Poetry of the Ideal.

221 of poetry; he rather realizes the story of the royal fairy whose words were all pure pearls. He puts a poetic thought in poetic phrase naturally, necessarily, as every action of a Prince speaks of high breeding and habitual power. But this is not all. If this were his chief merit, if poetic phrase were allowed to stand in place of profounder qualities of truth, then the palm should justly be awarded to the sage of Rydal. Better a rhythmical philosophy than a shallow poetry. Better the labouring, mournful, doubtful voice of Nature crying after God, and a discord tortured out of the "still sad music of humanity," than the procession of inane and glittering fancies, catching, like bubbles, the nearest light, and then bursting from sheer tenuity and emptiness. But is it so with the muse of Alfred Tennyson? His beauties of language and poetic phrase are not the set purpose, but the pure redundancies, of his genius; and yet they are not so far redundant but that they are made to serve the chief design,-to give collateral light, to touch, and tone, and harmonize the whole picture. Underlying all that wealth and beauty of expression, that play of fancy, that sparkling evanescent foam of imagery, the author's main design, like the strong current of a calm summer sea, carries his reader forward almost imperceptibly; and so lulling are the sights and measures which salute him, so idle the green, white, cresting, and relapsing waves, so motionless the thin, pure, dappled fleeces of the upper sky, that he can hardly persuade himself that he is drifted towards some grand conclusion, towards some island of rare loveliness and regenerating clime, towards some new continent of boundless treasure and dominion. Yet so it is. In all the poems of our author there is more than meets the eye of the imagination, and more than the delighted ear can well appreciate. The moral is profoundly felt, the lesson is received at once into the heart; but not less clearly are we taught, not less certainly are we raised into a region of elevated truths. From a higher point we survey a wider field, bounded by a more distant, but still beautiful, horizon. From "a peak in Darien," from some rare stand-point of this poor and "ignorant present," we catch glimpses of the tideless and boundless Pacific of ideal truth, and feel how profound is that divine saying, that only "the things which are unseen are eternal."

This union, or rather this interfusion, of thought and language; this wonderful co-ordination of detail and design, of final purpose and subordinate expression; this subtle incorporation of the spirit of poetry, by which the grosser medium is sublimed, and the diviner essence projected into form; is eminently seen in our author's poem of "The Two Voices." In that fine dialogue, a troubled soul maintains a controversy with his evil monitor: in what style and temper, and with what ultimate success, a few quotations may suffice to show.

Again the voice spake unto me, "Thou art so steeped in misery, Surely 't were better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep:

Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.'

"I said, "The years with change advance; If I make dark my countenance,

I shut my life from happier chance.
"Some turn this sickness yet may take,
Even yet.' But he: What drug can make
A withered palsy cease to shake ?'

"I wept, "Though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, thro' novel spheres of thought,
Still moving after truths long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not.'

"Yet,' said the secret voice, 'some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime

Make thy grass hoar with early rime. "Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven's starry flight,

Would sweep the tracks of day and night. "Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells.' "I said that all the years invent; Each month is various to present The world with some development. "Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Though watching from a ruin'd tower, How grows the day of human power ?' "The highest-mounted mind,' he said, 'Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit over head. "Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain Just breaking over land and main ?

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town?
"Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet.
"Thou hast not gained a real height,
Nor art thou nearer to the light,
Because the scale is infinite.'

Mastering a strong reluctance, we pass by many beautiful verses of this poem; and, further on, we read :

"O dull one-sided voice,' said I,
'Wilt thou make every thing a lie,
To flatter me that I may die?
"I know that age to age succeeds,
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,
A dust of systems and of creeds.

"I cannot hide that some have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with heaven:
"Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream;
"But heard, by secret transport led,
Even in the channels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head--.
"Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forbore, and did not tire,
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire:
"He heeded not reviling tones,

Nor sold his heart to idle moans,

Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones :
"But looking upward, full of grace,
He prayed, and from a happy place,
God's glory smote him in the face."

