"And wearying in a land of sand and thorns."
"Pelleas and sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him."
"By a mossed brookbank on a stone
I smelt a wildweed flower alone;
There was a ringing in my ears,
And both my eyes gushed out with tears."
"Clash like the coming and retiring wave."
"Quiet as any water-sodden log
Stay'd in the wandering warble of a brook."
"The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh."
From these quotations, not exhaustive, but representative, one may see in how gracious a sense Tennyson was a pastoral poet, in that he and his thought haunted the brookside and the mountainside, the shadow and the sunshine, the dark night, or dewy eve, or the glad dawn, always. Therefore is Tennyson a rest to the spirit. He takes you from your care, and ends by taking your care from you. He quiets your spirit. I go to his poems as I would go to seashore or mountain; and a quiet deep, as the gently falling night, wraps my spirit. Bless him always for the rest he knows to give and cares to give!
Tennyson's genius is lyrical rather than either dramatic or epic. What music is like his? Say of his poems, in words of James Whitcomb Riley,
"O but the sound was rainy sweet!"
Not great Milton was more master of music than he; though Milton's was the melody of wide ocean in open sea, or crash of waves upon the rugged rocks, or wrathing up the yellow sands in tumult of majestic menace. Tennyson's music is rather the voice of gentle waters, or the cadence of summer's winds in the tree-tops, or like human voices heard in some woodland. In either poet is no marred music. Mrs. Browning fell out of time; Tennyson never. His verse is like some loved voice which makes perpetual music in our heart. Read all of his poetry, and how diversified soever his meter is, music never fails; yet his lyrics are not as those of Burns, whose words sing like the brook Tennyson has sung of. Burns's melody is laughter: it babbles, it sighs for a moment, but will sing. But Tennyson's is not laughter. He is no joyous poet. Burns has tears which wet his lashes, scarcely his cheeks. Tennyson's cheeks are wet. He is the music of winds in pine-trees in a lonely land, or as a sea breaking upon a shore of rock and wreck; but how passing sweet the music is, stealing your ruggedness away, so that to be harsh in thought or diction in his presence seems a crime!