The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written in youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be almost obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love like that of Paul and Virginia, but the love is not returned by the girl, who prefers the friend of the narrator. Like the hero of Maud, the speaker has a period of madness and illusion; while the third part, “The Golden Supper”—suggested by a story of Boccaccio, and written in maturity—is put in the mouth of another narrator, and is in a different style. The discarded lover, visiting the vault which contains the body of his lady, finds her alive, and restores her to her husband. The whole finished legend is necessarily not among the author’s masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest work displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of genius. Here and there come turns and phrases, “all the charm of all the Muses,” which remind a reader of things later well known in pieces more mature. Such lines are—
“Strange to me and sweet,
Sweet through strange years,”
and—
“Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky
Hung round with ragged rims and burning folds.”
And—
“Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams,
Which wander round the bases of the hills.”
We also note close observation of nature in the curious phrase—
“Cries of the partridge like a rusty key
Turned in a lock.”
Of this kind was Tennyson’s adolescent vein, when he left
“The poplars four
That stood beside his father’s door,”