For the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. - Alfred Tennyson

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain The knots that tangle human creeds, 37 The wounding cords that 38 bind and strain The heart until it bleeds,

The development of Tennyson's genius, methods, aims and capacity of achievement in poetry can be studied with singular precision and fulness in the history of the poems included in the present volume.