However the general tenor of our author's philosophy be judged, and on that topic we reserve a few remarks, there can be little doubt of its highly poetical character; and the verses we have transcribed are sufficient to sustain what we have just preferred as the peculiar praise of Mr. Tennyson. All he writes is poetry: it may be of more or less distinguished merit, and more or less obvious in its truth and beauty; but in every mood of his mind, in all the tones and measures of his song, the poet's office is sustained, and the poetic function purely exercised. We have no logic chopped into longs and shorts; no dull, pert argument dressed up in figured robes, in which it naturally, but absurdly, stumbles at almost every step. In the midst of a busy, learned, enterprising age, our author has escaped its deadening and deteriorating influences, and is as pure a minstrel as any troubadour of the age chivalry.

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Before quitting this poem of "The Two Voices," which so happily exemplifies our author's poetic style, it may be allowed to carry us still forward in our estimate; for it is not more beautiful in parts, than it is complete and perfect as a whole. There is great truth to nature, and a fine moral lesson, embodied

in the concluding verses. In his mental struggles the tempted sufferer has, in each instance, manfully repelled the suggestions of "The Voice;" but his triumph is not complete, his cure is not effected, without assistance from the external world. A morbid introversion of the mind, an eager, but unhallowed, curiosity, had evidently sown the first seeds of doubt, and given occasion to the tempter of his soul; and the evil one had him, as it were, at disadvantage on his own ground, so long as the contest was maintained wholly from within. A new arena must be chosen; fresher and healthier influences must be allowed to invigorate and second nature; action must confirm the feeble dictates of his reason, and widest observation correct the partial data of secluded thought, and bring the whole being into accordance with the world of nature and the arrangements of Providence :

"I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.

Then said the voice in quiet scorn,
'Behold, it is the Sabbath morn!'
"And I arose, and I released

The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.
"Like softened airs that blowing steal
When woods begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church-bells began to peal.
"On to God's house the people prest:
Passing the place where each must rest,
Each entered like a welcome guest.
"One walked between his wife and child
With measured foot-fall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.
"The prudent partner of his blood
Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.

"And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walked demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
"These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat."

"I blest them, and they wandered on:
I spoke, but answer came there none:
The dull and bitter voice was gone.

"A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, Be of better cheer.'

Lyrical Genius of our Author. "As from some blissful neighbourhood, A notice faintly understood,

'I see the end, and know the good.'
"A little hint to solace woe,

A hint, a whisper breathing low,
'I may not speak of what I know.'

"Like an Æolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes

Far thought with music which it makes:

"Such seemed the whisper at my side:
'What is 't thou knowest, sweet voice,' I cried;
'A hidden hope,' the voice replied:'

"So heavenly-toned that in that hour
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,

"To feel, altho' no tongue can prove,

That every cloud that spreads above,
And veileth love, itself is love."

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In "The Palace of Art," and "The Vision of Sin," the same fine vein of moral poetry subsists. But the most popular and perfect of our author's compositions do not present the moral element so distinctively in these cases it is merely held in intimate solution, but in those it is cast down as a bright precipitate. The poet is generally successful in both these styles of composition. What an air of truth, and health, and happiness, breathes in his English idyls!-in "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter," and that exquisite bucolic, "The Talking Oak." But the genius of our poet, like the genius of his age, is essentially lyrical. The lightest of individual fancies, and the gravest of prophetic burthens, flow from him in easy, and abundant, and pellucid song. In "The Princess" we have both these elements-idyllic sweetness and lyrical perfection-well exemplified, and linked together by a fable of infinite delicacy and grace. The poem is "a Medley," for the age is such; and all its various qualities and features are represented in its pages; and especially are they sketched in its fantastic prologue with a touch so light, so faithful, so poetical, that it appears rather the effect of magic than of art. Again: what freedom of design and execution in the story of those wilful beauties! what images of feminine loveliness! what dissolving views of wayward and capricious passion! what final glimpses into the heart and oratory of true womanhood! But the finest measures of this poem are distinct and separable. Its songs and idyls are incomparably beautiful; and now haunt the soul with a sense of its own mystery and immortality, and now "lap it in soft Lydian airs." Who that has read can ever forget the "small, sweet