Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-08-04
I remember the poets .repeating-"Horace
and Keats"
HE p1sI1KED DULL ROUTINE.

HE DIsLIKED DULL ROUTINE.
When the time for accepting profession
came, the future poet laureate refused to
trammel himself by undertaking any form
of business or routine. He preferred to face
the probability of poverty to doing anything
which should disturb the development of
the genius within him. 1t was, perhaps, q
perilous experiment, but one which has been
justified thousand fold. Lord Tennyson,
although he started In life anything but
What is called Comfortably off," has never
done days work for his living. Or, to be
accurate, he has worked as few have done,
but Mt kind and class of labor peculiar to
himself. Some day, no doubt, the curtain
will be drawn from the poets early life, and
it will be seen with what passionate zeal
and persistent energy he toiled to become a
master of all the best that literature and
nature have to offer to student such as he
was.
After this first apprenticeship to the great
writer's of antiquity and to the leading elder
poets of his own race, Lord Tennyson ceased
to show sign of any outward influence. He
created, almost before he was OF age, style,
which was Enthusiastically his own, and
which has remained so, with the obvious
notifications OF increasing age.
About a stonecast from the wall
A sluice with blaoken'd waters slept
And DER il many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish:mosses crept.
Hard by poplar shook alway.
All silver green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste. the surrounding gray.
She only said. my life is dreary,
He cometh not" She said;
'.rm a-weary,"
She said. n would that I,were dead"
This stanza, as perhaps but few readers
realize, was written 60 years ago. When it
was written there was no one but Tenn yson
who could have composed it; it is still
perfectly typical example of his style. That
style, SO meilifiuous and polished In its man
nerism, has been applied to so many forms of
poetry within the last half century that, with
multitude of uncrirical readers, it has come to
suggest the typical form of verse. 1t has been
initiated with success by myriads of more or
less accomplished songsters. As Lord Tenny-
son himself complains, in his little piece called
''The Flower"
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.
But the blossoms born of this accidental SOW
ing do not come to stay; they bloom for a mo-
ment and disappear. The model on which they
equal, outlasts them, and will outlast all the
vicissitudes of task and time.
HIS LAST POEM NOT WRITTEN.
We are not called upon yet to form a final
Judgment on Lord Tennyson's poetry. Hap
PLY, indeed, it is not all yet in our hands A
new volume Is, at the moment IN Wnlch write,
lying in Messrs. Macmillan's shop ready to be
published IN the ensuing winter. We are not
likely to be disappointed in these winter bios
SONS of Lord Tennyson's garden. He was II
when he gave us "Rizpah" and "The Voyage
of Maeldune;' he was 70 when he gave us "The
Spinster's Sweet Arts" and "Frater que Vale"
No doubt the treasury of our literature will be
permanently enriched by the contents Of the
first book any great poet has given to the En-
glish-speaking world after the age of so.
Meanwhile, the whole race rises to-day to
do honor to this glorious old man. as all
Athens rose to carry Sophocles back from the
tribunal of the Phratores, after the recitation
of his "Edipus" at Colonus. Let us be careful,
however, even in our congratulations. If
Pliny is to be believed. Sophocles died of
fatigue in consequence Of the bolsterous accla-
nations of his countrymen. There is this
difference. however. between the English case
and the Greek one. All that was said of
Sophocles had been said in his presence. In
these days of newspapers and magazines Lord
Tennyson may sit among the dry-tongued
laurels at Farringford and hear as little as he
pleases of our plaudits. EDMUND GossE.