Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flush'd guests, and golden goblets, foam'd with wine,
While the deep burnish'd foliage overhead
Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon."

This really is a pretty picture; its worst, and perhaps its only fault, being that it constantly reminds us of the superior original artist. Throughout the book indeed, and incorporated in many of the poems, there occur images to which Mr Tennyson has a decided right by priority of invention, and which the Strayed Reveller has "conveyed" with little attention to ceremony. For example, in a poem which we never much admired, The Vision of Sin, Mr Tennyson has the two following lines —

"And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn."

This image is afterwards repeated in the Princess. Thus —

"Till the sun
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns."

Young Danby catches at the idea, and straightway favours us with a copy —

"When the first rose-flush was steeping
All the frore peak's awful crown."

The image is a natural one, and of course open to all the world, but the diction has been clearly borrowed.

Not only in blank verse but in lyrics does the Tennysonian tendency of our author break out, and to that tendency we owe by far the best poem in the present volume. "The Forsaken Merman," though the subject is fantastic, and though it has further the disadvantage of directly reminding us of one of Alfred's early extravaganzas, is nevertheless indicative of considerable power, not only of imagery and versification, but of actual pathos. A maiden of the earth has been taken down to the depths of the sea, where for years she has resided with her merman lover, and has borne him children. We shall let the poet tell the rest of his story, the more readily because we are anxious that he should receive credit for what real poetical accomplishment he possesses, and that he may not suppose, from our censure of his faults, that we are at all indifferent to his merits.

"Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.
She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
'Twill be Easter-time in the world – ah me'
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'
I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'
She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

"Children dear, were we long alone?
'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.
Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say.
Come,' I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town.
Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,
To the little gray church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
'Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.
Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone,
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.'
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were sealed to the holy book.
'Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.'
Come away, children, call no more.
Come away, come down, call no more.

"Down, down, down,
Down to the depths of the sea.
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark, what she sings; 'O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy.
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.
For the wheel where I spun,
And the bless'd light of the sun.'
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the shuttle falls from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh,
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair."

Had the author given us much poetry like this, our task would, indeed, have been a pleasant one; but as the case is otherwise, we can do no more than point to the solitary pearl. Yet it is something to know that, in spite of imitation, and a taste which has gone far astray, this writer has powers, which, if properly directed and developed, might insure him a sympathy, which, for the present, must be withheld. Sympathy, indeed, he cannot look for, so long as he appeals neither to the heart, the affections, nor the passions of mankind, but prefers appearing before them in the ridiculous guise of a misanthrope. He would fain persuade us that he is a sort of Timon, who, despairing of the tendency of the age, wishes to wrap himself up in the mantle of necessity, and to take no part whatever in the vulgar concerns of existence. It is absolutely ridiculous to find this young gentleman – after confiding "to a Republican friend" the fact that he despises

"The barren, optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true,
And for such doing have no need of eyes," —

thus favouring the public in a sonnet with his views touching the onward progress of society: —

"Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud