TENNYSON'S MAUD AND OTHER POEMS.'

Maid is a poem which if published anonymously would have perplexed the critics, and have failed to win for itself any loud applause from the multitude of readers of poetry. It is in many respects so unlike anything that _Mr. Tennyson has hi- therto published that its authorship might have escaped detection; and its beauties are of so severe a character as to form no attraction to readers who look to poetry for amusement without reflection, for a strong stimulus to relieve them of the monotony and ennui of life without an effort of their own imaginative and moral powers. The poems by which Mr. Tennyson is most popularly known and admired are distinguished for remarkable richness and splendour of language, variety and fulness of allusion, great me- trical skill, and a treatment of subjects which penetrates and kindles wide philosophic truths with the passion of personal feel- ings. True, he enhances his richness of style with occasional homeliness ; his learning and varied knowledge do not prevent him from every now and then almost startling his readers with lines and phrases of intense directness and force of simplicity ; he will break the regularity and melody of his measure for the sake of a specially appropriate effect; and he has shown a power of ex- pressing simple emotion that places him at-the top of the natural- istic English school. But a broad survey of his writings would show a great preponderance of that sort of excellence and power that belong to elaboration of thought and style, to an advanced literary period in which the spontaneity of poetry is sacri- ficed to studied effect, and the poet becomes the laboured and polished writer, rather than the singer who pours forth what the inspiration of the moment suggests. We do not imagine that Maud has been written with less art than his most evidently ela- borated poems, but the art is directed differently. The language is neither rich nor splendid, but *hat fire it has burns and smoulders within rather than shines out in superficial brightness and colour. The measure is varied and irregular, flowing as the gusts of pas- sion and the currents of thought drive it, aiming apparently at no mere charm for the ear, the rhymes often neglected altogether, and often so removed from each other as to give little more than the effect of lyrical blank verse. Then, the thought is not discursive, but arises immediately out of personal emotion, and is onesided, passionate, intense ; not broad, calm, and of philosophic compass; it belongs to the man who utters it, in the particular mood of mind in which he utters it, and is not the expression of a soul triumph- ing over the clouds of passion and the storms of time ; in other words, it is intensely personal, and dramatic. A poem which pre- sents only a sli ht framework of incidents faintly hinted, which

rejects what y be called the decorative arts of poetry, which at-

tempts no s action for the speculative intellect, no solution of the world- lems of our age, but which, on the other hand, calls on its rea •to sympathize with the rapid and vehement changes of passion m a morbid cynicism, through a rapturous eostaey of

'Maud, 1W-other Poems. By Mired Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. Pub- lished by Melon.

tenderness, through the stupefaction of a great and sudden misery, through the moans of incipient delirium, and the frantic shrieks of madness, to a final reawakening to the aims and interests of publio life—is a poem which, whatever attractions it may have for the few who really enjoy the great masters of pathos and passion, can scarcely win for itself a wide or immediate popularity among the miscellaneous reading public.

The story is told in detached passages, which may be best de- scribed as fragments from a poetical diary: The writer is, at the commencement, a young man soured in temper and blighted in hope by a great calamity, in which the fortunes of his family have been ruined, and through which his father is supposed to have put an end to his own life. He is living alone upon the wreck of his fortunes, indulging a gloomy and misanthropic temper, when a wealthy neighbour, who had thriven by the same speculation that had ruined his father, returns to the village after some years' ab- sence, with his young daughter Maud. At the first glance, as Maud passes in the carriage, she appears to the diarist faultily fault- less, icily regular," &c. ; but something in her face has touched him more deeply than he knows, and it comes back upon his dreams, haunting him. The fancy time caught, the heart is for some time repelled by an appearance of haughtiness and distance on Mau.d's part. It is, however, a fallacious appearance.

"Morning arises stormy and pale ; No sun, but a warmish glare In fold upon fold of hueless cloud ; And the budded peaks of the wood are bow'd Caught and cuffed by the gale: I had fancied it would be fair.

