What this is cannot easily be defined; it consists, perhaps, in the beauty of the atmosphere which Tennyson contrives to cast around his work, moulding it in the blue mystery of twilight, in the opaline haze of sunset: this atmosphere, suffused over his poetry with inestimable skill and with a tact very rarely at fault, produces an almost unfailing illusion or mirage of loveliness, so that, even where (as must sometimes be the case with every poet) the thought and the imagery have little value in themselves, the fictive aura of beauty broods over the otherwise undistinguished verse.   anvd [Please select]

His own lyric vein had an opaline intensity of fire, but in spite of its glow his verse sometimes refused to sing.   anvd [Please select]

Viewed from the peak, the lakes sparkle like opaline gems in the sun.   anvd [Please select]

Sufficient for thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.   anvd [Please select]

There were deeper shadows in the hollows but the sky behind the wooded ridge to the east was softly opaline.   anvd [Please select]

She saw the palms as a jungle, the pink-shaded electric globes as an opaline haze, and the eye-glassed faculty as Olympians.   anvd [Please select]

Immediately afterwards she slowly protruded a dense bunch of the fine long hairs, which quivered in the light, and shone with a delicate bluish-green lustre, here and there varied by opaline tints.   anvd [Please select]

The sun was going down, leaving a great glory of gold and crimson clouds and an [v]opaline haze upon the purple mountains.   anvd [Please select]