Lord Tennyson says, "German hexameters he disliked even more than
English." Indeed there is not much room for preference. Tennyson's
Alcaics (Milton) were intended to follow the Greek rather than the
Horatian model, and resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the
"mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies." The specimen of the Iliad in
blank verse, beautiful as it is, does not, somehow, reproduce the
music of Homer. It is entirely Tennysonian, as in


"Roll'd the rich vapour far into the heaven."


The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick of the
English poet, and is far away from the Chian:-


"As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn."