Part 7 (1/2)
Away from palaces to solitude; out of cities to hedgerows and the woods and wild-flowers,--there is the secret of perennial poetry. And Tennyson is the climax of this dissent from Pope and Dryden as elaborated in Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Thomson, and Wordsworth. The best of this wine was reserved for the last of the feast; for Tennyson appears to me the greatest of the nature poets. And this return to nature, as the phrase goes, means taking this earth as a whole, which we are to do more and still more. Thomson's poetry was not pastoral poetry at its best; seeing inanimate nature is not in itself sufficient theme for poetry, lacking pa.s.sion, depth, power. Sunrise, and flowing stream, and tossing seas are valuable as a.s.sociates of the soul and helping it to self-understanding. Tennyson took both men and nature into his interpretation of nature. His voice it is, saying,
”O would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me!”
The sea helps the soul's lack by supplying words and music. Tennyson never was at his best in a National Ode, unless one speaks from the elocutionary standpoint, because such tasks lack the poetical essential of spontaneity, and because, too, the themes seem to carry him outside of his nature-mood. Art in our century has gone out of doors. Scenery has never had lovers as now; and partic.i.p.ative in this mood is Tennyson. He lives under the sky. He loved to be alone; and nature is loneliness as well as loveliness. Nor is his love of nature a pa.s.sing pa.s.sion, but is pa.s.sionate, intense, endearing. He never outgrew it.
”Balin and Balan” is as beautiful with nature-similes as were ”Enid”
and ”Oenone.” In Tennyson we have the odors of the country and the sea and the dewy night. He is laureate of the stars. Nature is not introduced, but his poems seem set in nature as daisies in a meadow.
He was no city poet. Of the poet Blake, James Thomson writes:
”He came to the desert of London town Gray miles long.
He wandered up, he wandered down, Singing a quiet hymn.”
Not so Tennyson. London and he were compatriots, but not friends; for he belonged to the quiet of the country woods, and the clamor of sea-gulls and sea-waves, whose very tumult drown the voice of care.
Tennyson was to express the yearning of his era, and his poems are a cry; for, like a babe, he has
”No language but a cry.”
Our yearning is our glory. The superb forces of our spirits are inarticulate, and can not be put to words, but may be put to the melody of a yearning cry. Souls struggle toward expression like a dying soldier who would send a message to his beloved, but can not frame words therefor before he dies. Our pathos is--and our yearning is--
”O would that my lips could utter The thoughts that arise in me!”
But we have no words; and Holmes, in his most delicately-beautiful poem, ent.i.tled ”The Voiceless,” has made mention of this grief:
”We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber; But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild-flowers, who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone, Whose song has told their heart's sad story,-- Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.
O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine, Slow-dropped from Misery's crus.h.i.+ng presses,-- If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!”
Souls cry, ”Give us a voice;” and nature enters into our yearning moods. The autumn and the rain grieve with us, and June makes merry with us as at a festival, and the deep sky gives room for the soaring of our aspirations, and the solemn night says, ”Dream!” And for our heartache and longing, Tennyson is our voice; for he seems near neighbor to us. He lay on a bank of violets, and looked into the sky, and heard poplars pattering as with rain upon the roof. Really, in all Tennyson's poems you will be surprised at the affluence of his reference to nature. His custom was to make the moods of nature to be explanatory of the moods of the soul. Man needs nature as birds need air, and flowers, and waving trees, and the dear sun. Tennyson will make appeal to
”The flower in the crannied wall”
by way of silencing the agnostic's prating against G.o.d. Hear him:
”Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies-- Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what G.o.d and man is.”
Here follow a few, among many, very many, delicious references to the out-of-door world we name nature, as explanatory of the indoor world we call soul:
”Who make it seem more sweet to be The little life on bank and brier, The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree.”
”A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, Forever and forever.”
”Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale.”