O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; The poet's philosophy as to the sexes is thus summed up: For woman is not undeveloped man, But diverse: could we make her as the man, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world : In 1850 appeared, at first anonymously, In Memoriam, a volume of short poems, divided into sections, but all devoted, like the Sonnets of Shakspeare, to one beloved object—a male friend. Mr Arthur Hallam, son of the historian, and affianced to Mr Tennyson's sister, died at Vienna in 1833, and his memory is here embalmed in a series of remarkable and affecting poems, no less than one hundred and twenty-nine in number, and all in the same stanza. This sameness of subject and versification would seem to render the work monotonous and tedious; so minute a delineation of personal sorrow is also apt to appear unmanly and unnatural. But the poet, though adhering to one melancholy theme, clothes it in all the hues of imagination and intellect. He lifts the veil, as it were, from the inner life of the soul; he stirs the deepest and holiest feelings of our nature; he describes, reasons, and allegorises; flowers are intermingled with the cypress, and faith and hope brighten the vista of the future. His vast love and sympathy seem to embrace all nature as assimilated with his lost friend. Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; The ship containing his friend's remains is thus beautifully apostrophised: In Memoriam, IX. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, So draw him home to those that mourn All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above; Till all my widowed race be run; Arthur Hallam was interred in Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, situated on a still and sequestered spot, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel: * The Danube to the Severn gave The darkened heart that beat no more; And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills; And hushes half the babbling Wye, We add one of the sections, in which description of external nature is finely blended with the mourner's reminiscences: In Memoriam, XXII. The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, And crowned with all the season lent, To slant the fifth autumnal slope, And spread his mantle dark and cold; Nor follow, though I walk in haste; Winter scenes are described; Christmas, with its train of sacred and tender associations, comes; but the poet is in a new home : Our father's dust is left alone And silent under other snows. With the genial season, however, his sympathies expand, and in one section of noble verse he sings the dirge of the old year and the advent of the new: In Memoriam, CVI. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. *Memoir prefixed to Arthur Hallam's Remains, by his father, the historian. An interesting account of this volume is given by Dr John Brown, Edinburgh, in Hora Subseciva. Arthur Henry Hallam was born in London, February 1, 1811. He distinguished himself at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was author of several essays and poetical productions, which gave promise of future excellence. He died in his twenty-third year, September 15, 1833. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out false pride in place and blood, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; The patriotic aspirations here expressed are brought out more fully in some of Mr Tennyson's political lyrics, which are animated by true wisdom and generous sentiment. The next publication of our author was an Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)— a laureate offering, which he afterwards revised and improved, rendering it not unworthy of the hero or the poet. The Funeral of the Great Duke. Warring on a later day, In anger, wheeled on Europe-shadowing wings, Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown Dashed on every rocky square Their surging charges foamed themselves away; Through the long tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. What long-enduring hearts could do, In that world's earthquake, Waterloo! In 1855 appeared Maud, and other Poemsthe first, an allegorical vision of love and war, treated in a semi-colloquial bizarre style, yet suggestive and passionate. Maud is the daughter of the squire, and 'in the light of her youth and her grace' she captivates a mysterious misanthropic personage who tells the story. But Maud has another suitor, a 'new-made lord,' whose addresses are favoured by Maud's father and brother-the latter described as That jewelled mass of millinery, That oiled and curled Assyrian bull. The squire gives a grand political dinner, 'a gathering of the Tory, to which the Timon-lover is not invited. He finds, however, in the rivulet crossing his ground, a garden-rose, brought down from the Hall, and he interprets it as a message from Maud to meet her in the garden among the roses at night. He proceeds thither, and invokes the fair one in a lyric which is unquestionably the charm of the volume. It begins: Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown. I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, Maud obeys the call; but her brother discovers them, insults the intruder, and a duel ensues, in which the brother is slain. The lover flees to France, but returns to England, for ever haunted by visions of Maud, and then, in another section, we are startled to find him declare himself 'dead, long dead,' and buried, but without finding peace in the grave! It is a vision, and the dreamer obtains a new excitement: he rejoices to think that a war is to arise in defence of the right: