Part 6

"Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more."

His last declaration of devoted attachment is,

"Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho' I die."

CXXXI.

"O living will"--_free will in man_--that will outlast all present things, surviving and enduring

"When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock,"

which is Christ, the source of all life and strength; and flowing through our deeds, "make them pure;" so that out of the dust of death, we may cry to One that hears, and has conquered time, and with us works; and we may put our whole trust in those "truths that never can be proved until we close with all we loved," and with God Himself, who will be "all in all"--not by the souls of mankind becoming absorbed into the "general Soul"--a notion which Poem xlvii. repudiates--but by the Divine nature being infused into and prevailing in all.

PREFATORY POEM.

To this final confession of faith, worked out through Sorrow by the sustaining help of Love, the prefatory Poem is merely a pendant.

"Strong Son of God, immortal Love,"

is addressed to Christ, God Himself upon earth.[88] George Herbert had before called our Saviour

"Immortal Love, author of this great frame;"

and our Poet says, though we have not seen His face, we embrace Him by faith,

"Believing where we cannot prove."

He acknowledges Him as the great Creator, and through all surrounding mysteries and disappointments, is satisfied with this conclusion as to the future,

"Thou art just."

This conviction is enough.

"Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou"--

God incarnate, to whom we must become spiritually united,

"Our wills are ours, to make them thine,"

as expressed in Poem cxxxi., stanza 1.

"Our little systems" "are but broken lights of thee," even as the colours of the rainbow are the broken lights of the sun.

"We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see."

Faith apprehends things which are spiritual, and do not come within the range of our senses; whilst knowledge accepts only what can be seen and understood.

Hence, the Poet would have knowledge advance and increase to the utmost, "a beam in darkness" ever growing. But reverence must grow with it; so that mind which accumulates knowledge, and soul which is the dwelling-place of faith, according well with each other, may make one music--be in harmony "as before," that is, I presume, as at first; but now "vaster" in their compass owing to the greater reach of modern thought and research.

This warning against scientific assumptions, in opposition to spiritual truths, is repeated from Poem cxiv.

The concluding humble prayer, contained in the three last stanzas, has the true ring of devout piety.

"Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

"Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.

"Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise."

"What seem'd my sin," would be the Poet's excessive grief for Hallam's death: for he elsewhere says,

"I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch."[89]

"What seem'd my worth," would be his devoted love for his friend, which he felt had ennobled his own life; and so he says,

"To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise."

But this worth was only comparative,

"from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee;"

since no human goodness can be counted as merit in the sight of God.

SUPPLEMENTARY POEM.

The Epithalamium, or marriage lay, which is added to the great Poem, refers to the wedding of a younger sister, Cecilia Tennyson, who, about the year 1842, married Edmund Law Lushington, sometime Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.

The strong domestic affections of the Poet are prominently shown throughout _In Memoriam_, and his pleasure at this bridal is very charming. He just recalls that Hallam had appreciated the Bride in her childhood:

"O when her life was yet in bud, He too foretold the perfect rose."

The worth of the Bridegroom is acknowledged in this address:

"And thou art worthy; full of power; As gentle; liberal-minded, great, Consistent; wearing all that weight Of learning[90] lightly like a flower."

The whole Poem is pleasant and jocund and _was meant to be a kind of Divina Commedia_--_ending cheerfully_--but it scarcely harmonizes with the lofty solemnity of _In Memoriam_, whose Author might rejoice in the thought, that he would leave behind him a rich legacy of comfort to all future generations of mourners.

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "The brook alone far off was heard." P. xcv. s. 2.

[2] In Bag Enderby Church is a stone memorial tablet to the Burton family, let into the wall, and dated 1591. Upon it are carved, in bold relief, parents and children in a kneeling posture. It has a Latin motto, signifying, that all begins with the dust of the earth, and ends with it.

[3] The name is happily preserved in his patent of nobility, which runs thus: "Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth, in the County of Sussex."

[4] About the time of Dr. Tennyson's death, the population of Somersby was 61, the church accommodation 60, and the annual value of the benefice L92. The population of Bag Enderby was 115, church accommodation 100, and value L92.

[5] The use of this word misled the Poet himself, who has since exchanged the term "chancel" for "dark church."

[6] The scene is not laid in Somersby Churchyard, as there is no clock in the Church tower.

[7] Critics have regarded the term "lying lip" as too harsh; but in Poem xxxix. it is again applied to sorrow--

"What whisper'd from her lying lips?"

See also Psalm cxx. 2.

[8] It is said of a celebrated clerical wit, that almost his last words were, "All things come to an end"--a pause--"except Wimpole Street."

[9] This reminds one of the _Jour des morts_--All Souls' Day, or The Day of the Dead, when it is a Continental custom to visit the graves of relatives and friends, with pious offerings of flowers, &c.

