'A Dirge', in the rich and almost gorgeous fancy displayed in 'The
Recollections'.

The poems of 1833 are much more ambitious and strike deeper notes. Here
comes in for the first time that Greek[spondai_otaes'], that high
seriousness which is one of Tennyson's chief characteristics--we see it
in 'The Palace of Art', in ''none' and in the verses 'To J. S.' But in
intrinsic merit the poems were no advance on their predecessors, for the
execution was not equal to the design. The best, such as ''none', 'A
Dream of Fair Women', 'The Palace of Art', 'The Lady of Shalott'--I am
speaking of course of these poems in their first form--were full of
extraordinary blemishes. The volume was degraded by pieces which were
very unworthy of him, such as 'O Darling Room' and the verses 'To
Christopher North', and affectations of the worst kind deformed many,
nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect lay in
the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod, sometimes
quaintly affected, and we can never go far without encountering lines,
stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file. The power and charm
of Tennyson's poetry, even at its ripest, depend very largely, often
mainly, on expression, and the couplet which he envied Browning,

The little more, and how much it is,
The little less, and what worlds away,

is strangely applicable to his own art. On a single word, on a subtle
collocation, on a slight touch depend often his finest effects: "the
little less" reduces him to mediocrity, "the little more" and he is with
the masters. To no poetry would the application of Goethe's test be, as
a rule, more fatal--that the real poetic quality in poetry is that which
remains when it has been translated literally into prose.