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A CRITICAL STUDY OF IN MEMORIAM

.-> - ' ■ - I jtnmttmttltttittr"; .

A CRITICAL STUDY

IN MEMORIAM

BY THE

REV. JOHN M. KING, M.A., D.D.

PRINCIPAL OF MANITOBA COLLEGE
WINNIPEG

TORONTO
GEORGE N MORANG

1898

^'^'^'oC.-J.

44178

K'5'5'

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year of Our
Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety-eight, by John
M. King, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture, at Ottawa.

DEDICATED

THE MEMORY

MY WIFE

PREFACE

T^HIS small work on In Memoriam had its origin
*" in a course of Lectures delivered to ladies
in Manitoba College in the winter and spring of
the present year. The Lectures, the main con-
tents of which are embraced in this volume, were
prepared without any intention of publication.
They are put in print at the request of many
who heard them, and, though the perusal of a
summary however full, is a very different thing
from the hearing of a lecture, especially when, as
in the present case, the subject is a poem, which
in reading it the tones of the living voice can do
so much to interpret, they may perhaps interest a
wider circle, and help some of its numerous
readers to a better understanding of the meaning
and a deeper appreciation of the beauty of the
remarkable work.

Though not primarily intended for any wider
class than that composed of the ladies who
listened to them, the Lectures were not written
without a good deal of care and without a some-
what close study of much of the voluminous

VUl.

IN ME MORI AM.

literature on the subject to which Ihey refer.
Frequent references will be found throughout the
book to more than one of the expositors of the
Poem. While the Author would gratefully
acknowledge his indeb* dness to almost all of
these for valuable sui^gc tions, he has exercised
throughout an independent judgment, and has
not shrunk from calling attention to what appears
to him to be the misapprehensions and the forced
interpretations of one and another.

One of the earliest commentators on the Poem,
and one of the first to recognize its significance
for religious thought, as well as its literary charm
was the Rev. F. W. Robertson, and though his
small volume on the subject consists of nothing
more than a brief heading to the successive poems
or cantos, it 's singularly valuable, as shewing
what that brilliant and gifted man understood to
be the leading thought of each. It will be
observed that in several instances these headings
have been transferred to the present work. They
will be recognized by the initials (F.W.R.) of the
famous preacher. Dr. Gatty's little volume,
entitled a Key to In Memoriam, is instructive and
helpful : it is especially so, because of some
annotations written by the Poet himself, which
are incorporated in it. Under the title of
Prolegomena to In Memoriam, Mr. Thomas
Davidson gives a full analysis of the Poem and
discusses at considerable length and with much
vigor some of the philosophical and religious
questions which it raises. The Trancendentalism
of Kant is perhaps too largely in evidence
throughout this work. It remains true, neverthe-

PREFACE.

IX.

less, that it evinces both wide reading and mental
acumen, and gives valuable aid to the understand-
ing- of the Poem.

The most elaborate treatment of In Memorinm
which has come under the Author's eye ii: that by
Professor Genung. Its merits are sucfi ihat no
one making a thorough study of the Poem can
afford to overlook it, or fail to derive profit from
its careful perusal. At the same time, it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that its value is
greatly impaired by a theory as to the aim and
scope of the Poem, which leads the writer to
ascribe to it a kind of unity on the one hand and
a regularly graduated progress on the other, such
as the circumstances attending its composition, as
related by the Poet himself, must iiave prevented
it from acquiring. As a result, and by way of
sustaining this theory which is rigidly applied
throughout, we have presented to us purely
arbitrary and artificial divisions, connections
equally arbitrary and artificial, and forced inter-
pretations not a few. This, we are aware, is a
severe charge to bring against a book of such
note, but examples will be forthcoming in the
following pages to sustain it fully.

Among others, Mr. Joseph Jacobs gives a care-
ful, appreciative and minute word-study of the
Poem. A thoughtful, appreciative and liberal
criticism of it, from a Roman Catholic point of
view, is furnished by Brother Azarias in his
"Phases of Thought and Criticism." It is difficult
to speak too highly of the Analysis of In
Memoriam and the discussion of its contents,
especially on the moral and religious side, by

IN MEMORIAM.

Edward Campbell Tainsh in his volume entitled
*' A Study of Tennyson's Works."

The most effective treatment of In Memoriam,
simply as a poem, is probably that of Stopford
Brooke. His criticism of its literary qualities is
at once discriminating and appreciative. By the
assistance of his keen and practised pen we are
enabled in some measure to understand the secret
of that charm which all must recognize as belong-
ing to the matchless word-pictures with which the
Poem abounds. Not much importance apparently
is attached to the Poem by this writer, as a plea
for immortality. From Henry Van Dyke and W.
J. Dawson we have also valuable and discrim-
inating estimates of In Memoriam from the same
point of view, ' combining however with the
literary considerations, those of a religious
character as well.

The most satisfactory book on the whole, in
the way of assisting the student to read In
Memoriam intelligently, is probably the small
volume of Mrs. Chapman. Her analysis of the
separate poems is very generally just, and the
contents are summarized, always in correct, and
sometimes in felicitous and graceful terms.

It would be too much to expect that the present
critical study of the Poem should be free from
mistakes. No such claim is made on its behalf.
The author would not wish it to be brought into
comparison with some of the works which have
been named. It has, however, proved helpful in
its spoken form to not a few, and it is now given
to the public in the hope that it may assist a still
wider circle to understand and appreciate a poem

PREFACE.

XI.

which Is more than ever engatjing the attention
of those who use the English tongue, and in which
the genius of the Poet wrestles with problems of
undying interest to the human family.

Manitoba College, Winnipeg.
November 4, 1898.

INTRODUCTION

Tennyson is probably the greatest Poet of the
Victorian era ; without doubt In Memoriam is his
greatest poem; the poem ''most weighted with
thought, most varied in feeling" and most perfect
in form.

The occasion of the Poem, as is well known,
was the sudden, and, as we might reckon it, the
premature death of Arthur Hallam, a son of the
famous historian, and a young man, according to
the testimony of all who knew him, of remarkable
intellectual promise and of very lofty character.
The two young men, Tennyson and Hallam, seem
to have met for the first time in 1828, when both
went up to Cambridge as students. The friend-
ships of students are proverbially close and
confiding. The friendship then formed between
these two youths was one of quite exceptional
intimacy even for students. Common tastes, com-
mon ideals of a lofty character, even common
pursuits — both being poets — supplied its founda-
tion, and explain its closeness. Besides, they had
ample opportunities to become fully acquainted
with each other. They pursued their studies
together for a series of years at the same Univer-
sity. They joined in debate and song at the
meetings of its Societies. They visited at one
another's homes, in Somersby and London. They
travelled together on the Continent. In addition,
Hallam became engaged to the Poet's sister, Emily.
As the result of all, a friendship grew up between
the two, which, as has already been intimated, was

XIV.

IN MEMORIAM.

one of quite ideal intimacy and tenderness. This
friendship in its earthly form was broken by the
sudden death of Hallam at the age of twenty-two,
m the city of Vienna and on the 15th of September,
1833. So much for the occasion of the Poem.

The Poem itself, the In Memoriam, consists of
a hundred and thirty-one Cantos or, to speak
more properly, small separate poems, together
with a Prologue and what is termed an Epitha-
lamium or marriage song. Two of these poems,
the thirty-ninth and the fifty-ninth, were not found
in the earliest edition ; they must have been
written subsequently to its appearance. This, the
first edition, was given to the public in 1850,
almost seventeen years, therefore, after Hallam's
death. The separate poems were written, as we
are told, at different times and at different places
during this long interval, and in accordance with
the prevailing thought and feeling of the Poet at
the time. We see from the recently published
Memoir of Tennyson that these hundred and
thirty-one poems were not the only ones which
he wrote on his friend. There were still others
which were not allowed to find a place in In
Memoriam, apparently as not coming up to the
high pitch of excellence which he had marked
out for the shrine in which the memory of
his friend was to be encased, or perhaps as not
sufficiently distinguished in thought and tone from
those already incorporated in it.

The separate poems, as has been said, were
not written in the order in which they are
printed. It is important to bear this fact in
mind, in forgetfulnesa oi it, some commentators
have sought to impress on the Poem a kind of

INTRODUCTION.

XV.

unity, which is largely fictitious. In the order in
which they are now found, the earlier poems are
predominantly plaintive ; they are weighted with
the sorrow of separation and loss. In those which
immediately follow this earlier part — those con-
stituting the central portion of In Memoriam — the
grief is, in the main, more subdued ; it is such as
to leave the mind of the Poet free to deal with the
great questions of evil, of immortality, of the state
of the departed, on the supposition that they are
still consciously existent — questions which have
so deep an interest for us all, but especially for
those who have been called to part with those
dearest to them. I have said, the grief in this
central portion is in the niain more subdued. The
qualification is not unneeded ; for perhaps there is
no single poem in the whole series in which
expression is given to a more bitter and even
rebellious sense of loss than in one of the lyrics,
(Ixxii.) found within this part. In the latter
poems, while the sense of loss has not disappeared,
it has not only ceased to be tumultuous and bitter,
it has become sympathetic, it is less personal, it
has become in a manner even catholic. Again
the doubts which were fought in the earlier portion
have been overcome, or at least have ceased to
find expression ; and the prevailing state of feeling
reflected, so far from being one of sorrow, or at
best one of sullen resignation, is calm, confident,
even victorious. The striking characterization of
the Poem by Stopford Brooke is thus fully justified.
"It is a song of victory and life arising out of
defeat and death ; of peace which has forgotten
doubt; of joy whose mother was sorrow, but who
lias turned his mother's heart into delight." . ^

■J

XVI.

IN ME MORI AM.

As to the character of the Poem, it is not a
mere elegy, like the Lycidas of Milton or the
Adonais of Shelley. It has indeed this in common
with both of these, that it gives tuneful expression
to the sense of loss and of separation in death, and
to the virtues of the departed, but it differs from
them in that it raises and deals with the whole
question of the Hereafter. This is after all the
"">rnost distinctive feature of In Memoriam. It is a
great philosophical and religious poem ; one which
beyond any other takes its color from the age in
which it was written, reflecting its doubt, and at
; the same time giving intense and beautiful
t expression to its faith. One may speak of it in
this respect as a series of meditations on death,
on God, and on immortality. The value of the
Poem in this point of view has been variously
estimated. Some who admire its literary beauty
have been disposed to speak rather depreciatingly
of it as an attempt to throw light on the difficult
problems of existence. Others again, and among
these some of the highest and most cultured
minds, have regarded it as a priceless contribution
to the religious thought of England. Apart from
this, however, the Poem contains some of the
most exquisite pictures both of nature and of
domestic life, to be found in our own, or indeed, in
any language.

Altogether the attention which the Poem is
more than ever receiving, at least on this Con-
tinent, seems to warrant the belief that it will
continue, at least for many years to come, to
thrill with its blending beauty and pathos, the
minds of those who speak the English tongue.

IN MEMORIAM
The Prologue

The Prologue is dated 1849, the year preceding
that in which In Memoriam was given to the
world. It was thus composed subsequently to
all or nearly all the Cantos or separate pieces
which go to form the Poem as a whole. It is to
be regarded as embodying the conclusions reached
by the Poet, in his long and perplexing musings
on human life and human destiny, under the guid-
ance of sorrow and of love. As such it deserves
attentive study.

The religious character of the Poem is already
apparent in this prefatory piece ; addressed as it
is throughout to the Son of God, the Christ in
whose person the human and the divine meet
in mystic union. Christ is also recognized as the
Creator of the universe and of man, the source of
all satisfying light on the great and perplexing
questions of human character and destiny. As
such He is to be regarded with reverence — not to
fear Him is to mock Him — and to be met with
implicit surrender of will. As over against this
blessed invisible but not impersonal Presence, the
necessary and undeniable limitations of human
knowledge are explicitly recognized, and there-
with the consequent need of faith, if the whole
supersensible world is not to vanish from human
thought. The Poem ends properly and worthily
in a prayer, three times repeated, for forgiveness
for any excess of grief, or for any even misdirected
1

^^^^mmmmmmm

IN MEMOKJAM.

love which may have found expression in his
songs, " wild and wandering cries," as he terms
them, '* confusions of a wasted youth."

'* Strong' Son of God, immortal Love ; "

It seems almost unnecessary to say that the refer-
ence in these words is to the personal Christ, the
Christ of the Gospels ; or it would have been un-
necessary to say it, if more than one of the commen-
tators on the Poem had not shewn the inclination
to deny the fa>.t, and to make, as one of them does,
the sole reference to be '* to that Unseen Love
which is, as he (the Poet) trusts, at the heart of
things, in which all things live and move and have
their being, which is perfect power and perfect
tenderness and perfect justice."' There is really
nothing in this introductory poem to warrant such
an interpretation of its opening words, while there
is very much throughout it that is irreconcilable
therewith. Besides, we know on the best of
testimony^ that the Poet was a firm believer in
the Incarnation and, other considerations apart,
it would seem most natural to interpret the phrase
*' Strong Son of God " in the light of this belief.

But while it is the " Son of God" who is in-
voked in the Prologue, He is invoked, as the
the words which follow shew, as the embodiment
in human form of Love, victorious, immortal
Love. The use of [the capital letter indeed is
almost equivalent to the identification by the Poet

1. Mrs. Chapman ; the expositor who gives on the whole the best
analysis of In Memoriam.

2. In addition to statements in his Memoir, tlie Poet's words, as re-
ported by Dr. Gatty, may be quoted: — "I am not very tond of creeds ; it
IS enough for me that I know God Himself came down from Heaven in
the form of man."

THE PROLOGUE. 3

of immortal Love with the personal Christ ; it
does not justify, however, any expositor of the
piece in finding the personality of the Saviour
merged in an impersonal principle, "that pure
affection which as human love of friend for friend
had worked as an ennobling power within the
Poet's soul."'

This "Son of God " within whose heart love
dwells as in its shrine, or rather who is love, as
God is love, we that have not seen his face, em-
brace by faith, and by faith alone,

" Believing", where we cannot prove,"

( (

prove," i.e., in the logical sense. Faith in the
personal, the living Christ, is not the last result
of an argument or of a series of arguments, is not
the conclusion of a syllogism ; or the faith, or
what men term faith, which is thus produced, is of
little moral value.

" Thine," as their Creator, ** are these orbs of
light and shade ; " the planets, with particular
reference probably to the sun and the moon. The
three lines which follow bring us face to face with
the mystery which the death of Hallam in ej :ly
manhood had raised for the Poet, and which is
being ever raised anew for us all : Death, God's
creature, destroying Life, God's work. The mys-
tery is set before us in a line full of vivid realism,

" . . . and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made."

I. Genung'. It would be unfair to say that this author eliminates all
reference to the personal Christ from the Prologue, but he makes the
reference in it to the principle of love far more prominent than to the
Person, in whom love is embodied. The inversion of the clauses in his
analysis of the Prologue, thus — "Immortal Love, the Strong Son of
God, is divine" — is itself as unwarranted as it is misleading.

IN MEMORIAM.

But death is not the final experience for man.
Even the hope o't immortality which he finds
within his breast — " he thinks he was not made
to die " — affords a presumption to the contrary ;
and if, despite this presumption, he is still left in
some doubt in rej>;ard to his final destiny, there
remains the justice of the Creator, of Him who
has been invoked as immortal Love, as a final
refuge ;

" And thou hast made hnn, thou art just."

Pursuing his address to Him whom he had desig-
nated in the opening words, "Strong Son of
God," the Poet goes on to say,

"Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, hoHest manhood thou."

It should be obvious that the direct reference in
these lines is not to an impersonal emotion, love
" viewed as the efficient cause of the universe,"
(Mrs. Chapman) ; '* the Christ nature rather than
the Christ name," (Genung), but to the personal
Christ, in whom in virtue of the incarnation the
divine and the human to all seeming are united,
with love indeed as the constitutive principle of
His mysterious personality. Accordingly, the
** manhood " here is specifically that of Him who
stands at the head of humanity, the one sinless
and perfect man. When, therefore, Davidst)n
says in this connection and as illustrative of these
lines, '* The love which He is, is at the same time
our Lord above us, and our holiest manhood
within," he is at once reading into the passage a
truth which, however important, is not the truth
it is meant to convey, and missing another truth

THE PROLOGUE.

still more important — the perfection of humanity
in the man Christ Jesus — which it directly states.
Oi the two lines which complete the stanza the
one asserts a significant philosophical truth, the
other an equally sij^-nificant religious truth. The
philosophical truth is thus expressed,

" Our wills are ours, we know not how,"

Will as distinji^uished from desire; "that thou art
thou," to use the poet's own words, "With power
o\\ thine own act and on the world," the possession
and exercise of this power by a dependent beinj^,
is a mystery; one. as it appears from his Memoir,
with which Tenryson was much exercised. He is
not alone in feeling and confessing the mystery,
which is far from cleared up by making, as he
does, free-will "apparently an act of self-limita-
tion by the Infinite." Sir William Hamilton,
among others, pronounced the fact of human
freedom, of free-will to be at once undeniable and
inexplicable. This is precisely the purport oi the
line above. The fact is admitted, " our wills are
ours;" the comprehensibility of the fact by the
reason, or, at least, its actual comprehension is
denied. "We know not how." With this is
linked the religious truth,

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

This is the momentous significance of that free-
dom, that power of intelligent self-determination
which lies at the basis of human personality, that
it makes possible and therefore dutiful the sur-
render of our wills to Him who is sovereign Lord.
" Our little systems," systems, i.e.^ of moral
and religious truth, elaborated with more or less

IN MEMORIAM.

yT'

learning and skill, " have their day," often a
brief one ; they come to pass; they disappear to
give place to others.

"They are but broken lights of thee."

They are "of thee," so far as they possess any
truth whatever. They derive from Him who
is '* the light which lighteth every man that
Cometh into the world ; " but they are all of
them incomplete ; the whole of truth is not con-
tained in any one of the number. "They are
but broken lights of thee," "And thou, O Lord,
art rr»nrp than they." The system has yet to be
framed which gives " the Son of God " in His
entirety.

The three stanzas which follow are among the
most important in the Prologue for the right
understanding of In Memoriam in those numerous
passages which refer to the question of the exist-
ence of God and of Immortality. It will be
observed that the Poet expressly distinguishes in
them two states or attitudes of mind, designated
respectively faith and knowledge ; reserving the
latter for that apprehension which the mind has
of external objects and their relations, through
-the senses. What we see, hear, touch ; that we
know. We do not believe in its existence ; we
know it. The sense of sight, — " For knowledge
is of things we see^^' — is selected from among the
senses, perhaps as the largest inlet of such knowl-
edge. Of the whole supersensible world, the
world of real being of which the senses give us
no intimation,

" We have but faith, we cannot know."

THE PROLOGUE.

This distinction is in strict accordance with the
predominant philosophy of the ajje in which In
Memoriam was written — a period durinj^ which
the phenomenalism of the j^reat German phil-
osopher Kant, was coming- to be a prevailing-
clement in British thoug^ht. We are not required
to discuss at this time the validity of the distinc-
tion which is here drawn between knowledge as
coincident with the realm of experience, and faith
as relating to that which transcends experience ;
in any case we must recognize it in order to
understand the Poem before us. Some, those for
example who hold that the soul has a direct
intuition of spiritual truth, would scarcely agree
with the inferior place which the Poet apparently
assigns to faith, when he says, ** We have but
faith."

But while he limits the sphere of knowledge,
he is as far as possible from depreciating its
importance. To him all truth, the truths of
science, no less than those of religion, are from
God. It is of the mind's apprehension of the
former that he says,

** And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow."

The reference, indeed, might be to faith and its
contents, but what follows shews this to be
unlikely.

Of this knowledge which has for its exclusive
object the facts of experience and their laws, he
goes on to say,

" Let knowledge grow from more to more."

IN MEMORIAM.

The words bear testimony to a feature which has
been regarded as a striking characteristic of
^Tennyson, and one of the secrets^'of his influence
f on the thought of his age — his profound interest
in the scientific discoveries of the day, in the ever-
widening boundaries of human knowledge. But
not less characteristic of the Poet is the sentiment
which finds expression in the line following,

•* But more of reverence in us dwell."

The one must keep pace in its advance with the
other ; "that mind," the seat of intellect, "and
soul," the seat of emotion, of spiritual feeling,
apt to become divided and discordant in an en-
quiring and critical age, "according well, may
make one music as before^'' when knowledge was
so much more limited ; "one music as before,
but vaster,'^ necessarily so, in virtue of the new
strains which are making themselves heard for
the first time. The Poet's sense of the need and
the value of reverence in connection with the
pursuit of knowledge finds emphatic expression in
the lines which follow. If not suggested by, they
are at least in strict accord with the words of the
s-^ Psalm, " The secret of the Lord is with them that
/' fear him." " We are fools and slight," i.e., frail ;

/ " We mock thee when we do not fear." Compare
cxiv. "Help thy vain worlds," vain, i.e., as
ready to be puffed up and carried away by knowl-
edge aissevered from piety, " to bear thy light,"
the light of ever-enlarging discoveries of truth;

-""t termed "thy light," as reflected from the world
\ which is the expression of His thought who gave

'^ it being.

;

THE PROLOGUE.

The Prologue closes in three stanzas which, as
has been said, have " the true ring oi devout
piety."

" Forgive what seemed my sin in niQ,- ■^''^"^

What seemed my worth since I beg"ajT;"— — ~*"^

The reference in the first line may well be to the
excessive grief for Hallam's de;ath to which he
had gfiven way, and iii the second to the devotion
with which he had cherished his memory and to
the pains which he had taken to enshrine his
excellences in his song. In moments of severe
self-scrutiny, the latter equally with the former
may have appeared as needing forgiveness. There
may well have been the consciousness with the
Poet, when his work was completed, of mingled
motive in the tribute in many respects unrivalled,
which he had paid to his friend ; how seldom is a
feeling of this kind entirely wanting even in the
most self-forgetting services which we render to
one another ! and accordingly he invokes even
for the work by which he had immortalized his
friend the divine forgiveness.

" Forgive ....

What seemed my worth since I began,
For merit Hves from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.".

Who is not reminded by the last line of the words

of the Saviour, ** Even so ye also, when ye shall V*

have done all the things that are commanded you, i**~'

say, we are unprofitable servants ; we have done

that which it was our duty to do." Luke xvii. lo? ^

The lines which signalize the victory that his !
faith has reached, after its agonizing conflict with
doubt, arc found in the second last stanza of the

IN MEMORIAM.

Prologfue, and accompanied with what appears to
\ be a slight tinge of Pantheistic thought.

*' I trust he lives in thee, and there Xy^'
I find him worthier to be loved."

It is a note of humility which makes itself heard
in the last stanza,

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

The whole Prologue, of which these lines form
the worthy close, is alike weighty in thought and
admirable in tone. It is little less than the Poet's
confession of faith ; that to which he was accus-
tomed to point those who interrogated him as to
his belief. The regret is, therefore, all the
stronger that so many should have sought either
to reduce to a minimum its recognition of the
personal historical Christ or to eliminate it alto-
gether. The view which the recently published
Memoir gives us of the real sentiments of the
author, shews what injustice is done, alike to him
as well as to the Christian faith, by such interpreta-
tions. However he may have shrunk from defining
^jhis faith in the terms ordinarily employed by Chris-
tian people. In Memoriam alone, and this Pro-
logue especially, is evidence that he accepted and
prized the fundamental Christiat^ verity of the
Incarnation — God manifest in the flesh.
^ There is undeniable force in the words of
Tainsh, one of the most satisfactory interpreters
of Tennyson. " By this inscription on the thresh-
old, he who essays to enter, may learn that not
less to Religion, than to Art and to Human Love
is this temple dedicated."

IN MEMORIAM

i^-

The gain attendant on loss, conditioned
however through the cherishing of loss

BY LOVE.

While this poem stands first in the collection,
it must almost certainly have been written
subsequently to many of them. Grief has
already passed into the reflective stage, and at-j,
this stage the Poet recognizes the possibility of
rising to higher attainments through the lossj
which has desolated his life. The poet to whom
he refers in the opening lines is Goethe, not
Longfellow who founded a poem, which he
termed " the ladder of St. Augustine," on that
father's words : — *' De vitiis nostris sealant nobis
facinms, si vitia ipsa calcamus'^' — containing
these lines :

" 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up,
Whose g-olden rounds are our calamities, '
Whereon our feet firm planting-, nearer God
The spirit climbs and hath its eyes unsealed."

The " dead selves " of Tennyson, which may
become "stepping stones" "to higher things"
are certainly not vices, as with Augustine, nor

■j;

IN MEMORIAM.

even calamities only, as with Longfellow, but
those possessions or acquirements, which have
formed our life in whole or in part, and which
are either taken from us or voluntaril}- re-
nounced. The friendship in its earthly form of
Hallam, his "bosom friend and half of life"
may well be regarded as the dead self in the
present instance. " In all these dead," Vinet
says, speaking of loved ones withdrawn from
life " we ourselves die ; a part of our life and of
our heart is buried in each of these tombs."

But how difficult to anticipate, to apprehend
in advance, the gain the slow work of years
which is to come through loss and sorrow !
This difficulty is finely expressed in the lines :

" But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand Ihro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears ? "

Another possibility presents itself to the mind
of the Poet ; this, viz., that the loss might come
to be forgotten in the course of years, and the
sorrow vanish in this way. That were a result
to be still more dreaded, for it would mean the
loss of love, that is, the deterioration of the
nature. To ward it off, therefore,

-1

■I

•'•■

" Let love clasp grief lest both,"

CANTO I.

not grief only, but love with it

"be drowned,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss,
Ah sweeter to be drunk with loss.
To dance with death, to beat the ground,"

z>., to be frantic with grief,

" Than that the victor hours,"

the hours in that case victorious,

" Should scorn the long- result of love,"

i.e.^ the result in the long run of the affection he
had cherished for his friend,

" And boast,
' Behold the man that loved and lost.
But all he was is over worn,' "

The man indeed survives, but his love is gone ; he
survives only as a decayed and cast off garment.
This alternative, it is to be feared, is the one
more frequently realized. The best comment-
ary on the passage, with which we are acquainted
is supplied by the words of an author already
quoted, Vinet — words which point out both how
the dreaded alternative is reached and what of
loss it implies. " The greater part of men can-
not barter away their need of consolation,
nothing supplies its place, nothing can be taken

»4

IN MEMORIAM.

in exchange ; to blunt the sting of grief, time is
better than pride, for time wears out the soul, as
well as all the rest. Life thus becomes less
sorrowful, but it also becomes less serious, less
noble."

In the first eight poems or Cantos, the Poet is wholly absorbed in
the thought of his loss. His sorrow, as yet untouched by hope, is never-
theless solaced by song. The problem at this point, so far as there is
one, is, what shall he do with his sorrow, how shall he turn it to account.

V-

II.

First mood of sorrow — the yew tree in its
unchanging gloom a fit emblem of his

stony grief and, as such, CONGENIAL.

We have in this poem the first marked
instance of personification, of which there are so
many examples in In Memoriam. The object
personified is the immemorial yew of the Church-
yard, with its roots reaching down to the
mouldering dead, its sombre hue unrelieved by
any spring, unbrightened by any summer, the
church clock striking in its shadow the hours
which measure out " the little lives of men ; " fit
type of his own mind at the time in its
unrelieved gloom, and in its clinging attachment
to the departed. In addition there seems to be

CANTO II.

an allusion in the last stanza to the benumbing
effect in the first place of a great bereavement ;
the sorrow which can relieve itself in tears often
comes later.

