Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang
page 27 of 219 (12%)
page 27 of 219 (12%)
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may have reached Tennyson's mind from an older writer than Beattie. He is at least as likely to have been familiar with Greek myth as with the lamented "Minstrel." The form of 1833, greatly altered in 1842, contained such unlucky phrases as "cedar shadowy," and "snowycoloured," "marblecold," "violet-eyed"--easy spoils of criticism. The alterations which converted a beautiful but faulty into a beautiful and flawless poem perhaps obscure the significance of OEnone's "I will not die alone," which in the earlier volume directly refers to the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson's late piece, The Death of OEnone. The whole poem brings to mind the glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric lines on the divine wedlock of Zeus and Hera. The allegory or moral of The Palace of Art does not need explanation. Not many of the poems owe more to revision. The early stanza about Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel, and "Eastern Confutzee," did undeniably remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of The Groves of Blarney. "With statues gracing that noble place in, All haythen goddesses most rare, Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar, All standing naked in the open air." In the early version the Soul, being too much "up to date," |
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