No More Learning

Or of a chrysalis:--


And flash'd as those
_Dull-coated_ things, _that making slide apart
Their dusk wing cases, all beneath there burns
A Jewell'd harness_, ere they pass and fly.

--'Gareth and Lynette'.

So again:--


Wan-sallow, as _the plant that feeds itself,
Root-bitten by white lichen_.

--'Id'.


And again:--


All the _silvery gossamers_
That _twinkle into green and gold_.

--'In Memoriam'.


His epithets are in themselves a study: "the _dewy-tassell'd_ wood,"
"the _tender-pencill'd_ shadow," "_crimson-circl'd_ star," the "_hoary_
clematis," "_creamy_ spray," "_dry-tongued_ laurels". But whatever he
describes is described with the same felicitous vividness. How magical
is this in the verses to Edward Lear:--


Naiads oar'd
A _glimmering shoulder_ under _gloom_
Of _cavern pillars_.


Or this:--


She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.

--'A Dream of Fair Women'.


But if in the world of Nature nothing escaped his sensitive and
sympathetic observation,--and indeed it might be said of him as truly as
of Shelley's 'Alastor'


Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,


--he had studied the world of books with not less sympathy and
attention. In the sense of a profound and extensive acquaintance with
all that is best in ancient and modern poetry, and in an extraordinarily
wide knowledge of general literature, of philosophy and theology, of
geography and travel, and of various branches of natural science, he is
one of the most erudite of English poets. With the poetry of the Greek
and Latin classics he was, like Milton and Gray, thoroughly saturated.
Its influence penetrates his work, now in indirect reminiscence, now in
direct imitation, now inspiring, now modifying, now moulding.
He tells
us in 'The Daisy' how when at Como "the rich Virgilian rustic measure of
'Lari Maxume'" haunted him all day, and in a later fragment how, as he
rowed from Desenzano to Sirmio, Catullus was with him. And they and
their brethren, from Homer to Theocritus, from Lucretius to Claudian,
always were with him. I have illustrated so fully in the notes and
elsewhere [1] the influence of the Greek and Roman classics on the poems
of 1842 that it is not necessary to go into detail here. But a few
examples of the various ways in which they affected Tennyson's work
generally may be given. Sometimes he transfers a happy epithet or
expression in literal translation, as in:--


On either _shining_ shoulder laid a hand,


which is Homer's epithet for the shoulder--


[Greek: ana phaidimps omps]

--'Od'. , xi. , 128.



It was the red cock _shouting_ to the light,


exactly the


[Greek: heos eboaesen alektor] (Until the cock _shouted_).

--'Batrachomyomachia', 192.



And all in passion utter'd a 'dry' shriek,


which is the 'sicca vox' of the Roman poets. So in 'The Lotos Eaters':--


His voice was _thin_ as voices from the grave,


which is Theocritus' voice of Hylas from his watery grave:--


[Greek: araia d' Iketo ph_ona]

(_Thin_ came the voice).


So in 'The Princess', sect. i. :--


And _cook'd his spleen_,


which is a phrase from the Greek, as in Homer, 'Il'. , iv. , 513:--

[Greek: epi naeusi cholon thumalgea pessei]

(At the ships he cooks his heart-grieving spleen).