CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S POEM.

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picture is idealized, yet it does not pass very far beyond possibility; and, in giving a loving personation, he combines it with the qualities that obviate the frequent and deplorable failures in love attachments. He does not lose sight of those practical virtues that are the seasoning and the safety of life.

The combination of personal description with figurative iteration and the virtues of character, would require a more studied order than Wordsworth gives; at least if he wishes the ode to impress us as a whole. But this is a defect attending more or less all the descriptions of poetry whenever the complication of aims is considerable.

In Wordsworth's Highland Girl,' we have the expression of tenderness well exemplified, although not with a view to the sexual feeling. The most illustrative portion of the poem is the environment :

And these grey rocks: this household lawn:

These Trees, a veil just half withdrawn ;

This fall of water, that doth make

A murmur near the silent Lake;
This little Bay, a quiet road

That holds in shelter thy abode.

As a scenic description this has a merit of its own; as reflecting the beauty of the Highland girl, it has no obvious merit.

We must now advance a step, and open the wide gate of the description of the lover's own feelings by all the arts that have been employed for this purpose. The forms of expression are as numerous as the compass of language, and cannot be classified; yet we may exemplify the more prevalent occasions of success and failure.

The lover's feelings assume two opposite forms; the joys of prosperous love, and the pains of being thwarted. Both rank among the intensest forms of human emotion; and poetry assists in bodying them forth, even to excess.

The mingling of subjective description with all the arts previously illustrated, still further complicates the erotic strain of composition. It renders a consecutive order more and more difficult, without, however, doing away with the advantages of method.

Taking this new circumstance along with those previously named, and confining ourselves to the joyous side of love

emotion, we may next pass in review Tennyson's 'Gardener's Daughter' considered as a highly artistic specimen of erotic art.

Passing over the introduction, we take up the narrative at the point where the two friends, both painters, take the road to the gardener's cottage :—

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock.

The fields between

Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine.

These descriptive and concrete allusions, and more to the same effect-not specially in the style of the author, but common to him with poets generally,-give the interval to be gone over to the gardener's cottage.

The delineation of the beauty herself commences

Who had not heard

Of Rose, the gardener's daughter? Where was he,
So blunt in memory, so old at heart,

At such a distance from his youth in grief,

That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth,
So gross to express delight, in praise of her
Grew oratory. Such a lord is love,

And Beauty such a mistress of the world.

This very usual mode of celebrating beauty merely whets appetite; it is but a prelude to some more definite picture that we can in some measure conceive.

The poet's art shines forth in what comes next. It is the feverish anticipation of the visitor that his soul would be taken possession of, and his joy at the mere thought. But we are not yet admitted to the sacred presence. A long scenic description must intervene, ere the company reach the cottage. It is worked up so as to be in harmony with the lover's state of mind :

All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward.

-From the woods

Came voices of the well-contented doves.

The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he near'd

His happy home, the ground.

TENNYSON'S 'GARDENER'S DAUGHTER'.

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The approaches to the garden are given in the poet's picturesque style. The beauty herself is first disclosed in the act of fixing a rose tree :

One arm aloft

Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the shape-
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.

A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Pour'd on one side: the shadow of the flowers
Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering
Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist-
Ah, happy shade-and still went wavering down,
But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have danced
The greensward into greener circles, dipt,
And mix'd with shadows of the common ground!
But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'd
Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe bloom,
And doubled his own warmth against her lips,
And on the bounteous wave of such a breast
As never pencil drew.

The poet takes full advantage of an active attitude, and fills in the particulars by degrees, but without order, and without much coherence. Yet his epithets are all emotionally interesting, while some of them aid the picture: the soft brown hair, the golden gloss, the violet eyes, the bounteous wave of the breast. 'As never pencil drew' is an adjunct stale with repetition, but yet not to be dispensed with.

She is ignorant of the approach of the two visitors, until the entranced lover breaks in upon her with a speech of stunning and cruel exaggeration :

One rose, but one, by those fair fingers cull'd,
Were worth a hundred kisses press'd on lips
Less exquisite than thine.

