The parson was working his Sunday's text,- At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,- 11. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. 105 110 115 120 II. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 1. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 2. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, Before thee lies revealed Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 5 10 3. Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 4. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathéd horn! Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings 5. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! III. THE LAST LEAF. 1. I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, The pavement stones resound, 2. They say that in his prime, Not a better man was found By the crier on his round Through the town. CHARACTERIZATION BY BAYARD TAYLOR. 1. No English poet, with the possible exception of Byron, has so ministered to the natural appetite for poetry in the people as Tennyson. Byron did this-unintentionally, as all genius does -by warming and arousing their dormant sentiment: Tennyson 514 by surprising them into the recognition of a new luxury in the harmony and movement of poetic speech. I use the word "luxury" purposely; for no other word will express the glow and richness and fulness of his technical qualities. It was scarcely a wonder that a generation accustomed to look for compact and palpable intellectual forms in poetry—a generation which was still hostile to Keats and Shelley, and had not yet caught up with Wordsworth-should at first regard this new flower as an interpolating weed. But when its blossom-buds fully expanded into gorgeous, velvety-crimsoned, golden-anthered tiger-lilies, filling the atmosphere of our day with deep, intoxicating spiceodors, how much less wonder that others should snatch the seed and seek to make the acknowledged flower their own? 2. Tennyson must be held guiltless of all that his followers and imitators have done. His own personal aim has been pure and lofty; but without his intention or will, or even expectation, he has stimulated into existence a school of what might be called Decorative Poetry. I take the adjective from its present application to a school of art. I have heard more than one distinguished painter in England say of painting, "It is simply a decorative art." Hence it needs only a sufficiency of form to present color; the expression of an idea, perspective, chiaro-oscuro do not belong to it; for these address themselves to the mind, whereas art addresses itself only to the eye." This is no place to discuss such a materialistic heresy; I mention it only to make my meaning clear. We may equally say that decorative poetry addresses itself only to the ears, and seeks to occupy an intermediate ground between poetry and music. I need not give instances. They are becoming so common that the natural taste of mankind, which may be surprised and perverted for a time, is beginning to grow fatigued, and the flower-as Tennyson justly complains in his somewhat petulant poem-will soon be a weed again. 3. Such poems as Morte d' Arthur, The Talking Oak, Locksley Hall, Ulysses, and The Two Voices, wherein thought, passion, and imagination, combined in their true proportions, breathe through full, rich, and haunting forms of verse, at once gave Tennyson his place in English literature. The fastidious care with which every image was wrought, every bar of the movement adjusted |