" And g-azing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood ;
I seem to tail from out my blood.
And g-row incorporate into thee."

We have in this poem the first example, of
which In Memoriam supplies so many illustra-
tions, of Tennyson's sympathetic dealing with
nature, now reading his own feelings into its
varied scenes, and now finding expression for
these feelings in its diversified moods. The
yew tree is again introduced in Canto xxxix.,
but with a certain modification. It is there
described as " kindled at the tips." It is not to
be supposed that the Poet, whose observation of
nature was so close and accurate, was ignorant
of the fact, that the yew tree bore blossom and
seed like other trees, but in his own words,
quoted by Dr. Gatty, " Sorrow only saw the
winter gloom of the foliage."

-i<.

" Branding Hummer sun^i," I.e., Huvnmer suns which leave their hot
mark on other forms of plant life ; an example of the unusual use or
epithets, to which In Memoriam owes not a little of its torce and
beauty.

Sick for," i.e., desirous of " thy stubborn hardihood."

IN MEMORY AM.

III.

Misgivings as to the propriety of cherishing
sorrow, which with lying lips robs nature
of reality and purpose, and clothes it
in her own dark and cheerless hues.

Reflection begins and with reflection the
question arises, is sorrow to be cherished or is it
to be crushed ? The sorrow is specifically that
of bereavement. It is personified and addressed ;

*'0 sorrow, cruel fellowship,"

for the time being he finds himself mated with it.

•' O priestess in the vaults of death,"

The figure is changed. The mate has become
a priestess, performing her sad but sacred rites
in the vaults where death reigns.

" O sweet and bitter in a breath."

This characterization might be expected to refer
to the utterances of sorrow in the two following
stanzas, but it seems impossible to discover
anything in these to which the epithet " sweet "
could be applied. There may therefore have
been no connection intended in this line with
what follows. The force accordingly may be
" sweet " as the offspring of love ; " bitter" as the

CANTO III.

the accompaniment of loss. " What whispers
from thy lying lip;" "lying," as suggesting a
false and deceptive view of nature and of
human life. Some have regarded the epithet
as too harsh. It is again applied in the same
connection in Canto xxxix. She whispers,
"The stars . . . blindly run;" i.e., without
intelligent purpose or end ; or, if there be any
such, it is hidden from human discernment.

'* A web is woven across the sky,
From out waste places comes a cry,"

that is, of anguish. There is no spot, however
desolate, in which the wail of suffering is not
heard. "And murmurs from the dying sun;"
" dying," the reference may be to the slow but
steady burning out of the sun's fires, with its
gloomy suggestions as to the future of our
planet. Nature herself, the visible universe, she
pictures as a mere phantom, a ghostly unreal
thing,

*' With all the music in her tone
A hollow echo of my own ; "

another example of the way in which the Poet
uses nature to interpret and reflect his own
feeling ;

" A hollow form with empty hands."

holding out the hope oi good, but having

■^

IN MEMO Rl AM.

really nothing to bestow ; an altogether dismal
picture, but it is that which sorrow, unrelieved
by any ray of hope, draws. Such power does
she possess, the Poet will say, to robe nature in
her own gloom, and to empty the universe of
any wise and beneficent purpose. The question
arises in his mind,

•'And shall I take a thing so bhnd,
Embrace her as my natural good ;
Or crush her like a vice of blood,"

i.e., some inherited or at least inherent evil
tendency,

" Upon the threshold of the mind? "

crush her, that is, by thought, by reason, and
crush her " on the threshold of the mind,"— a
striking and appropriate metaphor, the force of
which is not to be overlooked. It is really
. equivalent to this : refuse it entrance into the
mind, as not in any way worthy of rational
entertainment.

The reader will notice how different, how
almost opposite, the Poet's thought in regard
to sorrow is here, from that which it was in
i., where he seemed resolved to cherish grief.
The contrast is even greater which meets us
in lix. There is nothing that need awaken

CANTOS III.IV,

surprise in this. The poet's mind, as everyone
knows, is not governed by logic ; consistency,
at least of the formal kind, is the last thing we
are to expect from him. One of the charms of
In Memoriam indeed is the expression which it
gives to numerous and widely diversified states
of mind, all of them true to nature in some of
its moods.

Sorrow, the Poet has told us in this poem, is a
treacherous guide, is sure to mislead us, is full of
illusion, is blind. But, on the other hand, it is
equally true, and this too we shall find told us in
In Memoriam before it ends, that sorrow is wise
or makes wise, that it dispels illusions, sees
truths which are hidden from the cold intellect,
has visions and of reality too, which seldom or
never greet the tearless eye. " Without sorrow,"
one has said, " what should we know?"

IV.

Picture of his state, when as just passing
into sleep, will is gone, and the heart

abandons ITSELF TO FEELINGS WHICH ARISE
SPONTANEOUSLY.

This poem is not without its difficulty ; it has
in point of fact received different interpretations

iic,

TN MEMO RT AM.

from the expositors of In Memoriam. The
situation described seems to be this : night has
come; the tired will gives up the effort to control
thought. His "will is bondsman to the dark."
It is for the time being in chains forged by the
night. As a result, he sits " within a helmless
bark." The mind, no longer under the control
of the will, muses under the sway of the prevail-
ing feeling. Consciousness still remains, and it
is dominated by the vague sense of something
lost, some prized pleasure gone. Few will have
any difficulty — none who have known great
sorrows — in understanding the experience de-
scribed; the dim sense of some nameless trouble
haunting the last waking moments of the night,
and then again the first of the morning, if
not al o disturbing the intervening hours with
frightful dreams, to which there seems to be a
reference in the first two lines of the last stanza.
" Break," the Poet says under this oppressive
feeling, still addressing his heart, though now
in the language of metaphor,

*' Break, thou deep vase of chilling' tears.
That g-rief hath shaken into frost ! "

It is said that water may be kept liquid below
the freezing point, if it is kept perpetually still,
but if disturbed, it becomes ice at once, and in

CANTOS rv.—v.

the suddenness of the expansion may break
the containing vessel ; and the claim has been
made, that the language before us has reference
to this singular scientific fact. The Poet's inti-
mate acquaintance with science makes this
claim probably true.

In any case what is meant by the invocation,
" Hreak thou deep vase," etc., is, his desire that
his pent-up feeling should find some outlet.

This musing, aimless grief, not unsuitable to
the night with its tired faculties, may not be
continued into the day.

" With morning- wakes the will and cries,
Thou shah not be the fool of loss."

The heart seeks relief by expressing its

SENSE OF loss IN VERSE.

As yet his sorrow is not accepted ; the aim is
simply to dull its stinging pain ; and this the
Poet finds he can accomplish by the effort to
express it in rhythmic language, which, "like dull
narcotics," numbs pain. He will persist, there-
fore, in " the sad mechanic exercise," although
the feeling occasionally arises that his grief is

IN ME MORI AM.

too large or too sacred for adequate expression
in human speech.

" In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold : "

the term " weeds " is probably used here in
its earlier signification of dress or clothing, with-
out any regard to the mourning character of the
apparel ; though in its later signification, seen in
the expression " a widow's v/eeds," it would be
far from inappropriate in this connection. The
epithet '^ coarsest," as here employed, would
seem intended to express the Poet's sense of
the disproportion between the word clothing
and the inward feeling, the roughness and hard-
ness of the one, the delicacy and tenderness of
the other. No poet had ever less reason to
complain of the inadequacy of human language
to express differing emotions and delicate shades
of the same emotion ; but dowered as he was
with great depth and wide range of feeling, he
may well have felt, that words even in his hands
were but an imperfect instrument for the ex-
pression of inward sentiment. The effort to
express his grief in rhythmic words soothed him.
" But," he tells us,

" That large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more."

CANTOS v.— VI.

It may be stated that by Genung, this and
some other poems, to be cited as we advance,
have been termed chorus poems, being distin-
guished from the great body of the work, as
portrayii the singer's mood, rather than giv-
ing formal expression to his thought.

VI.

No CONSOLATION IN THE THOUGHT THAT HUMAN
LIFE IS FULL OF SIMILAR TRAGIC EXPERIENCES.

The son perishes on the field of battle at the
moment when the unwitting father is drinking
his health ; the sailor boy finds his watery grave
as his mother's head is bowed in prayer on his
behalf, and the lover meets his sudden death at
the time when his love is decking herself for his
reception, even as his friend Arthur had taken
his departure from life at the very time when
he himself was wistfully awaiting his return.
There is no textual difficulty to be dealt with
in this poem. The language is as simple and
noble as the sentiment is deep and thrilling.
What is required is, that the reader keep his
nature open to the tender pathos by which it is

IN ME MORI AM.

pervaded and which appears to increase, till it
finds a fitting climax in the words :

"O what to her shall be the end ?

And what to me remains of g-ood?
To her perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend."

The reader will notice the strong and at the same time alliterative
line in the 4th stanza, " His heavy-shotted hammock shroud," also the
felicitous use of the epithet " wandering,'" as applied to a grave in the sea.

" Her father's chimney glows," (8th stanza), referring to the open
fire-place of England.

VII.

The desolate heart lends its own dark

COLOUR to objects ONCE BRIGHT AND JOY-
INSPIRING.

The picture is one of the utter desolateness
consequent on the sudden shock of bereave-
ment, as yet unrelieved by the touch either of
hope or of resignation. The house in which
Arthur had lived is revisited in the grey of
early morning. It is "dark house," the street
on which it stands is " the long, unlovely street ; "
" Like a guilty thing," with a heart as burdened
as that of one on whose conscience some great
crime lies, with .some such shrinking from the

CANTO VII.

presence of his fellows as the criminal feels
he creeps " at earliest morning to the door." '

" Doors, where my heart was used to beat
Sio quickly, waiting- for a hand,

A hand that can be clasped no more."

There is no mistaking the effectiveness and
he beauty of these hnes. The contrast of the
/^.« and the notv could hardly be made more
touching than by this detail :

" • • • waiting: for a hand,
A hand that can be clasped no more."

In the concluding stanza, the Poet, as .so often,
finds hts desolate mood reflected in nature with
.ts dnzzltng rain," while "far away the noise
of I.fe begms again." The rush and roar of
business ,s resumed regardless of individual
loss and sorrow. The last lines are peculiarly
strong and with their harsh sibilants, they seem
as If charged with the gloom and the drizzle of
the opening day ;

" .4nd ghastly through the drizy.linjj rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day."

The hard alliteration in the last line will not
be overlooked.

■'I

•J

\\h'

r .

IN MEMORIAM.

VIII.

Scenes of former enjoyment, unattractive

IN THE absence OF THE LOVED ONE— THE
fostered FLOWEEJ.

This is a companion picture to the former.
In both, expression is given to the common, or
rather, the universal experience of the fading of
the light from familiar and cherished scenes,
when the loved one is absent or has withdrawn ;
but in the latter poem the lonely heart is reliev-
ed by some memento of the vanished presence.

The Poet compares himself in his bereave-
ment to the lover disappointed in finding " her
gone and far from home " whom he had come
to visit, and for whom *' all the magic light,"
the light which acts like magic, light struck
from the heart, " dies off at once from bower
and hall." His is a precisely similar experience.

*• So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet.
The field, the chamber, and the street.
For all is dark, where thou art not."

Yet as that lover's disappointment and grief
are mitigated by some rain-beaten, wind-tossed
flower on which his love had spent care, he, too,

CANTOS VIII.— IX.

will find some solace for his stricken heart by
planting" on the grave of his friend the flower of
poesy which was once his delight. Poetry, it
will be noticed, which was formerly the narcotic
to dull pain, is now refreshing to his spirit, as
the flower "which pleased a vanished eye." The
author is not confident that it will live — this
poem may have been written in the earlier
years of the Poet's course, when his fame was
far from assured — but even if it die, it shall die
planted on the tomb of his friend.

The Cantos, or rather brief poems, ix. —
xvii., are written, or are at least supposed to
describe the Poet's feelings, during the course of
the ship's voyage which brought the body of
Arthur to England, ix. and x. are companion
poems, in both of which the mind of the Poet is
intent on the vessel with " its dark freight."

IX.

" Benison on the ship which brings back the
remains of one 'more than a brother. "

F.W.R.

The thoughtful reader will be conscious of a
change in the tone of the Poem at this point.
Hitherto it has been one recurring note of

IN MEMO RI AM.

plaintive grief, or of desolate sorrow ; the tone
now is one of tender and clinging love. This
poem is remarkable at once for the depth of
affection which it discloses, and for the manner
in which the affection is portrayed. It is repre-
sented as passing over to the vessel. " the fair
ship," which bears the " loved remains " " to
those that mourn in vain ; " and which in lan-
guage reflecting at every turn the rich fancy of
the Poet, is invoked to bear them swiftly and
peacefully under ** gentle winds and through
prosperous floods."

More than one expression in the piece
deserves attention, as illustrating the richness
of the Poet's fancy, and his felicitous use of
words. "A favorable speed ruffle thy mirrored
mast ; " the allusion being to the circumstance
that the swifter the vessel's speed, the more
would the reflection of the mast on the agitated
waters be broken. " Thro' prosperous floods,"
i.e., floods (of ocean) which prosper or speed the
vessel in its course. " All night no ruder air
perplex thy sliding keel ; " — the use of the
metaphorical term " perplex," has striking force
and beauty in this connection, — "Till Phosphor,"
the morning star, " through early light shall
glimmer on the dewy decks." We are intro-
duced in the last stanza to another striking

CANTOS IX.—X.

metaphor, "my widowed race." The h'ne is
repeated in kv\1 The skill of the Poet in the
use of words, so that their very sound seems
charged with the sentiment seeking expression,
IS very conspicuous in the fourth stanza :

"Sphere all your ligrhts around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow •
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now'
My friend, the brother of my love."

His friend's burial beside or within the
QUIET church more consonant to human

FEELING than HIS BURIAL IN THE TURBULENT
SEA.

In imagination the Poet follows the vessel in
Its course, follows it day and night;

** I hear the noise about thy keel ;

I hear the bell struck in the night ; "

"the bell," that is, which was telling the
hours on the ship ; the poet's liking for the par-
ticular, his careful avoidance of the general is
well seen in this stanza, as in so many parts' of
In Memoriam. Then we have an effective use

IN MEMORTAM.

of contrast in the second stanza ; in which,
addressing the ship, he says :

•• Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,

And traveli'd men from foreign lands ;
And letters unto trembling hands ;
And thy dark freight, a vanished life."

This peaceful transport which he sees in
imagination, is pleasing to the " home-bred
fancies," and so, though it makes really no
difference, yet as the effect of association, and
of habit, it seems sweeter,

*' To rest beneath the clover sod

That takes the sunshine and the rains,"

that is, to be laid at rest in the open churchyard,

*' Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God ; "«

that is, within the church, and near the altar-
rails where the wine of the sacrament is
dispensed to the kneeling worshipper, than that
" the roaring wells " of ocean should, together
with the ship,

"... gulph him fathom deep in brine ;

And hands so often clasped in mine.
Should toss with tangle^ and with shells."

The last two lines supply an example of very
vivid realism. The poem, throughout, gives

CANTOS X.-XI.

Striking and effective expression to the instinc-
tive feeling of at least all Christian people.

I " The fruit of the vine," Matt. 26 : tq.

a "Tangle"; sea-weed, or "oar-wood, such as grows at the ex-
treme tide limits, where its long fronds rise and dip in the water."— (Rolfe).

XI.

The profound stillness of an autumn morn-
ing MIRRORS TO HIM AT ONCE THE CALM OF
SPENT PASSION IN HIS OWN BREAST, AND THE
CALM OF DEATH IN HIS FRIENDS.

This poem is one specially deserving of study,
not only because of the skill with which a few
striking features in the landscape are selected,
and of the beauty with which they are
described, the marvellous adaptation of the lan-
guage to the thought, so that the calm of which
the poem speaks, seems to steal over us, as we
read the words ; but also because it supplies us
with a typical example of the Poet's method of
employing nature to reflect his own changing
moods. This indeed is one of the secrets of the
charm which In Memoriam has for the appre-
ciative reader.

The landscape is not that of Somersby, the
Poet's residence, but " some Lincolnshire wold,
from which the whole range from the marsh to

!r)»l

IN ME MORI AM,

the sea was visible." It lies in the calm of
autumn with its reddening leaf, the stillness so
complete that it is broken only by the chestnut's
pattering fall ; and lying thus, in its wide and
peaceful sweep, it both resembles the new feeling
arising within him ; the calm, not of submis-
sion indeed, but of spent tumultuous grief, and
is distinguished from it, for his is a sullen and
not yet a silver calm.

The effect of the poem is no doubt due in
some measure to the frequent repetition of the
epithet "calm," and the varied elements in
nature, — air, earth and sea, — and in man, to
which it is applied. " Calm and deep peace on
this high wold," "Calm and still light on yon
great plain," " Calm and deep peace in this
wide air," " Calm on the seas and silver sleep,"
" And in my heart, if calm at all, if any calm,
a calm despair." The last stanza is especially
beautiful: " the silver sleep" on the sea, and
" the waves that sway themselves to rest ; "

" And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving- deep."

"The bounding main"; the sea as forming in one direction the
limit to his view.

"Lessening towers" ; towers, that is, which seem to grow less as
the distance at which they stand is increased.

"The silvery gossamers, that twinkle into green and gold ; " a strik-
ing picture and one testifying to the Poet's minute observation of nature.

CANTO XI f. ^2

XH.

A STATE OF ECSTASV, DURING WHICH THE SPIRIT
OF THE POET, ABSENT FROM THE BODY, WINGS
'TSELF TO AND LINGERS BY THE RETIRNING
SHIP.

The calm of the precechng poem does not last •
the calm of despair seldom or never does : the
spirit of unrest returns. The carrier-pigeon with
Its message of woe attached to it, supplies the
figure here, though there is an obvious reference
also to the dove of Noah's ark (Gen. viii. : 8, n)
Like her I go," " I leave this mortal ark be-
hind. Compare " Our earthly house of this
tabernacle," 2 Cor. v. : i.

"A weight of ncrve.s without a mind."

Such is his description of himself in his disem-
bodied state, that state of trance or ecstasy, into
which he represented him.self as having passed •
a bundle of sensibility without any controlling
intelligence ;

" And leave the cliflFs,"

the white cliffs, by which the .southern seas of
England are bounded

ill

((

• . and haste away
O'er ocean mirrors rounded large,"

IN MEMQRIAM,

with obvious reference to the rounded form and
mirror-like face of the ocean, which his spirit
traverses, until the sails of the vessel come in
sight. Then the [)iteous cry arises,

"... Comes he thus, my friend ?
Is this the end my care ? "

The approach of the ship with the body of his
friend, so eagerly desired, how little after all it
is found to yield ! " Is this the end ? " Yester-
day, a friendship so rich, so ennobling, so full of
promise ; to-day, faith apart, all that is left, a
"breast, which heaves but with the heaving deep."
" Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " It is the
cry of keen aiid bitter disappointment ; so little
can that, which he meets on his dove-like flight,
do, to rekindle the ext flame of joy or even
to mitigate the sense oi ,oss. The last stanza
describes the close of the trance. The spirit,
after circling in the air, and playing about the
prow of the vessel, returns " to where the body"
that is, the body which it had left, his own
body, " sits," and learns that he has " been an
hour away."

It is difficult to know what exactly is to be un-
derstood in regard to a poem like this. The Poet,
we are told, had a quite singular and marvellous
power of passing into a state of insensibility

CANTOS X! I.— XIII,

to all external things, one approaching if not
actually reaching that state of ecstas)., which
we are accustomed to connect with the prophetic
afflatus. Whether the poem describes an actual
experience in the Poet's life, or is simply an im-
aginative picture of what might have been such
It IS impossible to say. The truth in it remains
in either case this ; that the sense of irretrievable
loss is only deepened by the sight in fancy of
the vessel, with its "dark freight, a vanished life."

xin.

His loss sekms i nrkal ; it mist bk a dream
—Time invoked to teach its reality.

At this stage reflection begins to work. Ex-
amining his consciousness, he finds a strange
s^nse of unreality attaching to that which has
transpired ; a common experience, especially
when the bereavement has been sudden, and as
yet IS known only by report. Like the widower's
tears, which mourn the " late-lost form " revealed
in sleep, but not restored to his doubtful arms,
so his, too, who weeps " a loss for ever new " a
void which nought can fill, a silence never to be
broken here.

The third stanza is a very striking one, and \^

IN MEMORIAM.

perhaps meant to explain, not only the greatness
of the loss he mourns, but the sense of unreal-
ness regarding it which he feels. Death is so
unlike every other human experience. It puts
an absolute close to our connection with him
who has undergone it. And it is the disappear-
ance, not of "a breathing voice," but of "a
spirit ;" the quenching, as it might seem, of a
spark struck from Deity itself. No wonder the
Poet terms it :

" An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A spirit, noJ a breathing voice."

Difficult as he feels it to be to realise the death
of this " more than brother," he invokes time to
teach him " many years," i.e., for years to come
— as if a lesson which could not be learned in
a day — that he does not suffer in a dream, but
that " the comrade " of his " choice " has for
ever gone from earth.

c
\

XIV.

The same sense of unreality attaching to
HIS friend's death.

This is obviously a companion poem to the
last ; only the failure to realise the fact of

to
m
th

CANTOS XIV.—XV,

Arthur's death is still more striking here • so
complete is it indeed, that, standing '« muffled
round with woe "-a very strong expression-on
the wharf which the ship touches, were his friend
to step '' lightly down the plank " with the other
passengers, with " no hint of death in all his
JVame," he '^ should not feel it to be strange.''
1 his no doubt depicts an actual mood, in which
the Poet found himself once, or it may have been
more than once. The details are wrought out
with equal simplicity and beauty, and the whole
picture IF a wonderfully vivid one.

The same difficulty in realising the death of
one dear, finds touching expression in Cowper's
poem on the death of his mother, and in Words-
worth's " We are Seven."

XV.

The unrest of his tumultlois feeling finds

NOT ONLY ASSUAGEMENT ,N NATURES CALM
BUT SOMETHING CONGENIAL EVEN IN ITS
STORM.

The poet, like all highly sensitive spirits, loves
to have nature in sympathy with his changing'
moods. We have had one striking example of
this n, our Poets case in x. There it was

lii

IN MEMORTAM.

nature's morning calm that reflected his mood ;
here it is her wild tumult, as the day declines to
night. The picture of the storm in this poem is
one of the Poet's master-pieces ; each effect in
the sky, on the water, and on the land is wrought
out in little more than a single word ;

** The rooks are blown about the skies ; "

a line of great force, vividly picturing the fury
of the gale, and filling with it the whole heavens.

" The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huucllcd on the lea,
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree,
The sunbeam strikes along the world."

The intensity of the storm and its wild, wide
sweep are thus presented to us in words, almost
each one of which forms a picture ; especially
striking, as shewing a close observer, as well as
a powerful delineator of nature, is the view of
'* the low^ shaft of storm-shaken sunlight dashed "
across the landscape.

On this tempestuous night the ship with the
body of Arthur on board is on its homeward
passage. In his fancy, he sees it gliding gently
over a calm sea, "athwart a plane of molten
glass ; " but for this fancy, assuring him of the
safety of the vessel with its sacred freight, he

CANTO XV.

could scarcely endure the strain of the surround-
ing storm. And yet on the other hand, but for
the fear that the fancy is a mistaken one and
that it is not thus " calm on southern seas,"

** The wild unrest that lives in woe

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud."

"cloud." which bears the rising wrath of the
storm in its breast, as on something entirely
con^^enial — the '* cloud "

" That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a laboring breast.
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire."

This last stanza is peculiarly powerful. The
agony of the storm is almost audible in the
words " And onward drags a laboring breast ;"
its glory is finely pictured in the same cloud,
which as the sun is setting becomes "a looming
bastion fringed with fire."

" The cattle huddled" (2nd stanza), crowded confusedly together.

\\\

IN MEMCRFAM.

XVI.

The changing moods of which he has been
conscious become n object of englirv

TO HIM.

This poem is at once introspective and meta-
physical. His sorrow has been now " calm
despair," now " wild unrest." What do these
changes mean ? Is sorrow, which is his abiding
-feeling, itself susceptible of this alternation
between extremes so wide apart, or, knowing
" no more of transient form," that is, having no
more inherent form even of the passing kind,
than the dead lake which simply reflects on its
surface what hangs above it, " doth she only
seem to take the touch of change in calm or
storm," or, a third alternative, has the shock of
grief unhinged his reason, so that he is no
longer able to distinguish, to keep apart — the
work of intelligence — blending views and feel-
ings, but unconsciously " fuses old and new,"
past and present, and made him, .

'**^
^

" that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan ? "

^t)l

CAN7VS XVI.-XVII. 41

The dependence at times of our ideas and
feelings on the aspects of nature around us the
degree in which these are frequently controlled
and colored by these aspects is vividly pictured
in the lake whose surface

" holds the shadow of a lark
Hung: in the shadow of a heaven."

The comparison of the mind, under the
sudden shock of grief, to the boat, which, strik-
ing against the shelving rock, "staggers blindly
ere she smks," and the metaphor '« confused " as
applied to the boat in these circumstances
deserve attention.

i i

th. ^' ^T'^^^A "''/'■"'" """^ P"''^*" *° '^'■"'^•" (4th stanza) ; an example ot
the condensed .node of expression, in which Tennyson so often fndu "
and which occasionally gives rise to obscurity 'ndulges

"Fancy/«.v^.,oldandnew."(sthstanza). The metaphor taken from
the treatment of ore. isboth obvious and striking. "^"^^'^^^ ^rom

XVII.

The ship hailed and tenderly and rever-
ently BLESSED.

There is little which needs elucidation or
remark in this poem. In it the affection enter-
tained for Arthur is transferred to the ship
which is bearing his remains to England, and
the wish is expressed that all tempests which

TN MEMORIAM.

sweep the ocean may spare her, and all good
influences attend her for ever. Attention may
be called to a few of the expressions : " such a
breeze compelled thy canvas," that is, impelled
it. His own prayer is regarded with a fine
play of fancy, as " the whisper of an air " to
bear the vessel onwards " over lonely seas."
The Mediterranean and the English Channel
are far from ** lonely," being, in fact, much fre-
quented waters, but the Poet reads into them
his own feeling. The burden which is borne
across them, the loved companion silent in
death, makes them "lonely " to him.

"I in spirit saw thee move,

Thro' circles of the bounding- sky."

Such a circle, one which bounds the view for
the time, is just that part of space included
within the horizon. The " circles " or tracts of
space would of course differ from day to day,
as the vessel moved forward in its course,
"My blessing like a line of light is on the
waters," that is, such a stream of light on its
forward course, as would enable it to avoid any
danger. " And balmy drops," gentle and sooth-
ing influences, (compare " tired nature's sweet
restorer, balmy sleep,") "in summer dark, slide
from the bosom of the stars ; " the stars, being

l-jMl Mll<W«l>Wt

'/.

CANTOS X 11 1.— .Will.

viewed as in some way affecting the fates of
men. Compare " ill-starr'd."

XVIII.

"The quiet English grave;" contending
emotions of thankful acquiescence and
of yearning desire.

