In Love and Duty, the lines describing the lovers parting The summer night, that paus'd irresistibly remind us of a similar scene in Wordsworth's Vaudracour and Julia: The galaxy display'd Her fires, that like mysterious pulses beat Aloft, momentous but uneasy bliss: To their full hearts the universe seem'd hung The lines about the hours- The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good, were of course suggested by Theocritus, Id. xv.104-5: βάρδισται μακάρων Ωραι φίλαι, ἀλλὰ ποθειναὶ ἔρχονται πάντεσσι βροτοῖς αἰεί τι φέροισαι (Tardiest of the Happy Ones are the beloved Hours, but greatly yearned for do they come, ever bringing some gift for all men). The very fine image, which concludes the poem, of Morning driving her plough of pearl Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, an image repeated with variation in The Princess, iii.— Morn in the white wake of the morning star Came furrowing all the orient into gold appears to have been suggested by Greene: Seest thou not Lycaon's son, The hardy plough-swain unto mighty Jove, We now come to Ulysses. The germ, the spirit, and the sentiment of this poem are from the twentysixth canto of Dante's Inferno. Tennyson has indeed done little but fill in the sketch of the great Florentine. As is usual with him in all cases where he borrows, the details and minuter portions of the work are his own; he has added grace, elaboration, and symmetry; he has called in the assistance of other poets. A rough crayon draught has been metamorphosed into a perfect picture. As the resemblances lie not so much in expression as in the general tone, we will in this case substitute for the original a literal version. Ulysses is speaking: Neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged sire, nor the due love which ought to have gladdened Penelope, could conquer in me the ardour which I had to become experienced in the world, and in human vice and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one ship, and with that small company which had not deserted me. . . . I and my companions were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks. O brothers,' I said, 'who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not to this the brief vigil of your senses that remain, experience of the unpeopled world beyond the sun. Consider your origin; ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.' . . . Night already saw the other pole with all its stars, and ours so low that it rose not from the ocean floor (Inferno, xxvi. 94–126). ... Now compare the key verses of Tennyson's poem. Ulysses speaks: I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd ... How dull it is to pause, to make an end! and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, To follow knowledge. There lies the port the vessel puffs her sail : There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me- The thunder and the sunshine. Death closes all: but something ere the end, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off. . . for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. In the poem the imitations from Homer and Virgil are too obvious to need specifying. One may be noted: Sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows, from Odyssey, iv. 580, and ix. 104:— ἑξῆς δ' ἑζόμενοι πολιὴν ἅλα τύπτον ἐρετμοῖς (And sitting in order they kept smiting the hoary brine with their oars). The reminiscences from Horace, Teucer's speech to his comrades, Odes, I. vii. 24-32, are equally unmistakable. So too Virgil's pluvias Hyadas, En. i. 748, and iii. 516. The style of Tithonus, in diction, tone, and colour alike, is obviously modelled on the soliloquies in the Greek plays, but particularly on those in Sophocles; its exact counterpart in point of style would probably be the soliloquy of Ajax (Ajax, 645-692 and 815–865), the colour of course being richer, and the rhythm softer and more plaintive. The story is told in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218–239. Here at the quiet limit of the world : ναῖε παρ' ὠκεανοῖο ῥοῇς, ἐπὶ πείρασι γαίης (Hom. Hymn, 227) (He dwelt by the ocean stream, at the limits of the earth). A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream is a transfusion of the Homeric σκιῇ εἴκελος ἢ καὶ ὀνείρῳ (Odyss. xi. 208) (Like to a shadow or even a dream). The superb image, applied to the horses of Aurora's shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire has been anticipated by Marston : See the dapple grey coursers of the morn Beat up the light with their bright silver hoofs The 'saying learnt,' namely that The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts, is of course an allusion to the well-known couplet of Agathon quoted by Aristotle (Ethics N. vi. 2) :— μόνου γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεὸς στερίσκεται, (Of this thing alone is even God deprived-to make undone whatsoever hath been done). Cf. too Horace, Odes, III. xxix. 45-48. When Ilion like a mist rose into towers is a reminiscence of Milton's Pandemonium : Out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation. I earth in earth forget these empty courts: So Stephen Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure, xlv. :- In Locksley Hall the poet seems to have laid many of his brethren under contribution. Early in the poem there is a parallel worth noting perhaps : Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. In the poems of that elegant writer of happy trifles, W. R. Spencer, we find a verse— What eye with clear account remarks The ebbing of his glass, When all its sands are diamond sparks, That dazzle as they pass? (SPENCER'S Poems, p. 166.) The magnificent line- And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips looks like a reminiscence of Guarini's Pastor Fido, act ii. scene 6: |