[10] This invocation to the ship reminds one of Horace's appeal to the vessel that was to bring Virgil home:--

_Navis, quae tibi creditum Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis Reddas incolumem, precor; Et serves animae dimidium meae._

Lib. I., Ode 3.

[11] "Sphere" _glomera_.

[12] This fruit of the vine, Matt. xxvi., 29.

[13] "Tangle," or "oar-weed," _Laminaria digitata_, says the Algologist, "is never met with but at extreme tide-limits, where some of its broad leather-like fronds may be seen darkly overhanging the rocks, while others, a little lower down, are rising and dipping in the water like sea-serpents floated by the waves." Plato, _Rep._, x., has a noble comparison from the story of Glaucus (498): "We must regard the soul as drowned ([Greek: diakeimenon]) like the sea-god, Glaucus: who, buffetted and insulted by the waves, sank, clustered with [Greek: ostrea te, kai phokia, kai petras]."

[14] In the month of October, 1884, I walked in the thickly wooded precincts of Hughenden Manor, the seat of the Earl of Beaconsfield; and I never heard the horse chestnuts patter to the ground as then and there. Quite ripe, they were constantly falling; and as they touched the gravelled walk the shell opened, and out sprang the richly coloured chestnut.--A. G.

[15] In Job xxxvii., 18, we read, "Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?" This term applies equally well to the sea.

[16] See 2 Cor. xii., 2.

[17] See P. ix., 5.

[18] The tenant farmers on the Clevedon estate were the bearers. The Rev. William Newland Pedder, who was Vicar of Clevedon for forty years, and died in 1871, read the burial service. The "familiar names" are those of the Elton family, which are recorded both on brass and marble in the church.

[19] The corpse was landed at Dover, and was brought by sixteen black horses all the way to Clevedon--so says Augustus James, who, when a boy, witnessed the interment. Sir A. H. Elton, the late Baronet, kindly corroborated this statement. Besides the coffin, there was a square iron box, deposited in the vault, which may have contained

"The darken'd heart that beat no more."

It is certain that the Poet always thought that the ship put in at Bristol.

Hallam's family resided in London, which accounts for the mourners coming from so great a distance. Augustus James told me, that the funeral procession consisted of a hearse and three mourning coaches, each of which was drawn by four horses; and he saw the sixteen animals under cover after their journey. My friend, Mr. Edward Malan, heard the same story from A. James.

[20] _It is a fact, that the Poem was written at both various times and places--through a course of years, and where their author happened to be, in Lincolnshire, London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere, as the spirit moved him._

[21] The effect of vapour in magnifying objects is shown towards the end of the Idyll, "Guinevere," where it says

"The moony vapour rolling round the King, Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it."

Can "the haze of grief" refer to the tear, which acts as a magnifying lens?

[22] "My proper scorn"--_proprius_--is scorn of myself, an imprecation. See Lancelot's self-condemnation at the end of "Lancelot and Elaine."

[23] The churches are not to be identified. Those in the neighbourhood of Somersby have too small belfries to allow of change ringing. The sounds may have been only in the Poet's mind.

[24] John, xii., 3

[25] A South African snake--_bucephalus Capensis_--commonly called the "Boom-slange "--attracts birds into its mouth as prey, drawing them by an irresistible fascination. Dr. Smith, in his "Zoology of South Africa," describes the process.

[26] In Cary's translation of Dante's "Hell," canto iii., line 21, we find this note on what Dante and Virgil encountered in the infernal shades--"_Post haec omnia ad loca tartarea, et ad os infernalis baratri deductus sum, qui simile videbatur puteo, loca vero eadem horridis tenebris, faetoribus exhalantibus, stridoribus quoque et nimiis plena erant ejulatibus, juxta quem infernum vermis erat infinitae magnitudinis, ligatus maxima catena._" _Alberici Virio_, Sec. 9.

[27] If time be merged and lost in eternity, why may not place, all sense of locality, be equally lost in infinitude of space?

[28] I remember holding a serious conversation with an enlightened physician, some years ago, who said, "I hardly like to venture the theory, but it almost seems to me, as if what is now said and thought becomes written on the physical brain, like a result of photography, and that a revelation of this transcript, may be our real accuser at the day of judgment." Had Shakespeare any such notion, in making Macbeth say,

"Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"

[29] Wordsworth entertains the notion of our having lived before in his fine Ode, "Intimations of Immortality," wherein he says,

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar," &c.

See Sir W. Scott's "Journal," where a like impression is acknowledged on 17th February, 1828.

Tennyson also says in "The Two Voices:"

"Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams--

Of something felt, like something here, Of something done, I know not where, Such as no language may declare."

[30] "Ay" must have the force of the Greek [Greek: ai] "alas"--and "ay me" be as the Latin _hei mihi_, "woe is me!" See also P. xl., 6.

