Highland Rambles: A Poem
By . Boston: Adams & Co.
THESE highland rambles began late in May, about daybreak,
“ As three strayed spirits, Arthur, Vivian, Paul,
Brushed off the humming swarms of early dreams,
And sprang from beds of pine-boughs underneath
Thick-branching pines. And Paul, who sough the East,
Cried, ‘ Look, the crescent strands her silver keel
Upon the pearly breakers of the dawn.’
And Vivian, ' Let us climb to yonder peak,
Ere the first rosy ripple break.’ But he,
Whose wit blew cool as winds from mountain lakes,
Arthur, ' Go up. I follow when my brows
Three times are dipped in water.’ And the three ”
Brushed off the humming swarms of early dreams,
And sprang from beds of pine-boughs underneath
Thick-branching pines. And Paul, who sough the East,
Cried, ‘ Look, the crescent strands her silver keel
Upon the pearly breakers of the dawn.’
And Vivian, ' Let us climb to yonder peak,
Ere the first rosy ripple break.’ But he,
Whose wit blew cool as winds from mountain lakes,
Arthur, ' Go up. I follow when my brows
Three times are dipped in water.’ And the three ”
rambled on for one hundred and eighty pages up and down the familiar heights of Mr. Tennyson’s poetry. We suppose that somewhere in this excursion they had loves and sorrows, for we catch a glimpse of at least one young lady out of The Gardener’s Daughter’s garden. But we have not read the whole poem, and could not. We take the reader to witness that we do not condemn it, or do aught but wonder that any one having a proper entity, and man’s inalienable right to obscurity, should care so conspicuously to disown himself, and to appear solely in the voice, movement, and expression of another whom he suffers us scarcely a moment to forget. Yet even this wonder of ours is mild, for frequent surprises of the sort have tempered us to what we must still regret.