Alfred was born in the parsonage at Somersby (near Spilsby) in 1810. In 1829, he gained the Chancellor's medal for the English prize poem, his subject being Timbuctoo.' Previous to this, in conjunction with his brother Charles, he published anonymously a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers.' In 1850 appeared Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson.' This volume contained poems since altered and incorporated in later collections. These early productions had the faults of youthful genius-irregularity, indistinctness of conception, florid puerilities, and occasional affectation. In such poems, however, as Mariana,' 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights,' and 'Claribel,' it was obvious that a true original poet had arisen. In 1833, Mr. Tennyson issued another volume, shewing an advance in · poetical power and in variety of style, though the collection met with severe treatment from the critics. For nine years the poet continued silent. In 1842, he reappeared with Poems,' in two volumes-this third series being a reprint of some of the pieces in the former volumes, considerably altered, with many new poems, including the most striking and popular of all his productions. These were of various classes-fragments of legendary and chivalrous story, as • Morte d'Arthur,' 'Godiva,' &c.; or pathetic and beautiful, as The May Queen' and Dora'; or impassioned love-poems, as The Gardener's Daughter,' The Miller's Daughter,' 'The Talking Oak,' and 'Locksley Hall.' The last is the most finished of Tennyson's works, full of passionate grandeur and intensity of feeling and imagination. It partly combines the energy and impetuosity of Byron with the pictorial beauty and melody of Coleridge. The lover of 'Locksley Hall' is ardent, generous, and noble-minded, nourishing a youth sublime' with lofty aspirations and dreams of felicity. His passion is at first returned:

Extracts from Locksley Hall.'

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring.
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

The fair one proves faithless, and after a tumult of conflicting passions-indignaHon. grief, self-reproach, and despair-the sufferer finds relief in glowing visions of future enterprise and the world's progress.

For I dipt into th· future. far as human eye could see.
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm:

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

There is a marvellous brilliancy of colouring and force of sentiment and expression in this poem, while the versification is perfect. The ballad strains of Tennyson, and particularly his musical'Oriana,' also evince consummate art; and when he is purely descriptive, nothing can exceed the minute fidelity with which he paints the English landscape. The poet having shifted his residence from Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, his scene-painting partook of the change.* The following is from his Gardener's Daughter:'

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love,
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies

A league of grass, washed by a slow broad stream,
That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,

Barge laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crowned with the minster towers.

1 he fields between

Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-uddered kine,
And all about the large lime feathers low,

The lime a summer home of murmurous wings.

The poet, while a dweller amidst the fens of Lincolnshire, painted morasses, quiet meres, and sighing reeds. The exquisitely modulated poem of The Dying Swan' affords a picture drawn, we think, with wonderful delicacy:

Some bine peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows;

One willow over the river wept.

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;

The route from Alum Bay to Carisbrooke takes you past Farringford, where resided Alfred Tennyson. The house stands so far back as to be invisible from the road, but the grounds

A careless ordered garden.

Close to the ridge of a noble down

looked very pretty, and thoroughly English. In another verse of the poem from which I have quoted-the invitation to the Rev. F. D. Maurice-he exactly describes the situa tion of Farringford:

For groves of pine on either hand.
To break the blast of winter. stand;
And further on the heary channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand.

Every one well acquainted with Tennyson's writings will have noticed how the spirit of the scenery which he has depicted has changed from the glooming flats.' the level waste' were stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh.' which were the reflex of his Lincolnshire observation, to the beautiful meadow and orchard, thoroughly English ruralities of The Gardener's Daughter and The Brook Many glimpses in the neighbourhood of Farringford will call to mind descriptive passages in these last named poems.-Letter in the Daily News. The laureate has also an estate in Surrey (Aldworth, Haslemere) to which he retreats when the tourists and admirers become oppressive in the Isle of Wight.

Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will;
And far through the marish green and still,
The tangled water-courses sl pt,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

The ballad of The May Queen' introduces similar scenery:
When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light,
You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night;

When from the dry dark wold the summer airs Plow cool

On the out-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool. "The Talking Oak' is the title of a fanciful and beautiful poem of seventy-five stanzas, in which a lover and an oak-tree converse upon the charms of a certain fair Olivia. The oak-tree thus describes to the lover her visit to the park in which it grew:

The Talking Oak.'

But not a creature was in sight:
She kissed me once again.

'Her kisses were so close and kind,
That, trust me on my word,
Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,
But yet my sap was stirred:

'And even into my inmost ring

A pleasure I discerned,

Like those blind motions of the Spring,
That shew the year is turned.

"Then flushed her cheek with rosy light; A thousand thanks for what I learn,

And the poet, in conclusion, promises to praise the mystic tree even more than England honours his brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abode

Till all the paths were dim,

And far below the Roundhead rode,
And hummed a surly hymn.

The last two lines furnish a finished little picture.

Still more dramatic in effect is the portrait of the heroine of Coventry.

Godica.

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the ball, among his dogs, alone....

She told him of their tears,

And prayed him, If they pay this tax, they starve.'
Whereat he stared, replying, half amazed,

You would not let your little finger ache

For such as these ? But I would die,' said she.
He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul:
Then filliped at the diamond in her ear;

O ay, ay, ay, you talk !'-'Alas!' she said,
But prove me what it is I would not do.'
And from a heart as rong as Esau's hand,
He answered: Ride you naked through the town,
And I repeal it;' and nodding as in scorn

He parted, wit great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind-
As winds from all the compass shift and blow-
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barred.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered. looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazoned with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spouts
Had cunning eyes to see; the barking enr
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up. till, last, she saw
The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity:

And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,

Peeped-but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,

And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused;

And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once,

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gained

Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,

And built herself an everlasting name.

An extract from The Lotos-eaters' will give a specimen of our poet's modulations of rhythm. This poem represents the luxurious lazy sleepiness said to be produced in those who feed upon the lotos, and contains passages not surpassed by the finest descriptions in the Castle of Indolence.' It is rich in striking and appropriate imagery, and is sung to a rhythm which is music itself.

The Lotos-enters.

Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown....

Lo! in the middle of the wood.

The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there,
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.

Lo sweetened with the summer light.

The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent antumn night.

All its allotted length of days,

The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

Let us alone.

...

Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence: ripen. fall and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death. or dreamful ease.

How swoot it worn, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eves ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!...