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THE SPLENDOR FALLS.

This exquisite song comes between the third and fourth parts of The Princess, and is one of the polished gems that redeem from mediocrity that curious medley. Notice the details of the poet's art: The first stanza carries the mind back into the historic past; a picture rises before us of Chivalry, with its blazonry of love and glory; we see the medieval castle, the mountains in the distance, with the lake sleeping at their feet and the white cataract smitten to gold by the rays of the setting sun. The second stanza completely etherializes this picture; transfers it to the Realm of Faerie. The third stanza carries the mind forward, suggesting Love, Immortality, Eternity. — The charm added to the whole by the refrain of the bugle-notes, I shall not attempt to analyze.

HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD. This song comes between the fifth and sixth parts of The Princess. It is a lyrical rendering of an incident in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, i. 9.

In sorrow o'er Lord Walter's bier

The warlike foresters had bent;
And many a flower, and many a tear,
Old Teviot's maids and matrons lent:
But o'er her warrior's bloody bier

The Ladye dropp'd nor flower nor tear!
Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain,
Had lock'd the source of softer woe;
And burning pride, and high disdain,
Forbade the rising tear to flow;
Until, amid his sorrowing clan,

Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee-
'And if I live to be a man,

My father's death revenged shall be!'
Then fast the mother's tears did seek
To dew the infant's kindling cheek.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.

Arthur Henry Hallam died in 1833 and was buried in Clevedon Churchyard, on the coast of Somerset. This lyric appeared in the first collection of poems that Tennyson published after his friend's death. The sentiment, the imagery and the date of publication would all seem to point to Clevedon as the source of this lyric's inspiration: as to its actual composition, — ' It was made,' said Tennyson, 'in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning.'

THE BROOK.

'On the north [of Somersby Rectory] a straggling road winds up the steep hill towards the summit of the wold, while on the south a pebbly brook bubbles along close to the edge of the garden. Not at all the sort of scenery one associates with the fen-country: instead of dreary waters and low-lying levels, the

landscape sweeps up into hills and drops into valleys, full of the sights and sounds of country life, and rich in flowery hollows and patches of tangled meadow-land. It requires no strain of imagination to catch the spirit of Tennyson's song here, where the little brook of his poem dances along through the heart of the country, chattering as it goes.'- Waugh's Tennyson, Cap. i.

CROSSING THE BAR.

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This poem was published in 1889 when Tennyson was in his eighty-first year. It stands last in the volume entitled Demeter and Other Poems. Tennyson's friend, Arthur Waugh, has spoken a word thereon to which it would be hard to add anything of value: 'And last, yet incomparably first stands that perfect poem which is above criticism — composed (it is said) during the poet's passage across the Solent—' Crossing the Bar.' It has been translated into Greek and Latin, and set to music; but no alien note was needed to complete the dignified perfection of its harmony. There is no more beautiful utterance in all the range of English verse.'

TENNYSON.

In Lucem Transitus. Oct. 6, 1892.

FROM the silent shores of midnight, touched with splendors of the moon,
To the singing tides of heaven and the light more clear than noon,
Passed a soul that grew to music till it was with God in tune.

Brother of the greatest poets

Lover of Immortal Love,

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true to nature, true to art, uplifter of the human heart,

Who shall help us with high music, who shall sing if thou depart?

Silence here, for love is silent, gazing on the lessening sail;
Silence here, for grief is voiceless when the mighty poets fail;
Silence here, but far above us, many voices crying, HAIL!

(Henry van Dyke.)

160

SOME ATTEMPTS TO DEFINE POETRY.

SOME ATTEMPTS TO DEFINE POETRY.

I. Poetry in general seems to have originated from two causes, both natural ones; it is innate in men from childhood (1) to imitate - and herein we differ from other animals, in that we are the most imitative and acquire our first knowledge through imitation — and (2) to delight in imitations. Poetry is the province either of a man that is clever or of one who is in an enthusiasm akin to madness. Aristotle; Poetics: iv. 2 and xvii. 3.

II. To which [Logic and Rhetoric] poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous and passionate. I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace and others, teaches us what

the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe. Milton; On Education.

III. A Poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species ·(having this object in common with it) — it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification” from each component part. Coleridge; Biographia Literaria,

Cap. xiv.

IV. All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow o. powerful feeling.- Wordsworth; Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

V. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Shelley; Defense of Poetry.

VI. Poetry is the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions. Ruskin; Modern Painters: Part

iv. Cap. i, § 13.

VII. It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life, — to the question: How to live. - Matthew Arnold; Essay on Wordsworth.

VIII. Poetry is simply the most delightful and perfect form of utterance that human words can reach. Its rhythm and measure, elevated to a regularity, certainty, and force very different from that of the rhythm and measure which can pervade prose, are a part of its perfection. - Matthew Arnold; The French Play in London. IX. Poetry, which is a glorified representation of all that is seen, felt, thought, or done, by man, perforce includes Religion and

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Philosophy among the materials reflected in its magic mirror.

But

it has no mission to replace them; its function being not to supersede, but to transfigure. · Alfred Austin; On the Position and

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Prospects of Poetry (Preface to the Human Tragedy).

X. By poetry I mean the art of producing pleasure by the just expression of imaginative thought and feeling in metrical lanCourthope; The Liberal Movement in English Literature,

guage. Essay i.

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