No More Learning

Hence that look and smile of thine,
Spiritual Adeline.


[Footnote 1: This conceit seems to have been borrowed from Shelley,
'Sensitive Plant', i. :--

And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music. ]

[Footnote 2: 'Cf'. Collins, 'Ode to Pity', "and 'eyes of dewy light'". ]

[Footnote 3: What "the low-tongued Orient" may mean I cannot explain. ]

[Footnote 4: 1830 and all editions till 1853. O'. ]

[Footnote 5: 1863. A-drooping. ]

[Footnote 6: A carcanet is a necklace, diminutive from old French
"Carcan". Cf. 'Comedy of Errors', in. , i, "To see the making of her
'Carcanet". ]





A CHARACTER

First printed in 1830.
The only authoritative light thrown on the person here described is what
the present Lord Tennyson gives, who tells us that "the then well-known
Cambridge orator S--was partly described". He was "a very plausible,
parliament-like, self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society ".
The character reminds us of Wordsworth's Moralist. See 'Poet's Epitaph';--

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling,
Nor form nor feeling, great nor small;
A reasoning, self-sufficient thing,
An intellectual all in all.

Shakespeare's fop, too (Hotspur's speech, 'Henry IV. ', i. , i. , 2), seems
to have suggested a touch or two.


With a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, "The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things".
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

He spake of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;
Then looking as 'twere in a glass,
He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his hair,
And said the earth was beautiful.

He spake of virtue: not the gods
More purely, when they wish to charm
Pallas and Juno sitting by:
And with a sweeping of the arm,
And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye,
Devolved his rounded periods.

Most delicately hour by hour
He canvass'd human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds
In impotence of fancied power.

With lips depress'd as he were meek,
Himself unto himself he sold:
Upon himself himself did feed:
Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,
And other than his form of creed,
With chisell'd features clear and sleek.






THE POET

First printed in 1830.

In this poem we have the first grand note struck by Tennyson, the first
poem exhibiting the [Greek: spoudaiotaes] of the true poet.