This poem and the one which follows con-
nect themselves with the place of burial. It is
a consolation to him that the ashes of his friend
are to blend with English earth, and rest " in
the places of his youth." In this the Poet again
expresses the instinctive feelings of the race.
" Tis well, 'tis something," " 'tis little " ; such
are the terms in which his qualified satisfaction
finds expression. Then in words of equal sim-
plicity and beauty, — words, too, in which he
surely interprets the better feelings of all, and
has become the teacher of many, — he points out
the character of those who may fittingly take
part in the burial of the noble and loved dead

"Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep
And hear the ritual of the dead."

And yet the yearning desire for the restoration

Ill

IN MEMORIAM.

of the object of his affection makes itself felt
within his breast. It finds expression in words
suggested by the incident of the prophet and
the Shunammite woman's child, 2 Kings iv. : 34.

" Ah yet, e'en yet, if this migfht be,
I, falling on his faithful heart.
Would, breathing thro' his lips, impart
The life that almost dies in me;

That dies not but endures with pain

And slowly forms the firmer mind." "~^"\

These two last lines are particularly strong ; it
is difficult not to recognise in them as in so
many other instances, the Poet's felicitous
adaptation of the words to the thought.

XIX.

The poet finds a resemblance in the stream
beside which arthur was buried, to his
own silence alternating with song.

Dying at Vienna on the Danube, the body
of Arthur was brought to Clevedon in Somer-
setshire, and buried there at a point near where
the Wye falls into the Severn. The Wye, like
the Severn, is a tidal river, and thus, when the
tide is full, the stream is hushed ; when the tide
ebbs, its purling voice is heard within its
wooded banks, termed in the poem " wooded

CANTOS XIX.-XX.

walls." Even so the Poet's grief for his friend's
loss is sometimes too full for utterance ; then
he brims "with sorrow drowning song." After a
season, a mood comes which permits utterance.

•• My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then."

At this stage in In Memoriam and for several
Cantos onwards, the sorrow, it has been ob-
served, is purely personal. It is instinct with
the tenderness of youth, rather than with the
thoughtfulness of maturer years, such as we are
to see it become farther on. But in giving it
expression, with what skill and delicate beauty
the Poet weaves together the workings of
nature without, and the alternations of feeling
within !

XX.

The garrulous speech of the servants, and

THE DUMB AND SCARED SILENCE OF THE
CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH, SUPPLY
HIM WITH ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION OF HIS
OWN CHANGING MOODS.

There are griefs, "the lesser" ones, which
may be spoken ; they are relieved by words.
They are not necessarily insincere, but they are

IN MEMORIAM.

not the deepest which we experience in seasons
of bereavement.

" There cire other jj^rief's within,
And tears whicli at their fountain freeze."

The former resemble the grief of the servants
in the house, where the now dead master hes,
who " weep the fulness from the mind." His

" lig-hter words are hke to these,
That out of words a comfort win ;"

The latter resemble the grief of the children,
who sit cold and silent in " that atmosphere of
death." Everyone must recognize the aptness
and the force of the comparison. How vivid,
too, and how true to nature, the picture which
the Poet draws of the blending grief and terror
of the children !

" For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit."

CANTO xxr.

/I,

XXI.

The poet justifies mis plaintive song Sor-
row HAS its rights ; SORROW ESPECIALLY
FOR ONE SO NOBLE, AND MUST NOT BE DENIED
EXPRESSION.

This is regarded by Genung as another of
the chorus poems, similar to viii. It opens as
if Arthur's grave had been in the churchyard,
and not in the chancel of the church, as it
actually was. The explanation may either be,
that the Poet was ignorant at the time of its
composition of the exact spot of burial, or that
this is an instance of poetic license. His song,
so plaintive, so full of personal sorrow, is viewed
as open to the charge of weakness, of affecta-
tion, of indifference to public interests of
overwhelming moment, and to the advancing
march of science, so remarkable at the time. It
is justified, nevertheless, by the distinguished
worth, unequalled among his compeers, of him

whom it mourns,

■ '■'■' ■■'.■■". .^ .■ '■•

" Ye never knew the sacred dust," I

and by its instinctive character ; his song is the
natural, spontaneous, even irrepressible outburst
of the emotion within. Nature supplies him

IN MEMORIAM.

with an instance of the like necessity; the pjay
note of the linnet, when the young she has bred
take wing ; the plaintive note of another whose
brood has been stolen.

" I do but s\\\% because I must
And pipe but as the linnets sinjf :

And one is glad ; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have rjtnged ;
And one is sad ; her note is changed.

Because her brood is stolen away."a

1 The most striking testimonies are borne alike to Hallam's intellec-
tual endowments and his moral excellence by the greatest of his co-
temporaries. Alford says of him : " He was a man of wonderful mind
and knowledge on all subjects, hardly credible at his age. I long ago
set him down for the most wonderful person I ever knew. He was of
the most tender, affectionate disposition." Gladstone, himself the
greatest Englishman of his day, says : "When much time has elapsed,
when most bereavements will be forgotten, he will stilt be remembered
and his place, I fear, will be felt to be still vacant." Almost the last, if
not the very last production of this distinguished man, was a tribute in
one of the Reviews to the gre.itness and the worth of him whom he had
parted with more than sixty years before.

2 The last stanza affords an example of the alterations, and in thift
instance, at least, the improvement which (lie poet made on the earliest
form of the poem. The lines originally read :

"And unto one her note is gay,

For now her little ones have ranged ;
And unto one her note is changed,
Because her brood is stolen away."

CANTO XXII,

XXII.

Thk brief bit joyous companionship inter.

Rl'PTKD BY DEATH.

The Poet at this point reverts to the past
which he reviews in this and the three following
poems. In the one before us, he sings of tha*t
sweet fellowship, -full of hope and song"
which had brightened life to him for {olxx
happy years. " The path by which we twain,"
— the old poetic word, — " did go,"

** Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,"

summer being regarded as the zenith to which
the year rises from the depths of winter, to
descend again to winter through autumn's
slope. The fifth autumn their fellowship is
broken, as "following hope," they encounter
'• the Shadow feared of man." The expression
"following hope," is designed no doubt to
convey the idea that their path was one not
only full of present gladness, but also lighted
up by anticipations of still brighter joys, as
that of youthful companionship so commonly
is. This unwelcome presence changes all ; the
lot of the Poet as well as and only in a less

i tf

k '

IN ME MORI AM.

decree than that of his friend. The two last
stanzas which describe the change are among
the most vivid and original in the whole Poem.

♦' Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapped thee formless in the fold."

" Formless in the fold ; " the alliteration, of which
the Poet makes so frequent use in In Me-
moriam, will be noticed. The reference can
scarcely be to the cerements of the tomb, in
that case there would be a very unnatural
sequence in the line which follows :

" And duU'd the murmur on thy lip."

The absoluteness of the separation effected in
death has nowhere found more touching ex-
pression than in the closing lines of the poem :

" And bore thee, where I could not see
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me."

XXIII.

Contrast of the past and the present.

The glad past is still vividly before him.
The Poem is here also true to nature. Never

CANTO XXIII.

does the mind revert so often to the past or
dwell on it with such fondness, as when some
great bereavement has changed all of life.
That past he contemplates, sometimes in
silence, as shut within his sorrow, sometimes
'' breakmg into song." With it present to his
mmd, he wanders in solitary thought to where
the Shadow sits. In other words he places him-
self in imagination in the presence of death, and
thence looks both back to the past and forwards
to the future. « The Shadow fr ar'd of man " is
now

" The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot.
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds."

The metaphor in these lines has been very
freely criticised, but even those who have char-
acterized it as halting or incongruous, have
been constrained to admit its originality and its
power. The reference in the latter line, which
has passed as a permanent element into British
thought, is to the fact, that it belongs to death,
and to death alone, to clear up the mysteries'
relating to God and immortality. It has the
prerogative to say the final word as to what is
true, and what is not in the various creeds.
In his reverie, he h.^s but one feeling, - How
changed "all!

" \

•jm

<li

lUl:'

IN MEMORIAM.

:•!

; (

The poem closes with a charming picture of
the pure and lofty pleasures, which had marked
and blessed the companionship so suddenly
interrupted. Among these are recounted, the
enjoyment together of the lavish beauty of
nature, the swift play of gleaming fancy, and of
rapid thought, ennobling converse with the
philosophers and the poets of the olden time ;
all together enriching and enlivening life to
such a degree that as memory recalls the
past he can only say :

" And all we met was fair and g'ood,

And all was good, that time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring-
Moved in the chambers of the blood."

"Breaking into song by Jits" (ist stanza). We now know from the
Poet's memoir, that In Mcmoriam was written through a course of years,
at various times and places, where the author happened to be, in Lin-
colnshire, London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere as the
spirit moved him.

"Often falling lame" (2nd stanza). With reference doubtless to the
difficulties regarding God and the Hereafter which arose in his own mind
in the earlier stages of his grief.

"And fancy light from fancy caught " (4th stanza), i.e. The imagi-
nation of the one was kindled by, caught light from, the imagination of
the other.

" The secret of the spring " (5th stanza). The expression is both an
original and a suggestive one, embodying the mysterious reviving life of
tree and flower. The conception of this moving "in the chambers of the
blood " is certainly a bold one.

CANTO XXIV.

XXIV.

The greatness of the contrast which is felt

BETWEEN THE PRESENT AND THE PAST RAISES
THE QUESTION WHETHER THE PAST WAS
REALLY SO COMPLETELY HAPPY AS IT NOW
APPEARS.

This poem consists in a series of interroga-
tions, very natural in the circumstances. Was
his happiness in the companionship of his
friend so perfect after all ? Even the sun has
its dark spots ;

" The very source and fount of day

Is dash'd with wandering- isles of night."

surely a very felicitous characterization of these
spots. If it were thus perfect, earth had re-
mained the Paradise, it has never been since,
(in the earliest edition of In Memoriam),'
1'^ Adam left his garden yet," (in later editions)
"since our first sun arose and set." The
change is a great improvement, so far as the
poetry is concerned, but not as regards the
truth expressed. The words as they now stand,
exactly construed, really involve the denial of
the existence of any primitive Paradise what-
ever. Or, having in view the well-known

b^i^

IN MEMORIAM.

' ,1.

powers of a dense mist to magnify, as well as
sometimes to distort objects beheld through it,
is what appears the greatness of his former
happiness due to "the haze of grief" through
which he comtemplates it? Or again, is it
simply an example of the effect of contrast in
heightening impression ?

"The lownesH of the present state
That sets the past in this relief?"

Or finally, is it an instance of the familiar '
experience of " distance lending enchantment
to the view?"

" Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being- far ;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein ? "

In explanation of the last two lines, Dr.
Gatty retnarks : " We are told that if we were
placed in the moon we should see the earth as
a * perfect star,' having a shining surface, and
being thirteen times larger than the moon
itself." Genung's explanation is in these words:
" So perfect because the distant viev: changes
it from nebular to orbic form." Both explana-
tions of the Poet's language seem a little far
fetched.

CANTO XXV.

XXV.

Life's burdens shared by love make it to

BE LIFE indeed.

Having given tuneful expression in xx. —
xxiv. to the happiness enjoyed in the com-
panionship of his friend and to the sense of loss
by which it has been followed, the Poet in this
and the two following poems lifts Love into
view as that which lends value to life, and that
in the absence of wh^ch, life is to him not worth
living. The keynote is thus struck of what
one must regard as the central teaching of the
Poem.

The questions of the preceding poem are
not answered in this one ; only the reality and
the intensity of his former happiness is reas-
serted. Life had its daily burden then, as still,
with him as with all. But in this burden lay
the very condition of its gladness. It thus
" needed help of Love," and Love was there by
his side to give the help, to share the weight.
" I know," says the Poet, with an unmistakable
emphasis on the word, " I may not be able to
answer my own questions, but I cannot be
wrong in this,

•'I know that this was Life."

|V'

!l,»

IN MEMORIAM,

This may mean either of two things : either
that this sharing of hTe's burden by Love was
the marked characteristic of the h'fe which he
had led during these four happy years, that
which lay at its heart and was its principle, or,
that this it was which lent existence its charm,
made it Life indeed. The more obvious force
of the words and the capital letter employed
would seem to favor the latter as the meaning
designed by the Poet ; the lines which immedi-
ately follow, however, agree better with the
former rendering.

The poem takes a somewhat unexpected
turn, and one not easily accounted for in the
closing stanza :

•• Nor could I weary, heart or limb.

When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him."

We are led to ask, is it not rather the part of
love, to halve the burden of another and take it
on itself, than to impose half its own burden on
that other ? No doubt the latter, too, displays
the confidence of reciprocated affection. The
characlerization, moreover, of love as " mighty,"
being in the case before us, his own love, can
hardly be regarded as felicitous.

CANTOS XXV.— XXVI.

As illustrating and confirming the sentiment
of this poem, the words of Bacon may be
quoted : " But one thing is most admirable,
which is, that this communicating of a man's
self to his friend, works two contrarie effects ;
for it redoubleth joys and cutteth griefs in
halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his
joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more, and
no man imparteth his griefs to his friend, but
he grieveth the less."

"The track whereon with equal feet we fared" (ist stanza). We
have in this line a good example of Tennyson's happy use of words in
senses now rare. " Fared " is used in the old meaning of travelled
(German /aA^e«). The phrase "equal feet" is also a felicitous one—
" feet " that is, keeping step with each other.

XXVI. /■ 7'

Better death itself than extinguished love.

That time can prevail over love, can eat the
heart out of the affection which has given not
happiness only, but nobleness to life, he longs
to prove false, whatever "fickle tongues" — or the
tongues of those who have fickle hearts — may
say. The result is a possible one indeed, and,
if there is any danger of its being realised in his

IN MEMORIAM,

case ; still more, if the eye to which the future
stands revealed,

" That eye which watches guilt

And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder'd tree,
And towers fall'n as soon as built,"

if He, — whose prescience is such that He sees,
even while the tree is green and flourishing, the
internal decay which is sure to set in, and sees
even while the tower is being built, its ultimate
fall into ruins, — foresees his (the Poet's) love
changed into indifference; then welcome death;
life shorn of that which made it noble, is true
life no more.

Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys.

To shroud me from my proper scorn."

The two lines which close the third stanza
supply a striking example of the condensed
force of expression for which Tennyson is
famous ;

** In more of life, true life no more ;
And love the indifference to be."

This poem marks, it will be noticed, a distinct
stage in advance in the development of the

CANTOS XXVI.— XXVII.

Poem ; lifting the reader up into a high plane, a
plane far above that in which there is simply
the bewailing, in however pathetic terms, of
personal loss, and putting the crown on love,
constant even in death, as that which gives true
dignity to life.

"In Him is no before" (3rd stanza); in accordance with the philo-
sophic conception that our time-determinations have no application to
God. He is, tmzeitlich, as the Germans have it.

"The morn" breakinj-: over Indian seas, (4th stanza), is the Poet's
way of sayinj? "dawning from the east. "

" My proper scorn," (4th stanza), is obviously, scorn of myself.

XXVII.

Love even issuing in the pain of loss is

BLESSED.

This is a kind of companion poem to the pre-
ceding, similar to that which we had in viii.,
as following vii. The theme is essentially the
same, the inherent nobleness of love. To have
loved, to have known the unselfish satisfactions
which are experienced in theexer:ise of love,
even though followed by the keen anguish of
loss, is better than to have the immunity from
trouble, which those enjoy who haye never
known what it was to love, and who had there-
fore nothing to lose. Love, the Poet has

IN MEMORIAM,

learned— and this may be regarded as the
achievement of the introductory part of In Me-
moriam — is valuable not only for what it brings,
fellowship, inspiration, mutual help ; it is most
of all valuable for what it is; and that abides
or may abide, a treasure even when its object
is removed. He does not envy, therefore,

" The captive void of noble rag-e,"

the lion which has lost its love of freedom and
is content to be caged and fed, nor the linnet

'• That never knew the summer woods,"

that has never tasted the sweets of liberty, nor
the brute, devoid of conscience, indulging its
propensities without restraint, and, just as little,
the rest" in man, the freedom from pain,
which is begotten of want, that is, which is due
to the absence of the nobler yearnings of the
human soul, seen in "the heart that never
plighted troth."

" I hold it true, whate'er befall, '

I feel it when I sorrow most,
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

The words have gone into the English tongue,
and are not likely to disappear from it soon.

CANTOS XXVII,— XXVIIL

What they express, however, it should be
noticed, is not the indestructibih'ty of true love
—its survival spite of death and separation,
that achievement is reached and signalized at
a later stage in the Poem ; it is simply the
enrichment which comes to the life from hav-
ing loved.

It seems difficult not to recognize that with
the close of this poem a point of transition in
In Memoriam is reached. One series of poems
closes here ; another series commences with the
poem which immediately follows.

)

xxviii. 7

Grief assuaged at the sound of the Christ-
mas BELLS.

Up to this point the poem has been one long
monody of grief, relieved mainly by the sense
of the nobleness of the affection out of which
the grief flows. At this stage the Poet's mind
begins to deal, first, indeed in a direct manner
in XXX., with the person of him, "his more
than brother," who has gone from him in death.
In doing so, the Poet enters the realm of faith,
of revealed truth, indeed, and hence the pro-
priety — not to be overlooked — of his entrance

\ W

IN ME MORI AM.

into this new realm being synchronous with the
observance of that festival, which commemo-
rates the Incarnation, the birth of Mim "who
hath abolished death and brought life and
immortality to light."

It is Christmas eve at Somersby, the first
(one might almost think from the fourth stanza
the second) since Arthur's death. The season,
from its very nature and associations, both
revives the sorrow and touches it with joy ;

" Four voices of four hamlets round,

From far and near, on mead and moor.
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound."

These, the blending bells of four village
churches, are not to be identified. It is possible
that they existed only in the fancy of the poet.
They proclaim

'* Peace and good will, good will and peace.
Peace and good will to all mankind."

The rhythm in these lines seems an imitation,
in a way, of the chime of bells. There is
something, one can hardly help feeling, of over-
strained sentiment in the fourth stanza. "This
year I slept and woke with pain," etc., to which
one is not reconciled by the condensed force of

CANTOS xxvni.—xxix.

the words in which it finds expression. Intense
as the feeh'n^r is, it cannot altogether resist the
soothing influences of the Christmas bells, in
virtue especially of the memories with which
they are linked.

♦' But they my troubliul spirit rule,

For they controlled ine when a boy ;
They brini>- me sorrow touched with joy,
The merry, merry bells of V'ule."

Students of Goethe will remember how it was
the sound of the chimes of Easter and the
choral song which interrupted Faust, as he was
putting the cup of poison to his lips. The
poet makes him say :

•' What hollow humming, what a sharp clear stroke
Drives from my lips the goblets at their meeting- ? "

XXIX.

The usual Christmas observances uncon-
genial, BUT still honored FOR USE AND
wont's SAKE.

How " keep our Christmas-eve " when, in the
absence of the friend whose presence had so
often brightened it. there is " such compelling

] :

IN MEMORIAM.

cause to grieve ; " such cause, that is, as really
leaves the mind no liberty to do aught but
grieve, thus day by day " vexing " — a fine use
of the word — ruffling or disturbing " household
peace," here obviously the quiet family happi-
ness ; and chaining " regrets to his decease ; "
another felicitous use of metaphor. Then the
wonted observances shall be omitted ? No,

" Yet g-o, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,

referring to the customary decoration of the
church at the Christmas season,

Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, "

here personified, and characterized in the next
stanza as

" Old sisters of a day gone by.

ray nurses, loving nothing new ;

.-• • • • *

» . , They too will die. "

The Poet in his present mood sees death put-
ting his destroying finger on everything, but
why cheat Use and Wont of their due "before
their time?"

CANTO XXX.

XXX.

" Christmas-day - Successive moods- Forced

MIRTH SUCCEEDED BY TEARS, SILENCE AND
THEN BY DEGREES SWEETER HOPE." F.VV.R.

The customary celebration of Christmas goes
on The sense of loss runs through it all
making the show of gladness a "vain pretence"
Its joy IS dimmed by "an awful sense of one
mute bhadow watching all." The day itself is
dull, and wet, and wintry, as if in sympathy
with their despondent feeling. The succession
of moods fn the poem is natural, and is finely
depicted ; first, silent looks in one another's
f^ces, contrasting with the winds which swept
• the winter land," then song, impetuous be-
cause forced, then a gentler feeling, induced by
the thought-surely not without connection with
the Christmas story-" They rest, their sleep
IS sweet, out of which there rises a new and
higher note of gladness ;

• • . they do not die,
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor chan-e to ,ls, although they change."

B^^L^^"^^ "^eans "gathered power," and the

(

IN MEMORIAM.

s[)irit, freed from its burden of clay, "the keen,
seraphic flame," pierces " from orb to orb, from
veil to veil."

Here for the first time in the Poem, the long
monody of grief is broken by the note of hope
and of joy; the lost presence, "the vanished
life" is recovered; extinguished here, it flames
yonder ; lost to sight, it is restored to faith.
Two points should not be overlooked at this
stage. First, it is surely not incidental that the
attainment, or at least the expression, of this
conviction, is made coincident with the sound of
the Christmas bells. We seem entitled to say
that the Poet's hope of immortality is primarily
based on Revelation, that the light which
illumines or at least relieves for him the other-
wise black darkness of the grave is kindled
at the cradle of Bf thlehem. It is important
to become seized of this truth, since more
than one of his commentators seem determined
to make his belief in immortality, so far as In
Memoriam goes, simply and solely the out-
growth of his inward feeling, the postulate, as it
were, of that love which is felt to be undying,
immortal ; whereas that is rather to t e regard-
ed as the weapon with which he fights the
doubts of his age, doubts in which he himself
may have sometimes shared. In any case, it

CANTO XXX.

cannot be said to be the exclusive ground of
the hope of the Hereafter which comes to hght
in the Poem. Second, the hope of immortaHty
which rises in the night of this household's
sorrow, is a hope which embraces others, as
well as the loved one whose withdrawal had
darkened for a time their Christmas gladness.
It is his personal loss which the Poet has hith-
erto bewailed. It is the recovery of others
besides— of all — which he now sings. " They
^ do not die." In the very nature of the case, it
must be so. The loss to any of us, of child, or
brother, or friend, is a purely personal matter;
the hope, kindled at the altar of Revelation,
which gives us that child, or brother, or friend
back, must ever include others also. The grief
is personal, the consolation general.

The new feeling finds noble and fitting ex-
pression in the lines :

" Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, !

Draw forth the cheerful day from night :; '
O Father, touch the east and lig-ht
The light that shone when Hope was born."

IN MEMOR/AM.

^Pf

j/ ,/ ^y-
\}J^ Questions regarding the nature of the

FUTURE STATE.

^^"Jf

■< .'OC'^-

The fact of immortality being admitted,
questions very naturally arise regarding its
character ; in particular regarding the state of
the departed, the interest which they are per-
mitted to take or are precluded from taking in
those who are still living. The sequence of the
poems is perfect at this point, and the new
range of thought into which they are turned
comes naturally. " Until now memory has
brought the dead friend back into his old place,
or sorrow has contemplated his place empty of
him. Now faith follows him into his new being
and the contemplation of the unseen life
begins." There is obvious propriety in taking
Lazarus, whom Christ raised, as an example to
bridge the path r)f enquiry from the world of
sense to that of faith. He has been in both.

His case is one, the Poet says, which might
conceivably have furnished answers to our
curious but always baffled questionings regard-
ing the place, and occupations of the departed,
and doing which, it " had surely added praise

■ ~- ' _

CANTOS XXXI.— XXXII.

to praise ; " that is, as I understand it, had
added the praise of extending man's knowledge
of the future state, to the praise of restoring the
loved brother from the tomb. In reality it has
not done so ; it has resolved for us no doubt,
has shed no light on the impenetrable mystery
involved in death.

" Behold a man raised up by Christ !
The rest remaineth unreveal'd ;
He told it not ; or something- seal'd
The lips of that evangelist."

Note.— Dr. Gatty has a strange m-'sinterpretation, or what seems
such, of the words " Had surely added praise to praise;" making them
to mean. " might have sealed and confirmed the promise that 'Blessed
are the dead that die in the Lord.' " In such an interpretation, the
language ".idded praise to praise " finds no explanation.

XXXII. ^ 'cvy^-

The 1 ngrossment and devotion of love as
exemplified in marys devotion to her

LORD.

The transition from Lazarus to Mary is a
very natural one, on the supposition, which was
the actual case here, that the author was in
que.st of spiritual truth. The piece supplies us
with one of the most exquisite and touching, if
not the most exquisite and touching, of all the
poems in In Memoriam. Many may surpass it

yf'

) ■

IN ME MORI AM.

in grandeur and stateliness, in depth and bril-
liance of color, in the subtle interpenetration of
nature and of human feeling; none surpasses it in
condensed force and beauty; and no one equals
it in the deep and sympathetic insight into
T the spiritual realm which it reveals. The poem
is so lofty in thought as to impress the most
unsusceptible ; so simple in expression as to be
intelligible to the most unlettered ; so exquisitely
beautiful in form as to forbid the alteration of a
single word. Such a picture of devout love as
it forms will not fail to charm, we may believe,
while the English tongue continues to be spoken,
and the sense for the appreciation of spiritual
truth and beauty survives among men.
. The very first words arrest us by their
exceeding depth and suggestiveness, and by
what we may term the boldness as well as the
beauty of the metaphor
•^ ••

."..-. " Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,"

[' the absorbing power of affection, especially of
/ \ an affection which has the blessed Christ for its
object follows.

\ " Nor other thought her mind admits

\ But, he was dead, and there he sits,

.._A And He that broug-ht him back is there.

CANTO XXXJI.

Then one deep love doth supersede-
All other, when her ardent gaze
) Roves from the living brother's face,

And rests upon the Life indeed."

Then there is the utter gladness, unclouded by
doubts and fears, which grows out of such devo-
tion. The line

"Whose loves in higher love endure,"

may perhaps require some explanation,
would seem to be equivalent to this : whose
earthly attachments are not destroyed but are
preserved and perfected in being taken up into
the higher love which the devout soul cherishes
towards God ; in the case before us, that of
Mary, whose love to a brother endures in her
love to Him who had raised him from the tomb.
Finally there is the self-possession, which is not
effaced but is rather perfected, and blessedness
with it, in the love which has the Life for its
object.

" What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs? "

In the connection in which this poem stands,
with curious and unanswered questions preced-
ing it (xxxi.), and with the expression of grave
and disquieting doubts following in one poem

L..y

IN MEMORIAM,

after another, it may have been the design of
the poet, many are of opinion it was, to repre-
sent Mary as the picture of a person, in whose
loving devotion to the Saviour and fellowship
with Him, all fears in regard to the future are
lost; "one, who has such satisfaction in the
presence of the Life indeed, that curiosity about
unseen things finds no place." Emerson is
quoted as saying, " Of immortality, the soul
when well employed, is incurious. It is so well,
that it is sure it will be well. It asks no ques-
tions of the Supreme power."

XXXIII.

The danger of unsettling faith by detach-
ing IT FROM FORM.

This poem is one which requires careful
interpreta,tion. In it the Poet becomes the^
preacher. The person, whom he addresses, the
representative of a class not indisposed to
intellectual arrogance, is one who has laid aside
the simple beliefs of his childhood, but who
after a season of doubt and conflict has come
to entertain what he regards as a more rational
faith ; a faith, for example, such as that of men,
who recognize the spiritual element in man.

