It seems that this new made lord was the grandson of an owner of coal mines, who had lately died,

"Gone to a blacker pit, for whom
Grimy nakedness dragging his trucks
And laying his trams in a poison'd gloom,
Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine,
Master of half a servile shire."

The maiden, however, is not to be won by the "new made lord;" she loves Tennyson, or Tappertit, or whatever the reader pleases to call him, and thus he sings; and sings very prettily too; the lines in italics, in the sixth stanza, are, as Tennyson's verses often are, like, too like, Herrick :

Birds in the high Hall-garden

When twilight was falling, Mand, Maud, Maud, Maud,

They were crying and calling.

Where was Maud? in our wood;
And I, who else, was with her,
Gathering woodland lilies,
Myriads blow together.

Birds in our wood sang
Ringing thro' the vallies,
Mand is here, here, here
In among the lilies.

I kiss'd her slender hand,

She took the kiss sedately;

Maud is not seventeen,

But she is tall and stately.

I to cry out on pride

Who have won her favour!
O Maud were sure of Heaven
If lowliness could save her,

I know the way she went
Home with her maiden posy,
For her feet have touch'd the meadows
And left the daisies rusy.

Birds in the high Hall-garden

Were crying and calling to her,

Where is Maud, Maud. Maud,

One is come to woo her.

Look, a horse at the door,

And little King Charles is snarling,
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling.

We do not admire this "little King Charles is snarling" and darling" it jars upon the ear, and reminds us of Sam Lover's Molly Bawn, and

"The wicked watch-dog near is snarlin',
He takes me for a thief you see,

For he knows I'd steal you Molly darlin'
An' thin thransported I should be."

A grand political dinner,

A dinner and then a dance,"

are to be given to "the men of many acres," and "the maids and marriage makers," by the brother of Maud, his father being now dead; but Tappertit will not go, not being asked, as he tells us, but he does not mind it, bless you; he prefers hanging about Maud's "rose-garden," knowing that she will come to him-" Love among the roses-" when she has got rid of the company. Here, however, we have a bit of the real Tennyson poetry, with not the least touch of poor Sim Tappertit. The following beautiful lines are an invocation to Maud, entreating

her to come to her lover in the " rose garden," and there is a passion and tenderness about them almost sufficient to redeem that shocking.

"Oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull, Smelling of musk and of insolence,"

to which we have already referred. The lines are as follow:

Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves

On a bed of daffodil sky,

To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard

The flute, violin, bassoon;

All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,

And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, 'There is but one

With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play.'
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose,
'For ever and ever, mine.'

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall;

And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall

From the lake to the meadow and on to

the wood,

Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet

That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet

In violets blue as your eyes,

To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake

One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake blossom fell into the lake,
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your
sake,

Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,

They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with
curls,

To the flowers, and be their sun.

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, I wait.'

She is coming, my own, my sweet;

Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,

Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

Maud comes forth to meet her lover: her brother and the

new made lord" surprise them, and the tale of sorrow and blood is thus told :—

When her brother ran in his rage to the gate,
He came with the babe-faced lord;

Heap'd on her terms of disgrace,

And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,
He fiercely gave me the lic,

Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,

And he struck me, madman, over the face,
Struck me before the languid fool,

Who was gaping and grinning by:
Struck for himself an evil stroke;

Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe;

For front to front in an hour we stood,

And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood,

And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christless code,
That must have life for a blow.

Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow.

Was it he lay there with a fading eye?

The fault was mine,' he whisper'd, 'fly!'

Then glided out of the joyous wood

The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;

And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,

A cry for a brother's blood:

It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die.

Is it gone? my pulses beat-

What was it? a lying trick of the brain?

Yet I thought I saw her stand,

A shadow there at my feet,

High over the shadowy land.

It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,

When they should burst and drown with deluging storms

The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,

The little hearts that know not how to forgive:

Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,

Strike dead the whole weak race of venemous worms,
That sting each other here in the dust;

We are not worthy to live.

Far away to foreign lands flies the lover, and never more in life knows he rest or joy. Racked in conscience; love all hopeless, life objectless; nothing in the future save despair, nothing in the present except bitter memories of the woful past; and yet amidst all his griefs, above every sorrow rises the image of his love, and thus he tells us of his hopes and fears:

O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
Of the land that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
Than any thing on earth.

A shadow flits before me,

Not thou, but like to thee;

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.

It leads me forth at evening
It lightly winds and steals
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

"Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And a dewy splendour falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;

'Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And the light and shadow fleet;
She is walking in the meadow,
And the woodland echo rings;
In a moment we shall meet;
She is singing in the meadow,
And the rivulet at her feet
Ripples on in light and shadow
To the ballad that she sings.

Do I hear her sing as of old,

My bird with the shining head,

My own dove with the tender eye ?

but there rings on a sudden a passionate

cry,

There is some one dying or dead,

And a sulien thunder is roll'd;
For a tumult shakes the city,
And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.

Get thee hence, nor come again,
Mix not memory with doubt,
Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about,
'Tis the blot upon the brain
That will show itself without.
Then I rise, the eavedrops fall,
And the yellow vapours choke
The great city sounding wide;
The day comes, a dull red ball
Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke
On the misty river-tide.

Here all the portions of this poem worthy praise or censure end: the conclusion is rank nonsense; containing references to every topic of the day, from the Peace party to the army before Sebastopol.

The other poems in the volume are The Brook, an Idyl: but how it falls short of those true Idyls, Dora, and The Gardener's Daughter! Indeed nothing more clearly shows the imperfection and short coming of this book than the Idyl before us; story it has none; and the poetry is of the most commonplace order. There are, however, some pretty lines running through the verses, and supposed to be a Song of the Brook, which we here insert, placing the detached lines together:

:

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally

And sparkie out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley,

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,]
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

The Ode on The Death of the Duke of Wellington, the reader has long since condemned, and The Letters is very inferior; the same observations apply to The Will. Daisy, however, is very beautiful, and is as follows: