Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age

Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber,; ancient rosaries,

Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,

The cursed Malajan crease and xbattle clubs
From the isles of palm; and higher on the walls,
Petwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,

His own forefathers' arms and armour hung. (1)

From this luxurious house we turn to hear the spinster say:

An' I sits i' my oån little parlour, an' sarved

by my oan little lass,

Wi' my oån little garden out side, an' myx oa'n

bed o' sparrow-grass,

An' my oan door-poorch wi' the woodbine an

Jessmine a-dressin' it greeån,

An' my oån fine Jackman i' purple a rodbin' the

'ouse like a Queeån. (2)

(1) The Princess, Prologue 165. (2) The Spinster's Sweet Arts, 559.

Enoch Arden, when he was twentyone,

purchased his own boat, and made a home

For Annie, neat and nestlike, half way up

The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill.(1)

Enoch with his white horse and load of fish traveled not

only to the market cross but through the leafy lanes

behind the down,

Far as the portal warding lion-whelp,

And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall.(2)

When Enoch was about to sail for China

He sold his boat,

Bought Annie goods and stores and set his hand

To fix their little street and sitting-room

With shelf and corner for the goods and stores.

And so set Annie forth with all that seaman or their

wives needed. (3)

Annie's home when Phillip's wife

----fronted on the street,

The latest house to landward; but behind,

With one small gate that open'd on the waste,

(1) Enoch Arden 126.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid. 127.

Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd;

And in it throve an ancient evergreen,

A yewtree, and all around it ran a walk

Of shingle, and a walk divided it.(1)

It is not so much what Tennyson says about English homes as what he leaves unsaid, that makes us feel their comfort and homliness. The atmosphere of the poems on English life is pervaded with a feeling of ease and serenity and happiness.

Tennyson tells us very little about what went on in these houses.

Sweet Alice, the miller's daughter was sometimes seen to sit and spin.

Olivia (The Talking Oak) left the novel half uncut upon the rosewood shelf and left the new piano shut to ruin in the park. (2)

Maud in her own little oak room sat with her music and books. (3)

twining

The Gardener's daughter was turning a rose over the

porch when we first saw her and the May Queen bequeathed (1) Enoch Arden 136. (2)90 (8) 295