A people’s voice,
The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people’s voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commander’s claim
With honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.”
What wearisome and forced repetition, what commonplace allusions! This is not Tennyson. The very verse is burdened with its vulgar prose, and halts and stumbles in clumsy confusion meant for art. And here is his description in the same poem of the battle of Waterloo:
“Dash’d on every rocky square
Their surging chargers foam’d themselves away;