Part 4

A succession of dreams now occurs. When at night he presses "the down" of his pillow, sleep, "Death's twin-brother,"[46] "times my breath"--takes possession of him and regulates his breathing. But, though so closely related to Death, sleep cannot make him dream of Hallam "as dead." He again walks with him, as he did before he was left "forlorn;" and all nature is bright around them.

But, looking at his friend, he discovers "a trouble in thine eye"--an expression of sadness, which his dream will not account for. The light of day reveals the truth. He awakes, and perceives that his own grief, the trouble of his youth, had transferred itself to the image he saw in his dream.

LXIX.

He dreams again, and nature seems to have become distorted, and will not answer to the seasons. Smoke and frost fill the streets, and hawkers chatter trifles at the doors.

He wanders into a wood, and finds only "thorny boughs." Of these he forms a crown, which he places on his head. For wearing this, he is scoffed at and derided; but an angel comes and touches it into leaf, and speaks words of comfort, "hard to understand," being the language of a higher world.

The occurrences in this dream seem to have been suggested by the indignities offered to our Lord before His crucifixion.

LXX.

The confusion of nightmare, with hideous imagery, follows his effort to discern the features of Hallam; till all at once the horrid shapes disperse, and his nerves are composed by a pleasanter vision:

"I hear a wizard music roll, And thro' a lattice on the soul Looks thy fair face and makes it still."

LXXI.

Sleep, from its capturing power over the brain, is called "kinsman to death and trance and madness;" and is here acknowledged as affording

"A night-long Present of the Past,"

by reviving in a dream of the night a tour they had made together "thro' summer France."

The Poet asks that, if sleep has "such credit with the soul," as to produce this temporary illusion; it may be farther extended by giving him a stronger opiate, so as to make his pleasure complete, in prolonging this renewal of their pedestrian tour, and reviving other cherished associations.

This reference to their foreign excursion recalls the charming verses, "In the Valley of Cauteretz," which evidently relate to their being together during this happy holiday:

"All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk'd with one I loved two-and-thirty years ago. All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me."

LXXII.

The dreams are over, and he addresses the sad anniversary of Hallam's death, which took place on the 15th of September, 1833--the day having just dawned with stormy accompaniments. The poplar tree[47] is blown white, through having its leaves reversed by the wind; and the window-pane streams with rain. It is a day on which his "crown'd estate," his life's happiness, began to fail; and that the rose is weighed down by rain, and the daisy closes her "crimson fringes,"[48] are effects quite in harmony with his feelings.

But, if the day had opened with no wind, and the sun had chequered the hill sides with light and shadow; it would still have looked

"As wan, as chill, as wild as now."

It is a disastrous "day, mark'd as with some hideous crime," he can therefore only say, "hide thy shame beneath the ground," in sunset, when the recalling anniversary will be past.

We are reminded of Job's imprecation on his own birthday--"Let the day perish on which I was born."

LXXIII.

He says there are so many worlds, and so much to be done in them--since so little has already been accomplished--that he thinks Hallam may have been needed elsewhere. The earthly career of usefulness and distinction is over; but he finds no fault, piously submitting--

"For nothing is that errs from law;"

all is overruled. We pass away, and what survives of human deeds?

"It rests with God."

The hollow ghost of Hallam's reputation may wholly fade here; but his exulting soul carries away unexpended powers for higher purposes,

"And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name,"

had he been permitted to live.

LXXIV.

This Poem will certainly not bear a literal interpretation. We cannot suppose that the writer ever looked on the face of his friend after death; for nearly four months had elapsed before the body reached England.

What he saw, therefore, was with "the mind's eye." And as Death often brings out a likeness,[49] which was never before recognized; so, contemplating the character of the departed, he sees

"Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old."

I can perceive worth in thee equal to theirs!

The last stanza is mystical; the darkness of death hides much; what he can see he cannot or will not explain: enough, that thou hast made even this darkness of death beautiful by thy presence.

LXXV.

The Poet leaves the praises of his friend unexpressed, because no words can duly convey them; and the greatness thus unrecorded must be guessed, by the measure of the survivor's grief.

Indeed, he does not care

"in these fading days To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song, To stir a little dust[50] of praise."

The world only applauds accomplished success, and does not care for what might have been done, had opportunity been given. It is therefore sufficient that silence should guard Hallam's fame here; because the writer is assured, that what he is elsewhere doing

"Is wrought with tumult of acclaim."

One cannot but feel that were it not for this immortal elegy, its subject would have been long since forgotten, like other promising youths who have died in their Spring.

