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Haney, John Louis

"Early Reviews of English Poets"

Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless
names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of
Dionysius retreated in despair--
----[Greek: eponymias nyn ellachen allas
Aithiopon gain, dysphonous oud' epierons
Mousais ouneka tasd' ego ouk agoreusom' apasas.]
but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier--
'Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays,
Between the southern and the western Horn,
Heard neither'--
We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected
to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean--he heard
--'neither the warbling of the _nightingale_
Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'
but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following
song:--
'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmed root,
Round about all is mute'--
_mute_, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at
sea--
----'all is mute
As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
As the sand-field at the mountain foot.


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