Piping a ditty sad for Bion’s fate,
And cross the unpermitted ferry’s flow.
And relax Pluto’s brow,
And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
Of Prosperine, among whose crownèd hair
Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air,
And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.
If that is a return to an older manner, it is an older manner with a difference, and the difference is one that in the first place was of Tennyson’s invention. Arnold was too personal a poet not to invest even his acquired characteristics with his own stamp, but when we read verse like this we know that Milton, Gray and Wordsworth were not the only masters. And, in fact, Tennyson’s particular “linked sweetness long drawn out” was not more certainly achieved by its originator himself than by Arnold in such passages as—
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,