Page:Tennyson; the Leslie Stephen lecture.djvu/27

 Blank verse can do anything; among other things it may be lyrical. Wordsworth knew this when he put a note to Tintern Abbey to say that he would not call it an Ode, which means, of course, that he had thought of it as an Ode and wished it to be so thought of. Oenone is a lyrical poem following the example of the Greek Idylls with their lyrical refrain; but the chief poem of this kind is Tithonus, which has no refrain, and so escapes from the touch of artificiality which might possibly be charged against the imitation of Theocritus. And in Tithonus there are none of those curiosities of verse, those 'Ajax' and 'Camilla' passages, which are so common in the Idylls of the King. The verse is all of the pure classical tradition—there are no variations beyond what are commonly recognised and known to every beginner. Yet the life in the poem is infinite and infinitely varied:—