1.-SONG-GEMS FROM THE PRINCESS.

[Tennyson's Princess is "a medley," but a medley in which is a rare mingling of philosophic thought with sweetest interludes of song. The following four lyrics are from this poem.]

1. THE BUCLE-SONG.

THE splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.1

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elf-land2 faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying,

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

1 Blow . . . dying. Point out examples of iteration.

2 Elf-land, the land of the elves, or fairies.

2. HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR.

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry;
All her maidens, watching, said,

"She must weep or she will die.”

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe:

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,1
Took the face-cloth from the face:
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee:
Like summer tempest 2 came her tears.
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

3.- TEARS, IDLE TEARS,

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

1 Stole ... stept. Change to the prose arrangement of words.

2 Like summer tempest. What is the figure of speech?

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the under-world,1 Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah! sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe 2 of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O death in life, the days that are no more!

Sweet and low, sweet and low,

Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

1 up... under-world. Explain. | 2 pipe, note.

Note

8 Sweet and low, etc. the musical effect of the repetition.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon:

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

[Ulysses was one of the principal Greek heroes of the Trojan war, and his exploits are celebrated by Homer in the Odyssey. In these noble lines, our poet represents Ulysses as the type of all aspiring souls.]

IT little profits, that, an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,1
Matched with an aged wife,2 I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard and sleep and feed, and know not me.
I can not rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone: on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades1
Vexed 5 the dim sea. I am become a name;
For, always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known, cities of men,

1 these barren crags. Meaning the Grecian island of Ithaca, of which Ulysses was king.

2 an aged wife, Penelope.

8 drink... lees. Explain.

4 Hyades, a cluster of five stars

in the constellation Taurus.

5

vexed. What is the figure?

And manners, climates, councils, governments
(Myself not least, but honored of them all),—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;

1

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence 2-something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit 3 yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere 5
Of common duties, decent not to fail

1 is an arch, etc. Observe this fine metaphor.

2 that eternal silence, death.

8

3 gray spirit. Explain.

4 by slow prudence, etc., is explanatory of "this labor."

5 centered... sphere, confined to, devoted to.