CANTO XXXIII.

who believe in a Supreme Power ruling the
world in righteousness, in an ever-active Love
guiding the meek and restoring the penitent,
but who nevertheless refuse to accept the his-
toric creeds of Christendom, or even to allow
their sense of the divine and the spiritual to be
embodied in any definite doctrinal statements
whatever. A man of this class is said to be one

"Whose faith has centre everywhere." A'

The exact idea intended to be conveyed is not
easily reached : perhaps it is that of stability, a
faith not easily overturned ; well-poised, like a
body in stable equilibrium. This characteriza-
tion must be regarded as proceeding on the
man's own estimate ; others might be disposed
to substitute nowhere for " everywhere."

-^'"^.. ^-.

" Nor cares to fix itself to form." " > ..

" Form," as must be obvious from what has
been already said, is in this connection, definite
statement, distinctly articulated belief.
^-. The Poet, without letting us sec how far he
sympathizes with the intellectual position,
warns the man who occupies it, and who in
doing so seems " to have reached a purer air,"
not to unsettle or disturb by " shadowed hint,"
by vague suggestions of doubt, the faith of his

(

-♦se^'

IN MEMOKIAM.

sister, who holds to the simple beliefs of her
childhood, and thus

"... confuse
A life that leads melodious days,"

a felicitous description surely, embodying some-
thing of the melody of the life of which it
speaks. With all her unacquaintance with the
realm of philosophic thought into which he has
risen,

" Her hands are quicker unto g-ood."

If right living, if prompt and active benevolence
be the test, then her simpler and more definite
faith is seen to have the advantage. The Poet
goes on to say, with reference probably to the
Incarnation, or, it may be to tlie Eucharist,

" O sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine."

In the closing stanza, the man who is disposed
to look contemptuously on creeds or forms of
^ belief, even Revelation itself, who counts it the
part of ripei>ed reason, to hold simply " by the
law within," is reminded that his more rational
faith, as he deems it, may leave his life a failure
" in a world of sin."

" And even for want of such a type."

" Such a type," that is, as the one divine and

'/I

V£

CANTOS xxxiir.—xxxi V,

spotless Life sup[)lics. Most seasonable and
necessary warning ; the sublimated faith of the
philosopher achieves few victories over *' the
world, the flesh and the devil."

''ote. — Gcmiiif^, who lias written so fully on In Meinoriam, and
often to jjviod purpose, is nniloiibteilly astray in his interpretiition of
this and the two preiedin^; poems. " Lazarus and Mary, " he remarks,
"illustrate two phases of Christian life ; those whose ripened reason and
spiritual insijjht make their views of unseen thinjfs approach the charac-
ter of knowled^'e, and those whose faith without knowledj^e supports
itself by forms." Now one need not hesitate to say that the identifica-
tion of Lazarus in Canto xxxi., or by implication in this Canto, with
any such phase of religious life as that above indicated, is utterly
{groundless ; while Mary even, with her eye on the personal Saviour, can
with difficulty be regarded as the type of a faith wiiich " supports
itself by forms." Her's is much more a faith which is fed by love. One
wonders to find this misinterpretation of Genung incorporated without
remarks by Rolfe in his Annotated Edition of the Poem.

-f

XXXIV.

The christian doctrine of immortality cor-
roborated BY THE facts OF OUR OWN
MORAL N ATT RE.

.1 - (

At this point in the Poem the question of
immortality assumes a new phase; one in which
it is contemplated again and again in the
course of the Poem. It is discussed from the
point of view of human reason, not from that of
Revelation. The value of tiiese discussions has
been very differently estimated. Some, attract-
ed mainly by literary beauty, rate them low ;

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IN MEMORIAM.

Others, ;"et more concerned with the truth, than
with mere form, find in them the supreme inter-
est of the Poem. There is evidence that the
Poet threw into them his whole force, both of
thought and of imagination ; and in reahty, be
their value as contributions to the settlement of
the great question ot immortality what it may,
there are no parts of In Memoriam which shew
greater intensity of feeling and greater force of
expression.

In this, then, and the following poem, the
Poet finds himself for the first time face to face
with the doubt of the age ; and finds himself
face to face with it to say that whatever show^..
of truth it may possess, it is in conflict not less
with the intuitions of reason, than with the
teachings of Revelation. The denial of immor-
taliy, the total and final extinction of the
personality in death, does not only impair the
dignity and happiness of human life, it destroys
its meaning, it renders human existence a hope-
less enigma. Make this life all, that is, for a
being such as man feels himself to be, endowed
with conscience, with religious feelings, with the
capacity of boundless love, and with eager
yearnings after an ideal never quite realized
here, then this green earth, that glowing sun is
not wise and ordered grace, it is " fantastic

CANTO XXXIV.

beauty," like that which is seen on the frosted
pane, or

"... such as lurks
In some wild poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim."

The lofty conception which Tennyson has of
his art, so conspicuous in his poetry, and differ-
entiating it from not a little of the literature of
the day, comes out incidentally here.

Religion likewise, on the supposition that
death ends all, has no longer any meaning, or,
at least, any attraction. " What then were God
to such as I ? " Suicide is the only wisdom.

" 'Twere best at once to sink to peace,

Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease."

Substantially the same plea for immortality
is made again and again in the course of the
Poem, and it is made with an urgency, with an
almost passionate vehemence, explained at once
by the supreme interest which attaches to the
truth, and by the prevalence, and the plausi-
bility of materialistic views of man and of
human destiny. The argument is not to be
misunderstood. It is not o{ the logical or the

IN MEMORIAM.

scientific kind. It is based on the possession
by man of an intellectual and moral nature.
To such a being, the world, human life, must
be rational, must be righteous. It has ceased
to be either, if death is the extinction of per-
sonal existence.

' I

XXXV.

Immortality the condition of any love that
IS worthy of the name.

This poem is in some respects the converse
of the former. The supposition is made in it,
that the hope of a life beyond the grave is ex-
tinguished, at least, that all probabilities are
against it, the sorrowful conclusion to which
some have come ; what then ? Is the sweet-
ness of love, even though to be tasted only for

a brief hour, not itself enough to make life a
blessing and a joy

" Might I not say, * Yet even here.
But for one hour, O Love, I strive,
To keep so sweet a thing alive ? ' "

No ; for, first, the sweetness would change,
would all but vanish, in view of the contrast

•^

CANTO XXXV.

between the fleeting life allotted to Love, and
the unending play of stream and ocean, which
rises before the imagination. This seems to be
the force of the third and fourth stanzas ; a
force, as far as one can learn, not very generally
apprehended, or at least not very clearly ex-
pressed by the expositors of the Poem. But,
second,

"... if Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been
Or been in narrowest working shut ;"

if there were no instinct of immortality in
man's breast, either Love would not arise, or it
would be a mere coarse and sensual passion ;
like that of the satyr in the woods. In other
words, the nobility of love, and as the poet will
say, of life, depends on the belief in immor-
tality ; Genung says " in its own immortality."
Ihe meaning of this poem, it may be ob-
served, has been mistaken by one who not
seldom shews a great measure both of learning
and insight in his treatment of In Memoriam :
Brother Azarias. He remarks on the poem :
" Going deeper still, Tennyson finds in the love
he bears his friend, — in all true love — an argu-
ment for his immortality." In this canto, and
at this stage of the poem, there is no such

IN ME MORI AM.

argument. It is less surprising to find Genung
making the same mistake.

"^Eonian hills" (3rd stanza); everlasting hills or hills enduring
for ages. The word seems to be one of the poet's coining.

••Forgetful shore" (4th stanza) ; a shore on which all is so change-
ful that it can retain no memory of the past-none of those who have

lived and loved upon it. , r n •

Note.-lt may not be amiss to transfer to these pages the followmg
striking argument for immortality, somewhat analogous to that of the
poet and quoted by Tainsh: "Thus if the celestial hope be a delusion,
we plainly see who are the mistaken. Not the mean and grovell.ng
souls, who never reached so great a thought, not the drowsy and easy
natures, who are content with the sleep of sense through life, and the
sleep of darkness ever after, not the selfish and pinched of conscience, of
small thought and smaller love -no. these, in such case, are right, and
the universe is on their miserable scale. The deceived are the ^rcat and
holy, whom all men. ay. these very insignificants themselves, revere ;
the men who have lived for something better than their happiness and
spent themselves on the race or fallen at the altar of human good. . . .
Whom are we to revere, and what can we believe, if the inspirations ot
the highest of created natures are but cunningly devised fables?

XXXVI.

Despite man's instinctive and rational hope
OF immortality, the revelation of truth

IN CHRIST IS needful AND WELCOME.

The Poet's thoughts revert to Revelation, as
if not altogether sure of the argument he has
framed.

«• Tho' truths in manhood darkly join
Deep-seated in our mystic frame."

The truths of reUgion, inclusive of the great

CANTO XXXVI.

truth of immortality, are indeed found "in
manhood," that is, in man's nature,— in the
human mind and constitution,~rooted deeply
in, stamped inefifaceably on, " our mystic " or
mysterious " frame," but they are at the same
time "darkly" joined, their subtle connections
are far from clear ; we welcome Him, therefore,
who embodied them " in a tale "—either with a
reference to the Saviour's so frequent use of
parable in inculcating truth, or more probably
to the story itself of His own life on earth—
and thus made them," not the privileged pos- j
session of the few thinkers of the race, but the I
common heritage, the "current coin" of man- '
kind.

To meet the need arising from the fact that
"Wisdom," Divine Wisdom, had to deal with
mortal powers, to which " closest words " fail to
reveal truth, the Word had breath, "the
Wr rd was made flesh and dwelt amongst men,"
John I : 14,

** • . . and wroug-ht
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong- than all poetic thoug-ht ; "

which all can understand ; the reaper in the
harvest field (notice the poet's love of the

■r

IN MEMO R I AM.

concrete), the mason on the wall, the digger by
the grave,

'' And those wild eyes, that watch the wave

In roarings round the coral reef.'

.•Closest words" (.nd stanza): words fitting the truth in the

''^"'Wiw"eyes" (4th stanza) ; "Wild" either as the eyes of savages,
or. which is'to be preferred, the eyes of thos. who watch the waves,
which threaten to wreck the boats and engulph the.r loved ones.

XXXVII.

Is SUCH RECOURSE IN HIS SONG TO REVEALED
TRUTH NOT A PROFANATION?

This again is a chorus song, one in which the
Poet reflects on and characterizes his work
rather than gives expression to his sentiments
either regarding his friend, or regardmg the
momentous questions which his death had
raised. It is important, moreover, as throwmg
Ho-ht on what he counted his proper sphere as

a poet. ^ J ,

Urania, the heavenly Muse, is represented as
rebuking him for his intrusion into the field of
Revelation, within which others could speak to
greater profit, and as bidding him go to Par-
nassus, the poet's hill, and there win his laurel
wreath through the lips of his own " earthly

CANTO XXXVII.

tlu

Muse," Melpomene. He accepts the rebuke
and answers,

" I am not worthy even to speak
Of thy prevailing- mysteries ; "

but Arthur loved to speak " of things divine,"
and recalling what he said,

" I murmured as I came along

Of comfort clasped in truth reveal'd ; "

leading us to understand that his entrance into
the field of Revelation was incidental, and not
in the main line of the task which he had set
himself.

" And loiter'd in the Master's field
And darken'd sanctities with song. "

He is SO far from claiming to shed light on
Revelation, that he feels his song rather darkens
the sacred truths taught by Christ. It is the
fact, nevertheless, that the poetry of Tennyson
evinces a minute acquaintance with the Scrip-
tures, and that he has known how to borrow
from them many a bold metaphor and many a
striking allusion.

"Prevailing mysteries" (3rd stanza); with reference probably to
the power or force which these mysteries exerted on the minds of men.

" Dear to me as sacred wine;" in the first edition, " dear as sacra-
mental wine."

IN MEMORIAM.

\\k

XXXVIII.

His grief remains or reappears slightly

SOLACED BY SONG.

It is springtime, but the reviving life of
nature cannot make itself felt in his life ; it
awakens no responsive movement there. He
drags along the journey of life " with weary
steps," and "always under altered skies," the
horizon narrowed or rather " gone," as in the
case of one hemmed in with darkness; the
purple vanished from the heavens. In the
music of the birds,

'« The herald melodies of spring,"

there is for him no more joy ; but a gleam, " a
doubtful " or fitful " gleam of solace lives " in
his song " which it may be— it may be— that
Arthur hears " (Chapman), and if he does,

«' Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear."

"The blowing season" (2nd stanza); that is. the blooming
season. Comp. German " bliihen." , u^

•'Spirits render'd free" (3rd stanza); emancipated from the body,
viewed as a clog or hindrance.

CANTO XXXIX.

: of

; it

eary
the
the
the
the

' in
-that

XXXIX.

The yew tree with its scarcely pi;rceptible
blossoms and soon returning to its native

GLOOM, IMAGES HIS DOUBTFl L AND FLEETING
SOLACE.

This poem did not appear in the first editions
of In Memoriam. It was added in the edition
which appeared in 1869. It is very generally
regarded as one of the more obscure pieces of
^he work. It is addressed, like \\., to the yew
tree, with whose " stubborn hardihood "' of
gloom, the poet at an earlier stage had felt
himself to be in sympathy, or which he desired
to share. It blossoms and forms seeds like
other trees. Being springtime, the blossom is
on it. To it, too, has come " the golden hour."
Of it, or rather, to it, he savs :

** And answering- now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke ; "

receives

The meaning is, that when the tree

random " shake, or " stroke," it sheds the pollen

like dust ; a " fruitful cloud " as fertilizing the

IN MEMO RI AM.

ovules or rudimentary seed, " living smoke,"
as containing in it the clement or principle of
life. But sorrow, it is said, whispered from he
lying lips, addressing the tree,

" Thy gloom is kindled at the tips
And passes into gloom again."

Considering that these lines state a simple and
undeniable fact in the case of the yew tree, why
is Sorrow said to speak it with '* lying lips ? "
The answer, so far as we can see, must be this,
that it is supposed to carry the suggestion that
his "sorrow," now "touched with joy," must
end in gloom after all.

XL.

The bride's parting from her home compared

TO AND CONTRASTED WITH THE PARTING IN
DEATH.

The comparison is a natural one, and it is
wrought out with great skill and beauty of
detail, and with deep and tender feeling. There
are points of resemblance between the two
cases. There is in both the severance of old

CANTO XL, 87

and cherished ties, separation attended with
more or less of sorrow, even in the case of the
bride ;

. . hopes and liffht regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes ;

And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother's face."

There is in both, too, an important purpose to
be served ; in her case, to rear, to teach a new
generation, in his to discharge "the great
offices that suit the full grown energies of
heaven." But there is a point o{ difference
likewise, and that is the outstanding feature
in the picture; it is here the tender and ex-
quisite pathos of the poem reaches its climax.
Her separation from the old home is not abso-
lute — is not for ever.

"Ay me, the difference I discern !
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return.

But thou and I have shaken hands,

Till growing winters lay me low ;

My paths are in the fields I know.
And thine in undiscover'd lands."

IN MEMORIAM.

How intense the sense of separation in the last
stanza ; how simply and touchingly expressed !

Note. — Genung makes the theme of this poem, " Progress in an-
other world, illustrated in the life of a bride, who leaves her parental
home and becomes the centre of a new family circle, and so an .ngent in
the world's progress. Such progress, only nobler is in heaven." This,
as it appears to me, is an arbitrary and forced interpretation and re-
ceives any color of support from the poem itself, only by mak'.ng the 5th
stanza, which contains simply a subsidiary point in the comparison, the
governing one in the whole poem. A reader who has no theory to
support, who is not bent on discovering connections where none exist,
will readily feel that the whole emphasis of the poem lies, not in the
resemblances noted, but in the difference. The verv first line, when
rightly understood, "Could we forget," etc. i.e., O that we could
forget, etc., disproves the view of Genung.

XLI.

/. >••■'■■

HE FEAR OF ETERNAL SEPARATION FROM HIS
FRIEND ARISING BECAUSE OF THE START HE
HAS GOT.

With this poem there commences a series of
questionings regarding the nature of the future
life, and the condition of the departed therein.
This is the subject of the poems from xli. to
xlvii. A variety of suppositions are brought
under review. In the poem before us, the
future state is regarded as one of constant, up-
ward progress, and, the whole problem of
immortality being in the meantime considered

CANTO XLL

mainly as it affects his relation to his friend, the
fear thence arises, that he cannot again share
his companionship.

It will be noted, that in the poem immor-'l,
tahty is assumed as a fact, but it is also a fact '
that the two are parted. Shall they ever meet
again, or, must their unequal attainments not
keep them forever separate? Arthur's course
on earth was ever upward, like altar-fire. His
spirit ever rose

" As flies the Hg^hter thro' the gross."

But that upward course could be followed ; now
it can be traced no longer. - I have lost the
links that bound thy changes," that is, that
mark the limits of thy advance. The wish
arises, (he knows it to be foolish and impracti-
cable) that by an effort of will he could

. leap the grades of life and lig-ht,"

which now separate them

'• And flash at once, my friend to thee."

Mrs. Chapman, generally so sane in her inter-
pretation of the Poem, \s surely at fault here, in
regarding these lines as a cry for death on the
part of the Poet.

IN MEMORIAM.

The wish thus expressed, incapable of grati-
/ fication, leaves him the prey of the chilling

{ doubt, which haunts him like a spectre ; that he

cannot again be the mate of Arthur, but,
despite all his striving, must forever remain
a life behind ; that differences of attainment,
acting like a power of gravitation, must keep
them in different spheres.

On the supposition of immortality, the fear
thus expressed, must be pronounced not un-
natural. Our ignorance of the conditions of
the future life, makes it impossible for us to say>
whether it is well or ill grounded.

"The bowlings from forgotten fields" (4th stanza). The expres-
sion is an obscure one. Dr. Gatty remarks regarding it, there is
" probably a classical allusion to those fields of mystic horror over which
the spirits of the departed were supposed to range, uttering wild shrieks
and cries."

*' The secular to be," (6th stanza), denotes, the future ages.

XLII.

^ This fear overcome by the recollection,
that inequality of mind did not separ-
ate them on earth.

Here, in the earthly life, Arthur "still out-
stript " him " in the race," and yet their com-
panionship was intimate and happy. " Unity
of place " united them, inequality of attainment

CANTO XLII.

notwithstanding. And ''Place" (though how
far place or locality applies to the future life is
perhaps a moot point) may still " retain " or
unite them, though more than ever unequal-
After all, this inequality, the lofty attainments
of his friend, now become " a lord of large ex-
perience " may only enhance the pleasure, for

** . . what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit's inner deeps,
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows,"

as it must increase the gain ; for it will be then
in his power to " train, to riper growth the mind
and will," that is, his (the Poet's) mind and will.

The last two lines of the poem deserve atten-
tion. The thought is as just and winsome, as
the expression is simple and beautiful.

The poem, it may be observed, affords an
Jllustration of the idealizing process which so
often goes on, when death removes a loved
friend. A note contained in Dr. Gatty's " Key
to In Memoriam " and giving Tennyson's own
words, says expressly that Hallam looked up
to him fully as much as he looked up to
Hallam. A different explanation, indeed,
would be given by " Brother Azarias " who says,
" Precisely as the ' I ' of the poem came to

IN MEMORIAM.

stand for the whole human race, even so the
'Arthur' of the poem hps become ideaUzed
into the representative of all that is or could be
excellent in a deceased friend." Of the former
we have the assurance from the Poet himself;
of the latter he gives us no hint. The two
things are very far from being necessarily con-
nected. The admission of the latter, if one
"effects on what is implied in it, would com-
pletely alter the situation depicted in the poem.
The presence, from which the Poet dreads
difference of attainment is to separate him for-
ever, is not that of " the representative of all
that is or could be excellent in a deceased
friend," it is that of his personal friend, his
" more than brother" invested indeed by his
imagination with new and higher excellence.

Note, — Genung gives the force of the poem in these words : " This
fear allayed by the thought of love. Here on earth he was always far
ahead, yet always helpful ; so there, where progress is certainly progress
in love, he will all the more surely devote himself to the late-coming
friend as guide and teacher." This is, as any careful reader will see,
an example, not a few of which Genung supplies, of reading into a
poem, a meaning which it does not contain, and which, so far as one
can judge from the words used, the Poet never intended to express.

CANTO XLin.

XLIII.

Dlath viewed as a long, unconscious trance,

AND LOVE RE-AWAKENING WITH RETURNING
LIFE.

The fear expressed in xli., it has been ob-
served, " was not quite that of the loss of all
communion whatsoever, but that of the loss of
equal matehood " (Tainsh). That proceeds on
the idea, that there is no interruption in death
to progress, or, rather it implies, that it proceeds
at an accelerated space.

Another conception altogether of the future
state comes into view in this poem, and is
treated with all the author's poetic skill ; the
conception, namely, that the state to which!
death introduces its subject, and which lasts j
until the resurrection of the body, is one of un- \
consciousness. The spirit exists, but exists in
a state of unconscious trance. This view of the
intermediate state, as is well known, is one
which has been widely entertained both in
earlier and later times. Our Poet neither
accepts nor rejects it. He simply deals with it
according to his method, as one of the possi-
bilities arising out of death. - — ^

^5";!

IN MEMOKIAM.

••A^

J It does not seem to have had much attrac-
tion for his mind, as he does not return to it.
It has even been made a ground of complaint
against him, that the prevailing view of the
future state, contained in In Memoriam, is that
of one of active and continuous progress, to the
disregard of what is claimed to be the Christian
doctrine of Paradise. " The Christian faith
■ concerning the blessed dead," says Tainsh, " is
.^that neither are they fully awake nor do they
wholly sleep.' . . . They sleep to rest;
they wake to love and long." Thus only, it
is claimed, does " the resurrection of the body "
come to its true significance.

It is not necessary that we should pronounce
an opinion on this point. It is sufficient to
note that the view of the intermediate state
dealt with in this poem is, as we have seen, that
of a state of sleep or unconsciousness. It is in-
teresting to notice how such a view is regarded
by the Poet, who throughout the Poem habitu-
ally looks at the question of the Hereafter, not
in its broad and general bearing, but as affect-
ing his relationship to his friend.

Well, if this were the true account, it would
be the negation of progress for the time being ;
it would not necessarily be the destruction, or
even the impairment of love, but only the

CANTO XL/I/.

>»

suspension of its exercise. The soul will awake
in the resurrection from its long sleep and Love
will awake with it. On this supposition, the
spirit will continue to slumber

"Thro" all its intervital ^loom,"

" the gloom," that is, resting on it between the
two lives, that prior to death, and that subse-
quent to resurrection ; its "bloom" acquired or
displayed here, not lost, but simply " folded."
In that case, nothing is really lost in death.
There is no disintegration of spiritual fibre,
no blanching even of color. In this "still,
speechless "garden of the souls" the entire
realm of human experience survives, wrapt up
" in many a figured leaf." Love, too, the love
which lent nobility and sweetness to life, sur-
vives ; not indeed in active exercise, but |a
potential; and will at the soul's springtime,
here termed " the spiritual prime,"

'• Rewaken with the dawning soul."

The conception, it will be seen, is one wrought
out with great skill and in a poem of exquisite
beauty ; the metaphor of the soul, as a flower,
is maintained throughout with complete con-
sistency in all the details of the picture. The
condensed force and beauty of the following

IN MEMORIAM.

expressions will be noted : The " spirit's folded
bloom," " the sliding hour," " silent traces of the
past," " the still garden of the souls," " a figured
leaf enrolls." We have next another compan-
ion poem, growing out of this one.

XLIV.

Death being viewed as on the whole a state
" of oblivion, may it not, however, be vis-
ited by gleams of recollection ?

Any light on the subject of the character of
the after life, apart from that which comes
through Revelation, must be borrowed from, or
at least in some way connected with, our
experience in the present earthly state of
existence. Well,

((

here the man is more and more,"

i.e. accumulates knowledge, exists in a state of
continuous progress. But with his growth in
knowledge, there is conjoined the loss of recol-
, lection of some prior state of being ;

J^ " But he forgets the days before

God shut the doorways of his head."

This singular and unquestionably obscure ex-
pression, " before God shut the doorways of his

CANTO XLIV.

dec!

the

jred

Dan-

er of
omes \
m, or \
our ^
of

.te of

Ith in

•ecol-

ex-

)f his

head," has been interpreted as meaning, before
the skull of the infant is closed. The forgetful-
ness in that case would be forgetfulness of the
very earliest stages of infancy, extending per-
haps even to the purely sensational experiences
in the womb. Or, the Platonic doctrine of pre-
existcnce, the fact of a preexistent state of
being, out of which the soul comes in birth into
the present, may be, probably is, the supposi-
tion with which the Poet is dealing ; and in that
case, the forgetfulness would denote the total or
all but total disappearance from memory of
everything connected with that prior state.
We say " all but total " disappearance, for he
qualifies it in a way. >7 /\

" And yet perhaps the hoarding' sense \ v

Gives out, at times, (he knows not whence,) \
A little flash, a mystic hint."

Many have spoken, Bacon, among others, of
experiences of the T<ind described in these
words, vague recollections, which refusing con-
nection with or explanation by, anything in the
present life, seem to come from some earlier
and entirely forgotten state of being. The
Poet now makes fine and happy use of this
obscure and strange experience, plays with it,
so to say, to bring his vanished friend once

/N ME MO AV AM.

more into touch with him. The state of ob-
livion, regarded for the moment, as that of the
departed, may in like manner be relieved or
interrupted in his friend's case, by " some dim
touch of earthly things." If so, addressing him,
he says :

"O, turn thee round, resolve the doubt,"

" the doubt," that is, as to whence the " touch "
comes, and what it means ;

** My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all."

The exposition of this poem would not be com-
plete, without subjoining what Tennyson 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,"

and these four lines from Wordsworth's fine
ode, " Intimations of Immortality."

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ;
^ The soul that rises with our life's star,

\ \ Hath had elsewhere its setting,

\[ And cometh from afar."

fi-^

■j^\y

CANTO XLV.

fine

XLV.
The bearing of the sense of individuality

ACgUIRED IN THIS LIFE, ON THE fiUESTION
OF MEMORY IN ANOTHER.

In the earliest stages of human hTe the sense
of .nd.vduality or personal being, the sense of
the me, is wanting. The life of the infant
IS one of pure sensibility. The subject !.as not
learned to distinguish itself from things around
It. The self-conscious " I " is as yet unde-
veloped. The process of its formation is
described in this poem. It is termed rounding
to a separate mind," a mind, that is, con-
sciously distinguished from the things which it
sees and touches, and is said to be accomplished
by or "thro' the frame that binds him in."
Whatever may be the case with the Divine
Personality, the sense of our own arises through
l.m.tation, through the physical frame which
separates us from other persons and from
everything around. Further, once acquired, it
cannot be unlearned or forfeited.

But what has all this to do with the subject
of present interest to the Poet, the character of
the future state ? Just this, he grounds on it an

lOO

IN MEMORIAM.

argument, or at least he finds in it a presump-
tion in favor of the view that man carries the
individuality, or sense of personal identity thus
gained, unshattered across the boundary which
separates this life from another, and with it,
therefore, the recollection of the earthly past.

'* This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of death."

The argument as presented in the poem, for the
existence of memory in another state of being,
may not seem to carry much weight to some.
After all, it will be observed, that the Poet does
not claim for it more than a conditional or con-
tingent force. " This use may lie in blood and
breath."