That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, true 'It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, And the Tyrtæan war-strain closes with a somewhat fantastic image: And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. Maud was the least successful of Mr Tennyson's longer poems. But three years afterwards (1858) the poet redeemed himself by the publication of The Idylls of the King, consisting of four poemsEnid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere. This Arthurian romance was completed in 1869, by another volume, entitled The Holy Grail, and including The Coming of Arthur, Pelleus and Etarre, and The Passing of Arthur--the whole of this Arthurian collection of idylls forming, according to Dean Alford, 'a great connected poem, dealing with the very highest interests of man,' King Arthur being typical of the higher soul of man,' as shewn in the king's coming, his foundation of the Round Table, his struggles, disappointments, and departure. Of the versification of the Idylls-pure, flowing, blank verse-we subjoin a brief specimen : From The Passing of Arthur? Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice For so the whole round earth is every way Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, them So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away. Between the publication of the series of Arthurian idylls, Mr Tennyson issued Enoch Arden, and other Poems (1864). One of the latter was a piece in the North Lincolnshire dialect, written in the character of a farmer of the old school, and which displayed a vein of broad humour and a dramatic power that surprised as well as gratified the admirers of the poet. He afterwards gave a companion to this bucolic painting by depicting a not quite so amusing, as his elder brother. farmer of the new school, as stolid and selfish, but ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. The highest place among our modern poetesses must be claimed for MRS BROWNING, formerly Miss Barrett. In purity and loftiness of sentiment and feeling, and in intellectual power, she is excelled only by Tennyson, whose best works, it is evident, she had carefully studied. Her earlier style reminds us more of Shelley, but this arises from similarity of genius and classical tastes, not imitation. The first publication of this accomplished lady was an Essay on Mind, and other Poems, said to have been written in her seventeenth year. In 1833 appeared her translation of the Prometheus Bound of Eschylus, of which she has since given an improved version. In 1838 she ventured on a second volume of original poetry, The Seraphim, and other Poems, which was followed by The Romaunt of the Page, 1839. About this time a personal calamity occurred to the poetess, which has been detailed by Miss Mitford in her Literary Recollections. She burst a bloodvessel in the lungs, and after a twelvemonth's confinement at home, was ordered to a milder climate. She went with some relatives to reside at Torquay, and there a fatal event took place which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially devotional feeling, to her poetry.' Her favourite brother, with two other young men, his friends, having embarked on board a small vessel for a sail of a few hours, the boat went down, and all on board perished. This tragedy completely prostrated Miss Barrett. She was not able to be removed to her father's house in London till the following year, and on her return home she 'began that life,' says Miss Mitford, 'which she continued for many years confined to a darkened chamber, to which only her own family and a few devoted friends were admitted; reading meanwhile almost every book worth reading in almost every language, studying with ever-fresh delight the great classic authors in the original, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.' Miss Mitford had presented her friend with a young spaniel, Flush, my dog,' and the companionship of this humble but faithful object of sympathy has been commemorated in some beautiful verses, graphic as the pencil of Landseer: To Flush, my Dog. Yet, my pretty, sportive friend, Little is 't to such an end That I praise thy rareness! Other dogs may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears, And this glossy fairness. But of thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Roses, gathered for a vase, Knowing that when light is gone, Love remains for shining. Other dogs in thymy dew Tracked the hares, and followed through Other dogs of loyal cheer Up the woodside hieing. This dog only, watched in reach And if one or two quick tears And this dog was satisfied If a pale thin hand would glide On the palm left open. Adam. The essence of all beauty, I call love. Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love. As form, when colourless, In man or angel. Angel ! rather ask Lucifer. Love ! what is love? I lose it. Beauty I darken to the image. Beauty-love ! [He fades away, while a low music sounds. Adam. Thou art pale, Eve. Eve. The precipice of ill Down this colossal nature, dizzies me And, hark ! the starry harmony remote Seems measuring the heights from whence he fell. Adam. Think that we have not fallen so. By the hope And aspiration, by the love and faith, We do exceed the stature of this angel. Eve. Happier we are than he is, by the death. Notwithstanding a few fine passages, A Drama of Exile cannot be considered a successful effort. The scheme of the poetess was imperfectly developed, and many of the colloquies of Adam and Eve, and of Lucifer and Gabriel, are forced and unnatural. The lyrics interspersed throughout the poem are often harsh and unmusical, and the whole drama is deficient in action and interest. In A Vision of Poets, Miss Barrett endeavoured to vindicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. 