The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Alfred Lord Tennyson
page 49 of 620 (07%)
page 49 of 620 (07%)
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picture of Dido, where, with the shadow of her death also falling upon
her, she seems to hear the phantom voice of her dead husband, and "mixes her fancies" with the glooms of night and the owl's funereal wail:-- Hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret; Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces. --'Aen'., iv., 460. (From it she thought she clearly heard a voice, even the accents of her husband calling her when night was wrapping the earth with darkness; and on the roof the lonely owl in funereal strains kept oft complaining, drawing out into a wail its protracted notes.) Similar passages, though not so striking, would be the picture of Pindar's Elysium in 'Tiresias', the sentiment pervading 'The Lotos Eaters' transferred so faithfully from the Greek poets, the scenery in ''none' so crowded with details from Homer, Theocritus and Callimachus. Sometimes we find similes suggested by the classical poets, but enriched by touches from original observation, as here in 'The Princess':-- As one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore. ... And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world, |
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