XLVL

On the supposition of memory surviving in
the future state, the whole past earth-
ly life must stand disclosed to it.

This again is somewhat of a companion poem
to the preceding ; on which, however, it takes a
step in advance, claiming for the immortal dead
a clear knowledge of their entire past. Much is

2sump-
ies the
y thus
' which
vith it,
)ast.

for the
' being,
) some.
et does
or con-
lod and

4G IN
RTH-

)n poem

takes a

tal dead

Much is

CANTO XLVr. loi

forgotten, passes out of view in this h'fe.
Speaking of himself and his friend, he says :

'• The path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is shadowed by the j<rowinjr bour,"

that is, by the lengthening day of life, and for the
good reason, that life may not fail, by indulging
in retrospect. Forgetting the past is even one
of the conditions of progress here. Only thus
can the present get its due.

But there, where character is perfected, "no
shade can last." The entire past of the life
must stand disclosed, and in it, "those five
years of friendship," " its richest field."

The last stanza is somewhat difficult. The
reference in the first two lines would seem to be
to those five short years in which he had en-
joyed the friendship of Arthur. But if this
were the whole domain of Love, he must say :

•* O Love ! thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching- far ; '

he will therefore have love widen its domain,
brighten with its roseate hues the whole of his
life.

" Look also," that is, appear, shew thyself,
O Love,

• • . a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge

■'I .'I

>1 :>J

I02

IN MEMORIAM.

* So that (to him) looking back upon this life
from out the clearness and the calm of the
other, it may appear all tinged with roseate
hues of love — all — not the five rich years of
friendship only." — (Mrs. Chapman).

Dr. Gatty is almost certainly wrong in his interpretation of the
words "lest life should fail in looking b^ick." His rendering is, "the
past becomes mercifully shaded, as time gees on, otherwise the retro-
spect would be intolerable ; " most true, but a truth not meant here, not
suitable to the context.

XLVII.

The idea of the absorption of the individual

SOUL IN universal BEING REPUDIATED.

This poem takes up and looks at, especially
in the light of Love, another possibility in
regard to the future life ; that, viz., according
to which personality — as dependent on " tempo-
rary and probably physical conditions " — is lost
in death, and the individual soul is merged
in the general soul, or in universal being.
This doctrine, or one like it, with modifications
in some instances, that wear a very Christian
guise, has been widely held. The l^oet's ac-
count of it is remarkably fine, all the more that
it is made in terms already employed to de-
scribe the rise of self-conscious personality.

lis

life

the

ros

eate

jars of

ion

of the

S is

, " the

the

retro-

I here, not

CANTO XL VII.

" That each who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds ;

103

" rounds " must mean here that which rounds
him off from other beings, and at the same
time rounds him in. (Compare the use of the
word in xlv., 1. 9).

** • . . and fusing all
The skirtsof self again, should fall
Remerging in the general soul."

The Poet pronounces this, a " faith as vague as
all," i.e., altogether, " unsweet." The absorption
of the individual in universal being, even in
the God of Pantheism, is really the equivalent
of extinction ; it certainly does away with the
possibility of that recognition or companionship
in the future state which Love demands. But
no ;

" Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet."

Some " vaster dream " as to the life beyond
may be conceivable, such as that of the absorp-
tion of all in God, but if it took away the
possibility of mutual recognition and fellow-
ship, it could not "hit the mood of Love on
earth."

And yet the alternative is not absolutely

I04

IN MEMORIAM.

and decisively rejected. As a final fancy and
that Love may play with it, he for a moment
admits the supposition of absorption in the Soul
of the universe ; but doing so, " he holds love to
be so strong and so persistent that the spirit of
his friend would await his own, to clasp it and
bid it farewell before losing itself in light."

"... He seeks at least

Upon the last and sharpest heig-ht,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing place to clasp and say,
' Farewell ! we lose ourselves in light.' "

The Poet's own rendering of these lines, as
oiven by Dr. Gatty, is : "If indeed we are to
be merged in the universal soul, let us have at
least one more parting, before we lose our
individualities in the Great Being," (p. 52).

XLVIII.

These songs are musings on death and im-
mortality, NOT CONCLUSIVE INTELLECTUAL
PROOFS.

This and the following poem may be regard-
ed -as another pair of chorus poems. They
aim at characterizing his song rather than
expressing either his thought or his feeling,

CANTO XL VIII.

105

though this statement does not apply without
qualification to the second, as the closing
stanza shews. Moreover, they are both sHght-
ly apologetic in their tone. " These brief lays
of sorrow born" are not meant to give con-
clusive answers to the great questions raised
by death. In that case men might well scorn
them. The concern of Sorrow is not " to part "
the false from the true, " and prove," establish
something certain regarding, the Hereafter ;
but rather, when some "slender shade of
doubt flits" before it, is suggested from with-
out or arises from within, to take it and play
with it, as Love may direct, thus making " it
vassal unto Love," do Love service, in furnish-
ing her with material for her song. But in
thus sporting with words. Sorrow has her
limits, which in her utterances, she would count
it profanation to pass. These lays, at least,
are but

" Short swallow flig-hts of song-, that dip
Their wings in tears and skim away."

The characterization is as beautiful and vivid
as it is appropriate to the character of the
poems which constitute In Memoriam.

"Afslender shade of doubt" (2nd stanza); that is, some view re-
garding the future state, which, while not certain, has still something to
say for itself.

io6

IN MEMORIAM,

XLIX.

They (the songs) borrow their varying
forms from art, nature and philosophy;
beneath them all lie his deeper sor-
rows unexpressed.

This poem, too, is apologetic ; it admonishes
the reader in what h'ght to regard his songs.
" The subjects are deep and solemn, but blame
not the muse for her temerity in touching
them. She ventures but at the impulse of
love, and questions rather than answers ;
seeks to learn more than to teach," (Tainsh).
The movements of thought and feeling which
they reflect come from varied quarters : from
Art, from Nature, from Philosophy and Science
(the Schools). These movements coming in
chance ways and at chance times, the Poet
welcomes, as supplying new suggestions to
Love, while musing on the Hereafter. They
break upon the " sullen surface " of his sorrow,
"chequering and dimpling it, like shafts of
light and tender breezes playing upon a pool."
(Chapman). The reader is to take a passing
look ;

" Look thy look and go thy way,"

CANTO XLIX.

107

at this play of fancy which gleams in his song,
but not to blame " the seeming wanton ripple ;
the fancies of the poet obey no law. After all
• it is but the surface play of feeling which is
revealed,

** Beneath all fancied hopes and fears ; "

that is, beneath all the hopes and fears of fancy
which have found expression in his songs ;

** Ay me ! the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears."

It seems correct to say that as the former
chorus poem closed a series (xli.-xlvii.) occu-
pied exclusively with questions regarding the
state of the departed, so this one introduces
another series (l.-lix.) predominantly, though
not exclusively, taken up with the develop-
ment, character and destiny of " the imperfect
and sinful life of earth " under the influence of
sorrow. It is charged throughout with, if pos-
sible, more intense feeling than the former.

" Like light in many a shiver'd lance" (1st stanza). The compari-
son is a striking one. The gleam of the wavelet on the pool, broken by
the breeze, is compared to that of a lance broken to shivers, every
separate fragment of which gleams.

"To make the sullen surface crisp " (2nd stanza) ; that is, to make
it curl.

'f5

•-"p!*

1 08

IN MEMORIAM

The ideal, or spiritual presence of his
friend, invoked to brighten and to
calm the darker and more disquieting
passages of life.

These darker passages are times of depres-
sion, his " light is low," " the blood creeps, the
nerves prick and tingle, and the heart is sick ; "
times of fierce, feverish pain, on witnessing the
wild work of death,

'* Time a maniac scattering dust.
And Life, a Fury, slinging flame,"

(powerful metaphors) ; times of doubt, " when
my faith is dry," like a channel deserted of its
waters ; times of pessimistic thought, when
human life seems to have lost all nobleness,
and men are like " flies of latter spring "

" That lay their eggs, and sting and sing,
And weave their petty cells and die,"

and last, not least, the hour of death,

" on the low, dark verge of life,
The twilight of eternal day."

Death, it will be noticed, is regarded as the end,
" the term " of human conflict, and " the dark

CANTOS L.—LI.

109

verge of life," as " the twilight of eternal day."
This was no doubt the settled mind of the Poet
regarding death, though at times in his case, as
in the case of so many, it had to maintain itself
amid conflict with doubt and fear.

The poem cannot be called a pleasant one ;
but it is an extremely strong and vivid picture
of one of the darker moods which are liable to
enter into human experience.

" Men the flies of latter spring " (.^rd stanza). The reference, from
the connection in which the words occur, would seem to be to those
writers who assail the common faith ol Christendom, soon pass off the
scene, but leave their venomous words behind them, to poison the souls
of the unwary.

. -i'. i

LI.

This presence not dreaded, even if earth's

VILENESS stands DISCLOSED TO IT.

This poem, it will be observed, is closely con-
nected with the preceding one. The fear, that
his friend's love for him, if the desire therein
expressed were granted, would be lessened by
the discovery of his less noble traits, is repelled
as wronging the dead.

" Shall love be blamed for want of faith ?"

f'<

IN MEMORIAM.

In the connection, the love here must be, not
his love for his friend, but his friend's love for
him. " To doubt that they (the dead) can
know us, and yet love, is to wrong them. For
they are wise, with the wisdom of death, and
pitiful with the large mercy of God." (Chap-
man). Compare the statement in i John iii. :
20, \vhere the greatness of God is adduced not
to aggravate, but rather to assuage, the heart's
fears and self-accusings. But this is done, it
must not be forgotten, in connection with and
under the qualification of the presence, in those
in regard to whom the reassuring words are
spoken, of an affection of a specifically moral,
or rather spiritual kind; love of the brethren, of
the disciples of Christ, as such.

In any case not all would be prepared to
make the prayer their own,

'* Be near us when we climb or fall ; "

while not a few would take exception to the
view of God, by implication at least, as making
" allowance for us all ; " not on the ground that
it unduly magnifies His mercy, for that reaches
unto the heavens, but that in its mode of state-
ment, it seems to leave the moral character of
the mercy in doubt, and to forget that holiness

CANTOS LI. —LI I.

Ill

is an attribute of God, not less than mercy, that
his eyes are " eyes of judgment, as well as of
charity."

Notice the expression, (and stanza), *' I had such reverence for his
blame."

LII.

Disquieted nevertheless by the conscious
presence of evil in his life, he is
assured that the spirit of true love is
not offended by human frailty.

This poem raises and discusses, as do the
two which follow, the question of the function
of evil in the world, so difficult and so perplex-
ing to faith ; and the view to which it seems
to incline is, the rather perilous one, that evil
is only a transient phenomenon, a mere stage
through which the feeble finite being must pass
on his way to the attainment of good. The
poem as a whole is complicated, and its transi-
tions rather difficult of apprehension.

The image of his friend rises before him.
He is conscious of loving him, but not ade-
quately. To do that he would require to
possess his qualities ; for adequate love, the love

^'if

113

IN MEMO RI AM.

which is worthy of the name, reflects the per-
fections of the object loved. But

*' The Spirit of true love replied ; "

the plaintive song of love is not to be blamed,
although sung by one very conscious of human
frailty. That frailty is unavoidable in man's
case. No ideal of goodness, which the mind
may frame, not even the record of the one sin-
less life, that of the Saviour of the world, has
power to keep " a spirit wholly true " to that
ideal. This we understand Lo be the force of
the interrogation in the 3rd stanza :

** So fret not, like an idle girl,"

"Abide," be patient. Life, even if unhappily
" dashed with flecks of sin," will be found to
have issued in something valuable,

•* When time hath sunder'd shell from pearl,"

that is, not exactly, as Dr. Gatty has it, " when
the flesh has left the soul free from its contami-
nating influence," but when in the course of
years, and in the process of development, good
has by degrees thrown off the attaching evil.

One is obliged to say that the moral note
struck in this poem is not a very high one.
Perhaps this was to be expected from the

CANTOS UI.—LIU,

113

uiulcrlyin- conception of evil. As a result, the
"wealth iscrathered in" without either repent-
ance or reparation. The whole process, more-
over, is purely natural.

LIU.

TlIK DANCJKR INVOl.VKI) IN THl": WV.W THAT
KVII. IS mr A STACK ON TlIK WAV TO COOI),
ANDINSOMK INSTAMKS TlIK MKANS KVKN OF
I'ROMOTINC (lOOi).

" TlIK NKKI)S-I?K OV KVIL IS TRITH IN TIIK RKTRO-
SPKCT, I'ALSKHOOI) AND I'KRILOlS IN PROS-
PECT.'—F.W.R.

The Poet now faces, as became him, the peril
of the doctrine to which he has given expres-
sion. Kven if it has to be admitted, that there
are instances in which a youth full of excess
and folly, has ripened into a richer and better
manhood than one coldly virtuous from the
beginning— instances which seem to verify the
proverb— "the greater the sinner, the greater
the saint,"

((

• . dar

e we to this fancy g-ive ? "

i.e., yield. The word was, in the earliest edition
not "fancy," but "doctrine," in the sense of

ill

■ *

■:%\

114

IN MEMOKIAM.

opinion or view. Arc vvu ready to assume the
responsibility of saying that the wild oats of
youthful sovvinj^ were needed to fertilize a soil,
that miiiht have otherwise remained barren ?

who would preach it as a Irulli
To Ujose (hat eddy round and round?"

The I'oet, seized of the danger, becomes the
preacher, not too soon, not too decisively.
There is in reality only one safe view to enter-
tain — that evil is evil in youth and in age, and
must be fought and shunned in both. The
philosophy that tends in any degree to obliter-
ate the distinction between evil and good may
call itself or be called "divine;" it certainly
does not lead to God, and just as certainly is
it at war with all our best moral instincts ;

•' Hold thou the good ; define it well :
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell."

as it must at least in some instances be, in
advocating or even in excusing youthful indul-
gence as the path to ultimate sanctity or
goodness.

CAN70 IJV,

i»5

LIV.

The trust kxprksskd ov (ux>i) as tiik iinal
goal of aix kvii,.

The connection between tliis ixjem and the
preceding one is not a very close one ; not so
close as it might appear. It is true that the
term "good" which is found in the closing
stanza of the one, reappears in the opening
line of the other ; but, as must be evident, the
word does not express precisely the same idea
in each case. In the former it is strictly moral
good,—- Hold thou the good ; "—in the latter,
the conception is more general. It is a good
in which, as the second stanza shews, even the
lower animals are contemplated as sharing—
good in the widest sense of the word. The
hope is expressed in the poem that somehow,
somewhere, such good

((

will be the final g-oal of ill."

In this connection various forms of ill, or evil,
in the wide sense of the term, are enumerated .'
physical, "pangs of nature;" moral, "sins of
will ; " spiritual, " defects of doubt ; " i.e., defects
growing out of doubt, or perhaps even con-
stituted by doubt ; even inherited weaknesses

' ii .,'

ii6

IN MEMORIAM.

"taints of blood." The th(ni<^]it of the Voet
then passes beyond man, to that physical
nature which suffers with and like him, and
having- singled out one form of suffering and
death after another, and pictured them in a
manner singularly vivid and realistic, the hope
is expressed, that no part of all this is aimless,

" Or but subserves ruiother's gain."

But that this will be the issue :

"... [hiii good sluill tun
At last —far olT—al last, to all,
And every winter change to spring,"

lie does not /v'/iozc>, he '' can but trust ; " the
trust evc?n becomes a " dream," and his song, a
cry in the night, an infant's cry ; so conscious is
the Poet of the limitation of human knowledge
as to the great mystery of suffering and of sin ;

'* So runs my dream ; but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night ;
An infant crying for the light :
p--«-_. And with no language but a cry."'

The helplessness of man in presence of the
mysteries of human existence has surely never
found more touching utterance than in these
now familiar lines.

1 Compare cxxiv., line 19 :—

" Then was I as a child that cries,
But crying knows his father near."

CANTO LV

117

LV.

The hopk of personal immorta v shaken

BY WHAT IS WITNESSED, THOUGH NOT QIITE
OVERTHROWN.

It should be noticed that the question in this
and the following poem is not exactly that of
the preceding one, the development of good
out of evil. It is rather that of individual
immortality. It seems a strong point in sup-
port of this, that the desire that no life may
be utterly extinguished, springs from that
which is likest God in us, benevolence ; but
Nature, which is God's work, seems to give the
lie to our expectation, so careless is she, of the
mdividual life, while maintaining the species.
Accordingly the P Jet, witnessing her callous
waste, falters "where " he "firmly trod," feels his
confidence shaken in the truth that " good," at
least in this sense of it, "will be the final goal
of ill," and finally falls

'• Upon the ^v^-aX world's altar stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God."

lliere are few finer or more striking concep-
tions in In Memoriam or indeed in modern
literature, than that embodied in these lines.

i/f

ill
Jit

ii8

IN MEMORIAM.

It is not, however, easy to define exactly the
meaning they were intended to convey. It is
doubtful whether Davidson hits it. His words
are : " Grandly original is the thought that
this stair is an * altar stair,' and that the great
world itself is an altar upon which everything
that lives, if it will save its life, must offer itself
in sacrifice unto God." The idea of sacrifice
seems entirely foreign to the passage. The
attitude is rather one of worship or prayer, as
that which befits the enquirer in such a realm,
and in the maintenance of which light may be
expected, if any, indeed, is to be given.

Another stanza follows, vividly depicting
man's helplessness, in his attempt to solve the
mystery of the Hereafter ;

" I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope.
And gather dust and chaff; "

a vivid figurative characterization of all which
his quest in this region brings him.

*' and call
^To what I feel is Lord of all.
And faintly trust the larger hope."

As the alternatives before the mind of the Poet
are, the extinction of individual being in death,
or its prolongation after death, '* the larger

LVI.

m
i

CANTOS LV.—LF/.

119

hope," in the connection in which it is here
used, would naturally be regarded as denoting
the latter simply. In reality, as now used, it
has conne to designate the ultimate salvation
of the whole race of mankind, as distinguished
from that of a certain number only ; a view,
with which, we are not left in doubt, Tenny-
son entirely sympathized.

ii:

'''I

The hope of immortality still farther dis-
credited, OR "THE HIDEOUS ' NO ' OF NA-
TURE."— F.W.R.

The Poet is still interrogating nature. Her
answer is that not only individual existences
out of number have perished, but that whole
species are extinct ;

** A thousand types are g-one ; "

I know nothing of immortality, " I bring to
life, I bring to death ; " death with me ends all.
But imafjine this to hold good of man ; man,
with hi:: /acuity of worship, " who rolled the
psalm to wintry skies ; " " wintry," ?>., on the
supposition that there is no God and no Here-
after ; " who built him fanes of fruitless

I i

l#l

III

I20

TN MEMORIAM.

I 'f '

prayer;" "fruitless," i.e., on the like supposi-
tion ; man, with his trust in Love, as at the
heart of things, as the sovereign Power ; with
his lofty ideals and self-sacrificing efforts,

" Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just."

Imagine this to hold good of him , accept the
conclusion that for him, too, there is nothing
beyond death; then so far as man is concerned,
life is a monstrous incongruity, a horrible
dream, an intolerable discord : then " dragons "
of the prime," that is, of the earliest period of
the earth's history,

'* That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him."

This poem is really, at least so it seems to me,
one of the most powerful pleas for personal
immortality, outside of Revelation. The plea is
obviously grounded on the moral and religious
nature which man possesses, and by the posses-
sion of which he is differentiated from all
around him. That he should have no different
end from the brute, should perish like it, is un-
natural. Man's rational nature demands that
the universe to which he stands related and of
which he forms part, should be rational, but

CANTO LVI,

121

rational it does not appear to be, if a being so
loftily endowed, capable of fellowship with
God, who has in prayer actually participated in
that fellowship, has no higher destiny than to
"be blown about the desert dust, or sealed
within the iron hills."

Still the agony remains ; for on such a ques-
tion, for all highest natures, for such natures,
especially in seasons of bereavement, doubt is
agony. Out of this agony the prayer rises,

" O for thy voice to soothe and bless !

What hope of answer, or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."

11 H

The meaning of the last two lines would seem to
be, not so much that Revelation must solve the
doubt, (though, as we have seen, Tennyson was
a believer in Revelation and evidently, as his
Memoir shows, knew its comfort), as that con-
clusive knowledge on the question of immortality,
must come from one who has passed " behind
the veil ; " or rather, will be reached by us, when
death shall tell us this secret as so many others.
We come now to a triad of Chorus soncfs,
(Ivii., Iviii., and lix.), in which speculative
thought wholly ceases. " It is as if the heart
had grown weary with the strain, and fell back

122

IN MEMORIAM.

like a tired bird into the nest of its personal
f sorrow " (Tainsh).

Note, — In the Vision of Sin, an earlier Poem, these words occur, re-
ferring to the same subject :

" At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? '
To which an answer pe.iled from that high l.ind.
But in a tongue no man could understand,
And on the glittering limit, far withdrawn,
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn."

LVII.

Simple lamentation of the lost friend.

We encounter a marked change in the strain
of In Memoriam at this point. The course of
thought in the immediately preceding poems,
in which the Poet's mind was fiercely agitated
in regard to the question of human destiny, is
broken off abruptly. In this lyric, which may
possibly be addressed to his sister, he simply
abandons himself to the sense of loss, the loss
of half his life. At the same time, he finds
some solace in the thought, that his friend is
richly shrined in these Poems, which have been
wrung from the heart of sorrow. He does not
anticipate for them, however, the lasting-
memory they are likely to enjoy.

" But I shall pass, my work shall fail."

CANTOS LVII.—LVIII.

123

But while he lasts, there will stay with him the
deathless memory of his friend's departure out
of life.

'♦Yet in these ears, till hearing dies.
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing- of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes."

The lines seem vocal with the melody of the
slow-pealing bell.

LVIII.

The first prelude of the note of jov.

This Poem opens with a comparison of the
"greetings to the dead," the Ave, Ave, Adieu,
Adieu, which have thus far been the burden of
these songs, to the drop, drop, of some dank-
burial vault. As a result, the peace of other
hearts had been idly, i.e.^ to no purpose, broken ;
and a too vivid, a depressing, sense of mortality
awakened within them,

" Half conscious of their dying- clay."

The high muse, Urania, reproaches the Poet for
in this way arousing, in those who shared his
loss, a fruitless grief, and thus counsels him :

'* Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave."

ii:

J".

124

fN MEMORIAM,

Let him continue to cherish the past, with its
keen sorrow, and it will be seen to have had
wise and happy issues. And if he must at length
leave it, and address himself to present and
pressing duties, it will be in a worthier and
nobler mood.

It should be observed, that those who divide
In Memoriam into two parts only, (Azarias),
make the second and victorious part, commence
with this poem.

LIX.

Sorrow invoked as his life companion.

This beautiful poem was added in the fourth
edition of In Memoriam, published in 1851.
It forms a fitting sequel to Iviii. The light in
which sorrow is regarded, it will be noticed, is
entirely changed from that in iii. and xxxix.
The explanation of the change, as given by
Genung, is " that Sorrow has fled from Nature
to God, and in spite of Nature's evil dreams,
can leave the problem of human destiny to
Him, and can therefore be taken as a trust-
worthy guide." It means, at least, that he has
begun to experience the benign influence of
Sorrow, when rightly taken.

CANTO LIX,

125

In acceptinj^ and even invitino: her lifc-lonL'-
companionship,— to Hve with him, "no casual
mistress, but a wife," — he counsels her, not to be
always ^doomy, but to " be sometimes lovely
like a bride," if she will rule his life, and shape
it to wise and ^^ood ends. Me will not have
her leave him, that cannot be ; his " centred
passion cannot move," but she must be with
him in such fashion that

" I'll h.ive leave at limes lo play
As w'illi the creature of my love."

That must be in tuning his song to her gentler
moods, and so tuning it, with such sprightliness
of hope that the note of Sorrow will scarcely be
recognized by others in his lay ;

" That, howsoe'er I know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine."

The whole poem is one of singular beauty and
charm. There is a certain delicate and subtle
witchery of fancy running through it, which it
is difficult to define, but which it should not be
difficult to recognize and to feel.

)i;l

rl:

126

IN MEMOKIAM.

LX.

The misgivings of UNEguAL love.

In this and in the five succeeding Cantos, the
Poet deals with the relationship i^ow subsisting
between himself and his departed friend. That
friend is contemplated, not as when he was yet
on earth, " a soul " indeed " of nobler tone," but
as still more ennobled, and in the same measure
removed from his sympathy, by his entrance
into a higher world. Their mutual relationship
is now accordingly such, that he finds the
image of himself in the village maiden who
has set her affection on one of higher rank than
her own, to whom, when he withdraws to his
proper sphere, her native surroundings look
poor and mean, and who, as she surveys them,
" weeps " and says,

"... how vain am I !
How should he love a thing- so low ? "

Like her, the Poet, too, doubts or despairs of the
possibility of retaining his hold on the love of
one, who has passed into a sphere so much
above his own.

CANTO LXI.

127

LXI

These misgivincs somewhat allayed by the
c:onsclol'sness that his own love abides
in spite of the ine(jlality.

This poem is closely connected with the

foregoing, being as it were, its complement.

Whereas in the former, the earthly life is viewed

as mean and narrow by the Poet, in comparison

with that into which his friend has passed, it is

now his friend himself who so regards it, or

rather who so regards the Poet in it. In his

high estate, it may be his to hold converse with

the greatest souls that have lived ; with a Plato, a

Dante, or an Isaiah : if so, " how dwarf'd and

blanch'd," like plants deprived of warmth and

sunlight, must his (the Poet's) growth appear.

Notwithstanding let him turn his eye to the

earthly shore, and he will find the love which is

worth all else, in full vigor and himself its

object.

" I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more."

There is a kind of bold and violent self-assertion
in these two lines, w^hich seems out of harmony
with the general tone of In Memoriam.

,J> I M

!'•

128

/N MEMOKJAM.

LXII.

TlIK SKLK AllNKliATlON Ol' LOVK.

'I'his poem attaches itself (|uile closely t(j tl
last, lie is sure of his own love, and happy, as
true love ever is, in its exercise. lie has asked
his friend to observe it from his hii^h estate. The
possibility is now contemplated, that this simi)le
earthly love may be too unworthy to attract
its object, may even make him " blench," start
back, as at the sii^ht of .something; unexpected
and unwelcome, then let it be as " an idle tale,"
not to himself, — that it could never be, — but to
its exalted object, to whose " deeper eyes "
becomes " matter for a flying smile," like som«^
foolish early love, outlived in later years.

Thus what the Poem depicts at this point is
the rare self-abnegation of which love is
capable. It should be .said, however, that this
belongs only to love of the purest and loftiest
sort. It is not all love which is content to give
affection, without receiving it in turn.

\k I

CANTO LXni.

129

LXIII.

Yet such self-abne(;ation may not be necessary.

The hijrhcr being may feel afTection for one
much beneath him, and this without thereby
beincr dragged downward. The Poet's own
experience has taught him this. Man though
he be, he can pity an overdriven horse, and
give love to his dog, nor is he hindered in his
upward aspirations by these feelings, of which
dumb animals are the objects. So he, too, in
turn, though so far beneath the friend who has
been taken up into the life above, may be in
his grief the object of his sympathy, without
impeding him \\\ his U| ward course.

" So mayst thou watch . le, where I weep,
As unto vaster motions bound,
The circuit of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep."

