THE SONGS IN TENNYSON'S " IDYLLS."

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 70

THE SONGS IN TENNYSON'S " IDYLLS."

By Jessie Mackay.

That gem of maiden lyrics, Elaine's "Song of Love and Death," is the very keynote of this, the idyll of love in innocence, love in ideality, the white convolvulus of the holy hills, that dies at a touch. Its place in the cycle, wlien evil had come to fullest blos&om in Arthur's Couit, throws the lily grace of Elaine into fullest prominence. Against this darkened screen of a sick, sore, cynical world, Elaine stands, a white child, mercifully never to be a woman. Life would have been the supremo tragedy for her ; not death. Even she herself allows she was Not all unhappy, having loved God's bc3t

And greatest, tho' her love had no return

Her song expresses this selfness phase of devotion to the fullest. Evil did not exisb

for her : she had no thought of blame for

any ; no room but for the two childlike yearnings — first, after a lulty, unrequited love ; and then after its only cure : the '"dreamful ease" of death. It is a child's song, limpid, tearful, tired, and holy : — Sweat is true Love, tho' given m vain, in vain ; And sweet is Death, who puts an end to pam ; I know jm>l which is sweetsr, no, not I! Love, art thou sweet? Then bitter Death must Love, thoa art bitter; sweet is Death to me.

0 Lo\e, if Death b; sv/eeier, let me die. Sweet Love, that seems not m?cle to la.de away, Sweet Deatli, that seems to make us loveless c^av. 1 know not which is sweeter; no, not I! I fain would follow Love, if that could Le; I needs must follow Death, who calls for me. Call and I follow, I follow! let me cue.

| In '" The Holy Grail " we have a break m the song-sequence ; and for a little time on,± wonders at the o"mission, seeing heretofore how the ordered thought of the poeL has dwelt with such exqiiisite design on these tiny keynote lyrics. But a very little study shows how the omission here is part of that same exquisite design. The soul of song is neither didactic nor philosophic : it floats like a foam-bubble on the sea of human emotion ; it goes with the winds of fantasy and the mysterious ocean-cunents of man's i mysterious being. Where the earth- spirit is not, where the time spirit is not, song is not. Ar.d the "Holy Grail," with all its olecUio bc-auly and superhuman tenderness is pine f-ynibolism, as fur above the living lily romance of Elaine as the blue s>ky is .above Acrangi. The Arthurian cycle has passed its glorious prime long since. License has sapped the once strong fibre of the knighthood ; the king moves sadly in the alien air, all alive with dtnibtfnl echo of a, treachery yet hidden from him. The wholesome joys of hearth and home have palled' ; asie strenuous endeavour of the patriot, the nationbuilder, the Christian warrior is a thing forgotten ard denied in principle ; while yet the shell of a false chivalry stands high in Camelot. Into this hollow society is flung ilie gage of the vis.on cf the Holy OJrail. in precisely the same manner as the. apple of discord was flung into tha banquet hall of Peleus when the «ns of the old heroic polity of Achaia and the luxury of the dream-built Ilion were alike ripe to judgment. It is to over-weening asceticism that the sick inertia of dream-built and decadent Camelot now turns, not to wholesome human repentance. The prophetic words of the king come too late to stem the tide ; the oath is sworn, and the flower of Arthur's court, goes forth on a quest too high for mortal man ; while the realm is left to waste and decay. From that point all is pure allegory — the trials of Percivole, the wanderings of Lancelot, the unearthly : splendour of the passing of Galahad — the '• one knight to whom the quest belonged. In this magnificent .symbolism, song would bo as much out of place as a dsisy in a queen's tiara ; the spiiitual truth set forth in the mournful return of the knights, and the ever-deepening decadence of their order, hastened by the 411 of over- weening pride, is all too sombre and far-reaching for the lyric touch.

Very different is the succeeding poem of " Pelleas and Elarre,"' which has been rightly called the poorest of all the Idyll". It if, in fact, a painfully manufactured link between the fair semblance of chivalry that still .existed in the " Holy Grail," and the utter rottenness and semi-anarchy that prevailed in the " Last Tournament. "' Etarre is most unlovely — a slightly humanised Vivien; the poor boy Pelleas is as fore-doomed as is Elaine, though his tragedy is sadly devoid of the pathos of hers, as he himself is far below her in intuition, though patient and loyal till his faith vanishes in the despair of disillusion. His song is the picture of his sou], foreboding, y'Bt chained in its boyish absorption of passion. Like the whole Idyll, the song of Pellet is not inspired; it is but the graoeful finger-work of a weary master, who sees his design still, but has" ceased for the hour to breathe in the subtle- ozone of living art. How thin is the repetition here compared with the iteralsd swan-song of Elaine, playing richly on the two primeval realities — Love and Death ! — A rose, but one, none other rose hal I, A rose, one lose, and this was wondrous fair; One rose, a rose that gladdened earth and sky One rose, my rose, that sweetened all mine a'v; I caved not for the thorns— the thorns were ihere. One rose, a rose to gather bye-ancl-bye-, One rose, a rose to gather and to wear ; jSTo rose but one— what other rose had I ?— - One rose, my rose, a rose that will not die ; He dies who loves it, if the worm be there.

