"Lady Geraldine's Courtship" is a poem of the Tennysonian school. Some pith is put forth in the passionate parts of the poem; but it is deficient throughout in that finished elegance of style which distinguishes the works of the great artist from whom it is imitated. Bertram, a peasant-born poet falls in love with the Lady Geraldine, a woman of high rank and very extensive possessions. He happens to overhear the lady address the following words to a suitor of the same rank with herself, and whose overtures she is declining-- "Yes, your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble, Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born." Upon which, imagining that these words have some special and cutting reference to himself, he passes into the presence of the lady, and rates her in a strain of very fierce invective, which shows that his blood is really up, whatever may be thought of the taste which dictated his language, or of the title he had to take to task so severely a lady who had never given him any sort of encouragement. In a letter to a friend, he thus describes the way in which he went to work--the fourth line is a powerful one-- "Oh, she flutter'd like a tame bird, in among its forest-brothers, Far too strong for it! then drooping, bow'd her face upon her hands-- And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others! _I, she planted the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands._ "I pluck'd up her social fictions, bloody-rooted, though leaf verdant,-- Trod them down with words of shaming,--all the purples and the gold, And the 'landed stakes' and Lordships--all that spirits pure and ardent Are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold. "'For myself I do not argue,' said I, 'though I love you, Madam, But for better souls, that nearer to the height of yours have trod-- And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam, Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. "'Yet, O God' (I said,) 'O grave' (I said,) 'O mother's heart and bosom! With whom first and last are equal, saint and corpse and little child! We are fools to your deductions, in these figments of heart-closing! We are traitors to your causes, in these sympathies defiled! "'Learn more reverence, madam, not for rank or wealth--_that_ needs no learning; _That_ comes quickly--quick as sin does! ay, and often works to sin; But for Adam's seed, MAN! Trust me, 'tis a clay above your scorning, With God's image stamp'd upon it, and God's kindling breath within. "'What right have you, Madam, gazing in your shining mirror daily, Getting, so, by heart, your beauty, which all others must adore,-- While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gaily,... You will wed no man that's only good to God,--and nothing more.'"