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"Here is a naturalist who sees the flower and the bud with a poet's curiosity and awe, and does not count the stamens in the aster, nor the feathers in the wood-thrush, but rests in the surprise and affection they awake." This was Emerson's own instinctive attitude to all the phenomena of nature.
And yet to gain that little how much is lost! Let us once aspire and madness follows. Could we but drag the purple from the hero's heart; could we but tear the laurel from the poet's throbbing brain, and read their doubts, their dangers, their despair, we might learn a greater lesson than we shall ever acquire by musing over their exploits or their inspiration.
"Good Herr Van Beunigen," she said, "your Greek is truly as smooth as your face. But it seems to me you do not sufficiently catch the spirit of the poet's lines commmencing The commencement of an extract from the "Melanippe" of Euripides, meaning, "To raise vain laughter, many exercise the arts of satire." Light as the touch was, however, it was enough. The unruly horse reared and plunged.
In the year 1889 the poet's health had permitted him to take long walks on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its whiteness, he had named "Taliessin," "the splendid brow." He also thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, "God bless Tristram the knight: he fought for England!"
Some bards pipe from Parnassus, some from Hermon; Room for the singer of the Sunday Sermon! His stimulant tepid tea, his theme a text, Carmarthen's cultured caroller comes next! AIR "The Birth of Verse." Wild thoughts which occupy the brain, Vague prophecies which fill the ear, Dim perturbation, precious pain, A gleam of hope, a chill of fear, These vex the poet's spirit.
When the poet of more firmly grounded conviction attempts to show reason for his confidence in the poet's virtue, he may advance such an argument for the association of righteousness and genius as has been offered by Carlyle in his essay, The Hero as Poet.
Of the pleasant things of Hellas they have no scanty portion to their lot; may they happen on no envious repentings of the gods. A god's heart, it may be, is painless ever; but happy and a theme of poet's song is that man who for his valiance of hands or feet the chiefest prizes hath by strength and courage won, and in his life-time seen his young son by good hap attaining to the Pythian crown.
To those who know the Memoir by his son, Hallam Tennyson, a memoir that while paying honor to filial reverence and devotion is at the same time and in all respects most worthy of its high theme, the events in the poet's life will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throw much light on, and impart the distinction of a high dignity to, the Laureate's work.
Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that reason unpoetic? This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the "well-languaged Daniel;" but likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, "the prosaic Daniel."
If poetry is to be rendered by the voice, and if the listener is to grasp all that it means, the most devout attention is essential; there should be an intimate alliance between the reader and his audience, or swift and subtle communication of the poet's thought and feeling becomes impossible.
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