Yet this light lyric has its fitness ; and fully indicates the tragedy of Pelleas, — a single-heailed, fore-dconWi! devotion, lonelier and sadder far than Elaine's.

More magnetic by far is the yet biiefer fragment of song in the "Last Tournament " — that verse of glozing passion that betrays its decadency in owning without shame its wind-blown lightness of purpose, the inqaxnaUon of _art decadent

n.

j and debased, sings this to Isolt in Tintagil during the List of their stolen intei'vevrs : — Ay, ay, O ay, the winds that bend the brier I A stai m heaven, a star within the mere! Ay, ay, O ay, a star was my desire, And one wa-s far apait, and one was near; Ay, ay, O ay— tho vane's that bow the grass! i And one iva3 water, and one star was fire, And one will ever shine, and one will pass, j Ay, ?y, O a.y — the winds that move tho mere. i HeTe is the over -blown rose of art's de- : cay. How subtle, how graceful, how apt i is the phrasing. — Isolt of Iceland, passionate and ddik, is tlie star o-f fire; Isolt of Brittany, pale and prayerful, is the star of . water ; and the chivalry of Tristram thinks I not shame to be blown hither and thither by the winds of caprice that, stir the shal- | low mere of his spirit. He-re at last the 1 decay of the Table Round is complete, since it is mirrored in its art without dsguise as heretofore. After this, indeed,

must come, and speedily, } The death-dumb, autuam-diipping gloom , that veils the flight of Guinevere and ushers ! in the open ruin of Arthur's realm. 1 There should be ro break between the flying song of Tiisiram and the deathknelling *ong of the little novice in '" Guinevere "that hymn of wrath and judgment ' ibot filly closes the doomed cycle of Arthur, i \\ ilk singular clearness of vision, this song J is given io the spotless child, as the one i character in the Idyll from whoso mouth song jis possible. Oiu of Ler limpid human inno- | ceuce h forged the last thunderbolt to break the spirit ol the guilty quren and prepare hiv for the feaiTul sacrament of Arthurs farewell. In this, the most powerful Idyll of all, sjmbolism rethes and human tragedy ! reigns supreme. But it is tragedy that I has done uith all hfiervening illusion, and j that stands fac^ to face with its Heavenly Judge. Thus, then, comes the end of that marvellous wedding song, sung when the "voiM was white with Alav !''

Late, la'e, so late! and dark tho night, and chill, Late, late, to late! but T\e can enter still. ; Too late, too iate 1 ye cannot enter now. Xo light h?d we — for that we do repent, — And, letnnmg Ihis, the bridegroom will relent; Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light, so Lite! a'-id dark i>nd chill the night! O, let -as in that v.-c may find tha light! Too late,' too !at"! ye cannot enter now. Have we no* heaid the bridegroom is so sweet 9 0. let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet! Too late too late! ye cannot enter now. Fatefully, mysteriously, this hymn of judgment reverberates through the ringing wreck of Arthur* kingdom that follows hard upon the flight of Guinevere. 1z strikes v. illi uitcv ruin the dream-built tower"; of Camelot, that are never more to •ecio lilts of love and lays of noble warfare as in days gone £y. 'it follows Arthur through the dim. terrible passes of the hill-, through the cbal'iful mist of the last battle in Lyonncsse, and even to the frozen crag on which he lies dyin_j that last night of the world-year whose glorious May had lieen his to shape. Xo song could possibly be t Aiined into the sombre glory "of thi't closing Idyll. Tha mystery, the majesty, the star-point ol lemotest* hope, in that Lf-t Idyll can m«.ivr» to no hiunm music — only to the eternal harmonics of the s&eeingspheres-. Tennyson, true prophet that he i«, can say no word beyond his vision ; on the eoith-Kard side there is; heard no more than the ancient rune, all but despair on the ha^ty tongue, but ever-widening hope to the instructed ear: — Fiom the great deep to the great deep he goes.