LXXVI.

"Take wings of fancy," and imagine that you have the whole "starry heavens of space" revealed to one glance--"sharpen'd to a needle's end."[51]

"Take wings of foresight," and see in the future how thy best poems are dumb, before a yew tree moulders; and though the writings of _the great early Poets_--"the matin songs that woke the darkness of our planet"--may last, thy songs in fifty years will have become vain; and have ceased to be known by the time when the oak tree has withered into a hollow ruin.[52]

LXXVII.

"What hope is here for modern rhyme?"

Looking at what has already happened,

"These mortal lullabies of pain,"

may bind a book, or line a box, or be used by some girl for curl papers; or before a century has passed, they may be found on a stall, telling of

"A grief--then changed to something else, Sung by a long forgotten mind."

Nevertheless, these considerations shall not deter the Poet--

"But what of that? My darken'd ways Shall ring with music all the same; To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise."

LXXVIII.

Another Christmas Eve arrives, with snow and calm frosty weather. Though, as of old, they had games, and _tableaux vivants_, and dance, and song, and "hoodman blind"[53]--blindman's bluff--yet in spite of these recreations,

"over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost."

There were no visible signs of distress--no tears or outward mourning. Could regret then have died out?

"No--mixt with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry."

LXXIX.

"More than my brothers are to me"--

he had used this expression in the last stanza of Poem ix., and in repeating it he would apologize to his brother Charles Tennyson, we may presume.

"Let not this vex thee, noble heart!"

for thou art holding "the costliest love in fee," even a wife's affection--we may again suppose.

The Rev. Charles Tennyson married Miss Sellwood,[54] and changed his name to Turner, for property left to him by a relation, and was vicar of Grasby, in Lincolnshire. The brothers,[55] in their boyhood, shared one home with all its endearing associations; and now each has his special object of affection: "my wealth resembles thine;" except that Hallam

"was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my want the more As his unlikeness fitted mine."

LXXX.

If any vague wish visits the Poet, that he had himself been the first to be removed by Death (when the dust would have dropt on "tearless eyes," which, as it is, have now so sorely wept over Hallam's departure); then the grief of the survivor would have been

"as deep as life or thought, But stay'd in peace with God and man;"

because Hallam would have found comfort in pious resignation.

So he minutely ponders over this holy submission, and invokes contentment from the contemplation--

"Unused example from the grave Reach out dead hands to comfort me."

LXXXI.

If, whilst Hallam was with him, it could be said that love had its full complement and satisfaction, and could not range beyond; still he torments himself with "this haunting whisper,"

"More years had made me love thee more."

My attachment would have expanded with the enlargement of his powers.

"But Death returns an answer sweet: My sudden frost was sudden gain"--

The change in death instantly exalted its victim;

"And gave all ripeness to the grain, It might have drawn from after-heat."

A sudden frost will ripen grain or fruit, but will not impart the flavour to fruit which the sun gives.

In Hallam's sudden transition, what might have been drawn from subsequent experience was at once fully accomplished.

LXXXII.

A fine burst of Faith in the future. He does not reproach Death for any corruption by it "on form or face." No decay of the flesh can shake his trust in the survival of the soul. "Eternal process" is ever "moving on;" the Spirit walks through a succession of states of being; and the body dropt here is but a case, the "ruin'd chrysalis of one" state left behind.[56]

Nor does he find fault with Death for taking "virtue out of earth:" he knows that it will be transplanted elsewhere to greater profit.

What he is angry with Death for is, their separation--

"He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak."

This Poem expresses a comforting belief in progress and advancement hereafter.

LXXXIII.

"The northern shore" must simply mean our northern region.

He reproaches the New Year for "delaying long." Its advent would cheer him, bringing the light and sweetness of Spring--for

"Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons?"

He would have the New Year bring all its customary flowers--

"Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire"--

a sight of these would set free the sorrow in his blood,

"And flood a fresher throat with song."

LXXXIV.

This Poem is a very charming conception of what their lives might have domestically been, if Hallam had been spared. The picture is almost too beautiful: detailing more than life ever allows--and there came the crushing sorrow.

Engaged in marriage to the Poet's sister,[57] death intervened--

"that remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange flower, Despair of Hope, and earth of thee."

It is remarkable how the imagination of the Poet glows over the tender scenes of home affection, and the great results which he presumes were arrested by the removal of his friend, who he had hoped would have attained "to reverence and the silver hair" in company with himself--and then, in their full old age,

"He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand, And take us as a single soul."

