Nor, on the other hand, are the passages here questioned, and others like them, instances of the lowered tension in writing such as we often find introduced with artistic propriety into narrative poetry. They are, rather, indications that the poet is momentarily relaxed in creative attention, and borrowing, and from a bad source at that. Other examples may be found by those who care to look for them, in both _Locksley Halls_, and in a way, though less evidently and with more excuse, from such amusing exercises as the Northern Farmer poems. Tis’n them as ’as munny as breäks into ’ouses an’ steäls, Them as ’as coäts to their backs an’ taäkes their regular meäls. Noä, but it’s them as niver knaws wheer a meäl’s to be ’ad. Taäke my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad. That has humorous charm, and as a _tour de force_ in writing its merit is obvious. But it comes something short of poetry, because it is fundamentally an expression which is not natural to the poet. It is witty and extremely sensitive reporting, but it is no more, in so far, that is to say, as the diction is concerned, the selective and shaping power of art not being here in question. In saying that poetic language should be based on common idiom, we mean an idiom that is naturally within the poet’s range, part of his own expressive habit, not an idiom that he deliberately copies. The Northern Farmer poems remain brilliant strokes of virtuosity, but Tennyson the poet had very little to do with them. It must be repeated, however, that in the great body of his work that explores the world of his own emotions, his response to nature and his simple but ever-brooding speculation, there is hardly a hint of the journalist confusing the poet. Tennyson in relation to the fourth of our problems, that of allowing natural objects to call up ready-shaped images in association from the stores of poetry, has already been briefly considered in connection with his faded leaf and falling chestnut. And in this matter he was no more troubled when the content of his poetry was something other than natural description and its inferences. He writes-- And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me ... but so intent is the mood that the siren voices of literature are beyond hearing, and on a sea unruffled by any alien wind the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill.