A Gifted Poet with Unrivalled Powers:
Tennyson was a great pictorial artist whose poetry is marked by an extraordinary gift for visual description. He possessed unrivalled powers of painting a scene, a landscape, or even a person with words full of clarity and vividness. This unique art of pictorial representation was cultivated early in his life, with Keats’s rich imagery serving as his model.
Tennyson’s poetry is essentially picturesque. He employed words as a painter uses his brush, capturing the impression of a scene in its full colour and glory. Among English poets, leaving aside Shakespeare, Spenser, and Keats, no one could rival Tennyson in creating such splendid pictures of landscapes.
Almost all of Tennyson’s poems, even the simplest ones, shine with ornate descriptions of natural beauty. His method was to seize the most striking details, shape them with expressive and musical language, and present before the reader a brilliant, lifelike image. Truly, Tennyson was a great pictorial artist who transformed poetry into a vivid gallery of word-paintings.
Depiction of Nature:
The Princess is rich in pictures of beauty and loveliness. The finest pictorial painting of landscape is seen in the Lotos Eaters where the poet draws the picture of the island in all the richness of nature’s scenery. It was a land of streams in which the Lotos Eaters found themselves:
“A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Roling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.”
In the poem Ulysses, the picture of the sea is clear enough to create the impression that we are standing at the shore:
“There gloom the dark, broad seas.”
In Come into the Garden, Maud, an astonishing description of beauty of the sky has been presented when the lover asks the beloved to come for the whole night is passed in waiting and now it is dawn. The morning breeze is blowing. Venus, the planet of love has lost its brightness. The stars which were shining like flowers of golden daffodils are fading in the light of the day:
“For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodils sky.”
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the movement of sea waves is recorded so nicely that the whole picture seems to be our own experience:
“Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.”
Presenting Vivid Depiction of Cities and People:
In the poem Ulysses, the poet presents detailed picture of domestic life and uncivilized people. Ulysses thinks that there is no use ruling over a barren and craggy land and uncivilized people and administering unsuitable laws to them. He feels that he would stagnate if he continues to live with his old wife in his dull home, and he would wear out if he continues to govern his people who simply make money, eat and sleep and have no ambition for higher things of life.
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the poet describes the world which goes unchanged. It is completely indifferent to the loss and grief of the poet. He envies the happy lot of the sailor lad and the fisherman’s boy who are playing and singing with a complete indifference to the poet’s grief. The stately ships are sailing towards their harbour and making the poet more sad by contrast:
“O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor’s lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!”
And
“And the stately ships go on
To their heaven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!”
Sensuous Pictures:
Sense of Sound:
In The Lotos Eaters, the perfection of his art is introduced when he describes the intoxicating atmosphere of the land of the lotos-eaters:
“There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass.”
Sense of Touch:
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the poet is grieved for his friend who would never come back to him. The poet will never feel the consoling touch of his friend:
“But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand.”
Sense of Taste:
In Ulysses, the poet refers to Ulysses’ bravery when he claims :
“And drunk delight of battle with my peers.”
Here the sense of taste is employed. It is used in this image also:
“I will drink Life to the lees.”
In Lotos Eaters, the word picture of apple is full of sweet taste: “The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellows, Drops in a silent autumn night.”
Sense of Smell:
In Come into the Garden, Maud, the poet repeatedly refers to flowers of rose and jasmine and our sense of smell becomes active:
“And the musk of the rose is blown.”