The sentiment is simple and natural, and the
expression strong, but the Canto scarcely rises
either in the melody of the rhythm or in the
tone of feeling to the general level of the Poem.

••Initsassu,«ptionupto heaven." (,st stanza) ; in its heavenward
asp.rat.ons ; Dr. Gatty : " without robbing heaven of its dues of rever-

I !

ence.

■;-="•!«»

130

/N MEMORIAM.

LXIV.

The continued interest of his friend in the
preceding earthly life and in himself
as a part of it, suggested and sustained
by another analogy.

This poem describes with a good deal of
detail, and with much vividness and force, the
upward career of a person of humble birth,
but of lofty genius ; his successful conflict with
opposing circumstances, and his achievement in
the end of the highest honors of the state, and
then calls attention to the f^imiliar and pleas-
ing fact that there are moments in his life when
the home of his childhood and the playmate of
his youth rise to his memory with deep and
tender interest. May not his friend, too, from
the lofty height to which he has risen, feel an
interest similarly strong and tender in him, his
early mate ?

The poem is a fascinating one. Its charm
lies, not in the depth and intensity of the
feeling expressed, — many surpass it in these
respects, — but in its exceeding simplicity and
naturalness. The fact which supplies the an-
alogy is familiar enough, but it is wrought out
with a singular combination of strength and

CANTO LXIV.

131

beauty ; so much so, that there are only few
of the separate lyrics that supply a larger
number of really striking lines.
Take the following :

" Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, "

" bar," <?>., obstacle to success ; " invidious," not
in the sense of awakening envy, but in the sense
of undesirable, offensive.

" And breasts the blows of circumstance,"
i.e., adverse circumstance.

"And gfrasps the skirts of happy chance,"

i.e., fortunate " chance."

" And grapples with his evil star,"

" evil " as having assigned to him a humble life.

•' Who makes by force his merit known ; "

"force," not here violence, but strength of
character and of will.

"And lives to clutch the g-olden keys ; "

" keys " as the well-known symbol of office.

" And shape the whisper of the throne ; "

a truly felicitous phrase, one which has gone as
a permanent expression into the language.

132

IN MEMORIAM.

Then, when the Poet would depict the inter-
est felt in moments of pensive memory by this
" divinely gifted " and wondrously succsssful
man in the scenes of his boyhood, it could
scarcely be more touchingly expressed than in
the words which represent him as feeiing

" A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream."

LXV.

He likewise may even be still something
to his friend.

This Canto may well be regarded as supply-
ing the culminating thought in this cycle of the
Poem, marking a great advance from ix. and
( Ixii. In the happier mocd which he has reach-
^ ed, he addresses the spirit of the departed in
a tone of resignation :

" Sweet soul, do with me as thou wlU."

He, on his part, soothes his troubled fancy with
the thought of the imperishable constancy of
love.

" Love's too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt."

The love here may either be, his love to his

CANTOS LXV.—LXVI.

^ZZ

friend or his friend's love to him ; it would
seem to be best to regard it as inclusive of both.
Seized of this truth, the inspiring thought
arises in his mind, comes fluttering up like a
bird on the wing, and like that bird, self-poised,
needing no support from without ;

** Since we deserved the name ^l friends
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee,
And move thee on to noble ends."

This brief lyric has so many subtle turns of
thought, that its beauty may easily escape the
reader.

A series of poems now follows, in which the
calmer mood reached by the Poet alternates
as in Ixxii. with the bitter, tumultuous feeling
of loss. This series may be regarded as ex-
tending to Ixxvii.

LXVI.
*• In the midst of utter desolation there

COMES A KINDLY CHEERFULNESS LIKE THAT
OF THE BLIND."— F.W.R.

The Poet's gay moods excite surprise in one
who had thought his heart to be diseased and
warped by sorrow. In explanation he says

fi I

134

IN MEMORIAM.

that the loss he has met has not only not
embittered him, it has touched his nature with
kindly sympathies ;

" Has niado nic kijidly witli my kind,"

like one who has lost his sight.

The picture of the simple and innocent
pleasures of the man overtaken with blindness
is wrought out with great beauty of detail and
in language that any child can understand.
We are made to see his helplessness rendering
him sympathetic, his deprivation of higher
satisfactions compensated by the greater pleas-
ure which he feels in simpler and lower ones.
As he indulges in those, he dreams of the sky
he can no longer see. Then in two lines re-
markable for their union of simplicity and force
— lines full of pathos, which speak to the imagi-
nation and the heart, and cling to the memory,
and which are equally applicable to the illustra-
tion and to the case which it is designed to
illustrate — he gives us the whole light and shade
of the situation ;

" His inner day can never die,
His night of loss is always there."

CANTO LXVII.

135

LXVII.

The moonlight sends his thought to the
tomb of his friend, but now with a
quieting influence.

This is the first of a nuinber of poems which
present to us the action of the Poet's mind, in
reference to his lost friend, during the night
season, first in the waking and afterwards in
the dreaming state.

In the poem before us, he is awake ; the
moonlight, as it falls on his bed, sends his
fancy to the marble tablet in Clevedon Church,
erected in memory of his friend. He sees it
illumined by the moon's " silver flame." The
night advances ; " the mystic glory swims
away." He falls asleep until the morning
dawn, " till dusk is dipt in gray," and again he
sees the marble whiteninp; in the returninp-
light.

The poem deserves, and will well repay
careful stud)^ It contains several felicitous
expressions. The reader will notice the fol-
lowing : '' closing eaves of wearied eyes," for
falling asleep ; '* dusk dipt in gray," for dawn ;
" a lucid veil," that which hides the object on

136

IN MEMOKTAAf.

which it is cast, but is itself white and clear.
The only expression which is at all difficult
is, '* mystic glory " as applied to the moonlight,
the " silver flame " which steals slowly over the
tablet. The meaning of the epithet here may
be emblematical. The words " from coast to
coast " must mean the coast from one side of
the bay into which the Severn falls to that on
the other, or from Somersetshire to Wales.

"In the dark church like a ghost," (4th stanza). In the earlier
editions the line ran, " In the chancel like a ghost." The tablet, how-
ever, is not in the chancel of the church, as incorrectly stated in Mr.
Hallam's private Memoir of his son.

LXVIII.

His own sadness transferred in the dream-
state TO the face of his friend.

We have now the action of the Poet's mind
in reference to his friend, during dreams, de-
picted in a succession of lyrics. It has been
observed that in the earlier stage of his bereave-
ment " clouds of nameless sorrow " darkened
his dreams ; now they are represented as calm
and natural, though the sense of loss makes
itself still felt amid them.

In the poem before us he represents himself
as dreaming of his friend, the friend of whom

CANTO LXVIII.

137

his waking thoughts are full, but he cannot
dream of him as dead.

" Sleep, Death's twin brother, knows not Death. "

This will scarcely hold as a univeral truth.
But in the Poet's case, if in dreams he calls up
the form of his friend, he can only call it up
as living ; he walks with him " as ere" i.e., before
he " walked forlorn,"

** When all our path was fresh with dew,
And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillee to the breaking- morn."

A fine description of the season of youth, made
vivid by one metaphor after another ; the sec-
ond being particularly striking.

Recalling his friend in dream, he sees a
strange trouble in his face ; a trouble which
remains unexplained while the dream lasts.
He wakes early,

•' . Ere the lark had left the lea,"

out of his vision-haunted sleep, to discover that
it is the trouble of his own earlv and uncontrol-
led grief, which he has unwittingly transferred
to the face of his friend. This is characterized
by Davidson as "a fine piece of psychological
observation."

'! I

-} k

"Times my breath," (ist stanza), referring to the fact that the
breathing is slower and more regular in sleep.

138

IN MEMORIAM.

LXIX.

Mis (;uikk, a crown ov thorns, is chani;k[)
INTO m:ak by thk glory <:^v a hani\

Tut: tranformation of sorrow.

The dream continues or is repeated ; but the
subject of the weird dream in this poem is not
the lost friend, but the Poet himself. The
dream, besides, is rather an allegory than a
dream, or, at least, it is a dream which shaped
itself into allegory. Nature, amid which he
wanders, gives no sign of spring. Its ancient
power is locked up in endless winter. The
streets are blackened " with smoke and frost "
and human speech is used only to chatter
trifles. This is nature and human life as
colored by his sorrow ; perhaps also, as viewed
in the light of the barren scepticism of the age.

A wood to which he wanders has no leafage
even on which to rest his eye ; it has but
thorny boughs, whereof he makes a wreath
for his head. Wearing this, he becomes an
object of merriment and scorn to those around.

" They called me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns."

CANTO LXIX.

»39

By this "crown of thorns" perhaps we may
understand, not so much the piercing sense of
loss under which he has suffered, as the songs,
thus far so generally charged with pain and
woe, in which he has given tuneful expression
to it, and in words, too, that to many seemed
exaggerated and unreal, and thus supplied
material for merriment and scorn.

At this stage, an angel of the night, one of
those celestial messengers whose task it is to
deal with the darker experiences of life, " look-
ed upon " his " crown and smiled," not the
smile of contempt, but that of sympathy ; also,

** He reached the g-lory of a hand,

That seemed to touch it into leaf."

This can only mean the transformation of his
sorrow, and of his song with it, under some
benign and heavenly influence which has reach-
ed him — " the divine thing in the gloom," which,
we are told, the Poet meant by " the glory of
a hand."

" The voice was not the voice of grief.
The words were hard to understand."

The Poet has told us, that even when he
speaks in the first person, he is sometimes voic-
ing not his personal feelings and experiences

% *

. L.-au iwf ^1

'^■nWUMHIVIW^

140

/iV MEMO RI AM,

only, but the feelings and experiences of hu-
manity at large, and which he shares in common
with it. If we might regard him as so speaking
here, then these words might be taken as point-
ing to the power, which belongs to the celestial
ministry of the unseen, to transform the darker
and more sorrowful experiences of life into the
rich harvest of saintly character and undying
hope. Compare 2 Cor., 4: 17; — "Our light
affliction . . . worketh a far more exceed-
ing and eternal weight of glory while we look

the things zvhich are not seen''

LXX.

Darkness. Futile effort to form a distinct
picture of his friend.

The Poet makes the effort to recall at night-
time the familiar features, striving to paint
" on the gloom " the face he knows, but without
success,

*• . . , the lines are taint
And mix with hollow masks of nig-ht."

The state seems to be that between sleeping
and waking, and while it lasts, those masks go

CANTOS LXX.—LXXI,

141

on tumbling and mixing at their own will,
a strange weird phantasmagoria ;

" Till all at once beyond (he will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro" a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still."

As SO often with the attempt to recall a word,
or a name, the effort must cease in order to
success, so in the present case, the familiar
features of his vanished friend, resisting the
effort of the active fancy to shape them into
distinctness, come up spontaneously in a passive
or quiescent state of will. But as this poem is
found in the midst of a succession of dream-
pieces, the state of quiescence, in which the else
eluding image is caught, may in this case have
to be thought as reached in sleep, and thus in
that sense " beyond the will."

LXXI.

One scene in their past experience at last

VIVIDLY recalled IN DREAM.

The reference in this final lyric of the series
is to a journey made by the two in 1830,
through a district in " summer France." Sleep,
which has often tortured him with fantastic

142

TN MEMOKIAM.

visions, at last favors the I'oet with one " night-
long " vision of that tour, recalling

•' . . . the river's wooded leacli,

The fortress, ajid the niountaiti ridjfe,
The cataract Hashing from the hridg"e,
Tlie hreaker hreakinjL^' 011 the heach, "

these being the outstanding features in the
landscape. This leads him to address sleep, as
kin " to death and trance and madness," sus-
pending like these the exercise of ordered
thought and will. Having " such credit with
the soul," such power to produce temporary-
illusion, it is invoked to "bring an opiate trebly
strong," that no sense of wrong rising blindly
may mar his pleasure as in the visions of the
night, he talks as of old with his friend.

"The blindfold sense of wrong" may be
supposed to refer, not to any wrong done him-
self in the withdrawal of a loved presence, but
to Arthur's loss of the fame, which he must else
have won, and to which explicit reference is
made in Ixxiii. Their talk was said to be "of
men and minds," (the alliteration will be
noticed, of which there are so many example'^
in the Poem, and to which, in part at least
melody is due)," the dust of chanj.
expression is an obscure one. It c. >es n< .

CANTOS /.x.w. -i.xxn.

143

necossHrily stand in apiJ(>sition to tlic clause
which precedes, and may simpl)- desi<rnatc the
Poet's sense of the hght and trivial character of
the objects and the interests which " chantre "
was continually evolving; like "dust" they
were blown hither and thither by every chang-
ing breeze. Once more, their talk embraced

" The days, lliat gri»\v to somcthiiij,'- s(ran«,'-e,"

the transformations wrought on i)rlvatc and
•social life, already so rapid in the i^^et's day,
and so marvellous.

LXXII.

First anniversarv ov arthirs nKATii.

This lyric, if there were no other evidence of
the fact, would be enough to shew that the
successive lyrics in In Memoriam were not
written in the order of time, in which they
stand in the Poem as a whole. Some allow-
ance, no doubt, must be made for fluctuations
in feeling, and for sudden outbursts of sorrow,
even after a degree of calm has been reached.'
One of the Poet's commentators has found such
a lapse here. The tumult of feeling in the

(',

11*?

144

IN ME MO KI AM.

lyric, however, is so great, the thought of the
loss of which the day reminds him is so steeped
in bitterness, that it is difficult to think its
composition could have followed that of lyrics
in some of which a sweet spirit of resignation
has been seen.

The day, a day of September wind and rain,
is graphically pictured as blowing " the poplar
white " by the reversal of its leaves, as lashing
" the streaming pane," and making the rose
droop " with its quick tears," (a fine metaphor),
and " the daisy close her crimson fringes ; "
with perhaps a subtle suggestion of resemblance
to the day a year before — the day that for him

"... sicken'd every living bloom
And blurr'd the splendor of the sun,"

with evident reference to the power which
belongs to a great bereavement, to change the
whole aspect of nature to the mourner ; " day "
when his " crown'd estate," crown'd above all
with such a friendship, " began to pine ; "
another metaphor of much beauty and force.

But so keen is his sense of loss, so rebellious
his feeling, so completely is he taken possession
of by it, that if, instead of rising in gloom and
storm, it had been a day of peaceful sunshine

CANTOS LXXIL^LXXIII.

or of gentle summer breeze, it would have
looked

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

Addressing it, he bids it, as if laden "with some
hideous crime," hasten to its joyless close, and
" hide " its " shame beneath the ground."

One is reminded of Job's imprecation on the
day of his birth. " Let the day perish on which
I was born."

The feeling in the poem may well appear
over-strained if not unreal ; but given the
feeling, the language in which it is expressed,
and in which the aspects of nature are
described, as seen through it, is wonderfully
vivid and forceful.

LXXIII.

Regret for the loss of fame by his friend,

MITIGATED BY THE CONSIDERATION OF ITS
FADING CHARACTER, AND BY THAT OF THE
INTELLECTUAL POWER WHICH WOULD HAVE
ACHIEVED IT.

This poem and the four which follow are
taken up with the subject of fame ; first, his
friend's, and then, as in some way connected
with it, the Poet's own. The thought with

146

IN MEMORIAM.

which this first opens, is that of the multiplicity
of interests in the universe, and of the greatness
of the need which they involve.

** So many worlds, so much to do.

So little done, such things tO be,"

He may not judge therefore by any narrow
view of things, where, in what realm, his friend's
powers were most needed or could be used to
best advantage,

** Kovv know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong- as thou wert true ? "

But in any case, the fame on earth which he
had anticipated for him, was not attained, nor
to be attained :

" The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath ! "

In this he finds ground for regret, but no longer
for complaint. This, like all else, falls out
according to unerring law ; and besides, earthly
fame has no endurance. " We pass." The
place which knew us, knows us no more forever.
The very path we trod is soon obliterated.

None.

"What fame is left for human doeds
In endless age ? "

. It rests with Go.!.'

CANTOS LXXIII.—LXXIV.

147

The meaning of the last statement therefore is
not, as it seems to me, that it rests with God to
determine what fame each shall have, but that
God, that the Divine mind, keeps in perpetuity
and that it alone keeps, the story of any heroic
act or course of action. This is the solace to
which he turns in view of his friend's head
missing "an earthly wreath ; " and this besides,
the soul retains self-infolded the virtuous force,
which with opportunity given, "would have
forged a name." He therefore bids the " hollow
wraith," the ghostly spectre, " of dying fame,
fade wholly."

LXXIV.

His friend's kindred with the great comes

OUT in death.

A fine use is made by the Poet in this lyric
of a well-attested fact, that not infrequently a
man's face in death reveals hitherto unperceived
resemblances to some one of his race. Sir
Thomas Browne, speaking of one recently dead,
says, "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.'*
In like manner, musing on his departed friend,

148

IN MEMORIAM,

he discovers his true character, his likeness to
the wise and great of the race ; but he does not
see all, nor speak all he sees,

** . . . knowing- Death has made
His darkness beautiful with Thee."

The thought and the expression in these
closing lines of the poem are alike beautiful.
One can hardly fail, however, to be struck with
the contrast between the sentiment which they
embody, and the bitter and rebellious feeling
regarding the death of his friend pervading
Ixxii. Months, if not years, one would imagine,
must have lain between the states of mind,
which could find truthful expression in strains
so wide apart.

LXXV.

The fame inattained here is surely being

ACHIEVED elsewhere.

The opening stanza of this poem takes up
the thought contained in the closing stanza of
the last. In both stanzas there is reference to
the same purpose; silence regarding the merits
of his friend ; in the one, in these words.

CANTO LXXV.

** But thr-e is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,"

in the other, in these,

149

•* I leave thy praises unexpressed."

There is in point of fact thus far, not much of
direct eulogy of his friend ; the same could not
be said of the later poems. He is silent
regarding his greatness, as feeling his incom-
petence to do it justice in his verse. He even
shrinks from the attempt to do so, as if makmg
an unworthy use of the qualities which had
won his admiration and his love.

" I care not in these fading- days,"

days, in which impressions made are so soon
obliterated,

" To raise a cry that lasts not long,

And round thee with the breeze of song.
To stir a little dust of praise."

The skill and success with which the metaphor
is carried out in these words, " the breeze of
song, to stir a little dust," etc., will be observed.
In any case, the world gives men credit for what
they do, not for what they might or could have
done ; but somewhere— beyond the veil— some

ISO

IN MEMORIAM.

high task is being "wrought with tumult of
acclairrii"

" So here shall silence guard thy fame,"

which could only be injured by inadequate
speech.

LXXVI.
The fleetingness of human fame.

The transition from the fame, which, had life
permitted, would have been Arthur's, to that of
the Poet, who sings of his loss, is a simple and
natural one. What immortality can the poet
hope for his verse ? Ascend in fancy to the
zenith, look at the achievements of the modern
poet from that high point, how do they not
dwindle and disappear? Or pass in imagina-
tion into the distant future, " lighten," i.e.^ take
thy airy flight,

"... thro'
The secular abyss to come,"

and thou shalt see that " thy deepest lays "
have ceased to charm, " are dumb," while the
yew tree,' which saw their birth, is still green.

I The yew is selected as attaining to a great age ; its life is number-
ed by centuries,

CANTOS LXXVr.—LXXVII.

151

" The matin songs," the songs of Homer, of
David may last, but thine shall wither before
the oak has lived half its days.

*' And what are they when these (oaks) remain
The ruined shells of hollow towers."

LXXVII.

Immortality for his verse hopeless, but he
will sing all the same.

This is the last of what have been termed the
Chorus poems. It need not detain us. It pre-
sents a view of modern song, which, however
applicable to much of it, time thus far has
happily shown to be inapplicable to the Poet's
own ; but even if applicable, if his verse, too,
shall die, his

((

darkened ways
Shall ring with music all the same."

To sing of his loss and of his love is sweeter
to him than to earn immortality, even if by
trying higher flights he might have hoped to
do so.

i.l

152

IN MEMORIAM.

LXXVIII.

Another Christmas. The sense of loss
remains, but now calm and not incom-
patible with mirth even.

It is claimed by some that a new section of
In Memoriam commences with this poem. Ac-
cording to Genung, it introduces a new Cycle,
which he terms the Cycle of the Present,
embracing Ixxviii.-ciii. It is so designated
because according to this writer, " the thought
has to do with the present aspect of the Poet's
love for the dead and of the immortal one's
relation to him." The marking off of these
twenty-five Cantos into a distinct section, with
the above as its characteristic thought, seems to
me very arbitrary. It has no obvious or even
actual foundation in the contents of the includ-
ed poems. If by " the present aspect of the
Poet's love for the dead, and of the immortal
one's relation to him," is meant " the aspect "
at the time when the songs were written, then
this is forthcoming in the earlier, as well as in
the intermediate and later parts of In Memor-
iam ; while on the other hand, a poem such as
Ixxxvii. is wholly retrospective. The utmost

CANTO LXXVIIL

'53

which can be said with certainty seems to be
this, that the three successive Christmas poems
indicate successive states of feeling, progress
from utter unrelieved grief, through tranquil
calm, towards hope and victory.

The change which has come over the Poem
at this stage will be readily recognized, if we
compare this Christmas celebration with the
previous one (xxx.) Then the sorrow was
tumultuous, like the storms raging without,
and the observance of the Christmas usages
was forced and cheerless ; now the sorrow is
calm, as is the day with its hushed winds and
its silent snow.

iit'

*' No wing- of wind the region swept ; "

a fine metaphor finely expressed.

But there is still "the quiet sense of some-
thing lost," brooding sleep-like over all things,
it is so quiet, however, the Christmas observance
proceeds with so much of ancient mirthful
usage, that the Poet asks with startled feeling,
"Can sorrow wane?" Is his grief for his
friend actually lessened ? That were worse
than all!

"O last regret, regret can die ! "

But no, his sorrow lives on within his " mystic "

* r * 1

154

IN MEMO RI AM,

being ; " mystic," perhaps as able to combine
strangely conflicting feelings, though tears are
no longer shed.

" This is not victory," to quote from Stopford
Brooke, " the grief is still only personal. The
Poet has not escaped from himself, and the year
which has been spent in half-intellectual
analysis of doubts, and the replies of the
understanding to them, has not brought peace
to the life of his soul." Still from this point
onwards " the change is towards recovery.
Through the undertone of grief, there begins to
flash up now and then, the note of hope, and
gradually the hope grows stronger and more
permanent, till at last the poem ends in hope so
intense as to be almost joy. The recovery
consists in the passing of g^'-^f unto hope, not
in the passing of love inco forgetfulness."
(Tainsh).

LXXIX.

A FRIEND MORE THAN A BROTHER, AS SUPPLE-
MENTING DEFICIENCIES.

This poem is addressed to the Rev. Charles
Tennyson, the Poet's brother, and at the time
of its composition engaged to be married to

CAN'IO LXXIX,

155

Miss Sell wood, a younger sister of Lady
Tennyson. This circumstance may be — ac-
cording to Dr. Gatty it is — the reference of
the words in the first stanza; "the costliest
love."

The tone of the poem is apologetic. The
Poet has before him the line in ix. and quoted
here,

" More than my brothers are to me,"

and the fear is present to his mind that it may
have hurt one who possessed the very strongest
claims on his esteem and affection. He feels
it his duty therefore to explain. The common
influences, to which in childhood and youth they
had been subjected, had moulded them alike ;
had made them both wealthy, but wealthy
therefore with kindred qualities of mind and

heart.

" But he was rich where I was poor,
And he suppHed my want the more
As his unHkeness fitted mine."

The brother is not the complement of the
brother, as the happily chosen friend is. The
picture of the way in which ancestry, nature in
field wood and stream, and Christian training
in the home, unite to mould the character and
habits of an English youth, is drawn with great

156

IN ME MORI AM.

vividness and force, while it is one to captivate
the reader by its naturalness and beauty. It
could have been drawn only by one who had
been reared amid the pure and healthful
influences which it depicts.

" My wealth resembles thine," (5th stanza). It is a singular mistake
which Dr. Gatty makes, in explaining these words by the fact, that each
brother had in the two sisters a special and kindred object of affection.

LXXX.

Hk finds mklp and comfort in the thought of
what his own dkath would have been
to his friend.

This is one of four pictures of what might
have been. The other three are Ixxxi., Ixxxiv.
and xciii. In the present poem, the case is
supposed, that he (the Poet) had died, and his
friend had lived on. "Death," then, ("holy
death," can scarcely be termed a felicitous
expression), had

"... dropl the dust on tearless eyes,"

i.e., the Poet's eyes, which on this supposition
had not known the sorrow of bereavement.
His friend, on the other hand, would have
mourned deeply but calmly, would have

CANTO LXXX.

157

sorrowed but with the resignation that comes
of trust in God and love to man ; and the
burden of sorrow thus borne would have turned
to gain.

What better can he (the Poet) do, since he is
the survivor, how more truly honor his friend
than bear his removal in the same sweet spirit
of resignation, and with a like purpose to turn
the burden of loss and sorrow into gain ?

" His credit thus shall set me free,"

i.e., the noble yet gentle sorrow with which I
credit him shall do so ;

" And, influence rich — to sooth and save,
Unused example,"

unused because the alternative which was
needed to allow the example to take effect was
not realized,

"... from the grave "
" Stretch out dead hands to comfort me."

It will add to the force of the last line if we
take the word " comfort " in its old and proper
sense of " strengthen."

.r<l

ill

158

IN ME MORI AM.

LXXXI.

Love ripened by death.

We have in this poem, as in the former,
another picture of " whr.t might have been."
But in this the supposition ir:, that he also had
survived as well as his friend, and the point
raised is, to what their mutual love might have
grown ! It must surely have ripened into an
affection still sweeter and more mellow. " Love
then " while he was still here

** . . . had hope of richer store:
What end is here to my complaint ? "

The answer implied — that there is none — rather
enlarges the room for regret. As he reflects
on it, he hears " the haunting whisper " " which
makes him faint,"

" More years had made me love thee more."

To this Death gives the sweet reply :

" My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gfave all ripeness to the grain.
It mig-ht have drawn from after-heat."

The allusion in these lines is to the effect of a

CANTOS LXXXI.—LXXXII.

159

moderate degree of frost in hastening the pro-
cess of ripening full-grown grain— grain nearly
but not quite ripe. The illustration would not
probably be regarded as so felicitous a one as
most others employed by the Poet, in this
region where "sudden frost" striking the un-
ripe grain is so often " sudden " and great loss.
Still, as applied to human life, it has undeniable
truth. The recently formed, the immature and
superficial affection, death terminates. The
love, deeply seated, and based on character,
death ripens and purifies, and that in brief time.

LXXXII.

But fellowship interrupted is the real
bitterness.

A Strong faith, one apparently unclouded by
doubt, underlies this poem in the active and
pr-gressJve life of his friend in another state of
being.

" Eternal process moving- on,

From state to state the spirit walks."

Having this faith, death is not blamed because
of the corruption to which it has subjected the
object of his affection in " form and face ; " why

'■-«j"'

i6o

IN MEMORIAM.

mourn " the ruin'd chrysalis," which the spirit
leaves as it moves from a lower to a higher
state ? Nor is it blamed, because it has de-
prived this world of a virtuous force which it
needed.

" I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

It is blamed, wrath against it rises within his
breast, because it has made the delightful
fellowshp of interchanging voices impossible
between him and his friend.