The mere thought of this forbidden consummation of their friendship shocks him; it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and stops

"The low beginnings of content."[58]

LXXXV.

The first stanza merely repeats the sentiment expressed in Poem xxvii., that the deepest grief has only more fully convinced him, that to have loved and lost is better than never to have loved.

It is _the friend to whom the epithalamium is addressed_--E. L. Lushington--"true in word and tried in deed," who asks how he is affected--if his faith be still firm, and he has still room in his heart for love? He answers, that all was well with him, until that fatal "message" came, that

"God's finger touch'd him, and he slept."

He then recounts what he thinks may have occurred to Hallam, when translated through various stages of spiritual being; and he repeats his sorrowful regrets for his loss. But "I woo your love," he seems to say to his future brother-in-law, for he holds it wrong

"to mourn for any over much:"

still, so deep is his attachment to Hallam, that he calls himself

"the divided half of such A friendship as had master'd Time;"

their intimacy would be eternal; and he imagines some sort of intercourse still carried on betwixt them, which he describes in language that has much of the spirit and character of Dante.

He then seems to turn again to his living friend, and says,

"If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you."

But he is not wholly disconsolate--

"My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone,[59] But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another living breast."

The concluding stanza offers the primrose of autumn to the surviving friend, whilst that of spring must be reserved for the friend whom he has lost.

LXXXVI.

He asks the ambrosial air of evening, which is so "sweet after showers," and is "slowly breathing bare the round of space,"[60] clearing the sky of clouds, and "shadowing" the divided stream by raising ripples on its surface, to fan the fever from his cheek, till Doubt and Death can no longer enchain his fancy, but will let it fly to the rising star, in which

"A hundred spirits whisper, 'Peace.'"

This Poem is remarkable as being one sustained sentence.

LXXXVII.

He revisits Cambridge, the chief scene of past intimacy with Hallam, and roams about the different colleges.

The expression "high-built organ," probably alludes to the organ being here, as in some cathedrals, reared above the screen which separates the choir from the nave.

"The prophets blazon'd on the panes,"

refers to the stained glass windows, and more particularly to those, perhaps, in King's College chapel. The scenery at the back of the colleges is vividly recalled.

He stops at the door of Hallam's old room, now occupied by a noisy wine party. It was there that his friend used to achieve such controversial triumphs--ever as the master-bowman hitting the mark in argument, when

"we saw The God within him light his face,"

like the martyr Stephen's;

"And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo"--

whose brow was straight and prominent--the sign of intellectual power.

_Michael Angelo had a strong bar of bone over his eyes._

Mrs. Frances A. Kemble in _Record of a Girlhood_, vol. ii. p. 3, thus describes young Hallam's appearance. "There was a gentleness and purity almost virginal in his voice, manner, and countenance; and the upper part of his face, his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness for his early translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still must wear in heaven. Some time or other, at some rare moments of the divine Spirit's supremacy in our souls, we all put on the heavenly face that will be ours hereafter, and for a brief lightning space our friends behold us as we shall look when this mortal has put on immortality. On Arthur Hallam's brow and eyes this heavenly light, so fugitive on other human faces, rested habitually, as if he was thinking and seeing in heaven."

LXXXVIII.

He asks the "wild bird," probably the nightingale, whose liquid song brings a sense of Eden back again, to define the feelings of the heart, its emotions and passions. In the "budded quicks" of Spring the bird is happy; in the "darkening leaf," amid the shadowing foliage, though its happiness be gone, its grieving heart can still cherish "a secret joy." The notes of the nightingale are supposed to be both sorrowful and joyous.

Even so, the Poet cannot wholly govern his own muse; for, when he would sing of woe,

"The glory of the sum of things,"

the grandeur of life's experience, will sometimes rule the chords.

LXXXIX.

This Poem is like a picture by Watteau of a summer holiday in the garden or the woods.

He recalls the lawn of Somersby Rectory, with the trees[61] that shade it, and Hallam as being present on one of his repeated visits. He has come down from his law readings in the Temple,

"The dust and din and steam of town;"

and now, in a golden afternoon, sees

"The landscape winking thro' the heat"

as he lies and reads Dante, or Tasso, aloud to his companions; until later on, when some lady of the group would bring her harp, and fling

"A ballad to the brightening moon."

Or the family party may have strayed farther away, for a picnic in the woods; and are there discussing the respective merits of town and country.

