old has long since been in the heavenly life, we understand how the clear edges of passion melt into ideal mist; and then we read the poem from the poet's point of view. The Talking Oak is another poem of youthful love. The lover to whom the tree speaks of his maiden and who tells the tree of her, is a motive which has been often used, but never with greater skill and charm. There is a youthful animation, and a happy chivalry in rivalry of praise between the lover and the tree, which are full of natural grace, that quality somewhat rare in Tennyson, who was frequently too academic, too careful in his work to attain it. In this poem, also, his inweaving of Nature's heart with the heart of man is more than plain. The oak talks to the lover. Nay, the oak itself is in love with the maiden. His very sap is stirred by her kiss. He drops an acorn on her breast; and the half-jealous lover knows that he need not be jealous. Above all, there is no poem more English in all the poems of Tennyson. We see the park, the Chase that Englishmen of all ranks love so well; the roofs of the great house above the trees; the wild woodland deep in fern, the deer, the mighty trees, the oak which has watched so many English generations, so much of English history-bluff Harry who turned the monks adrift-the Roundhead humming his surly hymn-the modish beauties of the Court of Anne-the English girl of to-day who leaves her novel and piano to race singing through the park. This is Tennyson close down to his own land, vitally interested in modern life, and the thing and its method are new in English poetry. The same springtide of love is described in Locksley Hall and in the gay delightfulness of The DayDream, with its modern applications; but in Locksley Hall we pass on into one of those graver phases of love which Tennyson now treated. The hero's love suffers a mean disillusion, and he is angry like a boy; but in Love and Duty the matter is more serious. Two love one another, whom duty forbids to fulfil their love. Was the love fruitless, did it turn to dust? Because passion was denied, were two lives ruined? No, is the answer of Tennyson. Because duty was lord over passion and drove their lives apart, love itself, honoured more in giving up than in taking an earthly joy contrary to righteousness, lasted in both hearts, unstained and lovely, and bettered both their lives. The man, emerging from himself, gained the higher love, and never knew The set gray life, and apathetic end. The woman knew, when the parting was over, that all Life needs for life is possible to will. And happiness came to her, and freedom, and the distant light was pure. There was a conviction in Tennyson's mind that the sanctity of the marriage tie was one of the eternal foundations of all true personal, social, and national life; that no amount of passionate love excused its breakage. This is not the view of the artists in general, but it is the view which prevails in the English nation. And Tennyson felt and represented it all through his poetry. It is a sin G 3 against that, with all its excuses also stated which, in his recast of the Arthurian story, overthrows the whole life-work of the king and brings about the last great battle and the death. It is to establish the true idea of marriage as he conceived it that The Princess was written; and a number of other poems, enshrining his reverence for long-continued faithfulness through all the troubles of domestic life, and culminating in the honour he gave to the Crown, chiefly for this reason, make him, even more than Wordsworth, the poet of the sanctity of marriage. Love and Duty seems to be the first of these poems. Two things are, however, curious in this poem. One is the passionate meeting of the lovers. From Tennyson's steady point of view, married faith which permitted what he relates is not faith at all. And if it was not marriage, but some other duty which stood in the way, then the intensity of the piece is overdone. That is the first curious thing, and the second is the predominance of the man in the matter. It is he that feels the most; it is he that directs the whole business of duty. It is he that expresses passion, or allows it to be expressed. It is he alone who is strong, who alone resists; and when both retire into steady life, he alone does work; "he is most Godlike, being most a man," and he uses his self-conquest to improve the world; but the woman tends her flowers, is sadly happy, dreams a little by day, dreams more at night, and does no human work at all. In The Princess, Tennyson expands another view, being somewhat forced into it by his subject. But, on the whole, this subordinate position of woman, or rather this instinctive dominance of the man, is a weakness, at least from our modern point of view, in his work. He never conceives womanhood quite clearly. The masculine is too strong in him for that, and its preponderance is the cause why few of his women have the weight, the worth, or the character some other poets give them. Wordsworth's picture of his sister, his short poem to his wife, his Affliction of Margaret, his Highland Girl, any of his women, are of more reality than the women of Tennyson. It seems and it is a fault in a poet-as if at the bottom of his mind, and in spite of his Princess, he tended to the view of woman which his angry boy expresses in Locksley Hall: Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine. This is, of course, continually modified. He is always trying to conceive women as higher than * Compare the passion of motherhood as expressed in this magnificent poem with that of Psyche in The Princess in the lines beginning Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more. There is no comparison. Indeed, the motherhood in Wordsworth's The Complaint and in Her eyes are wild is closer, more intimate to this primal passion, than anything in Tennyson, save always the intense penetration of Rizpah. My baby, the bones that had suck'd me, the bones that had laughed and cried Theirs? O, no! they are mine-not theirs-they had moved in my side. That is as great as Nature herself, this, and he succeeds; but a blind pull in his mind, growing out of his nature, appears to draw him back to this lower conception. He cannot get his women of equal worth with his men. One of the results of this is that there is no vital or supreme passion between the sexes expressed by Tennyson. There is always a certain element of condescension in the man, and where there is a shred of condescension there is no supreme passion. The nearest he gets to it is in the expression of the longing for lost love, and this is expressed by the man rather than by the woman.* It is the man who utters in Maud that most sorrowful and lovely of all Tennyson's cries : O that 'twere possible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true love But of the longing for lost love there are two poems, one in this book, and one included in it little later, which record the wild love-sorrow of men. One is a kind of ballad, Edward Gray, and the greater part of it attains power through its simplicity, but Tennyson was led. away at the end, and the poem There are always exceptions to be found to general statements of this kind, and they are frequently strong exceptions. Elaine draws near to such an exception, and the song in The Princess-" Tears, idle tears "-is sung by a girl, and she sings it in her own person. The lines: Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; are intimate with a passion elsewhere almost unknown in Tennyson. |