"The divided nature and its complement"
is said by Genung to be the subject of the last
four poems, and much ingenuity is displayed in
linking them together under this general head-
ing. But the connections are artificial, and
meanings are read into the songs at one point
and another, which it is difficult to discover in
the words, and not easy to believe were present
to the Author's mind.

CANTO LXXXIII.

i6i

LXXXIII.

Winter and its dkpression. Spring longed

FOR AS bringing INSPIRATION TO JOY AND
SONG.

The season is that of the second New Year
after Arthur's death. Comparing it with xxxviii.,
a song of the previous spring-tide, in which
these words occur,

*' No joy the blowing- season g-ives,
The herald melodies of spring-,"

we are made conscious at once of the changed
mood. There is still scirow, but it is a sorrow
from which the Poet seeks tj be released, not
by forgefcfulness of his loss, not by the narcotic
of song, but by the influences flowing in on him
from reviving nature. "His mood," Genung
observes here with obvious right, "answers to
the promise of the season and goes forth con-
genially to meet it." This change in the Poet's
feeling, we may regard as due, partly to the
healing influence of time, partly to his faith
that " human worth," removed from earth, " will
bloom to profit, otherwhere."

Impatient under the depressing influence of

1 62

IN ME MORI AM.

winter with its suspended life, and eager for
the return of reviving nature, he cries,

*' Dip down upon the northern shore,"

i.e., England as a northern region,

" O sweet new year, delaying long; ; "

and again,

*' What stays thee from the clouded noon,"

i.e., of spring,

"Thy sweetness from its proper place."

The lines which follow, and indeed the whole
poem, bespeak the Poet's minute observation
of nature in field and garden, his keen sym-
pathy with it, and his sensitiveness to all its
changing phases. It is as if the reviving life
within him, needed the reviving life of Nature
without, to set it completely free ; and in his
eager impatience, he cries once more, address-
ing now the New Year,

" O thou, new year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood.
That longs to burst a frozen bud,
And flood a fresher throat with song."

The metaphors in the last two lines are pecu-
liarly beautiful.

for

CANTO LXXXIV,

163

LXXXIV.

The home and the life which might have

BEEN.

This \? the third of the four pictures of what
might have been, had the hTe both of Arthur
and the Poet been spared. As a picture of the
domestic joy which must have followed his
friend's marriage to his sister and of the career
of usefulness and of honor, ending in a Chris-
tian's death, which his friend must have led, it
is drawn with exquisite tenderness and warmth;
drawn, as it could only have been by one to
whom home with its tender and faithful love,
its simple and pure joys, was peculiarly dear,'
and whose conception of civic life was singu-
larly high and noble. In this respect as a
revelation of the Poet, especially on the domes-
tic side of his nature, it merits careful study.

It is unnecessary to enumerate all the details,
which go to make up the picture, and which
are drawn with so deft and loving a hand. We
see the home to which his richly 'dower'd friend
has led a loved sister of his own ; in that home
this friend "crown'd with good" sheds happi-
ness all a;ound.

164 IN MEMORIAM.

" A central warmth difFusing' bliss

In j^lance and smile, and clasp and kiss."

Boys of his babble on their uncle's knee. In
vivid fancy the Poet sees,

** . . their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire."

No description could be more graphic. We see
him, " an honor'd guest," in his sister's home,
contributing his share to the genial and witty
" table talk,"

'* Or deep dispute and graceful jest."

His friend meanwhile grows in power and
" prosperous labor ; " honors are heaped on him
as the swift years pass on. At last their
earthly courses finished and at one and the
same moment, they reach together " the blessed
goal," and are welcomed " as a single soul " by
"the shining hand " of the Saviour.

All this might have been; but only seldom, if
ever, is such a picture of domestic joy and
prosperous labor, and blissful end, unmarr'd by
loss or failure, permitted to become a reality
In this case it was not:

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

CANTOS LXXXIV,-LXXXV. 165

To dream of it was to wake

> •' The old bitterness ag^ain, and break

The low beginning-s of content."

It remains, nevertheless, an ideal to charm by
its sweetness and purity, and to elevate by its
noble and lofty spirit, the thousand readers of
the Poem.

"Thv crescent" (ist stanza); properly applied to the moon on the
increase, and so to Arthur's developing power.

" The dolorous strait " (,oth stanza) ; that between the earthly and
the heavenly life.

"Involved in thee" (loth stanza) ; their unio.i unbroken even in
death, or rather, in dying.

"Backward fancy" (,2th stanza); fancy looking backward.

LXXXV.

His love for the departed compatible with

REAL BUT NOT WITH EQUAL LOVE FOR AN-
OTHER.

This poem is addressed, as might be gathered
trom a comparison of its second stanza, with
the opening stanza of the Epithalamium, to
one who was destined to sustain the same
relation to the Poet as Arthur had been, and

1 66

IN MEMORIAM.

who thus became a candidate for the same
place in his affection. We learn that this
was E. L. Lushinj^ton, Professor of Greek in the
University of Glasgow, who was about to be
married to another sister.

The poem opens with the words, already

found in xxvii., and repeats the sentiment there

'-•expressed, which we have seen to be the

/^culminating achievement of the conflict with

j sorrow and loss at that point ;

^^s^ % " Tis better to have loved and lost,
y^ Than never to have loved at all."

The poem is in substance a lengthy reply to
the question, supposed to have been put by this
friend, as to the effect of his bereavement on his
nature, on his trust in things above, and
especially on his power to enter into new
friendships. In the reply, there is none of
" the old bitterness " which threatened to awake
in the closing stanza of the preceding poem.
The Poet has recovered again his hardly
acquired calm ; there is as much as ever of
the old affection, but it is no longer permitted
to betray him into an excess of grief " I count
it crime to mourn for any overmuch ; " a
marked change of feeling.

The reply is in narrative form. In not a few

CANTO LXXXV.

167

2 same
at this

< in the
t to be

already
it there
be the
ict with

reply to
: by this
it on his
ve, and
ito new
none of
;o awake
g poem,
hardly
ever of
lermitted
" I count
ich;" a

lot a few

of the stanzas we miss the simple Saxon words
and sweet melody so characteristic of In
Memoriam. The music, which pervades the
Poem as a whole, is heard, however, in lines
such as these, and not less the old intensity of
feeling :

"But summer on the steaming floods,

And Spring- that swells the narrow brooks,
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods,

And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb.

And my prime passion in the grave."

The reply goes back to Arthur's death; the
manner of which is expressed in striking and
memorable words,

" God's finger touched him and he slept."

This death was followed by his friend's entrance
on the blessed state, his own relinquishment,

"To wander on a darkened earth.
Where all things round me breathed of him."

But his grief has not unmanned him. He
has found a reserve of strength even in the

1 68

IN MEMO R I AM.

sorrow ^vith which he has cherished the memory
of Arthur,

*' An itnag'e comforting"

in the original and proper sense of, strength-
ening

*' the mind,
And in my j4Tief a streng-th reserved."

His " imaginative woe," moreover, that is, his
woe bringing his imagination into play, in
handling the great questions which death
raises regarding the destiny of the spirit, " dif-
fused the shock " of bereavement " through all "
the life, and thus broke the violence of the blow
at the moment of its occurrence. He is ready
to form otlier friendships, all the more ready
that this one is now beyond the destroying
power of time ; nay, that the spirit of him who
was its object, as it speaks within him, or
"yearns to speak," counsels some new attach-
ment. Accordingly, he woos the love of the
new friend, and assures him of his own true
love, though love not equal to that which he
had felt for the departed ;

*' 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."

CANTO LXXXV.

169

He offers him therefore,

his

'' dif-
i all "
blow
ready
eady
^ying
who
or
tach-
the
true
h he

*' The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of spring. "

The two stanzas commencint^, " And I, Can
clouds of nature stain," etc., rais'i a question, on
the supposition of any knowledge possessed by
the departed of the state of those on earth, very
old and of very j^reat interest. The answer,

" I triumph in conclusive bliss
And that serene result otall."

does not aid us much in understanding, how the
bliss of heaven to those enjoying it is consistent
with their knowledge of the subjection to pain
and in many cases enslavement to evil, of those
dear to them on earth.

" Thro' light reproaches," etc., (4th stanza). Something like re-
proach W.1S implied in the interrof^^ations m('nti.>ned ; but if iniplicd, it
was only half expressed and it w.-is loyal to the l.iw oi kindness.

" Equal-poised control," (gth stanza); a quality said to have been
very characteristic of Arthur.

"Other form," as disembodied.

"Whatever way my days decline " (nth stanza) ; with reference to
the course of life as moving steadily downward.

" For which be they that AoW apart," (27th stanza), i.e„ that hold
" the promise of the golden hours," in ways all their own— with peculiar
firmness.

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170

IN MEMOKIAM.

LXXXVI.
Summons to nature, now in the bloom of

SPRING to come to THE RELIEF OF HIS
STRICKEN SPIRIT.

I>i

This poem attaches itself very easily and
naturally to the last stanza of the preceding
one. The call to Nature in her Spring fresh-
ness and beauty to shed her balmiest influences
on him may well be coniiected with his proffer
of a new friendship. It is impossible not to be
struck with the depth and intensity of the
sympathy with Nature — " the gorgeous bloom
of evening" in the western heavens, the sweet
and gentle breeze sweeping across the meadow,
and " shadowing down " the stream " in ripples,"
— a sympathy itself the sign of returning health
to his affections — which is here revealed.

The poem, it will be observed, forms one
long sentence. In it he entreats the " ambrosial
air," " ambrosial " — delicious, as the air often
is after a shower ; " slowly breathing bare " i.e.^
making bare of clouds : " the round of space,"
and streaming thro' " the dewy-tassell'd wood,"
and down the darkly-rippling brook, to fan his
brows and " blow the fever from " his cheek.

CANTO LXXXVI.

^71

and infuse *' the full new life that feeds " its
breath, "till Doubt and Death, ill brethren, let
the fancy," the imagination, fly

'* To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace.' "

This poem betrays in almost every line the
close and minute observation of Nature which is
everywhere conspicuous in his poetry. Tenny- I
son rarely interprets nature as does Words-!'. .*
worth, but he describes it truthfully and vividly, ^ W -■
and he sets it, as here, in close relation to his
own changinjr feelings. Commenting on the
poem before us, Stopford Brooke says: "Each
verse is linked like bell to bell in a chime to
the verse before it, swelling as they go from
thought to thought, and finally rising from the
landscape of earth to the landscape of infinite
space. Can anything be more impassioned and
yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of
youth and the nobleness of manhood's sacred
joy."

"And shadowing down the horned Jlood,'' (2nd stanza). The refer-
ence IS to the water as curling: over the intercepting rocks and horned in
Its motion hke the young moon.

" And^.irA the full new life," (3rd stanza) ; that is, impart as by a
breath or sigh.

X .1

172

IN MEMORIAM.

LXXXVII.

Recollections of college life and friendship.

Cambridge is revisited, whether in fact or in
fancy, is not just apparent. It lives and must
ever live in the memory of the Poet, as the
place where his friendship with x'^rthur was
formed, and as the scene of the larger part of
their intercourse. His altered feeling at this
stage is seen in the circumstance that there is
no trace any longer of passionate grief in his
description of the once familiar scenes, but
rather a kind of melancholy pleasure in survey-
ing them ; such as we feel in renewing acquaint-
ance with any scene, that recalls vividly the
face of a lost but still cherished friend. The
city, its halls of learning and its churches, the
river and the " gray flats," the rows of limes and
of willows, come successively before us. We
hear " the storm " of the pealing organ, " the
measured pulse of racing oars," and the " noise
of songs and clapping hands." But the mind
is taken back to the Cambridge of the Poet's
youth and early friendships, to its Society in
which

CANTOS LXXXVIL-LXXXVIII. 173

SHIP.

: or in
I must
as the
\x was
part of
at this
there is

in his
ss, but
survey-
quaint-
dly the
I. The
hes, the
nes and
is. We
n, " the

" noise
le mind
I Poet's
ciety in

* . . . once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labor, and the chang-ing- mart.

And all the framework of the land,"

and of which Arthur is ever the central figure,
" the master-bowman " ever cleaving the marki
the eloquent speaker, with face lit and form'
lifted by " the rapt oration," on his brow the
stamp of intellectual power.

" The bar of Michael Ang-elo."

"The high-huilt organs" (2nd stanza); probably as reared above
the screen, which separates the choir from the nave.

''A band of youthful friends" (6th stanza); the Society to which
the Poet and his friend belonged, and called " The Apostles," embraced
Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. F. Maurice, and Arthur
Phelps, among others; but according to another account, said by Mr
Knowles to be that of the Poet himself, the reference is to the " Water
Club." so called because there was no wine used.

"The God within him" (gth stanza); with evident allusion to the
Martyr Stephen.

"The bar of Michael Angelo " (,oth stanza); the great painter
we are told, had a strong bar ot bone over his eyes.

LXXXVIII.

Unaccountable extremes of feeling meet in
HIS heart and pulsate in his song.

In this brief but intense lyric, the nightingale
is addres.sed, popularly regarded as comming-
ling joy and grief in her song. Like her, the

174

IN ME MORI AM.

Poet feels himself driven between fierce
extremes of feeling. He bids her unfold "the
secret of that tumultuous . passion of song,"
which is now full of grief and now again of
rapture. Sorrow should preponderate in his
song ; that was what might be expected,

" And I — my harp would prelude woe — "

r^ but no, his passion, too, has in its midmost heart
\ a secret joy. The order and harmony of the
\ universe makes itself felt within his breast.

^ " The glory of the sum of things

Will flash along- the chords and go."

The mind of the Poet, it will be observed, is
at this stage no longer restricted to his personal
loss. He sees himself to be but a part, a
minute fractional part, of the whole of being ;
a whole which, despite his personal griefs, is
harmonized by love and justice. The order
and glory of the universe begin to dominate his
grief.

The depth of passionate feeling, weighted
with noble thought, which is reflected in this
brief, but really exquisite poem, will not be
overlooked. The passion is no longer the
bitter one of personal loss. *' The sweetness of

CANTOS LXXXVni.-LXXXIX. 175

memory and the soothingness of faith have .
discharged bitterness from the soul," (Stopford ■
Brooke), but the intensity is as great as ever

LXXXIX.

Recollections of Arthur at somersby.

Somersby in Lincolnshire was the Poet's
birthplace and early home, to which /.rthur
had made more than one visit. He is thu«= led
to giv^ us a series of pictures of the country
life of a simple but refined and cultured English
family. The present is the first of the series
Another follows in xcv.

As we read the poem, we are made to see the
changing light and shade on the green lawn, to
feel " immantled in ambrosial dark " the cool
retreat of the over-arching elms, and from it to
watch

" The landscape winking: through the heat,"

to hear the swift measured stroke of the scythe
in the grass, and the sudden gust of wind
among the pear trees ; to listen to Arthur's
voice, as he reads his favorite Tuscan poets
or discusses with his friend - the books to love'
and hate," or rails against " the busy town,"

176

/N MEMORIAM.

and to that of the sister, happy in her lover, as
she flings

'* A ballad to the brightening moon."

Nor are other sounds, still oftener heard in
rural life, wanting. The milk bubbling in the
pail, the bees buzzing in the air, mingle with
the flow of mirthful jest and grave discourse.
The pleasures of nature and of art, of intellect
and of taste, unite to form as noble and
charming a picture of simple country life as
has ever been drawn. Happy is the land that
can supply such scenes, and that had, too, a
poet who could depict them with pen at once
so sympathetic and so skilful. And now
*' something of the calm and bliss " of those fast
retreating days steals over the Poet as he lives
them over again in his song.

"Witch elms .... towering' sycamore " (ist stanza). This
last is again referred to in xcv. ; we are told it is now cut down, and the
four poplars are also gone and the lawn is no longer a flat one.

" Winking through the heat " (4th stanza); an extremely felicitous
and expressive metaphor.

" The bounding hill " (8th stanza) ; the hill which bounded their
view at the Rectory.

"Before the crimson-circled star, etc." (12th stanza); that is,
before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea, the grave of the sun.
According to La Place's theory, this planet is evolved from the sun.

/er, as

CANTO XC.

177

ard in
in the
2 with
:ourse.
itellect
and
life as
d that
, too, a
t once
1 now
)se fast
e lives

iza). This
n, and the

y felicitous

inded their

; that is,
of the sun.
le sun.

XC.

Where ,.ove .,s truest, the place of the

LOST IS NEVER FILLED.

The Poet, who likes to play now with one
fancy now with another, "making them vassal
unto Love ,n this poem deals with the fancy
of hLs fnends return to earth. The disconcert-
ing effect which a return to life would in manv
cases have, gives him the opportunity for tnat
use of contrast, of which he is so fond. In the
case of the heir, who had entered on the posses-
sion of another's estate, in the case of the bride
who had given her hand to another suitor, the
reappearance of the former owner, or the former
ioyer, must needs awaken mingled feelings
m.ght even work "confusion worse than death -'
But for Arthur, on his part, there would be no
iron welcome,"

((

• • ''"t come thou back to me •
Whatever chang-e the years have wrought,
J hnd not yet one lonely thought,
That cries against my wish for thee."

The possibility of this utter fidelity of love a
love weighted with thought, and based on char-
acter, is that which ennobles human existence

178

IN ME MORI AM.

He, who doubts its possibility, the possibility of
a love which masters time, and to which the
sense of loss never dies, has

** . tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven."

"Yea, though their sons were none of these" (sth stanza) ; " none
i>f these," that is, none of the class l)efore mentioned, hard heirs, or
those who had married others' brides.

XCI.

The desire for his friend's return associ-
ated WITH the reviving LIFE OF SPRING,
AND WITH THE BRIGHTNESS OF WARM SUM-
MER SUNBEAMS.

This poem, it will be noticed, attaches itself
easily and naturally to the former, and carries
forward its thought. The indignant disclaimer,
with which that poem closed, passes over in this
one into an eager cry of longing ; " Come."
Come, with the glory of either season ; spring-
like,

" The hope of unaccomplish'd years
Be large and lucid round thy brow,"

i.e.^ the promise of great achievements, which,
thy early death did not suffer to be realized, be
lucidly visible on thy forehead, or summer-like,

ility of
ich the

:a); " none
•d heirs, or

SOCI-

RING,

SUM-

es itself
I carries
;claimer,
ir in this
' Come."
spring-

5, which,
lized, be
mer-like,

CANTOS XCL—XCII.

* • . . beauteous in thine after form,
Anil like a finer lig-|ii in lij^hl."

179

Nothing is to our senses purer than hght The
imagination of the Poet soars above sense, and
on Its wings he sees his friend return, - h'ke a
finer h'ght in hght."

This is an exquisite picture, first of spring,
then of summer, executed in each case by a
smgle touch or two. In spring, we see the fresh
rosy tufts of the larch, and the deeper blue of
the kmgfisher, we hear the exquisite notes of
the thrush ; in summer, we have the sweet fra-
grance of the rose, the ripple of the waving
wheat field and the warm sunbeam brooding
over all. It is our Poet's way of depicting
nature, whether in her summer calm or m her
wmter storm, to make use of one or two bold
touches, not, as is the method of some other
poets, of lengthened descriptions.

XCII.
Yet such return no longer to be expected.

We have in this poem a striking contrast to
XIV. The states of feeling portrayed in each
are as widely remote as possible. Then the

m
I-

III

i8o

IN MEMORIAM.

Poet would have felt nothing strange in the re-
turn of his friend, unaltered in look and mien,
" no hint of change in all his frame." Now the
certainty of separation has becor e fixed. Were
the vision granted, which in the j^receding poem
he desired, did his friend return to him, either
** with the hope (jf unaccomplished years on his
brow," or with the summer-light of glory
wreathing his head, would he be able to believe
that it was really he ?

*' I mijifht but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring' the past."

Yea, though the strai'^ge presence should shew
minute acquaintance with the past, in which
their " lots were cast together," or make predic-
tions, verified by the revolving year, would he
not have to count it an illusion, the work of a
distempered brain, an objectifying of his own
presentiments or memories ?

'* . such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise."

"Refraction of events" (4th stanza). The reference here is to the
scientific fact, that the sun, by refraction, still appears in full size above
the horizon, after it h.is really sunk below it, and reappears in full, when
only just the upper edg^e has reached the horizon. (Dr. Gatty).

A^o/<'.— This ,Tnd the two preceding poems appear to afford conclu-
sive evidence that Genunp is not warranted in assigning the meaning to
this part of In Memoriam which he does. His heading of the poems
xc.-xcv. is, " In his peace with .ill bereaved, he finds communion in spirit
with the dead."

CANTO XCIJJ.

i8i

he re-

mien,

Dvv the

Were

[ poem

, either

on his

glory

believe

\ shew
which
predic-
uld he
k of a
is own

re is to the

size above

I full, when

^xA conclu-

meaning to

the poems

on in spirit

XCIII.

But his very self may come in spiritual form.

No approach discoverable by the senses is to
be expected. The burden of the preceding
poem was, an approach of this kind, even if
made, would not be credited. The opening
statement in this one is, it is not to be looked
for. "I shall not see thee." But the spirit
itself may come, spirit to spirit, by methods of
approach unknown to sense, may come through
channels

*' Where all the nerve of sense is numb ; "

can take no note whatever. In an appeal full
of passion, the Poet pleads

" That in this blindness of the frame,"

this inability of the bodily senses to detect a
spiritual presence,

" My Ghost vcidiyfeel that thine is near."

What is desired here is obviously something
more than, something different from, commun-
ion with the departed as generally understood
by us. By this we usually understand, a vivid

l82

IN MEMORIAM.

sense of their persons, their nearness or their
presence to imagination and thought and feel-
ing, implying rather our approach to them, than
theirs to us ; a change in our feeling rather than
in anything external to us. The Poet seems to
have contemplated something more than this as
possible, and not as possible only, but as actually
realized bv him.

" I therefore from thy sightless range " (3rd stanza) ; " range," that
is, which cannot be observed b)' sight ; thus, not v.ithout sight but be-
yond sight.

" Unconjectured bliss " (3rd stanza) ; i.e., bliss great beyond conjec-
ture, with a reference probably to i Corinthians 2 : q, "Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

" Of tenfold complicated change " (3rd stanza) ; such as the spirits
of the departed may be supposed to undergo in the higher sphere of
being, into which they are regarded as having passed.

XCIV.

This approach to be expected by those only
whose hearts are pure and calm.

There are spiritual conditions which must be
forthcoming, the Poet tells us, if spirit is to meet
spirit, that is, to meet good spirit, for of such
only is he speaking. Spiritual communion pre-
supposes spiritual affinity, some degree of

CANTOS XCIV.—XCV,

183

resemblance to those with whom communion is
sought. They have done with all discord and
passion ; with such thou, too, must have done,
if thou would'st know and feel them near.

" They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air.
The conscience as a sea at rest : "

" But when the heart is full of din,

And doubt beside the portal waits.
They can but listen at the gates.
And hear the household jar within."

The poem is from first to last an eminently
truthful and an exquisitely beautiful picture of
the moral state, the state of heart and life, which
conditions all highest communion, the commun-
ion, not less, with the uncreated spirit. Every
line is marked by its own beauty.

xcv.

The spiritlal communion realized in a state

OF ecstasy.

This poem, one of the most striking in In
Memoriam, opens with a fine picture of a sum-
mer evening in the country. All nature is siill,

• i 1

(

1 84

IN MEMORIAM.

save as its silence is broken by the gentle mur-
mur of the distant brook, and the sweet voice
of song. Trees stretch " their dark arms about
the field," while kine couch at ease on the
neighboring knolls, and moths flit through the
dusk '* with ermine capes and woolly breasts
and beaded eyes." The whole peace and love-
liness of the scene seem to steal in upon us, as
we read the lines which describe it.

Evening passes over into night. One after
another of the company withdraws, and the
Poet is left alone. " A hunger " seizes his heart.
We may regard this as meaning a keen desire
to have closer fellowship with the living spirit
of the departed than any yet realized. In this
mood of ardent longing, he takes out some of
his friend's letters, which are finely described as

" Those fallen leaves which kept their green."

"The silent -speaking words " of the letters are
picturesquely represented as strangely breaking
on the silence of the night, and as strangely
answered by '* love's dumb cry." The bold and
vigorous faith of the writer courageously facing
doubt rises before him as he reads, and in what
must be regarded as a waking trance or state of
ecstasy,

CANTO XCV. 185

" 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,

And mine in his was wound,"

with this result, he was whirl'd aloft,

"and came on that which is,"

that is, on real being as distinguished from the
merely phenomenal existence apprehended by
the senses. In this state, the movements of the
world, nhe shocks of Chance, the blows of
Death," often to us in our ordinary moments so
full of disharmony are heard by him as sweetly
musical ;

" ^^onian music measuring- out
The steps of time."

It is difficult to know in what light exactly
we are to regard this experience of the Poet, for
an actual experience it seems to have been,
which the lines record. The Poet himself
seems to have been somewhat at a loss regard-
ing It, as is evident from an important change
made on the original form of the poem at this
point. Instead of the words now found in the
last line of the ninth stanza, and the first of the
tenth, the first edition had these :

" His living: soul was flashed in mine.
And mine in his was wound."

1 86

IN MEMORIAM.

Evidently the Poet shrunk on reflection from
the claim implied in these words. *' His con-
science," we are told, " was troubled by the
' his ' " found in these lines. The change to
" the living soul," if an improvement in one
respect, does not in another fit in very well with
the context. On the whole, the words em-
ployed imply a sense of the presence of the
departed of a more direct and close kind than
is reached either by memory or imagination
simply. The state in which he found himself
on reaching it, may be compared to that ecstasy
described by Thomas Aquinas and the Mystics
generally, to that of Dante with his famous
vision, if not even to that of St. Paul, 2 Cor.
xii. Tennyson, as has been already said, was
on his own shewing remarkably susceptible of
such abnormal conditions.

At length the trance, which continued till
dawn.

*' Was cancell'd, stricken through with doubt,"

the result of the return of sense and intellect or
understanding.

The poem closes with a picture of the dawn,
unsurpassed in poetic beauty by anything found
in In Memoriam. The last three lines are

CANTOS XCV.—XCVI.

187

specially beautiful in the subtle resemblance
which they disclose ;

" And East and West, without a breath,

Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day."

"In matter-moulded forms of speech," (12th stanza) ; referring to the
famihar fact, that our words, expressive of spiritual ideas, are borrowed
from words primarily denoting sensible experiences.

XCVI.

The doubt, that leads to stronger faith,
defended.

This is the first of a series of poems, not con-
secutive, in which the Poet gives us, what has
been termed, " part portraitures " of his friend ;
for there can be little doubt that he is the person
referred to in the poem before us.

The picture, one drawn to relieve the feeling
of some gentle and pious woman, perhaps his
sister, that all doubt of religious truth is " devil-
born," is that of a person who had doubted, but
who had fought his doubts and laid them, as
distinguished from others, who also have to con-
fess to the presence of doubts, but who simply
turn away from them as wicked, or at least as
destructive of their peace, if not also of their

\\ «

1 88

IN MEMORIAM.

goodness. In the earliest stage, that of awaken-
ing thought, there was in Hallam's case, as in
that of so many, mental discord. He

** , . touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true ;

Perplext in faith but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out."

