The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-07-31

In the air men shall be seen,
In white, In black In green,
Iron on the river shall float
As easily as a wooden boat
Gold shall be found and shown
In lands not now known,
England shall ct .ast admit Jew.
/ And Ere and water shall wonders do.
Il. The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
/ TENNYSOA'S QUEEN MARY.''
English Views of the Latest Efort OF
| the Poet Laureate.
The London Times of June 10Th, has
the following review of Mr.. Tennyson's
Queen Mary: The appearance of Mr.
event of interest, it says, both for Eng
lish poetry and the English stage. To
say that the experiment. was regarded
with some anxiety by those who most
appreciate the subtlety of his artistic
power is only to say that fine poem in
the dramatic form is not necessarily a
fine drama but, unless we are deceived,
it will be GENERALLY allowed that Queen
Mary is not only fine poem, but a fine
drama, and that though each of the
several powers which go to make it SO
has already been proved by the author,
the mastery harmony in which they
work together here entities Queen Mary
to be considered something me re than
| merely a success in a new kind. The
dramatic glow and impetus which are
| proper to poem of action may be imi-
tated, but cannot be replaced by epic
| splendor or lyrical passion. In our
own days we have seen these, or feebler
substitutes, essayihg to do outy for it !;
but it is long since the genuine inspira-
ton, at least of tragedy, has been
among us. The ingenuity of the apollo
gies which have been suggested for the
fact is characteristic of the aga which
required them, but the fact is generally
| allowed. If we welcome Mr.. Tenny-
sons drama for one reason more than
another, it is for this-because here we
seem to recognize the presence of that
rare and precious virtue which has so
long seemed dead even in those works
| of English poetry which are most dis
tinctly products Of genius-dramatic
| fire; and if we had to say when last this
great quality found a comparably vivid
embodiment in the treatment of an
English historical subject, we should
not know where to stay our search until
it had carried us back to the year when
the series of Shakspeare's English his
tories was completed and crowned with
Henry V. The action of the drama
| covers the five years from "Marv's
accession, in 1853, to her death, in 1858.
As study of the time, at once truth
full in its broad aspects and accurate in
detail, we believe that it would bear the
scrutiny of Mr.. Froude and Mr.. Sped
ding. As a vivid picture of the whole
reign-of the feeling in England toward
the Spanish marriage, of "Mary's
effort to cancel not merely the Protes-
-,
crate reforms of the new learning, of
the temper in which the new parlia-
ment and the nation, after the submits
the purely Catholic policy of Spain,
| and, lastly, of that profound tragedy
which centers in the blasted hopes and
bighted love of the queen-the drama,
merely as a matter of English history,
can be appreciated by all. Some ex-
tracts follow, and then the reviewer con-
times: The paramount merit of the
poem as a work of art consists in the
skill with which the dramatist has held
the balance between the horror excited
by "Mary," the prosecutor, and the COM
passion felt for Mary" the sufferer.
Howard tells "Paget how he has
seen heretics of the poorer sort, in daily
expectation of the rack, lying chained
in sitting dungeons over steaming sew
ers, fed with bread that crawled upon
the tongue, drinking water Of which
every drop was q worm, until they died
of rotted limbs. Among those voices of
the night which pass the palace in
which "Mary is dying, there is one of
a citizen who had seen a woman burned
in Guernsey.
g" and in her agony
The mother came upon her-a child was
bonn
And. sir, they hurled IL back into the fire.
That, being but baptized in fire. the babe
Might be in fire forever"
The impression male by the entire
drama deepens that red brand which
rests on the memory of "Mary's," reign.
Yet, while the awful cruelties of q more
than Spanish bigotry are thus made to
live before the imagination, we are at
the same time irresistibly drawn to SYM
pathize with whatever is womanly,
whatever is heroic, whatever is of tragic
intensity in the miserable story of " Ma
ry,s" personal life. When, some months
after her marriage. MARY" for mo-
ment anticipates the realization of
great hope, her joy finds utterance in
what is, perhaps, the grandest, as it is
certainly the most pathetic passage of
the whole poem:
HE hath awaked he hath awaked!
He stirs within the darknessi
oh, Philip, husband now thine love to mine
Will cling more close, and those bleak man
ners thaw,
That make me ashamed and tonSue-tied in
my love
The second Prince of Peace
The great unborn defender Of Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies
He comes, and my star rises.
The stormy Wyatts and Northumberland
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fiercest partisans- pale
Before my STAR
The light of this new learning wanes and
dies
Into the deathless hell, which Is their doom,
Before my star!
His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind
His sword shall hew the hereto peoples
down?
His faith shall clothe the world that will be
his,
Like universal air and sunshine, Open,
Ye everlasting gates The King is here =
My star, my SON."
And when the end is near, and
"Mary," on her death bed, has passed
into delirium, the anguish brought by
the failure of that hope is interpreted
in q scene of wonderful power, from
which we quote only a few lines:
Mary This Philip shall not
Stare in upon me in my haggardness
Old, miserable, diseased.
Incapable of children. Come thou
| down. ICuts ont the picture
and throws it DOWN.
| Lie there. IWaitsl. o God. have
killed my Philip.
Madame, you have but cut the canvas
We can replace it.
| Mary All is well then rest-