'I have attempted,' she says, 'to express in this poem my view of the mission of the poet, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie," and of the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering should be acceptable as a part of knowledge.' The discipline of suffering and sorrow which the poet The result of those years of seclusion and study was partly seen by the publication in 1844 of two volumes of Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett, many of which bore the impress of deep and melancholy thought, and of high and fervid imagination. 'Poetry,' said the authoress in her preface, has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. I never mis-ess had herself undergone, suggested or coloured took pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor these and similar speculations. The affliction leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my which saddened had also purified the heart, and work, so far, as work not as mere hand and brought with it the precious fruits of resignation head work, apart from the personal being; but as and faith. This is an old and familiar philosophy, the completest expression of that being to which I and Miss Barrett's prose exposition of it must could attain and as work I offer it to the public; afterwards have appeared to her superfluous, for feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any she omitted the preface in the later editions of of my readers, because measured from the height her works. The truth is, all such personal reveof my aspiration; but feeling also that the rever-lations, though sanctioned by the examples of ence and sincerity with which the work was done, should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.' To each of the principal poems in the collection explanatory notices were given. Thus, of A Drama of Exile, she says, the subject was 'the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness, with a peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her offence, appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man.' The pervading principle of the drama is love-love which conquers even Lucifer: Dryden and Wordsworth, have inevitably an air A poet could not sleep aright, And thus he rose disquieted With sweet rhymes ringing through his head, Where, sloping up the darkest glades, To a faint silver-pavement fair The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare To foot-print o'er, had such been there. He meets a lady whose mystical duty it is to 'crown all poets to their worth,' and he obtains a sight of some of the great masters of song- the dead kings of melody-who are characterised in brief but felicitous descriptions. A few of these we subjoin: Here, Homer, with the broad suspense There, Shakspeare, on whose forehead climb Euripides, with close and mild Theocritus, with glittering locks The moderns, from Milton down to 'poor proud Byron,' are less happily portrayed; but in spite of many blemishes, and especially the want of careful artistic finishing, this poem is one of great excellence. There are other imaginative pieces of the authoress of a more popular character-as the Rhyme of the Duchess May, a romantic ballad full of passion, incident, and melody; and Bertha in the Lane, a story of the transfer of affection from one sister to another, related by the elder and dying sister in a strain of great beauty and pathos. One stanza will shew the style and versification of this poem: And, dear Bertha, let me keep On my hand this little ring, Which at nights, when others sleep, Let me wear it out of sight, In the grave-where it will light There are parts of this fine poem resembling Tennyson's May Queen, but the laureate would never have admitted such an incongruous and spasmodic stanza as that with which Miss Barrett unhappily closes her piece: Jesus, Victim, comprehending Love's divine self-abnegation, The most finished of Miss Barrett's smaller poems-apart from the sonnets-are the verses on Cowper's Grave, which contain not one jarring line or expression, and The Cry of the Children, a pathetic and impassioned pleading for the poor children who toil in mines and factories. individuality and intensity of feeling, this piece resembles Hood's Song of the Shirt, but it infinitely surpasses it in poetry and imagination. In The Cry of the Children. Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 6 'For oh,' say the children, we are weary, If we cared for any meadows, it were merely Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping- Through the coal-dark, underground— 'For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning- Till our hearts turn-our heads, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places. Turns the sky in the high window blank and reelingTurns the long light that drops adown the wallTurn the black flies that crawl along the ceilingAll are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day, the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, "O ye wheels"-breaking out in a mad moaning"Stop! be silent for to-day! Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. The Sonnets from the Portuguese are as passionate as Shakspeare's Sonnets, and we suspect the title, 'from the Portuguese,' has no better authority than Sir Walter Scott's Old Play' at the head of the chapters of his novels. The first of these socalled translations is eminently beautiful-quite equal to Wordsworth, or to Wordsworth's model, Milton: Sonnet. I thought once how Theocritus had sung |