Horace said non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should survive-Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non omnino moriar,' -'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my verse, and however low I may go, I warrant you I shall keep all my wits about me,-therefore • When, in the darkness over me, The four-handed mole shall scrape, Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape, Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical antiquity with the crape hatband of the modern undertaker. He proceeds : 'And when the sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the showery gray, And rugged barks begin to bud, And through damp holts, newflushed with May, Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is the peculiar attribute of man -but as Shakspeare found tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions--the jay laughs, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker laughs also ; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the woodpeckers and jays. Then let wise Nature work her will, And at my head-stone whisper low, Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such circumstances?-why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition of the poems had been sold-papa! our genuine poet's first wish is -if the woodbines blow!' 'And tell meWhen, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the woodbines, (of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friendand another to his mother 'If ، If thou art blest, my mother's smile Undimmed' but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too commonplace, and he immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the weather and the forwardness of the spring 'If thou art blessed-my mother's smile Undimmed-if bees are on the wing?' No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal season!—The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank after the blossoms of the woodbine, and just before the hummings of the bee; and this is all that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds 'Then cease, my friend, a little while That I may send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I have picked up from Aristæus, in the Elysian Fields,' or ، tell you how I am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below' ?—oh no That I may-hear the throstle sing Of bubbling wells that fret the stones, Thy words will be-thy cheerful tones As welcome to my crumbling bones!'-p. 4. If any sense in me remains!'-This doubt is inconsistent with the opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead and buried, as much sense' will still remain as he has now the good fortune to possess. We have quoted these two first poems in extenso, to obviate any suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot afford space-we wish we could-for an equally minute examination of the rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show-what we solemnly affirm—that every page teems with beauties hardly less surprising. The Lady of Shalott is a poem in four parts, the story of which we decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens thus 'On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky- The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave. ، Underneath Underneath the bearded barley, Her weaving either night or day. 'She knows not'— Poor lady, nor we either 'She knows not what that curse may be, Therefore she weaveth steadily; Therefore no other care has she, The Lady of Shalott.' A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming . from Camelot ;* From the bank, and from the river, Sang Sir Launcelot.'-p. 15.. The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for an instant her web :-the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically explain :— 'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy, Turned to towered Camelot. For ere she reached upon the tide The Lady of Shalott! Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the planked wharfage came; Below the stern they read her name, The Lady of Shalott.'-p. 19. We pass by two-what shall we call them ?-tales, or odes, or sketches, entitled Mariana in the South' and Eleanore,' of which we fear we could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together into one dreamy tissue-to a little novel in rhyme, called The Miller's Daughter.' Miller's daughters, poor things, 6 *The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is alluded to by Kent ́in 'King Lear' 'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain, have have been so generally betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr. Tennyson has united himself to his miller's daughter in lawful wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal appearance 'My father's mansion, mounted high, Looked down upon the village-spire; I was a long and listless boy, And son and heir unto the Squire.' But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the mansion mounted high;' and I met in all the close green ways, While walking with my line and rod,' A metonymy for rod and line' The wealthy miller's mealy face, While fishing in the mill-dam water, I laughed to see him as he stood, And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'-p. 33. He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter, whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resem'the moon in blance either to the mealy face' of the miller, or an ivy-tod;' and we think our readers will be delighted at the way in which the impassioned husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her father's occupation. 'How dear to me in youth, my love, Was everything about the mill; The black, the silent pool above, The pool beneath that ne'er stood still; The meal-sacks on the whitened floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door, Made misty with the floating meal!'-p. 36. The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not less wonderful : Remember you that pleasant day When, after roving in the woods, 'A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. With idle care, If If you remember, you had set, And you were leaning on the ledge.' The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in the long green box' of mignonette-and that masterly touch of likening the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam-these are beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats. We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived from mythological sources-Enone, the Hesperides, and the Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he makes them exclusively his own. Enone, deserted by 'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,' sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula which is sixteen times repeated in this short poem. 'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.' She tells her dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Enone) behind a rock, whence she had a full view of the naked beauties of the rivals, which broke her heart. 'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die : It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud * * * * * How beautiful they were too beautiful O mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'—p. 56. · ' In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description, long, rich, and luscious-Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for shame-no—of the lily flower violet-eyed,' and the singing pine,' and the overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and gnarlèd boughs,' and tree tops,' and berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the inanimate beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the ingenuus pudor of the author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details, because if there was one thing which mother Ida' knew better than another, it must have been her |