They are described as returning home,

"Before the crimson-circled star[62] Had fall'n into her father's grave,"

that is, before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea--"her father's grave."--_This planet is evolved from the Sun--La Place's theory._

The evening sounds are very charming--

"The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honied hours,"

when the bees were gathering their last stores of the day. Tender recollections of the past!

XC.

He is indignant at the idea that if the dead came back to life again, they would not be welcome; and declares that whoever suggested this, could never have tasted the highest love.

Nevertheless, if the father did return to life, he would probably find his wife remarried, and his son unwilling to give up the estate. Even if matters were not so bad as this, still

"the yet-loved sire would make Confusion worse than death, and shake The pillars of domestic peace."[63]

Though all this may be true,

"I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee."

XCI.

When the larch is in flower, and the thrush "rarely pipes"--exquisitely sings; and "the sea-blue bird of March,"[64] the kingfisher, "flits by;" come, my friend, in thy spirit form, with thy brow wearing the tokens of what thou hast become. Come to me also in the summer-time, when roses bloom and the wheat ripples in the wind. Don't come at night, but whilst the sunbeam is warm, that I may see thee,

"beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light."

XCII.

If a vision revealed Hallam in bodily presence as of old, he would doubt its reality, and ascribe it to "the canker of the brain." If the apparition spoke of the past, he would still call it only "a wind of memory" in himself. Even if it promised what afterwards came true, he would account it to be merely a presentiment--

"such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise."[65]

XCIII.

"I shall not see thee;" for he doubts, though he dares not positively speak, whether a spirit does ever return to this world--at least visibly--so as to be recognised. But he will dare to ask that where "the nerve of sense" is not concerned--that is, where neither sight nor touch are needed--wholly apart from the body--"Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost" may come, so that

"My Ghost may feel that thine is near."[66]

XCIV.

To be fit and capable of a spiritual visitation from the dead, you must be "pure in heart, and sound in head." There will be no answer to your invocation, unless you can say that your "spirit is at peace with all," as they can who are already in "their golden day" in Paradise. The mind and memory and conscience must be calm and still; for

"when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits,"

the departed spirits

"can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within."

This fitness for apprehending any communications from the next world, well describes the condition requisite for intercourse with God Himself.

XCV.

Here comes another family scene at Somersby.[67]

It may be observed here that Dr. Tennyson, the Poet's father, had died in 1831, but his family remained in their old home for several years afterwards, as the new Incumbent was non-resident.

The family party are at tea on the lawn in the calm summer evening. No wind makes the tapers flare, no cricket chirrs, only the running brook is heard at a distance, whilst the urn flutters on the table. The bats performed their circular flight;

"And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes"--

these are _night moths_ (_Arctica menthrasti_, the ermine moth, answers the description), whilst those assembled sing old songs, which are heard as far as where the cows are lying under the branching trees.

So passed the evening until all have retired to rest, and the Poet is alone, when he takes out Hallam's last-written letters--

"those fall'n leaves which kept their green, The noble letters of the dead."[68]

He reads them afresh, to renew a sense of their bygone intimacy:

"So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past, And all at once it seem'd at last The living soul was flash'd on mine."

The Poet's mind struggles on "empyreal heights of thought" in incorporeal ecstasy--a sort of trance inexplicable--which lasts till dawn, when

"East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day."

XCVI.

He reproves the young lady, who, whilst tender over killing a fly, does not hesitate to call the harass of religious doubt "Devil-born."

The Poet says, "one indeed I knew"--who, it may be presumed, was Hallam--and

"He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them." "Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,[69] At last he beat his music out,"

and found the serenity of faith.

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds."

Unquestioning faith is not the qualification for its champion. True faith is the result of conflict--"the victory that overcometh the world."

God made and lives in both light and darkness; and is present in the trouble of doubt, as well as in the comfort of belief. The Israelites were making idols when God's presence in the cloud was manifested by the trumpet. They doubted in the midst of sensible proof of the Divine presence.

The questionings of a speculative mind ought to be tenderly dealt with, not harshly denounced.

XCVII.

This Poem is highly mystical.

"My love has talk'd with rocks and trees."

His own affection for Hallam seems to personate the object of his attachment, and "sees himself in all he sees." Just as the giant spectre, sometimes seen "on misty mountain-ground,"[70] is no more than the vast shadow of the spectator himself.

The Poem proceeds more intelligibly, by drawing a comparison which typifies his own humble relation to his exalted friend. He imagines some meek-hearted and affectionate wife loving and revering a husband, whose high intellect and pursuits exclude her from any real companionship.

But she treasures any little memorials of their early devotion, and feeling that he is

"great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 'I cannot understand: I love.'"