thought, briefly, but
forcibly and harmoniously, expressed. If it requires some exertion to
comprehend it, when completely understood it becomes a valued possession.

It is difficult to believe that such poems as _Mariana_ and _Recollections
of the Arabian Nights_ were the production of a young man of twenty.

In 1833 he published his second volume, containing additional poems, among
which were _Enone_, _The May Queen_, _The Lotos-Eaters_, and _A Dream of
Fair Women_. _The May Queen_ became at once a favorite, because every one
could understand it: it touched a chord in every heart; but his rarest
power of dreamy fancy is displayed in such pieces as _The Arabian Nights_
and the _Lotos-Eaters_. No greater triumph has been achieved in the realm
of fancy than that in the court of good Haroun al Raschid, and amid the
Lotos dreams of the Nepenthe coast. These productions were not received
with the favor which they merited, and so he let the critics alone for
nine years. In 1842 he again appeared in print, with, among other poems,
the exquisite fragment of the _Morte d'Arthur_, _Godiva_, _St. Agnes_,
_Sir Galahad_, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_, _The Talking Oak_, and chief,
perhaps, of all, _Locksley Hall_. In these poems he is not only a poet,
but a philosopher. Each of these is an extended apothegm, presenting not
only rules of life, but mottoes and maxims for daily use. They are
soliloquies of the nineteenth century, and representations of its men and
conditions.

THE PRINCESS.--In 1847 he published _The Princess, a Medley_--a pleasant
and suggestive poem on woman's rights, in which exquisite songs are
introduced, which break the monotony of the blank verse, and display his
rare lyric power. The _Bugle Song_ is among the finest examples of the
adaptation of sound to sense in the language; and there is nothing more
truthful and touching than the short verses beginning,

Home they brought her warrior dead.

Arthur Hallam, a gifted son of the distinguished historian, who was
betrothed to Tennyson's sister, died young; and the poet has mourned and
eulogized him in a long poem entitled _In Memoriam_. It contains one
hundred and twenty-nine four-lined stanzas, and is certainly very musical
and finished; but it is rather the language of calm philosophy elaborately
studied, than that of a poignant grief. It is not, in our judgment, to be
compared with his shorter poems, and is generally read and overpraised
only by his more