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This book consists of a succinct but complete biography of Lord Tennyson; an account of the volumes published by him in chronological order, dealing with the more important poems separately; a concise criticism of Tennyson in his various aspects as lyrist, dramatist, and representative poet of his day; a bibliography.
Aside from an occasional song like "Thistledown," with its brilliantly fleecy accompaniment, and the setting of Browning's famous "The Year' at the Spring," for which Loomis has struck out a superb frenzy, and a group of songs by John Vance Cheney, Loomis has found some of his most powerful inspirations in the work of our lyrist, Aldrich, such as the rich carillon of "Wedded," and his "Discipline," one of the best of all humorous songs, a gruesome scherzo all about dead monks, in which the music furnishes out the grim irreverence of the words with the utmost waggery.
No poet has excelled him in precision and delicacy of language and completeness of expression. As a lyrist he has, perhaps, no superiors, and only two or three equals in English poetry, and even of humour he possessed no small share, as is shown in the Northern Farmer and in other pieces.
And there it is, in that marvellous little poem of "The Bells," that the American lyrist, as it has always seemed to us, has caught much of the eltrich force and beauty and poetic significance of "The Chimes" as they were originally rung forth in the prose-poetry of the English novelist:
The little encore song, which generally appeared anonymously, was the opening wedge for the American lyrist. Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a dawning interest in national music.
was this lyrist of luxurious ecstasy. In his work there was nothing worldly; that divides him from the Venetians, whose sensuousness he shared: nothing scientific; that distinguishes him from Da Vinci, the magic of whose chiaroscuro he comprehended: nothing contemplative; that separates him from Michael Angelo, the audacity of whose design in dealing with forced attitudes he rivalled, without apparently having enjoyed the opportunity of studying his works.
Had he waited till the day of his maturity, 'the monsters of life's waste' would have fled from him, as the wolves, ravens, and vultures had fled from, and fawned upon, 'the Pythian of the age. Then came the Mountain Shepherds, bewailing Adonais: the Pilgrim of Eternity, the Lyrist of lerne, and among others, one frail form, a pard-like spirit.
On the way back to their hotel, March made some reflections upon the open neglect, throughout Germany, of the greatest German lyrist, by which the poet might have profited if he had been present.
His poems are more full of reflections, meditations, and generalizations upon human life than any poet’s since Shakespeare. But then the moment that Shakespeare descended from those heights whether his metaphysical imagination had borne him, he became, not a lyrist, as Tennyson became, but a dramatist.
There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming and splendid lyrist, as the author of Infant Joy, and The Tyger, and the rest of the Songs of Innocence and Experience.
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