Part 44

But the progress of mind and purpose is very conspicuous in the poems of Tennyson. The first volume of his present edition is rich to excess with all the charms of genius; but it can bear no comparison with the elevated character and human object of many poems in the second volume. In the earlier stages of his career, the gay poet rather luxuriates in the wealth of sentiment than the golden ore of virtue, which he finds stored up by all-bountiful nature, for the use of his genius. He chants many merry ditties, full of elastic grace, like that to Airy, Fairy Lilien. He draws female characters glorious as divinities, affluent in charms, warm with love, the Isabels, and Eleanors, and Madelines of the volume. He works out another class of lyrical poems, such as Mariana in the Moated Grange, The Miller's Daughter, The Lady of Shalott, all most inimitable of their kind, where every word is, as it were, a jewel of poetry too precious ever to be lost again. Where the landscape is painted with the pencil of a great master--a Claude or a Poussin of poetry--where we see the golden cornfield, the evening sun gleaming on the old towers of enchanted beauty, where the birds sing, and the river runs as in a glorified dream; where every knight in his burnished greaves, or lady in her tapestried chamber, is presented as in the glass of Agrippa, living, moving, yet alone in the charmed scene of an unapproachable life! Where every minute falls numbered and weighed from the hand of time, and a great sentiment of weary existence and waiting is gradually let down upon you with the pressure of a nightmare. Or again, where the scenery and loves of rural life are, as in the Miller's Daughter, sketched with the pleasing and buoyant heart of Nature herself, and we are made to feel what brooks of love and happiness, bankful, flow through many a lowly place. Beyond these advance the passionate sorrow of Oriana, the drowsy richness of the Lotus Eaters, the splendid painting of The Palace of Art, and the Dream of Fair Woman; but not one of these is to be compared for a moment to Locksley Hall, or the Two Voices, in breadth of human sympathy, in a development of the great spirit of progress, in a union of all that those earlier poems possess of vigorous and beautiful with that sense of duty which comes on the true heart with advancing years, toward the world of actual man. In the first volume there are indications that the poet, calm as he is, and apart as he seems from the crowded path of human life, is still one of the true spirits who live for and feel with all. The poem of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, is a stern lesson to the heartlessness of aristocratic pride, shrouded as it may be under the fairest of forms.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred lords, You are not one to be desired.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name; Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that doats on truer charms, A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Some weaker pupil you must find, For were you queen of all that is, I could not stoop to such a mind. You sought to prove how I could love, And my disdain is my reply; The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head; Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Lawrence dead. O your sweet eyes, your low replies A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat, Which you had hardly cared to see.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear, Her manners had not that repose That stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a specter in your hall: The guilt of blood is at your door, You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse To make him trust his modest worth, And last, you fixed a vacant stare, And slew him with your noble birth.

"Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

"I know you, Clara Vere de Vere; You pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these.

"Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, If time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate, Nor any poor about your lands? Oh! teach the orphan boy to read, Or teach the orphan girl to sew, Pray heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go."

The poems which immediately follow this, The May Queen, and New-Year's Eve, are practical examples of the truth just enunciated--

"A simple maiden in her flower, Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms."

The natural beauty of The May Queen, and the exquisite pathos of the New-Year's Eve, have made them universally known. In the second volume the poet seems particularly to have endeavored to enforce his ideas of the dignity of a virtuous nature, which stands in its own divine worth, far above all artificial distinctions. His Gardener's Daughter, the ballad of Lady Clara, and that most delightful one of The Lord of Burleigh, all teach it. Lady Godiva is an example of that high devotion to the public good, which is prepared to make the most entire sacrifice of self; and of which history, here and there, amid its mass of selfishness and crime, presents us with some glorious examples--none more glorious than that of the beautiful Godiva. But Locksley Hall and The Two Voices are the most brilliant of all Tennyson's productions, and among the most perfect things in the language.

We can scarcely conceive any thing more perfectly musical and intrinsically poetical than Locksley Hall. It is the soliloquy of a wronged, high, and passionate nature. The speaker, a young man capable of great things, wars against the false maxims of the present time, yet sees how it is advancing into something better and greater. He perceives how mind is moving forward into its destined empire. He feels and makes us feel how great is this age and this England in which we live. Some of the thoughts and expressions stand prominent even amid the superb beauty of the whole, and have never been surpassed in their felicitous truth and pictorial power. The description of his life at that country hall, and the love of himself and his cousin Amy, are fine; but how much finer these stanzas, the result of the fickle cousin marrying a mere clod with a title. The certain consequence of the wife's mind, which would have soared and strengthened in the association with his own, sinking to the level of the brute she had allied herself to, is most admirably told. How constantly do we see this effect in life, but where ever has it been, and in so few words, so fully expressed?

"Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper thronged my pulses with the feelings of the spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me--to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the coarseness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine. Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him; take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought; Soothe him with thy finer fancies, tend him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand-- Better wert thou dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social ties that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from Nature's honest rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool."

With a lover's fancy he would seek comfort in persuading himself that his love was dead, but quickly spurns from him this idea. Every line which follows this--the picture of the repentant wife, and the drunken husband, "hunting in his dreams," the child that roots out regret, the mother grown into the matron schooling this child, a daughter, into the world's philosophy--all is masterly. Not less so the portraiture of the age:--

"What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barred with gold, and opens but with golden keys.

Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow, I have but an angry fancy,--what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, _When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound_.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels."

How finely, in the next stanzas, are portrayed the expectations of the ardent youth, the light of London, and the imagined progress of scenic and real life!

"Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusty highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men, the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that could be:

Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales:

Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, With the standards of the people plunging through the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

So I triumphed, ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry, Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint, Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

Disappointed in love, and sickened in hope of civilized life, the speaker dreams, for a moment, of flying to some savage land, and leading the exciting life of a tropical hunter. In the reaction of his thoughts how vividly is expressed the precious preëminence of European existence, with all its attendant evils!

"Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I _know_ my words are wild, But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage--what to me were sun or clime? _I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time_--

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon.

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward, let us range, Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day: _Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay_.

Mother-Age! (for mine I knew not,) help me as when life begun: Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun--

O I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set; Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet."

Who shall say, after this, that Alfred Tennyson wants power? There speaks the man of this moving age. There speaks the spirit baptized into the great spirit of progress. In the silence of his meditative retreat the poet sees the world rolling before him, and is struck with the majesty of its mind subduing its physical mass to its uses, and trampling on time, space, and the far greater evils--prejudice, false patriotism, and falser ideas of glory. Brotherhood, peace, and comfort advance out of the school and the shop, and happiness sits securely beneath the guardianship of

"The parliament of man, the federation of the world."

Alfred Tennyson has given many a fatal blow to many an old and narrow maxim in his poems; he has breathed into his latter ones the generous and the victorious breath of noblest philanthropy, the offspring of the great renovator--the Christian religion. This will give him access to the bosoms of the multitude--

"Men our brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;"

and his vigorous song will cheer them at their toil, and nerve them to more glorious efforts. Of the hold which his poetry has already taken on the public heart, a striking instance was lately given. The anonymous author of The New Timon stepped out of his way and his subject to represent Tennyson's muse as a puling school-miss. The universal outburst of indignation from the press scared the opprobrious lines speedily out of the snarler's pages. A new edition was quickly announced, from which they had wisely vanished.

Perhaps, however, the crown of all Tennyson's verse is The Two Voices. I have said that he is not metaphysical. He is better. Leaving to others to build and rebuild theories of the human mind, Tennyson deals with its palpable movements like a genuine philosopher, and one of the highest order, a Christian philosopher. The Two Voices are the voice of an animated assurance in the heart, and the voice of skepticism. In this poem there is no person who has passed through the searching, withering ordeal of religious doubts and fears as to the spiritual permanence of our existence--and who has not?--but will find in these simple stanzas the map and history of their own experience. The clearness, the graphic power, and logical force and acumen which distinguish this poem are of the highest order. There is nothing in the poems of Wordsworth which can surpass, if it can equal it. Let us take, as our last quotation, the closing portion of this lyric, the whole of which can not be read with too much attention. Here the combat with Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is most simply and beautifully put an end to by the buoyant spirit of nature, and man walking amid his human ties hand in hand with her and piety.

"The still voice laughed. 'I talk,' said he, 'Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee Thy pain is a reality.'

'Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark? But thou,' said I, 'hast missed thy mark By making all the horizon dark.

'Why not set forth if I should do This rashness,[6] that which might ensue With this old soul in organs new?

'Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

''Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death for which we pant; More life, and fuller that I want.'

I ceased, and sate as one forlorn. Then said the voice in quiet scorn, 'Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.'

And I arose, and I released The casement, and the light increased With freshness in the dawning east.

