No More Learning

Take the following:--


And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
_On the bald street strikes the blank day_.

--'In Memoriam'.

See particularly 'In Memoriam', cvii. , the lines beginning "Fiercely
flies," to "darken on the rolling brine": the description of the island
in 'Enoch Arden'; but specification is needless, it applies to all his
descriptive poetry. It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by
such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it,
as here:--


No gray old grange or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple style from mead to mead,
Or sheep walk up the windy wold.

--'In Memoriam', c.

Or here:--


The meal sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.

--'The Miller's Daughter'.


His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless
variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare's, it has not the
massiveness and majesty of Milton's, it has not the austere grandeur of
Wordsworth's at its best, it has not the wavy swell, "the linked
sweetness long drawn out" of Shelley's, but its distinguishing feature
is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge
said of Claudian's style may be applied to it: "Every line, nay every
word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is
seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or
more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for
ever.

In his description of nature he is incomparable.
Take the following from
'The Dying Swan':--


Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,


or the opening scene in '? none' and in 'The Lotos Eaters', or the
meadow scene in 'The Gardener's Daughter', or the conclusion of 'Audley
Court', or the forest scene in the 'Dream of Fair Women', or this stanza
in 'Mariana in the South':--


There all in spaces rosy-bright
Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears,
And deepening through the silent spheres,
Heaven over Heaven rose the night.


A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as
here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:--


The _wrinkled_ sea beneath him _crawls_.

--'The Eagle'.


Or here of a ship at sea, in the distance:--


And on through zones of light and shadow
_Glimmer away to the lonely deep_.

--'To the Rev. F. D. Maurice'.


Or here of waters falling high up on mountains:--


Their thousand _wreaths of dangling water-smoke_.

--'The Princess'.


Or of a water-fall seen at a distance:--


And _like a downward smoke_ the slender stream
Along the cliff _to fall and pause and fall_ did seem.


Or here again:--


We left the dying ebb that _faintly lipp'd
The flat red granite_.


Or here of a wave:--


Like a wave in the wild North Sea
_Green glimmering toward the summit_ bears with all
_Its stormy crests that smoke_ against the skies
Down on a bark.

--'Elaine'.