“The poem of Oenone is the first of Tennyson’s elaborate essays in a metre over which be afterwards obtained an eminent command.  It is also the first of his idylls and of his classical studies, with their melodious rendering of the Homeric epithets and the composite words, which Tennyson had the art of coining after the Greek manner (’lily-cradled,’ ‘river-sundered,’ ‘dewy-dashed’) for compact description or ornament.  Several additions were made in a later edition; and the corrections then made show with what sedulous care the poet diversified the structure of his lines, changing the pauses that break the monotonous run of blank verse, and avoiding the use of weak terminals when the line ends in the middle of a sentence.  The opening of the poem was in this manner decidedly improved; yet one may judge that the finest passages are still to be found almost as they stood in the original version; and the concluding lines, in which the note of anguish culminates, are left untouched.”

“Nevertheless the blank verse of Oenone lacks the even flow and harmonious balance of entire sections in the Morte d’Arthur or Ulysses, where the lines are swift or slow, rise to a point and fall gradually, in cadences arranged to correspond with the dramatic movement, showing that the poet has extended and perfected his metrical resources.  The later style is simplified; he has rejected cumbrous metaphor; he is less sententious; he has pruned away the flowery exuberance and lightened the sensuous colour of his earlier composition.”—­Sir Alfred Lyall.

First published in 1832-3.  It received its present improved form in the edition of 1842.  The story of Paris and Oenone may be read in Lempriere, or in any good classical dictionary.  Briefly it is as follows:—­Paris was the son of Priam, King of Troy, and Hecuba.  It was foretold that he would bring great ruin on Troy, so his father ordered him to be slain at birth.  The slave, however, did not destroy him, but exposed him upon Mount Ida, where shepherds found him and, brought him up as one of themselves.  “He gained the esteem of all the shepherds, and his graceful countenance and manly development recommended him to the favour of Oenone, a nymph of Ida, whom he married, and with whom he lived in the most perfect tenderness.  Their conjugal bliss was soon disturbed.  At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the goddess of discord, who had not been invited to partake of the entertainment, showed her displeasure by throwing into the assembly of gods, who were at the celebration of the nuptials, a golden apple on which were written the words Detur pulchriori.  All the goddesses claimed it as their own:  the contention at first became general, but at last only three, Juno (Here), Venus (Aphrodite), and Minerva (Pallas), wished to dispute their respective right to beauty.  The gods, unwilling to become arbiters in an affair of so tender and delicate a nature, appointed Paris to adjudge the