22-23. O MOTHER IDA--DIE. Mr. Stedman, in his _Victorian Poets_, devotes
a valuable chapter to the discussion of Tennyson's relation to
Theocritus, both in sentiment and form. "It is in the _Oenone_ that we
discover Tennyson's earliest adaptation of that refrain, which was a
striking beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse;
"'O mother Ida, hearken ere I die,'
"is the analogue of (Theocr. II).
"'See thou; whence came my love, O lady Moon,' etc.
"Throughout the poem the Syracusan manner and feeling are strictly and
nobly maintained." Note, however, the modernisation already referred to.
MOTHER IDA. The Greeks constantly personified Nature, and attributed a
separate individual life to rivers, mountains, etc. Wordsworth's
_Excursion_, Book IV., might be read in illustration, especially from the
line beginning--
"Once more to distant ages of the world."
MANY-FOUNTAIN'D IDA. Many streams took their source in Ida. Homer
applies the same epithet to this mountain.
24-32. These lines are in imitation of certain passages from Theocritus.
See Stedman, _Victorian Poets_, pp. 213 f. They illustrate Tennyson's
skill in mosaic work.