Discuss Alfred Tennyson as a lyric poet.
Tennyson was by temperament a lyric poet. He had been endowed with all those qualities which made him the supreme lyric poet of his country. Even though Tennyson allowed his lyric genius to be dominated by philosophic thoughts, his lyrics could not be completely ebbed, and from time - to - time the poet composed songs and lyrics of requisite beauty and loveliness.
The restraining force of caution and philosophy could not chill the ardour of his soul, and lyrics and songs continued to flow from his pen right from the age of seventeen to the ripe old age of eighty Tennyson could keep up his power for melody and song even to the age of eighty. During the long span of his poetic career, he produced such fine pieces of lyricism as Marina, Oriana, Fatima, Merman and Mermaid, The Miller's Daughter, The Lotos-Eaters, Break, Break, Break, The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls, Tears, Idle Tears, Come into the Garden Maud O Swallow, Swallow.
These songs and lyrics attract us by their luscious melody, their tilting music, their Acolic chiselling of phrase and their exquisite finish. their Aeolic chiselling of phrase and their exquisite finish. These lyrics are masterpieces of his genius. Commenting on the greatness of these lyrics and longs a critics has aptly pointed out, " Tennyson's genius is lyrical. He has the great gift of song, though without the rapture that sometimes attends it. Whatever he touches, he transmutes into a sweet melody, simple and personal, or rich and sonorous."
Tennyson's lyrics are extremely melodious and musical. The poet has a trained and refined ear for music and metrical harmony and the metrical flow of his lines is completely free from the defects of rhythm and melody. He knows the art of harmonising with the sense the sound of the words employed in his lyrics. Dunn rightly writes, " He is a great poet because he is a great artist, a master of words and metres, a maker of magical music . "
This lyrical gift is nowhere so well employed as in giving expression to a sense of loss, recollected after the occasion of grief, and brooded over intellectual anguish and stoical suffering. This feeling mingles with the voice of the sea or the mists of the air or finds illustration in many pictures from Nature. In a more joyous mood, the poet enables us to see the idyllic side of English life its quite rural scenery, rich perfumes or the rare tints of autumn.
Tennyson's lyrics and song, despite the eulogy and they have won from critics and admirers of his poetry cannot be placed in the first rank of lyrics and songs. As Albert points out, " On the whole, his nature was too self-conscious and perhaps the life too regular and prosperous to provide a background for the true lyrical intensity of emotion. " The lyrics of Tennyson with all their charm hardly scale the radiance of a lyric by Sappho or Sophocles. They fail to strike a sympathetic chord in our hearts.
Even some of the lyrics, of pathos and mourning, fail to move us. Oliver Elton believes that Tennyson is more at home in classical lyrics - ode like commemorative carefully concerted pieces, the short or long with full rolling lines than in the briefer spontaneous kind. Rarely do his songs attain the same intensity the songs of Burns, Scott and Shelley do. The pathetic strains do not move us to pity and despair. Even the music of Tennyson's loveliest songs is somewhat languorous. It is :
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.
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