Chapter C: Section II: Portraits of Women

What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of women: Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, from the hand of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, embossed with flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of delicate faces, always elegant and always correct, which we might take to be sketched at random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white vellum, slightly touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy the soft, white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated many ideas and many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of these portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or shaded by the neighboring tint, with all the boldness and results of the happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. And there an art so just, so consummate, is necessary to paint the charming prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half blushes, the imperceptible and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty. He opposes, harmonizes them, makes of them, as it were, a gallery. Here is the frolicsome child, the little fluttering fairy, who clasps her tiny hands, who,

"So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gather'd wimple Glancing with black-beaded eyes, Till the lightning laughters dimple The baby-roses in her cheeks; Then away she flies."[434]

Then the pensive fair, who dreams, with large open blue eyes:

"Whence that aery bloom of thine, Like a lily which the sun Looks thro' in his sad decline, And a rose-bush leans upon, Thou that faintly smilest still, As a Naiad in a well, Looking at the set of day."[435]

Anew "the ever-varying Madeline," now smiling, then frowning, then joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the two:

"Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Light-glooming over eyes divine, Like little clouds sun-fringed."[436]

The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He caressed them so carefully that his verses appeared at times far-fetched, affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much adornment and polishing; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well as in beauty. He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances, curious or pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and idyls. He wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the feelings of all ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, Œnone, Sir Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated, alternately, Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old English poets and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively to the little real events of English life, and the great fantastic adventures of extinguished chivalry. He was like those musicians who use their bow in the service of all masters. He strayed through nature and history, with no foregone conclusions, without fierce passion, bent on feeling, relishing, culling from all parts, in the flower-stand of the drawing-room and in the rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild flowers whose scent or beauty could charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure; smelt the grateful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together; preferred those which he took from the country; found that his talent was nowhere more at ease. They admired the minute observation and refined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting aspects of things. In the "Dying Swan" they forgot that the subject was almost threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might appreciate such verses as this:

"Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, Shone out their crowning snows. One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro' the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow."[437]

But these melancholy pictures did not display him entirely; men accompanied him to the land of the sun, toward the soft voluptuousness of southern seas; they returned, with an involuntary fascination, to the verses in which he depicts the companions of Ulysses, who, slumbering in the land of the Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like himself, forgot their country, and renounced action:

"A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sun-set flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse....

"There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petal from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep....

"Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil....

"But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly), With half-dropt eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill-- To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-- To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine."[438]