The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-19 00:00:00

FRANCE.

BOURSE, Feb. 17, Three o'clock.--The close has
taken place on the following quotations :-
4i. per Cents 9B 95 Roman —
Do. end month — Ottoman Fives 3B 30

3 per Cents.
Do. end month 69 15
Credit Mobilier 675
Do. end month
Bank Shares 3690
Credit Foncier 1330
Italian Loan 6l
Do. end month 6O 97i
BAIL

Mexican Loan 47 25
Do. Bonds 3OO
Russian -
Austrian
Spanish Threes
Home Debt —
Deferred

Orleans
Northern
Lyons and Mediterranean
Southern
Western
Eastern
Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard
North of Spain
Saragossa
Ditto to Barcelona
Roman

Acct.
... 870 -
- ... 1120 ---
- ... 881 25
... 557 50

-- - ... 570 --
- - ... 548 75
- - ... 155 -
- - ... 406 75
- - ... 401 25
- - ... 172 50

220 -

-- ...

... hlo

ON A SONG IN THE PRINCESS.

A CRITICISM, BY GEORGE GROVE, IN TIIE " SHILLING

MAGAZINE."

The following charming paper we extract in its
entirety from the " Shilling Magazine" for Feb-
ruary. We should be tempted to do so, if we
were simply to regard it as a specimen of refined
and sympathetic criticism. But, far beyond its more
obvious excellence as such, it is, to our thinking, so
especially remarkable as indicative of its subtle
appreciation of the lyrical genius of Alfred Tenny-
son, that its perusal throughout can hardly, as it
appears to us, do otherwise than afford exquisite
gratification to the countless admirers of the Poet
Laureate. :

" Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea ;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ;
But oh, too fond, when have I answer'd thee ?
Ask me no more.

" Ask me no morn ; what answer should I give ?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye :
Yet oh, my friend, I will not have thee die !
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ;
Ask me no more.

" Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seal'd ;
I strove against the stream and all in vain :
Let the great river take me to the main :
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ;
Ask me no more."

A Song ? surely a Drama! If, instead of a song in three
verses, we called it a drama in three acts, it would be nearer
the truth ; and indeed it might well form the motif of such
a drama. Name the three acts Indifference, Hesitation,
Submission, and let us see what they disclose to us.
They aro addressed by a woman to a man'--a man who
loves her most ardently, and to whom, after long resist-
ance, she ultimately yields ; and they describe the process
of her mind in the unequal conflict. In the first—lndif-
ference—she is almost aggressive. " Ask mo no more,"
she says, half angrily, as ono well-nigh wearied out by his
ceaseless importunities. "Ask me no more,"—your en-
treaties are of as little concern to me as the moon to the
ocean, as the cloud to the mountain, to which it has a casual
and distant resemblance, but no real connection. "Ask
me no more,"— you are " too fond,"—when have I given
you either encouragement or return for these advances ?
Go, go, and " ask me no more." But the man, the lover—
who
with all the instinct of real, faithful, heartfelt love,
knows no obstacle, and will take no denial still perseveres,
still assures her of his devotion. And thus it comes to pass
that in the next act she is softened and is become more
merciful. She has allowed herself to notice his worn and
haggard looks, and to recognise that is the cause of them,
and that if she relents, they will be removed. She still
reiterates, " Ask me no more," but with what an altered
meaning ! Her perplexity and uncertainty are evident.
" Ask me no more,"—l pray you press me no longer, lest
I bo compelled to give you an answer which I do not wish
to give. "Ask me no more ; what answer should I give?"
She is still almost vexed by his persistence —" I love not
hollow cheek or faded eye." But then the blessed light
and warmth break into her mind, and the first token of
relenting appears. "Yet oh, my friend,"—" my friend,"
mark that concession !—" Yet oh, my friend, 1 will not
have thee die !" The thought of the loneliness which
would besot her if this one man, this "fiend," with whom
she is still half angry, were to go where he could never
come back ; where he would really be for ever lost to her;
where all his delicate, thoughtful, scorned, unrequited acts
were gone for ever—this thought for the first time has
found its way into her marble bosom, and it makes hor
tremble, it makes her hesitate, and the " Ask me no more"
with which the verse concludes is more troubled and softer
in its tone than that with which it begins. A new light
has shone in upon her, and the moment of hor conversion
is at hand. For her lover, possessed by the divine inspi-
ration of his love, will not, cannot, cease from his suit.
He still presses her with that which is a necessity for them
both ; which, though they neither of them know it, is their
Fate. He still "asks" her; and now comes the moment
when with all her force, all her fancied panoply of indif-
ference, she can resist no longer. And this time again
what a different meaning do the familiar words contain.
"Ask me no more! Not because I will net grant, but be-
cause I can no longer refuse,"—because she sees how true
is the instinct, how irresistible the fury, of real passion ,
because she is forced to admit how right as well as how
powerful her lover has been in his obstinate perseverance ;
because she finds herself too feeble, and is compelled to
give herself up to an influence which is too strong for her
weak will to combat. And observe how readily and
gracefully the concession is made, as all concessions should
be, when the inevitable moment has arrived. "No more,
dear love, for at a touch I yield." How wonderfully sweet
is the " dear love," following on the " too fond," and the
former verses ! Even to this it has come—" No more, dear
love, for at a touch I yield." "A touch,"— yes ! not yet
an embrace, but a touch—the touch of hand to hand, which
at such a moment does more than match to fire a magazine.
"No more,"—yes, "no more" now—no more importunity,
but also no more resistance -now, silence and fondness,
and unutterable union of hands to hands, and lips to lips,
and heart to heart, and being to being.
When we turn from the inward to the outward, from the
substance to the form of this exquisite poem, how truly and
astonishingly beautiful it is ! It would be difficult to find
a more striking example amongst the many that meet us on
every page of his works, of the singular power which Mr.
Tennyson possesses of clothing beautiful sentiments in
beautiful words, and thus fulfilling the definition which
Coleridge gave of poetry, that it was " the best thoughts in
the best language."
The stanza in its mode of rhyme has a ring of "In Me-
moriam," which will prejudice no one against it, though
the difference in the length of the lines and the addition
of the short terminal line, are sufficient to make the resem-
blance but a distant one.

I have already endeavoured to bring out the moral force
of the constant recurrence of the burthen, "Ask me no
more." But its artistic worth, in reference to the sound
alone, is hardly less ; and the finish which it gives to each
stanzas, and the expression of its varying cadence as the
phases of the drama alter, are beauties which may be felt,
but can hardly be described.

The ,music of the lines is throughout charming. It is
not perhaps quito equal to the last stanza of the 18th canto
of " Maud," beginning—

" Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay 2"
and containing the two most exquisite lines—
" To dreadful wastes where footless fancies dwell,
Among the fragments of the golden day;"
or to the Bugle Song from the "Princess," or to that other
idyll from the same—

" Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawns,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmurs of innumerable bees."
But then these are indeed pro-eminent instances oven of
Mr. Tennyson's pre-eminently melodious verso, and, being
less dramatic, they are able to be sober and smoother in
their flow.

Two things I venture to remark in the structure of the
verse of this poem. First, that it is almost entirely com-
posed of monosyllables. In the whole fifteen lines there
are only six words of two syllables. This gives a great
fulness to the lines ; and I can only find no other instance
of it, to the same degree, in Mr. Tennyson's works
Secondly, it is most interesting and instructive to observe
that whereas the paegagee jutit quoted, and others in the