drawn out" of Sh.e.l.ley's, but its distinguis.h.i.+ng feature is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge said of Claudian's style may be applied to it: "Every line, nay every word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise". His earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and easy than his later. [2] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for ever.

In his description of nature he is incomparable. Take the following from 'The Dying Swan':--

Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will,

or the opening scene in '?none' and in 'The Lotos Eaters', or the meadow scene in 'The Gardener's Daughter', or the conclusion of 'Audley Court', or the forest scene in the 'Dream of Fair Women', or this stanza in 'Mariana in the South':--

There all in s.p.a.ces rosy-bright Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears, And deepening through the silent spheres, Heaven over Heaven rose the night.

A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:--