O birds that warble to the morning sky,
O birds that warble as the day goes by,
Sing sweetly; twice my love hath smiled on me.

O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,

O rainbow, with three colours after rain,

Shine sweetly; thrice my love hath smiled on me.

At the conclusion, we learn that Gareth, according to some, married the Lady Lyonors, but according to others, who seem better informed, his bride was Lynette.

The Idylls of the King, with all their merits, are somewhat too long and diffuse, and we cannot help thinking that the poem would have gained, as a whole, by the omission of some of the less interesting episodes. We have still to say something about another poem, to which no such objections can be made. We mean Enoch Arden; which, as the Quarterly Review observes, "bears evident marks of being a cherished work, perfected by untiring and affectionate care." It is a simple story. The hero, "a rough sailor's lad", the miller's son Philip Ray, and Annie Lee, were playmates in childhood; and Annie was "little wife" to both the boys; but in maturer years, when Annie had to make a choice, she gave her hand to Enoch. For some years all went well, but then came unforeseen misfortunes, and Enoch, first a fisherman but in time a skilful sailor, was induced to embark as boatswain aboard a ship "China-board." The voyage out was prosperous, but the ship when homewards bound was wrecked on a rocky island, and only three of the crew, including Enoch, escaped to land. The island was beautiful and fruitful, but one of the survivors, who had been hurt in the shipwreck, soon after died, another "fell sunstricken", and Arden was left alone. Here he passed many years in solitude, while all at home supposed him to have perished with the ship. Of that tropical paradise, and Enoch's life there, we have the following exquisite description:

The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns

And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,

The lightning flash of insect and of bird,

The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what be fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise- but no sail!

A ship at last touches at the island, and the wedded wanderer is enabled, after many years' absence, to return to his native land and his native place. He first seeks a tavern he had known of old, kept by an old woman called Miriam Lane, who does not recognise him, but in reply to his inquiries, tells him how Enoch Arden was lost at sea, how Annie had bravely battled with -her growing poverty, How Philip put her little ones to school, And kept them in it;

and then proceeds to recount

-his long wooing her,

Her slow consent and marriage, and the birth
Of Philip's child.

Enoch Arden with a strong effort suppresses his feelings; he directs his steps to Philip's house; conceals himself behind a yew-tree in the small garden, and sees the happy family seated at the hearth:

Philip, the slighted suitor of old times,

Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees;
And o'er her second father stoopt a girl,
A later but a loftier Annie Lee,

Fair-hair'd and tall, and from her lifted hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring

To tempt the babe, who rear'd his creasy arms,
Caught it and ever miss'd it, and they laugh'd:
And on the left side of the hearth he saw

The mother glancing often toward her babe.

At this sight, the returned sailor feels what misery his re-appearance must cause these dear ones; and he nobly resolves to sacrifice himself; to withdraw unseen, and to live alone and unknown for the brief space of time he may still linger on earth, with his broken heart and shattered frame.

He therefore turning softly like a thief,

Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot,
And feeling all along the garden-wall,

Lest he should swoon, and tumble, and be found,
Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and closed,
As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door,
Behind him, and came out upon the waste.

He was not all unhappy. His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up thro' all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul.

He finds employment, for "almost to all things he could turn his hand", but it was "work without hope": and when a year has slowly passed away

a languor came

Upon him, gentle sickness, gradually

Weakening the man till he could do no more,
But kept the house, his chair, and last his bed.

And thus he dies, after revealing his secret to Miriam Lane, and blessing his wife, his children, and Philip.

Whatever may be the defects of Tennyson's earlier poetry, however insipidly sweet the stanzas addressed to the Adelines, Isabels, Lilians, or Claribels, no candid critic will deny the power and vigour of his later productions. Even among these earlier efforts, which have

been sneeringly styled "mere drawing-room verses", we may find some short poems, like that here subjoined, which proved that a new poet of no ordinary rank had arisen in England.

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired:
The daughter of a hundred Earls,
You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

I know you proud to bear your name,
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,

Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that doats on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower

Is worth a hundred coats of arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange memories in my head.
Not thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld your Laurence dead.
Oh, your sweet eyes, your low replies:
A great enchantress you may be,
But there was that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere

When thus he met his mother's view,
She had the passions of her kind,

She spoke some certain truths of you
Indeed I heard one bitter word

That scarce is fit for you to hear:
Her manners had not that repose

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

There stands a spectre in your hall:
The guilt of blood is at your door;

You changed a wholesome heart to gall.
You held your course without remorse
To make him trust his modest worth,
And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare,
And slew him with your noble birth.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,

From yon blue heavens above us bent
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me

'Tis only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere,
You pine among your halls and towers:
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.

In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease

You know so ill to deal with time,

You needs must play such pranks as these.

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere.

If time be heavy on your hands
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew
Pray Heaven for a human heart,

And let the foolish yeoman go.

In 1884, Tennyson was raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron, so that now he is generally spoken of as Lord Tennyson. We shall conclude our notice of the poet and his writings by quoting his spirited lines: the Charge of the Light Brigade. During the Crimean war, the Russians attempted, on the morning of Oct. 25, 1854, to surprise the British position in front of Balaclava, by descending in great force, from north to south, the valley between the Causeway Heights and the Fedioukine Hills. On the first-named heights were three redoubts, occupied by Turkish troops,