_The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens._ Words written for Music, by
ALFRED TENNYSON, Poet Laureate; the Music by ARTHUR SULLIVAN. Strahan.
So many rumours have been for so long in circulation about this volume,
and the names of its joint authors are so eminent, that it is not
surprising it should have excited much curiosity and many hopes. We
venture to predict that neither the curiosity nor the hopes will be
disappointed. Mr. Tennyson's songs need not fear being 'tested' in the
same crucible with the 'Lotos Eaters,' or 'In Memoriam,' or we may add
with 'Maud,' or the 'Princess.' Nor will Mr. Sullivan's music be found
less characteristic of his genius, or other than fully worthy of the
words to which it has been composed.
The 'Window' is, we believe, the first attempt in English--certainly the
first attempt of any eminent English poet--to cast a series of events or
emotions into the form of a set of connected songs. Wordsworth's
well-known series of sonnets are an approach to the same thing; but the
song--a composition of two or three stanzas, suitable to music--is not
so favourite a form with English poets as with those of Germany. There
the cycle of songs--the _Liederkreis_ or _Liedercyclus_--is better
known. Readers of Heine and Chamisso will remember more than one
instance. We are glad to welcome it to English literature, not only as a
new form of verse, but also because of the promise which it gives of
many a marriage between fine poetry and fine music--a marriage hitherto
far too rare among us.
The 'Window,' then, is a 'circle of songs,' twelve in number, describing
the hopes and fears of a lover parted from his mistress, and uncertain
what her reply will be to the great question he has asked her.
In the first--'On the hill'--he stands on the slope of the valley which
separates his home from hers, and as he looks across the distance sees
the flash from the window-pane of his love:--
'The lights and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's eye!
O is it the brook, or a pool, or her window-pane,
When the winds are up in the morning?
'Clouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that cannot be still,
All running on one way to the home of my love,
You are all running on, and I stand on the slope of the hill,
And the winds are up in the morning!'
He knows the window of which the flash has thus come to him, and is
familiar with all the charm both of what surrounds it, and what it
enshrines:--
'Vine, vine, and eglantine,
Clasp her window, trail and twine!
Rose, rose and clematis,
Trail and twine and clasp and kiss,
Kiss, kiss; and make her a bower
All of flowers, and drop me a flower,
Drop me a flower.'