[31] The early purple orchis is said to bear 200,000 seeds, and perhaps one grows to a plant.

[32] Coleridge says: "The Jacob's ladder of Truth let down from heaven to earth, with all its numerous rounds, is now the common highway on which we are content to toil upward."--_Friend_, viii.

[33] The doctrine of evolution may dispute this statement, and tell us that the type, or form, of the winged lizard of chaos, now fossilized in the rock, has been developed and continued in the reptile of the ditch; but its living self has perished, and its type is gone.

[34] "To die,--to sleep,--no more."--Hamlet.

[35]

"But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still."

[36] The term "toll" is correct--

"When we lament a departed soul We toll."

[37] _Dixitque novissima verba_, AE. iv., 650.

[38] A poem by Catullus (_Carmen_ ci.) who visits his brother's grave, concludes with these lines:

"_Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, Atque in perpetuum, frater, Ave, atque Vale._"

_Ave_ is the morning greeting: _Vale_ that of the evening. This seems the like idea to that of the morning and evening star. See P. cxxi., 5.

[39] There is often great charm in the cheerfulness of those who we know have suffered.

[40] See the Poet's own words on this point at the end of Poem XCVII.

[41] "Doubtful shore" may mean that here there may be doubt, whether there has not been a previous existence.

[42] "Thou, as one that once declined," recalls in Hamlet, Act I., s. 5, "To decline upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine."

[43] Clevedon Church, which is dedicated to St. Andrew, is quaint and picturesque in appearance, but not architecturally beautiful. It is an irregular structure, which has evidently been added to at various times, the chancel being the original fisherman's church, and it has a solid square tower. Within the sanctuary is the Hallam vault, on which the organ now stands. Two cliffs, known as Church Hill and Wains Hill, rounded and grass-grown, that rise on either side, seem to guard and shelter it, with its surrounding churchyard that holds the quiet dead. There are only two bells in Clevedon Church--a small one, on which are three initial letters L. A. C., and a larger one, weighing 25 cwt. which is inscribed--

"I to the church the living call, And to the grave do summon all."--1725.

[44] There are other tablets in this church, which contain touching memorials of the Hallam family. The historian's own death is recorded as having taken place on 21st January, 1859. Mrs. Hallam died 28th April, 1840. Their son Henry Fitzmaurice died at Sienna, 25th October, 1850, aged 26; and he is said, by one who knew him, to have had all the charm and talent of Arthur. On 13th June, 1837, in her 21st year, Eleanor Hallam was suddenly called away, and was buried in the vault where her brother, Arthur, had been laid.

It was after this sad bereavement, that Mr. and Mrs. Hallam made a brief sojourn at Sevenoaks, then unspotted by villas, where they lived in strict retirement. Mr. Hallam only associated with Sir John Bayley, the retired judge, who was a kind friend of my own youth. I see the sorrowing couple at church in garments of the deepest mourning: and the fine brow of Mr. Hallam resting on his hand, as he stood during the service in pensive devotion.--A. G.

[45] The Severn is nine miles wide at Clevedon.

[46] _Consanguineus leti sopor._ AEn. vi. 278. See also Iliad xiv., 231, and xvi., 672.

[47] In Tennyson's "Ode to Memory" the lines occur

"The seven elms, the poplars four. That stand beside my father's door."

[48] The foot of "Maud" opened these fringes by treading on the daisies. "Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy."

[49] Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Letter to a Friend," says, with reference to some one recently dead, that "he lost his own face, and looked like one of his near relations: for he maintained not his proper countenance, but looked like his uncle."

[50] In "The Two Voices," Tennyson says,

"I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A _dust_ of systems and of creeds."

And again, in "The Vision of Sin,"

"All the windy ways of men Are but _dust_ that rises up, And is lightly laid again."

Also in Poem LXXI., 3.

"the _dust_ of change."

[51] Shakespeare says,--"Till the diminution of space had pointed him sharp as my needle."--_Cymbeline_, Act i., s. 4.

Chaucer says,

"And all the world as to mine eye No more seemed than a prike."

_Temple of Fame._

[52] "The Poet Laureate has written his own song on the hearts of his countrymen that can never die. Time is powerless against him," said Mr. Gladstone, in returning thanks at Kirkwall for himself and Mr. Tennyson. To both of whom the freedom of the borough was presented, on the occasion of their visit--13 Sept., 1883.

[53] This term is Shakespearean,

"What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind."

_Hamlet_, Act iii., s. 4.

[54] A younger sister of Lady Tennyson.

[55] Their scholarly father gave them their first classical training. He was a strict tutor, and would make them repeat some odes of Horace before breakfast.

[56] In "The Two Voices" we find the idea that man may pass "from state to state," and forget the one he leaves behind:

"As old mythologies relate, Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping thro' from state to state."

[57] Miss Emily Tennyson eventually married a naval officer, Captain Jesse.

