CHAPTER V.
TEN YEARS' SILENCE AND ITS RESULTS.
Two different causes may account for our Poet's silence during the next ten years (1833–1842);[1] his over-
- ↑ A silence not, however, altogether unbroken. In 1837 the poem of "St. Agnes" appeared in the "Keepsake," and in the same year Tennyson contributed some stanzas to "The Tribute; a Collection of Miscellaneous Unpublished Poems, by Various Authors, Edited by Lord Northampton." This volume elicited the first notice of Tennyson from the "Edinburgh Review," which had till then been silent respecting him. "We do not profess," says the reviewer, "perfectly to understand the somewhat mysterious contribution of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, entitled 'Stanzas;' but "amidst some quaintness, and some occasional absurdities of expression, it is not difficult to detect the hand of a true poet—such as the author of 'Mariana' and the 'Lines on the Arabian Nights' undoubtedly is—in those stanzas which describe the appearance of a visionary form, by which the writer is supposed to be haunted amidst the streets of a crowded city."—Ed. Rev. October, 1837, p. 108.
These stanzas, beginning "O that 'twere possible," were
