Part 4 (1/2)
”Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow There shows not her white wings and windy feet, Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive”
So fortunate in their transh poets have been the lines of ”the Ionian father of the rest,” the greatest of them all
In the variety of excellences which lish idylls of 1842 hold their prolish than the picture of ”the garden that I love” Theocritus cannot be surpassed; but the idyll matches to the seventh of his, where it is irl as the Sicilian never tried to paint
Dora is another idyll, rese the work of a Wordsworth in a clime softer than that of the Fells The lays of Edwin Morris and Edward Bull are not a of even the playful poems The St Simeon Stylites appears ”made to the hand” of the author of Men and Worotesque vanity of the anchorite is so ree of the truth of the picture, though the East has still her parallels to St Simeon Frohtly turns to ”society verse” lifted up into the air of poetry, in the char sketches of actual history; and thence to the strength and passion of Love and Duty Shall
”Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?”
That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern moral
But Honour is the better part, and here was a poet who had the courage to say so; though, to be sure, the words ring strange in an age when highly respectable matrons assure us that ”passion,” like charity, covers a multitude of sins Love and Duty, we must admit, is ”early Victorian”
The Ulysses is almost a rival to the Morte d'Arthur It is of an early date, after Arthur Halla his
”Great Achilles e knew,”
as if he thought that this was in Cae days But it is later than these Tennyson said, ”Ulysses ritten soon after Arthur Halla forward, and braving the struggle of life, perhapsin In Memoriam” assuredly the expression is more sinified for the classic veil
When the plaintive Pessi Skeleton said when they showed him”) tells us that ”not to have been born is best,” we may ansith Ulysses -
”Life piled on life Were all too little”
The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante's Ulysses, not Hoht home to Ithaca not one of his mariners His last known adventure, the journey to the land of men who knew not the savour of salt, Odysseus was to host of Tiresias within the poplar pale of Persephone
The Two Voices expresses the contest of doubts and griefs with the spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in Ulysses The man who is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to hiuuments of ”that barren Voice” are, indeed, re ourselves to strip the discussion of its poetry The original title, Thoughts of a Suicide, was inappropriate The suicidal suggestions are prohout that of one who thinks life worth living:-
”Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with hu'd for death
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want”
This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a livelihood by publishi+ng pessireat Alexandre Dureat dra Beauty) Tennyson again displays his e of powers Verse of Society rises into a char from the Berlin-ork of the period
(”Take the broidery frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw”)
into the enchanted land of the fable: princes ines and Sir Galahad, companion pieces, contain the romance, as St Simeon Stylites shows the repulsive side of asceticiser as St Theresa in her childhood It has been said, I do not knohat authority, that the poet had no recollection of co The Bride of La of Tennyson's , Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, a thing of perfect charh are not exath; for his power and fantasy we es have the languid voluptuous music of The Lotos-Eaters, with the ethical ele -