and

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,
Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still,

"she to Almesbury

Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,
And heard the spirits of the waste and weald

Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan
And in herself she moan'd, "Too late, too late!'
Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn,
A blot in heaven, the raven, flying high,
Croak'd."

The Passing of Arthur culminates the series with some of the most effective mood-painting in Tennyson. Every scene is saturated with gloom, with wet and cold and weariness. After the

"last, dim, weird battle in the west,"

"the pale king glanced across the field Of battle,"

and saw that

"only the wan wave

Brake in among dead faces, to and fro

Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down

Tumbling the hollow hands of the fallen,

And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,

And rolling far along the gloomy shores

The voice of days of old and days to be."

No detail is omitted which might deepen the emotional tone of the poem. The

"dolorous day

Grew drearier toward twilight falling,"

and over the scene,

"the sea-wind sang

Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam."

Sir Bedivere concealed Excalibur in

"the many-knotted water-flags,

That whistled stiff and dry about the marge,"

and when the three queens with crowns of gold came to take Arthur on the barge, he heard rise from them

"A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony

Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills

All night in a waste land, where no one comes
Or hath come, since the making of the world."

He stood long,

"Revolving many memories, till the hull

Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groan'd, "The King is gone!""

There is no quality more common to poetry than this constant use of picture-making words to create mood. Many times these pictures are painted in detail, but more often they are suggested in a few words. How many pictures of cold are sug

Use of pictures to suggest mood

gested, for instance, in each line of the opening stanza of The

Eve of St. Agnes:

"St. Agnes' Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the beadsman's fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith."

It would be difficult to point out a better example of words to create a single vivid impression in one line. No description of cold has ever been more compelling than that one line,

"The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold."

Another instance of feeling created by pictures is found in one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after Sunset fadeth in the West,

Which by and by black night doth take away
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

That thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong

To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

Consider the emotional effect of cold and desolation created here by just the two lines,

"Upon those boughs which shake against the cold

Bare, ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang"

and you will begin to realize the magic power that very simple words may have to suggest feeling through pictures.

The first way, then, by which a poet creates feeling is through pictures, sometimes painted in detail and sometimes suggested in just a few words.

The second common way by which the poet may create feeling is by the use of sound. We shall discuss the imporFeeling created tance of sound in poetry somewhat in detail through sound later; here we merely wish to suggest a few of the ways in which it helps to arouse a mood. Probably our

CF

LITCHFIELD CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND

The imagination which finds beautiful expression in poetry finds

equally beautiful expression in architecture.