And darkening the dark graves of men,- And passes into gloom again. These stanzas were added to the poem in a later edition as if in answer to objections taken to a previous reference where the poet said O not for thee the glow, the bloom Nor branding summer-suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom. This was interpreted as meaning that the yew had no flower, whereas all that the poet meant was that the flower is not conspicuous or brilliant, that it has no glowing blossoms; however, the added section put the matter beyond doubt, and shows that Tennyson was thoroughly conversant with the economy of the yew tree, as also with the fact that in the spring its young shoots are of a lighter green and grow darker as the season advances. It is kindled at the tips and passes into gloom again. In that exquisitely graceful poem, The Talking Oak, there is a whole bolus of botany. If a tree could talk, we may be sure its language would be something very like what Tennyson has conceived. He shows the true dramatic faculty of personating a tree-a feat possible only to one with botanical knowledge. The oak swears and swears in character when he is made to say: and may insects prick Each leaf into a gall. tho' I circle in the grain Five hundred rings of years. When Olivia strove to span his waist, Alas! I was too broad of girth I could not be embraced. I wish'd myself the fair young beech That round me, clasping each in each, Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet Or when I feel about my feet The berried briony fold. Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind, But yet my sap was stirred: And even into my inmost ring A pleasure I discern'd, Like those blind motions of the Spring I, rooted here among the groves, My vapid vegetable loves With anthers and with dust. Nothing could be finer as a charming picture of a garrulous old tree which has seen many changes in his fifty decades of stationary life; he is intensely human in that he is proud of his great age, and eager to pour forth his interesting reminiscences, but he never ceases at the same time to be a tree and to talk as a tree should. Every stroke tells. His coarse rind, the rising sap, his colourless loves, his envy of the of the young beech, his many rings, and even the galls that disfigure his leafage, his affection for his tiny acorns, are all woven into his utterances by one who can transfigure himself for the time being into a living tree. The poet's close attention to buds, which has already been remarked upon, might be still further illustrated. A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime gives in a single line a perfect picture of the appearance of the lime when the tender and delicate leaves are pushing their way through the ruby scales of the buds. The same skill is shown in the following: Enormous elm-tree-boles did stoop and lean Upon the dusky brushwood underneath Their broad curved branches, fledged with clearest green, New from its silken sheath. Here the epithet "silken" is exactly the right one for the bracts of the elm. The appearance of a wood in the transition stage between bud and leaf is described thus: Such a time as goes before the leaf, When all the wood stands in a mist of green, And nothing perfect. It is impossible to exhaust such references without being tedious. When rosy plumelets tuft the larch is one more which is worth quoting, because it serves to show that Tennyson does not describe these things for their own sake, but to fix the time at which certain events take place. This is the poet's way of avoiding the prosaic date-the month and the day of the month. So when he says, "willows whiten, aspens quiver," he is working by suggestion, always a telling effect in poetry; this is his way of hinting that a gentle breeze was blowing, turning up the silvery undersides of the willow leaves. The same idea is seen in realms of upland, prodigal in oil And hoary to the wind. The olive leaves are lighter in colour on the under side. To turn from trees to flowers lands us in a wealth of description and allusion from which it is difficult to select. To begin with that all too common weed the dandelion, we find in an early poem the remark that a poet's " vagrant melodies are borne by the winds till they alight, upon Then, like the arrow seeds of the field-flower, Cleaving took root and springing forth anew Like to the mother-plant in semblance grew This is effective enough, but Tennyson improved it in later work. In Aylmer's Field the two children amuse themselves as many other children have done by blowing From the tiny pitted target What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting. The same metaphorical application is found in Gareth and Lynette, where the shield of the warrior called Noon-day Sun flames in the sunshine :— As if the flower That blows a globe of after-arrowlets The passages show the same minute study that we have been insisting on, but even more remarkable is the felicity of the wording. The " pitted target,' |