The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-06-25
TENNYSON'S POEMS ON
classical SUBJECTS"

There lies the port: the vessel puffs
her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas My
mariners
Souls that have toil'd and wrought ana
thought with me.
That ever with a froic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine and OPP
posed
True hearts. free foreheads. You and
| are old
odd age hath yet his honor and his
Death closes all. but something ere the
Some work of noble note may yet be
done,
gods
The lights begin to twinkle from the
rocks:
The long day wanes; the slow moon
climbs: the deep
Means round with many voices. Come,
my friends,
IT'S not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off. and sitting well in order smite
The sounding burrows; for my purpose
holds
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
OF all the western stars until die
1t may be that the CULTS will wash us
down:
1T may be we snail touch the HAPPY
Isles
And see the great Achilles whom we
knew"
In "Tithonus' Tennyson treats the
beautiful myth of the youth who was
loved by Aurora. the goddess of the
| dawn. Aurora had at his request be
slowed upon her lover the gift of i'm
mortality. But Tithonus had neglected
| to ask for perpetual youth. and finding
fol f,-H n
| tolerabfe he implOres the goddess to
! withdraw her gift and let him die.
The entire poem is exquisite and replete
| with classical imagery and expression.
but ! would be trespassing too much
upon your space if / quoted it in full,
The following beautiful passage in the
| Dream of Fair Women in which
Iphigenia describes her own immola-
| ton at "Aulis," was clearly inspired by
Euripeie's "Iphigenia in Aulede'
Il was cut off from hope in that sad
Which men calId Aulis in those iron
years
My father held his hand upon his face;
T. blinded with my tears,
| Still stroVe TO speak; my voice was
thick with signs,
AS in dream. Di'nly | could descry
| The stern black bearded kings with
| wolfsh eyes
| Waiting to see me die.
| The high masts fiicker'd as they lay
| ahoat;
The crowds, the temples waverd, and
the shore.
| The bright death quiver'd at the vic
| Tins throat.
Touch'd. and ! knew no more
The poems from which l have quoted
| were avowedly written in imitation Of
49,, l,1- n IT
scores of passages to prove that Ten
nyson's general style was tinged by
classical forms of expressions. Take, for
instance, the following lines from his
Deserted House,"
All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light,
And no murmur al the door,
| So frequent on its hinge before
The last two lines are unquestonably
an echo from one of the odeS of Horace
| Tennyson is pre-eminently the poet al
the cultured classes. and of all the Vic
torian" poets | should prefer to see his
works in the hands of boys and sgirlS
His splendid poetry is the ''melloWeC
reflex" of his own elorifed life. As son
brother, husband, friend, Tennyson ap
preached as near perfection as it is
given to few to go, and from his melodi-
Gus teaching the youthful mind vii
learn to honor in man and woman no.
blity of character and kindness OF
heart and to despiSe everything con
temptble and mean. no matter how
highly placed. He lacks the intense fire
and enchanting glamor of Byron anC
falls far behind Shelley in metrica
melody and loftiness of lyric flight. bu
he is more self-c0ntained and ennoblint
than either. His was not the flash anC
thunder of the cataract. rather was hi.
poetry like a river of Danubian volume
and sweep, holding its imperial course
through verdurous, flower decked bank:
and mur1nuring sweetly as his owl
brook, past many fairy foreland Sc
with willow weed and malloW," till
having passed the bar" of time. i
sank melodousIy into the limitlas
ocean of eternity. r. P. O'BR1EN.
Anaconda, June "a, 1899.