Another point of general interest is to be noted in the poem.  Despite the classical theme the tone is consistently modern, as may be gathered from the philosophy of the speech of Pallas, and from the tender yielding nature of Oenone.  There is no hint here of the vindictive resentment which the old classical writers, would have associated with her grief.  Similarly Tennyson has systematically modernised the Arthurian legend in the Idylls of the King, giving us nineteenth century thoughts in a conventional mediaeval setting.

A passage from Bayne, puts this question clearly:  “Oenone wails melodiously for Paris without the remotest suggestion of fierceness or revengeful wrath.  She does not upbraid him for having preferred to her the fairest and most loving wife in Greece, but wonders how any one could love him better than she does.  A Greek poet would have used his whole power of expression 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;