Early Essays

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...child to you than ever I have been. "She'll find my garden-tools upon the granary floor: Let her take 'em: they are hers: I shall never garden more: But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rose-bush that I set About the parlour-window and the box of mignonette. "Good-night, sweet mother: call me when it begins to dawn. All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at morn; But I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year, So, if you're waking, call me, call me early, mother dear." This poem is fitted for a more extensive popularity than any other in the two volumes. Simple, genuine pathos, arising out of the situations and feelings common to mankind generally, is, of all poetic beauty, that which _can be most universally appreciated; and the genius implied in it is, in consequence, apt to be overrated, for it is also of all kinds that which can be most easily produced. In this poem there is not only the truest pathos, but (except in one passage)1 perfect harmony and keeping. The next poem which we shall quote is one of higher pretensions. Its length exceeds the usual dimensions of an extract. But the idea which would be given of the more perfect of Mr. Tennyson's poems, by detached passages, would be not merely an incomplete but a false idea. There is not a stanza in the following poem which can be felt or even understood as the poet intended, unless the reader's imagination and feelings are already in the state which results from the passage next preceding, or rather from all which precedes. The very breaks, which divide the story into parts, all tell. If every one approached poetry in the spirit in which it ought to be approached, willing to feel it first and examine it afterwards, we should not premise another word. But...