Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/272

242 Boner, upon the cottage at Fordham, which aver of Poe, that

Tennyson's words often seem too laboriously and exquisitely chosen. But that was a good moment when, in his early poem of "Œnone," he pictured her as wandering

Amongst Americans, Emerson has been the chief master of words and phrases. Who save he could enveil us in "the tumultuous privacy" of the snow-storm? Lowell has great verbal felicity. It was manifest even in the early period when he apostrophized the dandelion,—"Dear common flower," "Thou art my tropics and mine Italy,"—and told us of its "harmless gold." But I have cited a sufficient number of these well-wonted instances. Entering the amazing treasure-house of English song, one must remember the fate of the trespasser within the enchanted grotto of the "Gesta Romanorum," where rubies, sapphires, diamonds, lay in flashing heaps on every side. When he essayed to fill his wallet with them, the spell was broken, the arrow whizzed, and he met the doom allotted to pickers and stealers.

With respect to configuration, the antique genius,