Like softened airs that blowing steal, When meres begin to uncongeal, The sweet church-bells began to peal.

On to God's house the people pressed, Passing the place where each must rest, Each entered like a welcome guest.

One walked between his wife and child, With measured footfall firm and mild, And now and then he gravely smiled.

The prudent partner of his blood Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good, Wearing the rose of womanhood.

And in this double love secure, The little maiden walked demure, Pacing with downward eyelids pure.

These three made unity so sweet, My frozen heart began to beat Remembering its ancient heat.

I blessed them, and they wandered on; I spoke, but answer came there none; The dull and bitter voice was gone.

A second voice was at mine ear, A little whisper, silver-clear, A murmur, 'Be of better cheer.'

As from some blissful neighborhood, A notice faintly understood, 'I see the end and know the good.'

A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, 'I may not speak of what I know.'

Like an Æolian harp that wakes No certain air, but overtakes Far thought with music that it makes.

Such seemed the whisper at my side: 'What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?' I cried. 'A hidden hope,' the voice replied.

So heavenly toned, that in that hour From out my sullen heart a power Broke, like the rainbow from the shower.

To feel, although no tongue can prove, That every cloud, that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love.

And forth into the fields I went, And nature's living motion lent The pulse of hope to discontent.

I wondered at the bounteous hours, The slow result of winter showers; You scarce could see the grass for flowers.

I wondered, while I passed along: The woods were filled so full with song, There seemed no room for sense of wrong.

So variously seemed all things wrought I marveled how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought.

And wherefore rather made I choice To commune with that barren voice, Than him that said, 'Rejoice! rejoice!'"

[6] Suicide.

So much for the poetry, but still where is the poet? It may be supposed by what has already been said, that he is not very readily to be found. Next to nothing has yet been known of him or his haunts. It has been said that his poetry showed from internal evidence that he came somewhere out of the fens. In three fourths of his verses there is something about "glooming flats," "the clustered marish-mosses," a poplar, a water-loving tree, that

"Shook alway, All silver green with gnarled bark; For leagues no other tree did mark The level waste, the rounding gray."

Or a whole Lincolnshire landscape of--

"A sand-built ridge Of heaped hills that mound the sea, Overblown with murmurs harsh, Crowned by a lowly cottage whence we see Stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like emblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky."

There are

"Long dim wolds ribbed with snow. Willows whiten, aspens shiver;"

thorough fen-land objects;

"A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand; Left on the shore."

These images show a familiarity with fen-lands, and flat sea-coast, to a certainty; but Alfred Tennyson, after all, though a Lincolnshire man, is not a native of the fens. He was born near enough to know them well, but not in them. His native place is Somersby, a little village lying about midway between the market-towns of Spilsby and Horncastle, and containing less than a hundred inhabitants. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., was rector of that and the adjoining parish of Enderby. He was a man of very various talents--something of a poet, a painter, an architect, and a musician. He was also a considerable linguist and mathematician. Dr. Tennyson was the elder brother of Mr. Tennyson d'Encourt, M.P. Alfred Tennyson, one of several children, was born at the parsonage at Somersby, of which a view stands at the head of this chapter. From the age of seven till about nine or ten, he went to the grammar-school of Louth, in the same county, and after that returned home and was educated by his father, till he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.

The native village of Tennyson is not situated in the fens, but in a pretty, pastoral district of softly sloping hills and large ash-trees. It is not based on bogs, but on a clean sandstone. There is a little glen in the neighborhood called by the old monkish name of Holywell. Over the gateway leading to it, some by-gone squire has put up an inscription, a medley of Virgil and Horace.

"Intus aquæ dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo Et paulum silvæ superest. His utere mecum;"

and within, a stream of clear water gushes out of a sand-rock, and over it stands an old school-house, almost lost among the trees, and of late years used as a wood-house, its former distinction only signified by a scripture text on the walls--"Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." There are also two brooks in this valley which flow into one at the bottom of the glebe-field, and by these the young poet used to wander and meditate. To this scenery we find him turning back in his Ode to Memory.

"Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside, The seven elms, the poplars four That stand beside my father's door, And chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodlands. O! hither bend thy feet! Pour round mine eyes the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep frem wattled folds, Upon the ridged wolds, When the first matin-song hath wakened loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn, What time the amber morn Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud."

In the church-yard stands a Norman cross almost single of its kind in England.