[58] In this Poem occurs the line

"Arrive at last the blessed goal."

"Arrive" is thus made an active verb: but there are good authorities for this use, which has the meaning of "attain," or "reach."

"But ere we could arrive the point proposed, Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink."

_Julius Caesar_, Act i., s. 2.

"I mean, my lords, those powers that the queen Hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast."

_3 Henry VI._, Act v., s. 3.

"Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive The happy isle."

_Paradise Lost_, B. II., l. 409.

[59] This Poem was written "through a course of years," and during that long period the author was devotedly attached to the lady whom he ultimately married, but they were not allowed to meet. May not this separation have tinctured, with double sadness, this wonderful elegy in memory of his friend? Lord Tennyson's marriage, and the first publication of "In Memoriam," both occurred in 1850.

[60]

"all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems."

Shakespeare, _Sonnet XXI._

[61] The "towering sycamore" must be a notable tree on the lawn, again alluded to in P. xcv., s. 14. _It is cut down, and the four poplars are gone, and the lawn is no longer a flat one._

[62] "In summer twilight she, as evening star, is seen surrounded with the glow of sunset, _crimson-circled_."

Spedding's _Bacon_, vol. vi., p. 615.

[63] In the "Lotus Eaters," we read

"all hath suffered change; For surely now our household hearths are cold: Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy."

[64] The kingfisher is here meant, which, like other birds, puts on its best plumage in early spring--see "Locksley Hall"--

"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove."

Longfellow sings in "It is not always May:"

"The sun is bright--the air is clear, The darting swallows soar and sing, And from the stately elms I hear The blue-bird prophesying spring."

I can positively say that the kingfisher is the bird to which the poet refers. Another parallel passage may be quoted:

"The fields made golden with the flower of March, The throstle singing in the feather'd larch, And down the river, like a flame of blue, Keen as an arrow flies the water-king."

"The little halcyon's azure plume Was never half so blue."--Shenstone.

[65] Campbell says, "Coming events cast their shadows before." The sun, by refraction, still appears in full size above the horizon, after it has really sunk below it; and reappears in full, when only just the upper edge has reached the horizon.

"As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow."

_Death of Wallenstein_, Act v. Scene i.

[66] The wish realized. See Poem xcv. s. 9.

[67] Somersby may be described as being utterly secluded from the "madding crowd"--the most rural retirement that the most agricultural country can show. I find the population was recorded in 1835, when the family still resided there, as being sixty-one, whilst the church accommodation was for sixty. Small, however, as both church and parish were, and still are, the so-called Rectory is a roomy family house, with its back to the road, on which there can be but little traffic, and it fronts a very extensive stretch of country, on which you enter by a steep slope of ground. There are no striking features in this expanse of soft undulations, but you feel a consciousness that the sea is not far off, and that the scenery is well adapted for fine cloud and sunset effects. The air seems to have a bracing tone, and the several equally small churches around, tell of thin populations, and a general condition of rustic simplicity and peace.

[68]

"They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead: They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed; I wept, as I remember'd how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

"And now that thou are lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake, For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take."

I cannot resist quoting these touching lines, which are translated from the Greek of Callimachus, librarian of Alexandria, 260 B.C., on his friend Heraclitus of Halicarnassus.

[69] See P. cix., s. 3.

[70]

"Jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops."

_Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii., s. 5.

[71] _Ignis fatuus_--"Will o' the Wisp."

[72] That is, the _ursa minor_, or little bear, which is a small constellation that contains the pole star, and never sets in our latitude.

[73] This is a favourite figure. In Poem xlix., stanza 1, we read,

"Like light in many a shiver'd lance That breaks about the dappled pools."

[74]

"This holly by the cottage-eave, To-night, ungather'd, shall it stand."

Changed in later editions to

"To-night ungather'd let us leave This laurel, let this holly stand."

[75]

"Use and Wont, Old sisters of a day gone by. They too will die."--Poem xxix.

[76] "_Ligna super foco large reponens._" Thackeray sang,

"Care, like a dun, Lurks at the gate, Let the dog wait! Happy we'll be.

Drink every one. Pile up the coals, Fill the red bowls, Round the old tree."

[77] "All stone I felt within," Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 47. Wright's translation. "My heart is turned to stone," Othello, act iv., s. 1. Eloisa says, "I have not quite forgot myself to stone."

[78] Lucan has, "_ulularunt tristia Galli_."

[79] "Nearest" in later editions.

[80] Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Christian Morals," says, "the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer."

[81] In _Measure for Measure_, act iii., s. 1, we read

"To be imprison'd in the viewless winds."

"Sightless" and "viewless" are alike used for "invisible."

"O, therefore, from thy sightless range."

P. xciii., 3.

[82] "_Caelum mutant, qui trans mare currunt._" Hor. Ep. xi., 27.