as Lovelace’s Althea, and the lines on the far-off waving of a white hand, “betwixt the cloud and the moon.” The lyric of
“Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling,”
was a favourite of the poet.
“What birds were these?” he is said to have asked a lady suddenly, when reading to a silent company.
“Nightingales,” suggested a listener, who did not probably remember any other fowl that is vocal in the dusk.
“No, they were rooks,” answered the poet.
“Come into the Garden, Maud,” is as fine a love-song as Tennyson ever wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the poem drops from its height, like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy comes, and remorse, and the beautiful interlude of the
“lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl.”
Then follows the exquisite
“O that ’twere possible,”