poet's sympathy was so gracious, so all-pervading, that it has dyed with its own colours not only the landscape with all its smaller features,—birds and flowers, but also the very tools of the labourer, the steam-thresher, the distant railway-the poet's imagination not only personifying, but ensouling them with human life, under pressure of a strange personal energy. Henry Vaughan, two centuries before, has shown the same power, which is quite distinct from the gift of vivid description.
If I here offer a liberal selection from Charles Tennyson's work, this is because it is so little known. The first, one of the early sonnets, shows how from the beginning he revelled in the fineness of detail
A SUMMER TWILIGHT
It is a Summer gloaming, balmy-sweet,
A gloaming brighten'd by an infant moon,
Fraught with the fairest light of middle June;
The lonely garden echoes to my feet,
And hark! O hear I not the gentle dews,
Fretting the silent forest in his sleep?
Or does the stir of housing insects creep
Thus faintly on mine ears? Day's many hues
Waned with the paling light and are no more,
And none but drowsy pinions beat the air:
The bat is hunting softly by my door,
And, noiseless as the snow-flake, leaves his lair;
O'er the still copses flitting here and there,
Wheeling the self-same circuit o'er and o'er.
THE FIRST WEEK IN OCTOBER
Once on an autumn day as I reposed
Beneath a noon-beam, pallid yet not dull,
The branch above my head dipt itself full
Of that white sunshine momently, and closed;
While, ever and anon, the ashen keys
Dropt down beside the tarnish'd hollyhocks,
The scarlet crane's-bill, and the faded stocks,-
Flung from the shuffling leafage by the breeze,
How wistfully I mark'd the year's decay,
Forecasting all the dreary wind and rain ;
'Twas the last week the swallow would remain-
How jealously I watch'd his circling play!
A few brief hours, and he would dart away,
No more to turn upon himself again.
Thro' the deep drifts the south wind breathed its way
Down to the earth's green face; the air grew warm,
The snow-drops had regain'd their lonely charm,
The world had melted round them in a day :
My full heart long'd for violets-the blue arch
Of heaven-the blackbird's song-but Nature kept
Her stately order-Vegetation slept-
Nor could I force the unborn sweets of March
Upon a winter's thaw. With eyes that brook'd
A narrower prospect than my fancy craved,
Upon the golden aconites I look'd,
And on the leafless willows as they waved-
And on the broad leaved, half-thaw'd ivy-tod,
That glitter'd, dripping down upon the sod.
It is the fairest sight in Nature's realms,
To see on summer morning, dewy-sweet,
That very type of freshness, the green wheat,
Surging thro' shadows of the hedgerow elms ;
How the eye revels in the many shapes
And colours which the risen day restores!
How the wind blows the poppy's scarlet capes
About his urn! and how the lark upsoars !
Not like the timid corn-craik scudding fast
From his own voice, he with him takes his song
Heavenward, then, striking sideways, shoots along,
Happy as sailor boy that, from the mast,
Runs out upon the yard-arm, till at last
He sinks into his nest, those clover tufts among.
THE STEAM THRESHING-MACHINE
WITH THE STRAW-CARRIER
Flush with the pond the lurid furnace burn'd
At eve, while smoke and vapour fill'd the yard;
The gloomy winter sky was dimly starr'd,
The fly-wheel with a mellow murmur turn'd;
While, ever rising on its mystic stair
In the dim light, from secret chambers borne,
The straw of harvest, sever'd from the corn,
Climb'd, and fell over, in the murky air.
I thought of mind and matter, will and law,
And then of him, who set his stately seal
Of Roman words on all the forms he saw
Of old-world husbandry; I could but feel
With what a rich precision he would draw
The endless ladder, and the booming wheel!
Vergil, the poet presently notes, saw much the same human interest in farming tools—
The wizard Mantuan
Who catalogued in rich hexameters
The Rake, the Roller, and the mystic Van.
A delicately quaint humour, also among C. Tennyson's gifts, pervades the following sonnet :
Poor malkin, why hast thou been left behind?
The wains long since have carted off the sheaves,
And keen October, with his whistling wind,
Snaps all the footstalks of the crisping leaves;
Methinks thou art not wholly make-believe;
Thy posture, hat, and coat, are human still;
Could'st thou but push a hand from out thy sleeve !
Or smile on me! but ah! thy face is nil!
The stubbles darken round thee, lonely one!
And man has left thee, all this dreary term,
No mate beside thee,--far from social joy;
As some poor clerk survives his ruin'd firm,
And, in a napless hat, without employ,
Stands, in the autumn of his life, alone.
Similarly he gives life to the Hydraulic Ram, the BuoyBell, or to the children's old Rocking-horse.
Nature and Humanity are beautifully and most touchingly entwined in our last example--
MARY-A REMINISCENCE
She died in June, while yet the woodbine sprays
Waved o'er the outlet of this garden-dell;
Before the advent of these Autumn days
And dark unblossom'd verdure. As befel,
I from my window gazed, yearning to forge
Some comfort out of anguish so forlorn ;
The dull rain stream'd before the bloomless gorge,
By which, erewhile, on each less genial morn,
Our Mary pass'd, to gain her shelter'd lawn,
With Death's disastrous rose upon her cheek.
How often had I watch'd her, pale and meek,
Pacing the sward! and now I daily seek
The track, by those slow pausing footsteps worn,
How faintly worn! though trodden week by week.
That disastrous rose of consumption,-what a fine, what an original touch!
These sonnets intentionally differ in structure from the orthodox arrangement; the poet seems to have followed, whilst enlarging, the precedent set by Spenser. And although when single sonnets, especially if grand in style, are concerned, the pure Italian fashion is certainly the most effective, the most musical and shapely; yet, when placed in a sequence such as this, the monotony which besets that form may be avoided, whilst the system of the rhymes is rendered a little easier.
We have poets of wider sweep and greater power than Charles Tennyson, none more decisively original; in style he
is absolutely unlike his illustrious brother. His own phrase, "the single-hearted sonnet," is truly justified by his work; some of the sonnets, indeed, Alfred held "among the noblest "in our language." It is sad and strange that so sweet a singer, one who should be dear also for his brother's sake, should be neglected-and that, now when the great Voices are silent— not less than Barnes; although Tennyson does not offer the superficial difficulty of a rustic dialect. But Books also have
their fates. Why, however, will readers turn to the literature "which can be enjoyed but once
Those gilded trifles of the hour,
Those painted nothings sure to cloy1—
from that which offers permanent truth to human nature, pathos, and beauty together?
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