Part 21 (1/2)
”Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides: It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides.
”And fairer she: but, ah! how soon to die!
Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease: Her peaceful being slowly pa.s.ses by To some more perfect peace.”
The very next poem, ”The Sailor Boy,” in the same volume, is-- though written in exactly the same measure-- driven on with the most rapid march and vigorous rhythm--
”He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, Shot o'er the seething harbour-bar, And reached the s.h.i.+p and caught the rope And whistled to the morning-star.”
And this is a striking and prominent characteristic of all Tennyson's poetry. Everywhere the sound is made to be ”an echo to the sense”; the style is in perfect keeping with the matter. In the ”Lotos-Eaters,” we have the sense of complete indolence and deep repose in--
”A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go.”
In the ”Boadicea,” we have the rush and the shock of battle, the closing of legions, the hurtle of arms and the clash of armed men--
”Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy ma.s.sacred, Phantom wail of women and children, mult.i.tudinous agonies.”
Many of Tennyson's sweetest and most pathetic lines have gone right into the heart of the nation, such as--
”But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!”
All his language is highly polished, ornate, rich-- sometimes Spenserian in luxuriant imagery and sweet music, sometimes even Homeric in ma.s.siveness and severe simplicity. Thus, in the ”Morte d'Arthur,” he speaks of the knight walking to the lake as--
”Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills.”
Many of his pithy lines have taken root in the memory of the English people, such as these--
”Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.”
”For words, like Nature, half reveal, And half conceal, the soul within.”
”Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.”
7. ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, afterwards MRS BROWNING, the greatest poetess of this century, was born in London in the year 1809. She wrote verses ”at the age of eight-- and earlier,” she says; and her first volume of poems was published when she was seventeen. When still a girl, she broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, was ordered to a warmer climate than that of London; and her brother, whom she loved very dearly, took her down to Torquay. There a terrible tragedy was enacted before her eyes. One day the weather and the water looked very tempting; her brother took a sailing-boat for a short cruise in Torbay; the boat went down in front of the house, and in view of his sister; the body was never recovered. This sad event completely destroyed her already weak health; she returned to London, and spent several years in a darkened room. Here she ”read almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and gave herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.” This way of life lasted for many years: and, in the course of it, she published several volumes of n.o.ble verse. In 1846 she married Robert Browning, also a great poet. In 1856 she brought out +Aurora Leigh+, her longest, and probably also her greatest, poem. Mr Ruskin called it ”the greatest poem which the century has produced in any language;” but this is going too far. --Mrs Browning will probably be longest remembered by her incomparable sonnets and by her lyrics, which are full of pathos and pa.s.sion. Perhaps her two finest poems in this kind are the +Cry of the Children+ and +Cowper's Grave+.
All her poems show an enormous power of eloquent, penetrating, and picturesque language; and many of them are melodious with a rich and wonderful music. She died in 1861.
[Transcriber's Note: The above paragraph is given as printed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born Elizabeth Barrett Moulton, later Moulton-Barrett, in 1806.
Her year of birth was universally given as 1809 until some time after Robert Browning's death. Her brother's fatal accident took place in 1840.]
8. ROBERT BROWNING, the most daring and original poet of the century, was born in Camberwell, a southern suburb of London, in the year 1812.
He was privately educated. In 1836 he published his first poem +Paracelsus+, which many wondered at, but few read. It was the story of a man who had lost his way in the mazes of thought about life,-- about its why and wherefore,-- about this world and the next,-- about himself and his relations to G.o.d and his fellow-men. Mr Browning has written many plays, but they are more fit for reading in the study than for acting on the stage. His greatest work is +The Ring and the Book+; and it is most probably by this that his name will live in future ages. Of his minor poems, the best known and most popular is +The Pied Piper of Hamelin+-- a poem which is a great favourite with all young people, from the picturesqueness and vigour of the verse. The most deeply pathetic of his minor poems is +Evelyn Hope+:--
”So, hush,-- I will give you this leaf to keep-- See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand, There! that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand.”
9. +Browning's Style.+-- Browning's language is almost always very hard to understand; but the meaning, when we have got at it, is well worth all the trouble that may have been taken to reach it. His poems are more full of thought and more rich in experience than those of any other English writer except Shakspeare. The thoughts and emotions which throng his mind at the same moment so crowd upon and jostle each other, become so inextricably intermingled, that it is very often extremely difficult for us to make out any meaning at all. Then many of his thoughts are so subtle and so profound that they cannot easily be drawn up from the depths in which they lie. No man can write with greater directness, greater lyric vigour, fire, and impulse, than Browning when he chooses-- write more clearly and forcibly about such subjects as love and war; but it is very seldom that he does choose. The infinite complexity of human life and its manifold experiences have seized and imprisoned his imagination; and it is not often that he speaks in a clear, free voice.
10. MATTHEW ARNOLD, one of the finest poets and n.o.blest stylists of the age, was born at Laleham, near Staines, on the Thames, in the year 1822.
He is the eldest son of the great Dr Arnold, the famous Head-master of Rugby. He was educated at Winchester and Rugby, from which latter school he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. The Newdigate prize for English verse was won by him in 1843-- the subject of his poem being +Cromwell+.