Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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The Augusta Scmmary Annual. 5 In this, the shadow of death has fallen between two spirits who have been joined together in the closest friendship. That friendship had depended for its endnrance on the community of lofty and immortal sympathies, of great thoughts, of pure and earnest afifections. It was beyond the power of death to bring it to an end. Death could only cast a veil of shadow between two friends. It is a stillness, a lofty mournfulness, rather than an overwhelming sorrow that was cast over the life of Tennyson. The grave, majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an organ, yet acts as a brake or undue spasmodic outbursts of discordant grief. Perhaps in none of his minor poems has Tennyson shown the strength, tenderness and beauty of his genius to such a degree as in his epic, The Idyls of the King, where we find the old, old tales of Arthur and the Round Table retold for us, in picture-words, which take us back to the olden time when his knights swore, To reverence the king, As if he were their conscience, And conscience as their King. To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. To lead sweet lives in purest chastity To love me maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her b} ' years of noble deeds. The Idyls appeared in a disjointed series. It is hardly probable that the poet meant at first to write an epic. They grew as Wolf conceived the Homeiic legends to have done, until the time came for them to be united in one grand epic. Wave and transept, aisle after aisle, the Gothic minister ex- tended, until with the addition of a cloister here and a chapel yonder, the structure stood complete. TheArthur of poetry is a grand ideal character, whose true greatness Guinevesre realizes but too late, when she makes her moan, Ah ! my God What might I have not made of thy fair world, Had I but loved thy brightest creature here ? The Idyls, is an epic of chivalry — our conception of what knighthood should be rather than what it really was. The whole work is sufiused with the Tennysonian glamour of golden

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Mi El The Augusta Seminary Amuial. 11. ' ' Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious song, Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart. Therefore to thee, the laurel leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance. For thy allegiance to the poet ' s art. ENNYSON is by emminence the representative poet of J the recent era. Not, like one or another of his com- peers, representative of the melody, wisdom, passion, or other partial phase of the era, but of the time itself, with its diverse elements in harmonious conjunction. By the weight of his thought and the richness of his poetic expression, he has given delight to the reading world of his day and has won our gratitude as a purifier and guardian of the language. He has gleaned from all nature and all history what was most lofty and aim- iable. Not unfrequently he rises to the Shakespearian level in the beauty and picturesqueness of his expression, but he does not possess that wild forest-like freedom which so charcterizes the great master. Tennyson ' s command of English is wonderful. He com- bined old words into new epithets, he daringly mingled all col- ors to bring out tints that never were on sea or shore. His words gleam like pearls and opals, like rubies and emeralds. The stern vocables of the English language under the power of his imagination became gracefully brilliant as the leopards of Bacchus soft and glowing as the Cytherean doves. No finer group of songs has heen produced in this centurj ' than the melodies, Sweet and Eow. The splendor falls on castle walls, and Ask me no more. Not one of the blank verse songs, in his Arthurian epic, equals in structure or depth of feeling, Tears, idle tears, and O swallow, swallow, flying, flying south! What witchery of landscape and action; what fair women and brave men! The distinctive character of In Memoriam is deter- mined b} its having been composed, not within the compass of a few weeks, expressly in honor of a deceased friend, like Mil- ton ' s Lycidas and Shelley ' s Adonais, but during a number of years and apparently without being designed as a single poem.

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6 ' Ihe Augusta Setiiinary Annual. mist, and often blazes with light like that which flashed from the holy wizard ' sbook, when the covers were unclasped. It rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gathered shape. The Coming of Arthur is but an introduction to the Idyls. Tennyson seems only half in earnest, for he has not yet thrown the whole power of his wonderful genius into the work. How- ever, he gives us a picture of Arthur ' s court when the Round Table was in its highest glory. The splendor of the presence of the King Throned and delivering doom, Fills the ' • long- vaulted hall. There his knights are sworn to their vows Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, And uttermost obedience to the King. Arthur, the blameless King, gathers around him. A glorious company of men To serve as model for the mighty world. In the morbid jealousy of Geraint we see the first shadow of the world-taint which overthrew the glory of the Round Table. Elaine though less epical than Guinevere must be classed as one of the ' mountain summits of English poetry For pathetic sweetness and absolute beauty of narrative and rhythm, Elaine still remains dearest to the heart of maiden, youth or sage. The portrait of lyancelot is a higher, more difficult achieve- ment than that of Arthur. Tennyson here gives expression to the thought that no man can be truly happy in sin. Eancelot is not merely a man of the world, but a hero who, though he has swerved from the path of virtue, is at heart, as truly heroic, as deeply in sympathy with righteousness and honor as Arthur himelf. And now the glory of the Round Table grows less and less. At the Last Tournament it is almost gone and in Guinevere the heaven is clothed with sackcloth. There is nothing finer in modern verse than the interview between Arthur and his remorseful wife.