With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
  Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
  Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth: 
  So that men’s hopes and fears take refuge in
  The fragrance of its complicated glooms
  And cool impleached twilights.  Child of Man,
  See’st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
  Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through
  The argent streets o’ the City, imaging
  The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes;
  Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,
  Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells: 
  Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite,
  Minarets and towers?  Lo! how he passeth by,
  And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring
  To carry through the world those waves, which bore
  The reflex of my City in their depths. 
  Oh City!  Oh latest Throne! where I was rais’d
  To be a mystery of loveliness
  Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come
  When I must render up this glorious home
  To keen Discovery:  soon yon brilliant towers
  Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
  Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
  Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
  Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement,
  How chang’d from this fair City!’
                    Thus far the Spirit: 
  Then parted Heavenward on the wing:  and I
  Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
  Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

[The following review of ‘Timbuctoo’ was published in the Athenaeum of 22nd July, 1829:  ’We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away.  The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it—­namely, in a prize poem.  These productions have often been ingenious and elegant but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any men that ever wrote.  Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to the author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour.  We extract a few lines to justify our admiration (50 lines, 62-112, quoted).  How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?’ At the time when this highly eulogistic notice of the youthful unknown poet appeared, the Athenaeum was edited by John Sterling and Frederick Denison Maurice, its then proprietors.]

[Footnote A:  Mr Swinburne failed to find this couplet in any of Chapman’s original poems or translations, and was of opinion that it is Tennyson’s own.]

[Footnote B:  Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.]