Taken by surprise, she had no words to reply, but the asking of the rose came to her relief. She gave the rose, and statue-like' moved away.

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The remainder of the poem is occupied with the lover's feelings, which are intensified by a wide variety of descriptive touches. First, he could not leave the spot till dusk. Going home, he is exposed to his companion's banter, but without effect. Then he is sleepless, kisses the rose, recalls her glance in the giving of it. He feels

Such a noise of life

Swarm'd in the golden present, such a voice
Call'd to me from the years to come, and such
A length of bright horizon rimm'd the dark.

The torrent of the thoughts is one of the perennial effects of intense emotion. The whole night is passed in such

dreams:-
:-

Henceforth, on all manner of slight pretexts, he goes day by day to the cottage; feasts his eyes on her beauty; at last succeeds in obtaining the return of affection. Endearments commence, which are graced by the poet's usual scenic accompaniments. Then comes the conversation, leading up to exchange of vows:

Yet might I tell of meetings, of farewells

Of that which came between, more sweet than each,
In whispers, like the whispers of the leaves
That tremble round a nightingale.

And the fine pathetic conclusion :—

Behold her there.

As I beheld her ere she knew my heart,
My first, last love; the idol of my youth.
The darling of my manhood, and, alas!

Now the most blessed memory of mine age.

Such an avowal is a worthy climax of affection, redeeming it from passing fancy and frivolity, and attesting its extraordinary power for conferring happiness.

We may remark again on the efficacy of a plot or story to bring out the strength of love, and to carry home the impression. The other arts have become apparent in the course of the review.

The painful phase of the love passion has already received prominence in the illustrations from the ancient poets. It will be sufficient now to make a brief allusion to Pope's Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard'.

Pope had the advantage of starting from Eloisa's own. letters, which kept him in the right track in his delineation. He superinduced upon this his own poetic treatment, according to his judgment of effect.

Eloisa having embraced the conventual vows, is yet unable to suppress her passion for Abelard; and the struggle of the two motives, tearing her heart to pieces, is the prevailing idea of the poet's handling. He takes care to picture the gloomy interior of the convent as a reflex of her feelings; and follows with an expression of her furious attachment

to the beloved one; making her reflect, as she goes on, upon the dismal incongruity between her feelings and her present duties. She appeals to Abelard still to write to her, and let her share his griefs. She can think of nothing but his image, while she goes mechanically through her religious devotions. But this is a fight too dreadful to be borne. Her spirit again re-asserts the fulfilment of her vows. She bursts

out

No, fly me, fly me! far as pole from pole.

She falls back upon virtue and immortality as her single aim; prepares her mind for an early consignment to the tomb. Even then she invokes the presence of Abelard, to perform the last offices and see her departure; and prays that one grave may unite them, as a memento to lovers in after ages.

The tragedy of the whole situation dispenses with many of the usual modes of representing a lover's distress. The conflict with religious duty alone suffices to attest the violence of the passion.

The chief adverse criticism would be that the language is too uniformly dignified and rhetorical for the natural utterance of intense passion.

The question may be put-Why should a poet depict such great misery? The love passion when prosperous is pleasant to sympathize with; pleasure calls up pleasure in our minds.

The answer is this:-Such a picture of devotion to a man inspires us with the grateful feeling of nobleness of character in its most touching form. We like to contemplate the fact that one human being is able to evoke such a strength of devotion in the breast of another; it is an enormous possibility of happiness to both, when fortune smiles on their felicity.

The next example is from Scott. In The Lady of the Lake, Canto I., Ellen is portrayed in three fine stanzas. In the first, her approach in the boat, in response to the stranger's horn, is embedded in scenic description, and she is left in an attitude compared to a Grecian statue. Her person is delineated in a succession of circumstantials of beauty, falling under Scott's usual comprehensive sketch.

And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace

A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace,
Of finer form, or lovelier face.