The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again—
'Lest his scalèd eyelid drop,
For he is older than the world'—
older than the hills, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would hardly have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of lyrics. It proceeds—
'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
We shall lose eternal pleasure,
Worth eternal want of rest.
Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
Of the wisdom of the west.
In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three
(Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery.'—p. 102.
This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of conspirators' in the Rovers.
Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic—(the Hesperides sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)—appears to have kept on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem concludes,—
'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,
Five links, a gold chain, are we,
Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;
Daughters three,
Bound about
All around about
The gnarlèd bole of the charmèd tree,
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Watch it warily,
Singing airily
Standing about the charmèd root.'—p. 107.
We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song would have been more intelligible.
The 'Lotuseaters'—a kind of classical opium-eaters—are Ulysses and his crew. They land on the 'charmèd island,' and 'eat of the charmèd root,' and then they sing—
'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
This is lovelier and sweeter,
Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
Like a dreamy Lotuseater—a delicious Lotuseater!
We will eat the Lotus, sweet
As the yellow honeycomb;
In the valley some, and some
On the ancient heights divine,
And no more roam,
On the loud hoar foam,
To the melancholy home,
At the limits of the brine,
The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'—p. 116.