to instil bitterness into her resentful words. The
classic legend, instead of representing Oenone as forgiving Paris, makes
her nurse her wrath throughout all the anguish and terror of the Trojan
War. At its end, her Paris comes back to her. Deprived of Helen, a
broken and baffled man, he returns from the ruins of his native Troy, and
entreats Oenone to heal him of a wound, which, unless she lends her aid,
must be mortal. Oenone gnashes her teeth at him, refuses him the remedy,
and lets him die. In the end, no doubt, she falls into remorse, and
kills herself--this is quite in the spirit of classic legend; implacable
vengeance, soul-sickened with its own victory, dies in despair. That
forgiveness of injuries could be anything but weakness--that it could be
honourable, beautiful, brave--is an entirely Christian idea; and it is
because this idea, although it has not yet practically conquered the
world, although it has indeed but slightly modified the conduct of
nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and socially
right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration
of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless
bronze of Pagan obduracy."

1. IDA. A mountain range in Mysia, near Troy. The scenery is, in part,
idealised, and partly inspired by the valley of Cauteretz. See
_Introduction_, p. xvi.

2. IONIAN. Ionia was the district adjacent to Mysia. 'Ionian,'
therefore, is equivalent to 'neighbouring.'

10. TOPMOST GARGARUS. A Latinism, cf. _summus mons_.

12. TROAS. The Troad (Troas) was the district surrounding Troy.

ILION=Ilium, another name for Troy.

14. CROWN=chief ornament.

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., migh