ALLITERATION IN TENNYSON.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5015, 7 February 1885, Page 4

ALLITERATION IN TENNYSON.

No poet manages his alliteration more ably than Tennyson; no poet would Idse more by the use of it being denied, him.. Indeed, the more musical the poet, the oftener we shall find him offending. Begin with his first words :— ' "Where deribel lbw-lieth / The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall; But the solemn oak-tree sigheth." Observe eight sounds of 1 in four lines, and the s's in the last, the third line being the best manipulated.. Turn the page :— " Airy, fairy Lilian!" Flitting, fairy Lilian ! , , Here flitting would never have occurred to the poet's mind, but for the f in fairy; yet it contains the idea of the poem. Try " The Princess " :— "Father will come to thee Boon: Father will come'to his babe in the neat: . Silver sails all out of the west, Under the silver moon," where the s in the west must be allowed its share in the general sibilation. Or "Maud":— " Out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling^wailed," too heavily—with five w's. "Maud,the,beloved of my mother, the moonfaced darling of all," where we have to thank the m for giving us the expressive word moon-faced. Or, once more :— " I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles." What with d's, l's, b's, and the softer and smoother sound p, you hear the music of the brook as plainly over the gravel as you would if you leaned, as I have, on a certain little bridge, near which the Laureate's youth was dreamed away. Lastly, the " Idylh," lest our poet should be said to have outgrown a trivial art :— " It is the littlo rift within tho lute. ' Thatby«and-by will make the music mute;" where the recurrence of the vis especially to be noted:— 11 The little rift within the lover's lute: Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit;" which word pitted, so finally graphic, 'so daintily pathetic, is entirely due to the p in speck.—Temple Bar.