A Gifted Poet with Unrivalled Powers:
Tennyson was a great pictorial artist. He was gifted with unrivalled powers of picturing a scene, a landscape, a person in words marked with clarity and vividness. This art of pictorial painting was learnt by the poet quite early in his life by keeping Keats's pictorial paintings as his models. His art was essentially picturesque and he used words as the painter employs his brush for conveying the impression of a scene in all its vivid glory and colour. Leaning aside Shakespeare, Spenser, Keats no poet was able to draw such gorgeous pictures of landscapes as Tennyson did. Nearly all Tennyson's poems, even the simplest, and rich in ornate description of natural scenes, his method is to seize upon appropriate details, dress them in expressive and musical phrases, and thus throw a glistening image before the reader's eye.
Depiction of Nature:
The Princess is rich in pictures of beauty and loveliness. The finest pictorial painting of landscape is seen in The Lotos Eaters where the poet draws the picture of the island in all the richness of nature's scenery. It was a land of streams in which the Lotos Eaters found themselves:
"A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Roling a slumbrous sheet of foam below."
In the poem Ulysses, the picture of the sea is clear enough to create the impression that we are standing at the shore:
"There gloom the dark, broad seas."
In Come into the Garden, Maud, an astonishing description of beauty of the sky has been presented when the lover asks the beloved to come for the whole night is passed in waiting and now it is dawn. The morning breeze is blowing. Venus, the planet of love has lost its brightness. The stars which were shining like flowers of golden daffodils are fading in the light of the day:
"For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodils sky."
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the movement of sea waves is recorded so nicely that the whole picture seems to be our own experience:
"Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
Presenting Vivid Depiction of Cities and People:
In the poem Ulysses, the poet presents detailed picture of domestic life and uncivilized people. Ulysses thinks that there is no use ruling over a barren and craggy land and uncivilized people and administering unsuitable laws to them. He feels that he would stagnate if he continues to live with his old wife in his dull home, and he would wear out if he continues to govern his people who simply make money, eat and sleep and have no ambition for higher things of life.
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the poet describes the world which goes unchanged. It is completely indifferent to the loss and grief of the poet. He envies the happy lot of the sailor lad and the fisherman's boy who are playing and singing with a complete indifference to the poet's grief. The stately ships are sailing towards their harbour and making the poet more sad by contrast:
"O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor's lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!"
And
"And the stately ships go on
To their heaven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"
Sensuous Pictures:
Sense of Sound:
In The Lotos Eaters, the perfection of his art is introduced when he describes the intoxicating atmosphere of the land of the lotos-eaters:
"There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass."
Sense of Touch:
In the poem Break, Break, Break, the poet is grieved for his friend who would never come back to him. The poet will never feel the consoling touch of his friend:
"But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand."
Sense of Taste:
In Ulysses, the poet refers to Ulysses' bravery when he claims :
"And drunk delight of battle with my peers."
Here the sense of taste is employed. It is used in this image also:
"I will drink Life to the lees."
In Lotos Eaters, the word picture of apple is full of sweet taste:
"The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellows,
Drops in a silent autumn night."
Sense of Smell:
In Come into the Garden, Maud, the poet repeatedly refers to flowers of rose and jasmine and our sense of smell becomes active:
"And the musk of the rose is blown."
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