Whom but Maud should I meet Last night, when the sunset burned On the blossomed gable-ends At the head of the village street, Whom but Maud should I meet ?

And she touched my hand With a smile so sweet

She made me divine amends For a courtesy not returned.

And thus a delicate spark Of glowing and growing ligitt Through the livelong hours of the dark Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams, Ready to burst in a coloured flame ; Till at last when the morning mime In a cloud, it faded, and seems But an ashen-gray delight.

What if with her sunny hair, And smile as sunny as cold,

She meant to weave me a snare

Of some coquettish deceit, Cleopatra. like as of old, To entangle me when we met, To have her lion roll in a silken net

Asad fawn at a victor's feet,

Ah, what shall I be at fifty' Should Nature keep me alive, If I find the world ao bitter When I am but twenty-five ? Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seemed, And her smile were all that I dreamed, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet."

Maud's smile is not deceitful. She returns the passion of the journal-writer. Thus he records the completeness of his happiness, in a strain which, in our judgment, is quite unrivalled for its tenderness and " rapture of repose."

I have led her home, my love, my only friend.

There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end, Full to the 'banks, close on the promised good.

None like her none.

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk Seemed her light foot along the garden-walk,

And shook my heart to think she comes once more ; But even then I heard her close the door ;

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.

There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

0, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, though thy limbs have here increased, Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the South, and fed With honey'd rain and delicate air, And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar-flame ; And over whom thy darkness must have spread With such delight as theirs of old, thy great Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limbed Eve from whom she came.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day On in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seemed far better to be born To labour and the mattock-hardened hand, Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man.

But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The countercharm of space and hollow sky, And do accept my madness, and would die To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

Would die ; for sullen-seeming death may give

More life to love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet 'tin sweet to live. Let no one ask me how it came to pass ; It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

Not die ; but live a life of truest breath, And tench true life to fight with mortal wrongs.

0, why should love, like men in drinking-songs, Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death ?

Make answer, Maud my bliss, Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss, Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this ? 'The dusky strand of death inwoven here With dear love's tie, makes love himself more dear.'"

The happiness is soon disturbed' Mand's brother— "That oiled and curled Assyrian bull, Smelling of musk and insolence "- breaks in upon an interview of the lovers; • and a quarrel results, followed by a duel, in which the brother is killed. The writer of the journal flies to Brittany; but the shock has crushed his heart and struck his brain. He is haunted everywhere by a fixed image of Maud in her shroud. The following passage, perhaps the finest in the whole poem, describes his sensations in some great city. "0 that 'twere possible

After long grief and pain To find the aThis df my true love Round me once again !

When I was wont to meet her In the silent woody places Of the land that gave me birth, We stood tranced in long embraces Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter Than anything on earth.

A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee ; Ah Christ! that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

It leads me forth at evening, It lightly winds and steals In a cold white robe before me, When all my spirit reels At the shouts, the leagues of lights, And the roaring of the wheels.

Half the night I waste in sighs, Half in dreams I sorrow after The delight of early skies; In a wakeful doze I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes, For the meeting of the morrow, The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies.

'Tis a morning pure and sweet,

And a dewy splendour falls

On the little flower that clings To the turrets and the walls ;

'Tis a morning pure and sweet,

And the light and shadow Sect: She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings; In a moment we shall meet ; She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings.

Do I hear her sing as of old, My bird with the shining head, My own dove with the tender eye ? But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry, There is some one dying or dead, And a sullen thunder is rolled;

For a tumult shakes the city,

And I wake, my dream is fled ; In the shuddering dawn, behold, Without knowledge, isithout pity, By the curtains of my bed That abiding phantom cold.

Get thee hence, nor come again, Mix not memory with doubt, Pass, thou deathlike type of pain, Pass and cease to move about, 'Tis the blot upon the brain That will show itself without.

Then I rise, the eavedrops fall, And the yellow vapours choke The great city sounding wide; The day comes, a dull red ball . Wrapt data of lurid smoke On the misty river-tide.

