Mariana in the Moated Grange is not by any means improved by this habit of repetition, every stanza ending with the same lines, and those not too skilfully constructed:— "She only said, 'My life is dreary;
He cometh not,' she said!
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!'"
This piece of Mariana has been very much extolled; the praise we should allot to it would seem cold after the applause it has frequently received. The descriptive powers of Tennyson are, in his happiest moments, unrivalled; on these occasions there is no one of whom it may be said more accurately, that his words paint the scene; but the description here and in the subsequent piece, Mariana in the South, has always appeared to us too studied to be entirely pleasing. We have tried to feel it, but we could not.
For instances of graver faults of style, and in productions of higher aim, we should point, amongst others, to The Palace of Art, The Vision of Sin, The Dream of Fair Women. In all of these, verses of great merit may be found, but the larger part is very faulty. An obscurity, the result sometimes of too great condensation of style, and a jerking spasmodic movement, constantly mar the effect. From The Palace of Art we quote, almost at haphazard, the following lines. The soul has built her palace, has hung it with pictures, and placed therein certain great bells, (a sort of music we do not envy her,) that swing of themselves. It is then finely said of her—
"She took her throne,
She sat betwixt the shining oriels
To sing her songs alone."
After this the strain thus proceeds:—
"No nightingale delighteth to prolong
Her low preamble all alone,
More than my soul to hear her echoed song
Throb through the ribbed stone;
"Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth,
Trying to feel herself alive;
Lord over nature, lord of the visible earth,
Lord of the senses five.
"Communing with herself: 'All these are mine;
And let the world have peace or wars,
'Tis one to me.' She—when young night divine
Crown'd dying day with stars,
"Making sweet close of his delicious toils—
Lit light in wreaths and anadems,
And pure quintessences of precious oils
In hallow'd moons of gems,
"To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands, and cried,
'I marvel if my still delight
In this great house, so royal, rich, and wide,
Be flattered to the height.
"'From shape to shape at first within the womb,
The brain is modell'd,' she began,
'And through all phases of all thought I come
Into the perfect man.