The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 8

So in 'The Princess', sect. i.:--

And _cook'd his spleen_,

which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'., iv., 513:--

[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]

(At the s.h.i.+ps he cooks his heart-grieving spleen).

Again in 'The Princess', sect. iv.:--

_Laugh'd with alien lips_,

which is Homer's ('Od'., 69-70)--

[Greek: did' aedae gnathmoisi gelps_on allotrioisi]

So in 'Edwin Morris'--

All perfect, finished _to the finger nail_,

which is a phrase transferred from Latin through the Greek; 'cf.', Horace, 'Sat'., i., v., 32:--

_Ad unguem_ Factus h.o.m.o

(A man fas.h.i.+oned to the finger nail).

"The _brute_ earth," 'In Memoriam', cxxvii., which is Horace's

_Bruta_ tellus.

--'Odes', i., x.x.xiv., 9.

So again:--

A bevy of roses _apple-cheek'd_

in 'The Island', which is Theocritus' [Greek: maloparaeos].

The line in the 'Morte d'Arthur',

This way and that, dividing the swift mind,

is an almost literal translation of Virgil's 'Aen'., iv., 285:--

Atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc

(And this way and that he divides his swift mind).

Another way in which they affect him is where, without direct imitation, they colour pa.s.sages and poems as in 'Oenone', 'The Lotos Eaters', 't.i.thonus', 'Tiresias', 'The Death of Oenone', 'Demeter and Persephone', the pa.s.sage beginning "From the woods" in 'The Gardener's Daughter', which is a parody of Theocritus, 'Id.', vii., 139 'seq.', while the Cyclops' invocation to Galatea in Theocritus, 'Id.', xi., 29-79, was plainly the model for the idyll, "Come down, O Maid," in the seventh section of 'The Princess', just as the tournament in the same poem recalls closely the epic of Homer and Virgil. Tennyson had a wonderful way of transfusing, as it were, the essence of some beautiful pa.s.sage in a Greek or Roman poet into English. A striking ill.u.s.tration of this would be the influence of reminiscences of Virgil's fourth 'Aeneid' on the idyll of 'Elaine and Guinevere'. Compare, for instance, the following: he is describing the love-wasted Elaine, as she sits brooding in the lonely evening, with the shadow of the wished-for death falling on her:--

But when they left her to herself again, Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field, Approaching through the darkness, call'd; the owls Wailing had power upon her, and she mix'd Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms Of evening and the moanings of the wind.

How exactly does this recall, in a manner to be felt rather than exactly defined, a pa.s.sage equally exquisite and equally pathetic in Virgil's picture of Dido, where, with the shadow of her death also falling upon her, she seems to hear the phantom voice of her dead husband, and "mixes her fancies" with the glooms of night and the owl's funereal wail:--

Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret; Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.

--'Aen'., iv., 460.

(From it she thought she clearly heard a voice, even the accents of her husband calling her when night was wrapping the earth with darkness; and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains kept oft complaining, drawing out into a wail its protracted notes.)

Similar pa.s.sages, though not so striking, would be the picture of Pindar's Elysium in 'Tiresias', the sentiment pervading 'The Lotos Eaters' transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the scenery in '?none' so crowded with details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus.

Sometimes we find similes suggested by the cla.s.sical poets, but enriched by touches from original observation, as here in 'The Princess':--

As one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night Blot out the slope of sea from verge to sh.o.r.e.

And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world,

which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv., 275:--

[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti, melanteron aeute p.i.s.sa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa pollaen.]

(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind.)

So again the fine simile in 'Elaine', beginning

Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,

is at least modelled on the simile in 'Iliad', xv., 381-4, with reminiscences of the same similes in 'Iliad', xv., 624, and 'Iliad', iv., 42-56. The simile in the first section of the 'Princess',

As when a field of corn Bows all its ears before the roaring East,

reminds us of Homer's

[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeon, elthon labros, epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]