For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam," Having thus disposed of the times, Tennyson, with some rhyme, but no reason, thus abruptly introduces Maud: There are workmen up at the Hall: they are coming back from abroad, I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud, I play'd with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair. Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, grapes, What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse. Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse. At length Maud arrives at the village, and the hero being "round the corner" along with all the bumpkins, catches a glimpse of her "sensitive nose," and going home he thus pours out his feelings: : Long have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at last! Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full, Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose, From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen. The "sensitive nose" appears to have acted upon the mind of the lover with an "Unfortunate Miss Bailey, Giles Scroggins, and Ghost of a Grim Serag of Mutton, combined power, and Tennyson, thus, not forgetting his never failing "Orion describes his restless condition: Cold and clear cut face, why come you so cruelly meck, He meets Maud "as she rode by on the moor;" she flushes with pride at his salutation, and having told himself that she is a "milk white fawn," and "all unmeet for a wife," that she haswandered about at her will," he adds, prettily"You have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life." Let the reader bear in mind that these lines above quoted are from the pen of Alfred Tennyson: the man of all others in these Kingdoms from whom one might expect taste and feeling. Who could believe that the writer of The Miller's Daughter was able to indite this nonsense. We have heard Tennyson called thoughtful and philosophic, like Wordsworth; fanciful as Coleridge; pathetic, yet strong, as Crabbe. But is this like Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Crabbe? Maud's brother appears to have excited the lover's anger; Sim writes; "That dandy-despot, he, That jewell'd mass of millinery, Tappertit is found trespassing by the brother, and angry at being so discovered, he thus describes him, and he reminds us of a saying of Charles Lamb--we paint our enemies so unflatteringly that no body knows them. There is a curious. problem in obstetrics and physiology suggested towards the end of this extract, in which it is stated that Maud is "only the child of her mother." Scorn'd, to be scorn'd by one that I scorn, That a calamity hard to be borne? And six feet two, as I think, he stands; Who shall call me ungentle, unfair, Why sits he here in his father's chair? Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat; Made her only the child of her mother, And heap'd the whole inherited sin Far upon a lonely moor he sees his mistress ride, and by her side her brother and a new made lord, splendour plucks The slavish hat from the villager's head." It seems that this new made lord was the grandson of an owner of coal mines, who had lately died, "Gone to a blacker pit, for whom Grimy nakedness dragging his trucks The maiden, however, is not to be won by the "new made lord;" she loves Tennyson, or Tappertit, or whatever the reader pleases to call him, and thus he sings; and sings very prettily too; the lines in italics, in the sixth stanza, are, as Tennyson's verses often are, like, too like, Herrick : We do not admire this "little King Charles is snarling" and darling" it jars upon the ear, and reminds us of Sam Lover's Molly Bawn, and "The wicked watch-dog near is snarlin', He takes me for a thief you see, For he knows I'd steal you Molly darlin' A grand political dinner, A dinner and then a dance," are to be given to "the men of many acres," and "the maids and marriage makers," by the brother of Maud, his father being now dead; but Tappertit will not go, not being asked, as he tells us, but he does not mind it, bless you; he prefers hanging about Maud's "rose-garden," knowing that she will come to him-"Love among the roses-" when she has got rid of the company. Here, however, we have a bit of the real Tennyson poetry, with not the least touch of poor Sim Tappertit. The following beautiful lines are an invocation to Maud, entreating her to come to her lover in the " rose garden," and there is a passion and tenderness about them almost sufficient to redeem that shocking. "Oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull, Smelling of musk and of insolence," to which we have already referred. The lines are as follow: Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd And a hush with the setting moon. I said to the lily, There is but one With whom she has heart to be gay. I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes O young lord-lover, what sighs are those, And the soul of the rose went into my blood, And long by the garden lake I stood, From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes, To the woody hollows in which we meet The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree; The white lake blossom fell into the lake, As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; But the rose was awake all night for your sake, Knowing your promise to me; The lilies and roses were all awake, They sigh'd for the dawn and thee. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls, To the flowers, and be their sun. There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, She is near, she is near;" And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;' The larkspur listens, I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers, I wait.' She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red. Maud comes forth to meet her lover: her brother and the "new made lord" surprise them, and the tale of sorrow and blood is thus told : The fault was mine, the fault was mine Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still, Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill ?— It is this guilty hand! And there rises ever a passionate cry From underneath in the darkening land What is it, that has been done? O dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky, The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising sun, The fires of Hell and of Hate; For she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word, 460 When her brother ran in his rage to the gate, Heap'd on her terms of disgrace, And while she wept, and I strove to be cool, Till I with as fierce an anger spoke, And he struck me, madman, over the face, Who was gaping and grinning by: Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe; For front to front in an hour we stood, And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christless code, Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow. The fault was mine,' he whisper'd, 'fly!' Then glided out of the joyous wood The ghastly Wraith of one that I know; And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry, A cry for a brother's blood: It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die. Is it gone? my pulses beat What was it? a lying trick of the brain? Yet I thought I saw her stand, A shadow there at my feet, High over the shadowy land. It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain, When they should burst and drown with deluging storms The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust, The little hearts that know not how to forgive: Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just, Far away to foreign lands flies the lover, and never more in life knows he rest or joy. Racked in conscience; love all hopeless, life objectless; nothing in the future save despair, nothing in the present except bitter memories of the woful past; and yet amidst all his griefs, above every sorrow rises the image of his love, and thus he tells us of his hopes and fears It leads me forth at evening At the shouts, the leagues of lights, Half the night I waste in sighs, "Tis a morning pure and sweet, |