Part 8 (2/2)
have all the subdued beauty of Wordsworth's narrative poems, and are as certainly lyric as those unapproachable lyrics in ”The Princess.” The ocean is epic in its vast expanse; tragic in its power to crush Armadas on the rocks and let them
”Rot in ribs of wreck;”
and lyric in its songs, whether of storm outsounding cataracts, or the singing scarce above the breath of waves that silver the sh.o.r.es of summer seas. Commend me to the ocean, and give all the ocean to me.
Dispossess me of no might nor tragedy nor melody. Let the whole ocean be mine. So, though Tennyson be not epic as Milton, nor dramatic as Browning, he is yet a mine of wealth untold. He is more melodious than Spenser (and what a praise!) Tennyson can not write the prose, but always the poetry of life. So interpreted, how perfect his execution becomes! His words distill like dews. Take unnumbered extracts from his poems, and they seem bits of melody, picked out from nature's book of melodies, and in themselves and as related they satisfy the heart.
Let these songs sing themselves to us:
”Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee?
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye; Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live; Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd; I strove against the stream and all in vain; Let the great river take me to the main; No more, dear Love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more.”
”Thy voice is heard through rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee.”
”O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.”
”Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.”
And ”Tears, Idle Tears,” is beyond all praise. Pa.s.sion was never wed to music more deliriously and satisfyingly. I am entranced by this poem always, as by G.o.d's poem of the starry night:
”Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean; Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the under world; Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The cas.e.m.e.nt slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.”
All these lyrics are such delights as leave us silent, seeing we have no words to tell the glow of spirit we feel. The genius of lyric poetry is its power of condensation. The drama may expand, the lyric must condense, and Tennyson has the lyric power, summing up large areas of thought and feeling into a single sentence or a few verses, which presents the quintessence of the lyric method. Immense pa.s.sion poured into the chalice of a solitary utterance--this is a song. Let the harpist sit and sing, nor stop to wipe his tears what time he sings,--only let him sing! Tennyson was as some rare voice which never grows husky, but always sounds sweet as music heard in the darkness, and when he speaks, it is as if
”Up the valley came a swell of music on the wind.”
Tennyson is poet of love. Love is practically always the soil out of which his flowers grow. Our American bards say little of love, and we feel the lack keenly. Love is the native n.o.bleman among soul-qualities, and we have become schooled to feel the poets must be our spokesmen here where we need them most. But Bryant, nor Whittier, nor Longfellow, nor yet Lowell, have been in a generous way erotic poets. They have lacked the p.r.o.nounced pa.s.sion element. Poe, however, was always lover when he wrote poetry, and Bayard Taylor has a recurring softening of the voice to a caress when his eyes look love.
Tennyson, on the contrary, is scarcely less a love poet than Burns, though he tells his secret after a different fas.h.i.+on. Call the roll of his poems, and see how just this observation is. Love is nodal with him as with the heart. Bourdillon was right in saying:
”The night has a thousand eyes, The day has one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun.
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