It is poignant in the garden-night:-
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
. . .
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rocked the full-foliaged elm, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
"The dawn, the dawn," and died away.
His are the exalted senses that sensual poets know nothing of. I think
the sense of hearing as well as the sense of sight, has never been more
greatly exalted than by Tennyson:-
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry.
As to this garden-character so much decried I confess that the "lawn"
does not generally delight me, the word nor the thing. But in Tennyson's
page the word is wonderful, as though it had never been dull: "The
mountain lawn was dewy-dark." It is not that he brings the mountains too
near or ranks them in his own peculiar garden-plot, but that the word
withdraws, withdraws to summits, withdraws into dreams; the lawn is
aloft, alone, and as wild as ancient snow. It is the same with many
another word or phrase changed, by passing into his vocabulary, into
something rich and strange. His own especially is the March month--his
"roaring moon." His is the spirit of the dawning month of flowers and
storms; the golden, soft names of daffodil and crocus are caught by the
gale as you speak them in his verse, in a fine disproportion with the
energy and gloom.
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