G.W.C.


II

PROVIDENCE, _September 1, 1843._

My dear Friend,--Your letter did not reach my hands until last evening,
when I returned from Newport, where I have passed the last eight days, how
pleasantly I need not tell you. After the quiet beauty of our farm home,
there was a striking grandeur in the sea that I never beheld so plainly
before. There is something sublimely cheerful about the ocean, altho' it
is so stored with woe, and so constantly suggestive it is of that ocean,
life, whereon we all float.

It was pleasant to me that Nature confirmed my judgment of Tennyson. The
little poem that closes one of the volumes, "Break, break, break," etc.,
is so exquisitely human and tender, with all its vague and dim beauty,
that the waves dashed to its music, and silently the whole sea sung the
song. Just so the jottings down of poets, the few words that must be said,
tho' the Nature which they sing is so limitless, and inexpressible are the
blossoms of poetry and all literature. Will not the little song of
Shakespeare's, "Take, oh! take those lips away," be as immortal as Hamlet?
Not because chance may print them together, but because it is as universal
and more delicate an expression. That charm pervades our favorite,
Tennyson. There is no rough-marked outline, all fades away upon earnest
contemplation into the tones of his songs, into the colors of the sky. So
in the landscape, tint fades gently into tint, and the beauty that
attracts spreads from leaf to hill, from hill to horizon, till the whole