No adequate estimate of Tennyson's work can be made in the small space
allotted to this article. All that can be done is to mention a few of
his best works and to quote a few of his stirring lines. If the reader
will study these poems he will be pretty sure to read more of
Tennyson. To my mind, _Locksley Hall_ is Tennyson's finest poem, as
true to-day as when it was written seventy years ago. The long,
rolling, trochaic verse, like the billows on the coast that it
pictures, suits the thought. The poem is the passionate lament of a
returned soldier from India over the mercenary marriage of the cousin
whom he loved. Here are a few of the lines that will never die:
Many a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool!
Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.
Mated with a squalid savage--what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time.
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