In these and in a host of other rhymes Tennyson has done what Sidney has given as the work of the poet: 'to make the too much loved earth more lovely.' They dwell in the memory, like
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way.
Tennyson's blank verse is of many different kinds, almost as various as Wordsworth's. Here again it is possible to find anticipations, in older poets, of some of Tennyson's effects; in Landor's Gebir for example:—
And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand
Lay like a jasper column half upreared.
What strikes one first, and at first with pleasure, is the ingenuity of Tennyson's variations. He uses his blank verse according to Pope's rules in the Essay on Criticism; he is fond of rendering Ajax and Camilla in the movement of his line. This is Ajax:—
He felt were she the prize of bodily force
Himself beyond the rest pushing could move
The chair of Idris.
