According to Wikipedia , Tennyson is the second most quoted author in the English language, after Shakespeare. This collection provides a surprisingly broad survey of a poetic career spanning more than sixty years. The book is portable , attractively packaged and needing you, to take it on a trip to mountain or beach.( Or a mid-winter's read by the fireside.) The selections are often stirring and profound and there is an over-arching ambience of melancholia...." Come down , o maid , from yonder mountain height "...It's all high drama I tell ye.