Through the hubbub of the market , I steal, a wasted frame, • It crosses here, it crosses there, Through all that crowd confused and loud, The shadow still the same ; And on my heavy eyelids My anguish hangs like shame.

Alas for her that met me, That heard me softly call, Came glimmering through the laurels At the quiet evenfall, In the garden by the turrets Of the old manorial hall. Would the happy spirit descend, From the realms of light and song, In the chamber or the street, As she looks among the blest, Should I fear to greet my fri aid Or to say Forgive the wrong,' Or to ask her, Take me, sweet, To the regions of thy rest' ?

But the broad light glares and beats, And the shadow flits and fleets And will not let me be ; And I loathe the squares and streets, And the faces that one meets, Hearts with no love for me: Always I long to creep Into some still cavern deep, There to weep, and weep, and weep My whole soul out to thee."

Raving madness follows this chronic excitement of the brain, from which an appearance of Maud in a dream begins the cure ; and the final restoration to a healthy activity is caused by the war with Russia, and the consequent hopes for the world and the eleva- tion of the tone of the English nation.

"And as months ran on and rumour of battle grew, It is time, it is time, 0 passionate heart,' said I, (For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true,) • It is time, 0 passionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die: And I stood on a giant deck, and mix'd my breath With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry,

Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly

Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.

Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told ; And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd !

Though many a light shall darken, and many shall weep For those that are erush'd in the clash of jarring claims. Yet God's just doom shall be wreak'd on a giant liar ; And many a darkness into the light shall leap, And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And noble thought be freer under the sun, And the heart of a people beat with one desire ; For the long, long canker of peace is over and done. And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire."

The extracts we have given will enable our readers to., estimate the quality of Maud as a love-poem. The Cynicism of the earlier portion is as intense as the tenderness of the passages we have printed, and of the closest contemporary bearing, -branding- with fierce invective the freshest meannesses and vices of the Eng- lish nation. The madhouse scene has a terrible heartrending gro- tesqueness; and the vigorous energy of the close admirably renders the sudden reawakening of a diseased mind to hope and activity under the influence of a strong national impulse, and the kindling excitement of a great promise for the world. Much of the poem is written in a rhyming dactylic verse, which is to us a novelty, the stanza consisting of four lines rhyming alternately, or of six the first three of which-rhyme respectively with the last three, The dactylic measure has a fair chance, when such a master of metre as Mr. Tennysoghandles it, and gives it the additional charm of rhyme ; but even A his hands-it fails to please the ear in any- thing like proportion to the difficulty of writing in it, though every new metre treated by a master adds to the resources and variety of the art. As a whole, Maud is perfectly intelli- gible in its action, the character of the autobiographic hero is well marked, and the changes of passion are indicated with a dra- matic force and singleness of aim which Mr. Tennyson has never before reached. We have heard it remarked that close study of Goethe is very perceptible in this poem. In freedom of move- ment, in bold selection of typical scenes leaving all connecting links of incidents to the reader's imagination, in the sacrifice of all subordinate interest to dramatic strength and intensity, in a a style that seems a perfectly achromatic medium of passion, we recognize this influence. Nor should we fear to place Maud and her lover beside Margaret and Faust, for the exquisite delicacy, purity, and depth of passion exhibited; though dialogue gives a more lifelike and complete presentation than the form adopted by Mr. Tennyson, and Hand presented only in her lover's diary is a vague and shadowy image compared with Margaret uttering her own heart's music, and gleaming like an angel of purity and peace and joy on the lurid storm of Faust's restless earthly passions' and the stony desert glare of the impassible Devil-nature which tempts and mocks him.

The "other Poems" comprise one idyll, "The Brook," which will rank with the idylls of earlier date in its ease of manner and freshness of feeling; the corrected version. of the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington's Funeral" ; and three or four smaller which will not add to their writer's poetical reputation, though a& the one addressed to Frederic Denison Maurice, the godfather 0 the poet's son, is a pleasant epistle in verse.