Thus the duty of the hour, as the Poet defines
it, when faith in the spiritual verities is shaken,
and doubt is in the ascendant for the moment,
is to do the right, to keep the conscience clean,
and to face, instead of running away from " the
spectres of the mind." It has to be said, that
the firmest and most inspiring faith in divine
realities is often reached in this way. The truth
for which a man has had to wrestle with doubt,
when once recovered, is usually both better
understood and more prized, than if no such
doubt had ever arisen. The possibility of doubt
is involved in the circumstance that the object
of faith is insusceptible either of logical proof
or of sensible verification. The value of it, or
the absence of value, depends altogether on the
character of the doubt, and the spirit in which
it is dealt with. It is certainly not to be re-
garded as in itself a good.

The lines follow, so often quoted, not always

■■ "if

CANTO XCVI.

189

wisely, nor in the sense in which we may believe
the Poet wrote them :

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

The term "creeds " is here used, not its ordinary
and proper meaning, that of systems of belief or
doctrine, but in the sense of the beliefs which
are cherished by men in these systems, the
mental assent which they give to them. The
truth in the statement, so far as it contains
truth, is somewhat to this effect, that a man
honestly doubting, not denying but simply
doubting, and wrestling with his doubt, not
cherishing it, ma)- have more real faith, that is,
a profounder sense of the reality of the unseen
and eternal, than one who gives an unthinking
assent to the fullest creed ever formulated.

The victory of the man who " fought his
doubts and gathered strength" is expressed in
these striking lines,

" And Power was with him in the nig-ht,
Which makes the darkness and the lig-ht.
And dwells not in the lig-ht alone."

The reference would seem to be to God, whose
presence and benign operation — hence the
name used here, Power, for the Divine Being—

190

IN MEMORIAM.

is regarded as at work in the darkness as in the
h'ght, in the doubt which is struggling onward
to faith, as in the faith which has laid hold of
the unseen.

l«<

XCVII.

His relation to Arthur in his exalted state
compared to that subsisting between a
married pair of unequal attainments.

The first stanza of this poem is somewhat
mystical. The main truth implied would seem
to be that the heart dominated by love gives its
own color to all in nature and in human life by
which it is surrounded, projects itself into every
object which meets its view.

" He sees himself in all he sees,"

even " as the giant-spectre sometimes seen ' on
misty mountain ground ' is no more than the
vast shadow of the spectator himself." In the
present case it is an unequal marriage, but one
in which the early love remained undiminished
by the inequality, which is made to prefigure
the existing relationship between himself iand
his friend ; we say existing, for we are expressly
told by the Poet himself, that what he " would

CANTO XCVTL 19 j

describe is the relation of one on earth, to one
in the other and higher world," not his own
relation to his friend here.

Towards his friend, who now lives " in vast-
ness and mystery," he feels as a wife might
feel towards a husband, with whom there was
formed in the days long ago a union of real
affection, but from whom high pursuits, in
which she can have no share, now separate her
Meantime " her life is lone," but not either
loveless or cheerless. She looks now and again
at the old love-tokens ;

" She keeps the gifts of years before,
A wither'd violet is her bliss."

She does not doubt that the love which bestow-
ed It is still cherished towards her, though it is
no longer given her to taste its sweetness as
once. It is the greatness to which he has
grown, greatness which she cannot even under-
stand, that separates him from her.

" For that, for all, she loves him more."

It is not assuredly an ideal union of man and
woman, but perhaps just because of this it all
the more aptly pictures the Poet's relation to
the friend whom death has in a manner trans-
figured.

1 ,1

192

IN MEMO RI AM.

(

The comparison, it must be said, is wrought
out with great beauty of detail, and with a sim-
plicity, which apparently artless, is really the
perfection of art. The alternations of light and
shade, of real love and of seeming coldness, in
the picture of the simple-hearted wife are
peculiarly striking, e.g.,

" He loves her yet, she will not weep ;
He seems so near, and yet so far,
He looks so cold ; she thinks him kind."

The state of mind which the Poet has reached
in relation to his departed friend is finely
mirrored in the closing stanza,

" Her faith is fix'd and cannot move.

She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
* I cannot understand ; I love.' "

XCVIII.

Vienna, with all its bealtv, to him dismal.

A friend is going to Vienna, where Arthur
had died. This is enough to rouse anew the
sense of loss and to invest the city, in itself so
beautiful, with forbidding qualities of the most
marked character. It is known how caprici-
ously the mind acts in circumstances of the

CANTO XCVIII.

DUght
L sim-
y^ the
,t and
;s.s, in
L* are

'93

lached
finely

lAL.

Arthur
ew the
tself so
e most
caprici-
of the

kind, how the place associated with a friend's
death will sometimes gain a new charm in
consequence, sometimes become an object of
aversion. Vienna acts on the Poet in the latter
way. Its splendor, which his friend had often
celebrated, is of the deceptive kind ;

•' No livelier than the wisp that jcleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death."

Then in language extremely strong and vivid,
evil is represented as haunting the city and
dogging the steps of its inhabitants from the
cradle to the tomb ;

'♦A treble darkness. Evil haunts

The birth, the bridal ; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more g^raves."

The very '' blaze of kings " is shadowed to his
fancy by the everywhere prevailing sadness.

The pervading sentiment of the poem, the
keen and bitter sense of loss which it expresses
would be strange and not easily accounted for!
if the separate poems which constitute In
Memoriam had been written in the order in
which they stand in the collection.

rr..! ^aTT *"' *' f "^^^""^ ^""^ wine.^^7^nza): these belts^e"th^
marked features ,n the landscape in a .^reat part of Germany.

ooen It u' • ^''^ '^""'^''^^ = '-'«''*• ^''her as uncheered by the

open fire, or, as without domestic love.

"Any mother town.- (6th stanza) ; Engh'sh rendering of metropolis.

194

/N MEMOKIAM,

XCIX.

Anothkk ANNIVKRSARY 1>F akthir's okath —
All are kin to tiik pokt, to whom it
hrincs likk mkmoriks of loss.

It is natural to compare this poem with that
written on the previous anniversary. It opens
with the same words,

" Risest thou thus, dim dawn again."

There is still the same sense of loss,

** Day when I lost the flower of men ; "

but the tumult of rebellious feeling is no longer
heard, nor nature moaning as if in sympathy
therewith. The grief has become calm and
nature with it. Her breath is balmy. The
winds no longer howl, " issuing out of night."
They murmur in the foliaged eaves — a beautiful
figure —

" A songf that slig-hts the coming- care."

The sounds which meet the ear are not " blasts
which blow the poplar white," *' and lash with
storm the streaming pane," but " voices of the
birds" and " lowings of the herds." But uhe great-
est change observable is, that the sorrow which

CANTO XCIX.

'95

the day renews is now touched with sympathy
towards all, to whom it brin^rs as to him. not
memories of bridal or of birth, but memories of
death.

•' O, wheresoever those may be,

Beiwixt the shimber of tlie poles,
To-tlay Ihey count as kindred souls ;
They know me not. but mourn with me."

This last circumstance has been taken for all it
IS worth by Gcnung and others as evidence of
the escape from a merely personal sorrow ; per-
haps for more than it is worth. Genung says
the sorrow there (on the previous anniversary)
renewed was centred in self, while this sorrow is
touched with sympathy for all who have similar
sad memories." But fully to justify this state-
ment, would the Poet not needed to have
written " I mourn with them," instead of they
" mourn with me ? "

" Betwixt the slumber of the poles." fcth stan^-,^ • tk,f •
whole earth "Tk i - F*^ "=«. 15^ stanzaj , that is, over the

the earth l; I ^u ■'»'•*-' ''^'^ ""^^•"-y -ds of the axis on which

the^earth revolves; they remain at rest, .'slumber" while other parts

m It

196

IN MEMORIAM.

Each feature of the landscape which he is

ABOUT TO leave RECALLS HIS FRIEND, AND
LEAVING IT, THAT FRIEND SEEMS TO DIE ANEW.

We have in this poem another beautiful
sketch, the details of which are filled in with
all the deftness of the Poet's art. The occasion
is his leaving Somersby, the home of his child-
hood and early youth. The scene, which is in
Lincolnshire, is largely pastoral. The golden
waves of the wheat field, " the long arms " of
the spreading elm, and the broad river, are not
here. In their place we have the "lonely fold,"
the " low morass," the " simple stile," the trill-
ing linnet, the " wrangling daw," the " runlet
tinkling from the rock ; " all picturesque details
of a pastoral landscape. It is a scene from
which he is about to pass, and which accord-
ingly once more recalls the friend who had in
other days enjoyed its simple and healthful
charms in company with him. Of these details
which go to make up the landscape, he says,

" Er'.ch has pleased a kindred eye.
And each reflects a kindlier day ;
And, leaving- these, to pass away,
I think once more — he seems to die."

CAN70 CI.

197

The landscape loses the eyes to which its

VARYING FEATURES ARE DEAR AND SACRED.

In this simple and sweet poem, the Poet in
prospect of change of residence, laments that
tree flower and brook will no longer have the
eyes which had watched their changes with
fond delight.

" Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away ; "

referring to the fact that the beech becomes
brown, the maple red under the autumn sun.
Unloved, the rose-carnation, too, will

• • . feed
With summer spice the humming air ; "

in which the bees are at work.

Uncared for, the brook will babble

" At noon, or when the lesser wain,"

the Ursa Minor, or Little Bear, a small con-
stellation, containing the Pole Star, and which
in England never disappears,

" Is twisting- round the polar star ; "

198

IN MEMORIAM.

** Or into silver arrows break
The sailings moon in creek and cove ; "

referring to the fact that the moon's reflection
in the brook, as it runs along, becomes broken
into silver arrows. Compare xlix., stanza i.

All this will continue until, in the course of
years, new associations gather round flower and
brook, and other eyes come to regard them with
delight.

The poem, like so many others, bears testi-
mony to Tennyson's close observation of and
intense sympathy with Nature in its changing
aspects. In it, and the preceding poem, we
have conspicuous examples of landscape
" humanized by tender feeling," so much so
that it seems half-conscious of the mingling
emotions of delight and regret with which it is
regarded.

CII.

His heart clings to the old home, bound
to it by two feelings which in the end
melt into one of pure regret.

The hour for leaving the Rectory, in which

the Poet was born and in which mother and

•children have lived after the father's death, has

CANTO cn.

199

come. A last ramble is taken through the
grounds. He is made conscious of a two-fold
spell, which the place throws over him. It is
the home of his childhood, of his earliest and
most innocent, if not of his highest, joys.

*' . . Here thy boyhood sung-
Long since its matin-song, and heard
The low love-Iang-uage of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung."

But it is also the scene of former delightful
companionship with Arthur—

" • . . Yea, but here
Thy feet have strayed in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers."

Does this circumstance invest it with a still
dearer and more sacred interest ? He may not
say; but as he turns to go, the two feelings,
which the leave-taking of the place awakens

" . . mix in one another's arms
To one pure image of regret."

"Gird the windy grove," (4th stanza) ; that is. " gird " in the sense
of surround, with " the brook '" as the subject of the verb.

" Lops the glades," (6th stanza) ; trims the hedges or thickets.

pr^m

200

IN MEMORIAM.

cm.

All that has served him in honoring his
friend will accompany him into the
life beyond.

This poem presents not a little difficulty to
the interpreter of In Memoriam. Such ques-
tions as these arise : Does the poem record an
actual dream, accompanied by the vision which
it describes with its changing scenes ? Or, is it
an allegory in the form of a dream ? Whether
the one or the other, are all the details to be
regarded as significant, or, as so often in the
case of the parable, have we to be content with
the one leading thought, the numerous details
having significance only as the necessary appro-
priate setting of that thought ? We incline to
the view that what we have here is a simple
allegory, possibly suggested by some dream of
the Poet before leaving the residence in which
he had lived with his maiden sisters, certainly
borrowing some of its coloring from the nature of
his surroundings there, that we are therefore not
to regard all the details as significant, and that
the main thought in the allegory is, according
to the Poet's own interpretation, as given by Dr.

t^i

CANTO cm.

20 1

Gatty, that "the Muses, Arts," etc., "the maid-
ens " of the story, " everything that has made life
beautiful here," are to be carried over into the
life beyond. The voyage of the poem, there-
fore, is not to be thought of as his going from
one place of residence to another, but as his
passage down the stream of being, and that not
so much in his individual capacity as represent-
ing the human race.

The general meaning of the poem is thus
plain. The maidens who dwell with him in the
hall are not his sisters, not at least in their
personal character, but poetry, art, music,
science, etc. ; all that has contributed to enrich
or adorn life. The veiled figure of his friend,
his memory, had brought all these— shall we
say— poetic, artistic, and scientific endowments
of the writer into exercise.

((

. in the centre stood
A statue veiled, to wiiich they sang-;"

** . . then flew in a dove
And broug^ht a summons from the sea."

These words are significant. According to
Brother Azarias they mean, " he feels called to
other life-duties than those of weaving songs
around the memory of his friend. He must
proceed to fulfil those duties. The maidens

■f

(

202

IN MEMORIAM.

weep lest they should now be neglected ; but
they accompany him." And they not only
accompany him down the stream of existence,
they gather " strength and grace and presence,
lordlier than before ; " and he himself feels
clothed with new power, as his muses poured
out new songs.

*' As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star."

At length the voyage nears its end. The Here
gives intimations of passing into the Hereafter.
The maidens, the muses, arts, etc., fear they are
to be left behind, and set up a wail. But their
fear is groundless. They, too, pass into the life
beyond.

The poem, of which this seems the main
scope, receives only added significance and
force, when the allegory is viewed as represent-
ing the experience of the human race, rather
than that of the individual poet. The last lines
are peculiarly striking, having all the mystery
of eternity stamped upon them;

" And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud.
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep."

|i4

r^'^Mmi

CANTOS cm.— CIV.

203

Genung regards a new Cycle, what he terms
the Cycle of the Future, as commencing at the
point in In Memoriam which we now reach.
He claims it to be distinguished from the two
Cycles which are said to have preceded this, in
that the future of which it sings is " no longer
confined to a single new friendship, but takes
in the whole race of man ; " and the friend whose
loss the Poet has mourned in the earlier parts,
" is connected with this greater future by being
taken as its type." In accordance with this,
poems cix.— cxiv. delineate his high qualities.
This would appear to be a large induction from
the facts before us. It may be conceded, how-
ever, that it contains an element of truth.
There is certainly an advance in the feeling
from this point ; there is less of personal sor-
row, more of wide, catholic, human love.

CIV.

Christmas eve under new associations.

The Poet is now in his new home, which, we
are told, was at High Beach, Epping Forest ;
and the church mentioned is Waltham Abbey
Church. The first two lines are identical with

^if

;;

204

IN MEMORIAM.

those describing the first Christmas Eve after
Arthur's death (xxviii). But instead of " four
voices of four hamlets round," it is

" A single peal of bells below,

That wakens at the hour of rest,
A sing-le murmur in the breast."

The murmur is one of regret, that while the
season recurs, all the old associations are
broken ; the very bells sound " like strangers'
voices ; " *' not a memory strays," i.e., wanders
amid the scenes within the reach of their peal ;

" But all is new unhallow'd ground ; "

" ground," that is, without any of those tender
associations which had lent ineffaceable sacred-
ness to the scenes he had left behind.

CV.

The old Christmas customs unsuitable in the

NEW circumstances.

The return of Christmas is not now to be
marked by the holly being hung upon the wall.
This were out of keeping with the " father's
dust left alone and silent under other snows."
That tribute, formerly paid to Use and Wont,
can be well dispensed with in the new abode.

CANTO CV,

205

Grief shall no longer be made to assume the
mask of gladness.

" For change of place, like growth of time
Has broke the bond of dying use."

Still the petty cares of life are to be thrown off
and the mind be left free to quiet, thoughtful
brooding on the past ; but nothing further, no
bowl, no song, no dance,

" For who would keep an ancient form
Thro* which the spirit breathes no more ? "

In Other words, the old observances are to be
dropped because the associations which lent
them propriety and charm, have been broken.
This is something very different from that for
which, with the v\^^ of sustaining a certain
theory in regard to the Poem, Genung pleads.
He says, '' The usual customs have lost their
life, because the spirit of Christmas hope has
become so settled and significant that the
ancient form can no more express its meaning.
The cheer of this season not only eclipses the
grief, but rejects all formal demonstrations of
joy as unnecessary and meaningless." Any
careful student can see that a good deal has to
be left out of the poem, and not a little read
into it, to make it bear such a meanino-

i^'^

i| !!

^ .JW'

206 /// MEMORIAM.

*• . . No motion, save alone
What li}j^htens in the lucid east

O^ rising worlds by yonder wood."

This '* refers," to give Tennyson's own words as
found in Dr. Gatty's book, "to the scintillation
of the stars rising." The Poet, moreover, has
in his eye a good age, an age of triumphant
goodness, as before the race. Its coming lingers ;

" Long- sleeps the summer in the seed."

The summer is viewed here as the seed, or the
seed-time of the autumn. In his impatience,
he bids it, or, perhaps, " the rising worlds "
" run out," their ** measured arcs, and lead,"
that is, usher in,

" The closing cycle rich in good."

cvi.

The new year ; its bells summoned to ring
IN the era of triumphant good.

This is one of the poems through which the
Poet has sought to become, and has in good
measure become the prophet of his age. He
lets us see his ideal, in respect both of that
which he desires should pass away, and of that

CANTO CVl.

ao7

which he desires should come in. This ideal, as
we see at a glance, is intensely moral, and it is
very lofty. It is embraced, moreover, with a
passionate eagerness, and with a noble scorn
which makes itself felt in every stanza, of the
things in individual and social life opposed to it.
He will have the bells which ring out the
dying year and ring in the new. ring out false-
ness, class feuds, party strife, faithless coldness,
spite and slander, "the narrowing lust of gold ''
even '

'• The grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more."

ring in truth, redress of wrong, sweeter man-
ners, purer laws, the common love of good, the
larger heart, the kindlier hand,

"the Christ that is to be,"

not here the personal Christ, though Dr. Gatty
so takes it, but the humanity, the race, worthy
to bear his name. The whole poem is pervaded
by a noble vein of sentiment, and by aspira-
tions of the very loftiest character.

li Hf

■ ).

111

208

IN MEMO RI AM.

CVII.

Annivkrsary ok Arthur's dkath, now cele-

BRATKI) Wrril MUSIC AND SONG.

The spirit of the Poet is entirely changed,
since this season, the year before, when he spoke
of the day as one " marked as with some hid-
eous crime," but nature is not in sympathy with
his new and happier mood. It has put on a
wintry fierceness. This furnishes the Poet with
the opportunity to give us one of his very finest
pictures of a wild winter night. The sun goes
down early,

" Beliind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapor, leaving nig"ht forlorn."

The wind blows fiercely from the north-east,
" and bristles," that is, makes erect, " all the
brakes and thorns to yon hard crescent." We
see the long pointed icicle hanging from the
eaves, the frosted branches on brake and thorn
gleaming in the moonlight. We hear the
leafless limbs rubbing one against the other
and clanging in the breeze. Again we observe
the storm leaving the land, to sweep over the

CANTOS cn/.-c/rif.

2og

sea, its white drifts darkening as they meet
"on the rolling brine."

By one or two vivid touches, the fierceness of
the storm and its wild, wide sweep are brought
before us. The very words, full of rough, hiss-
ing sounds, seem charged with the rage of the
storm which they describe.

But it is Arthur's birthday, and the Poet
will have it kept with honors. The new mood
withm overcomes the depressing influences
without. The logs shall blaze, the wine shall
flow, the cheerful talk proceed,

** • • • with festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, vvhate'er he be,
And sin^- the songs he loved to hear."

So changed is now the whole mood,

CVIII.
Sympathy with one's kind neckssary to ripen

THE FRIIT OF St)RROVV.

A tendency of sorrow, often seen, is to isolate
the person who experiences it. We have all
witnessed the self-absorption of a great grief,
and closely connected with this, is its tendency
to make its subject indifferent or even insensible

»4

210

IN ME MORI AM.

to the sufferinf^^s of others. Has the Poet
yielded too much to this tendency since his
great bereavement? This poem seems to be-
tray something like a consciousness of this on
his part. At least he will yield to the tendency
no longer ;

'• I will not eat my heart alone."

He will not in selfish isolation brood on his grief,
and thus "eat" his "heart," consume its sym-
pathetic power ;

" Nor feed with sig-hs a passing- wind ; "

add to the " passing wind " a breath of sighs ;
very vivid and realistic.

" What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning'? "

Such a question makes one feel that the reaction
from his brooding sorrow and soaring specula-
tion has gone almost too far. Why should
faith be barren or yearning vacant ? No genu-
ine faith, no healthful spiritual longings are
fruitless, or fruitful in anythnig but good. Still
his solitary brooding is not healthful, even, if it
seems to lift him in thought to the heights of
heaven above, or carry him down to the mys-
terious depths below, to which death conducts.

CANTO CVIII.

211

rrief,

He seems to say in the third stanza, that
thus musing, it is after all but the shadow of
himself, the reflection of his own qualities,
which is pictured to his fancy.

" What find I . - he highest phice,

But mine own phantom, chanting liymns ?
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face."

There is probably a deep and important truth
implied in these lines. It is difficult, indeed, to
reconcile the view which they present with
much that he has said ; for has he not seen and
professed to show us one much nobler than
himself? But then the poet is not required to
be consistent; he is the creature of moods.
This is especially true of In Memoriam.

In human sympathy, then, and in human
fellowship, he will seek the fruit of wisdom
which sorrow is said to yield. It will be noticed
that the fruit of sorrow, of which he speaks, is
not that which we are so often accustomed to
associate therewith— purity, gentleness, good-
ness ; it is zvisdom, wisdom as distinct from
knowledge. Of this, more in the poems which
follow.

212

IN ME MORI AM.

CIX.
"What he vvas."-(F.\V.R.)

It has been noticed that there is little of
eulogy in the earlier part of In Memoriam, so
little that considering the design of the Poem —
to form a shrine for his friend — its absence, or at
least its very limited presence, can hardly fail
to strike us. In the latter part, it is entirely
different. In xcvi. vvc have already had one
sketch of Artliur ; now we have five following
in succession. The first is an appreciative
rehearsal of his intellectual and moral qualities.
It looks, indeed, as if it were the Poet's inten-
tion to portray a part of that wisdom, which in
the last line of the preceding poem, he had
spoken of as sleeping with his friend.

In the poem before us, there is a fine blending
of the intellectual and the moral in the excel-
lence depicted ; power of rich discourse acquired
in an intellectual home, refined and discrimina-
ting taste,

" The critic clearness of an e)'e,
That saw thro' all the Muses' walk."

"Seraphic intellect" at the connnand ncH of

CANTOS crx.~cx.

213

chnibt, but of truth ; a faculty of reasoning that
readily crlowed with the fire of passion ; the love
of goodness, but no asceticism ; the love of
freedom, but no hysterics ; the glow of youthful
passion, but pure as snow ; all the grace of
woman, united to the strength of man ; a face
to win the confidence of childhood,

((

. . the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine
And find his comfort in thy face ; "

Did such excellences as these meet in the friend
over whom the grave had closed, but whom it
had been his privilege to know, then. \{ he has
not learned much,

" My shame is gfreater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise."

Ot of

ex.

The influence of his personality on others.

So richly dowered, the charm of his presence
was magical ; young and old alike felt it " the
men of rathe," that is, early, ''and of riper
years." It strengthened the weak,

" The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Porg^ot his weakness in thy si^ht."

r^*"

214

IN MEMORIAM.

It s(jftened the severe, and shamed the false or
the foolish. In the Poet it kindled admiration
and "passionate love, and the emulation, too,
that is born of love."

The poem is an exquisite word-picture of a
rare and lovely character. Its charm is due in
part to the effective use of antithesis, of which
we have a fine example in the last stanza ;

" Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
Rut mine the love that will not tire."

This charm ^rows on us with every line, till in
the end we reach the warm, almost reverent
affection with which its original was regarded
by the Poet, an affection which we admire, but
at which we can no longer be surprised. It
seems a species of violence to subject a work of
art so perfect to any analytical process. The
main thing is to look at it steadily till its
beauty takes possession of us.

"The feeble soul, a haunt of fears" (ist stanza); are unusually
felicitous expressions.

"To flicker with the double tongue " (2nd stanza) ; with some refer-
ence to the serpent's tongue. The word was "treble" in the original
edition.

CANTO CXI.

215

CXI.

His gentle heart.

The churl may be seen in all ranks, even in
the kingly — in " him who grasps " the " golden
ball " of state — the rude nature breaking out in
unguarded moments, through fashion's veiling
forms, here termed "the gilded pale," that is,
boundary or fence ;

*' For who can ahvays act ? "

that is, play a part which does not belong to
him. But Arthur had that nobility of nature
which no unguarded moment could surprise into
ungentle words or acts. Gentle of heart, he was
all that others seem, and " best seemed the
thing he was." In his case, no .even passing
spite narrowed or darkened the eye,

" Where God and nature met in lig-ht ; "

the reference probably being to the love or
gentleness of God, and the grace or beauty of
nature.

*' And thus he bore without abuse

The grand old name of g-entleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ig^noble use."

"iB=

2r6

/N ME MO RT AM.

The poem is a sweet and gracious picture of a
character itself gracious and beautiful.

CXII.
The reserve of power in him.

The Poet is chidden by some one, in that,
while tolerant of marked defects, he shews slight
appreciation of narrower merit in those around
him — the merit or ** perfectness " of persons
more scantily endowed. " High wisdom," wis-
dom, that i'", that counts itself high, thinks him
at fault in this. His defence or his explanation
is, that he is so possessed by his friend's excel-
lence, not narrow or bounded, rather boundless,
that he is able to feel little interest in inferior
souls, '* the lesser lords of doom," as he terms
them. " Lords of doom " even they are, as
having through their possession of free-will the
destiny of a life at their disposal, nay, in a
measure, of other lives as well as their own ;
" lesser lords," as less largely dowered with
intellectual power.

And that in his friend, which drew his special
admiration was the reserve of power which ever
belonged to him ; so that one knew not what
to expect, or, rather, what not to expect ;

CANTOS cxn.-^cxrii,

" Hope coukl never hope U)o much,
In watching'- thee from hour to hour."'

217

What was seen as this marvellous power was
exerted, was order evolved out of confusion, and
calm out of storm,

" And world-wide fluctuation sway'd
In vassal tides that followed Ihoug-hl ; "

that is, large and fluctuating movements or
tides of feeling followed obediently his thought,
became vassals thereto.

This impression of a reserve of power, which
a certain class of mind makes on the observer,
is, it may be remarked, an unmistakable index
of intellectual greatness.

CXIII.

The piBLic LOSS sustained by his death.

We have here another poem which has for its
subject, " What might have been." The poem
opens with the repetition of the line from a
former lyric.

" 'Tis held that sorrow makes us

s Wise.

Here, however, the statement is but the back-
ground for the thought of the wisdom that

2l8

TN MKMORTAM.

sleeps with liis friend, wisdom that would have
greatly served the public need in the years to
come. The concepticjn (jf the age in which his
lot is cast present to the Poet's mind, is that of
one of stormy unrest and startling change ; the
whole fabric of religious thought and social life
agitated

*' With thousand shorks that come and g'o,"

an age full of eager enthusiasm, but full like-
wise of danger. What might not one so highly
endowed, at once so wise and so firm, have been
to it ! Not only '* a pillar steadfast in the storm,"
but, when the time was ripe for the change, a
power to give a new and higher direction to
thought and life ;

" A lever to u[:lift the earth
And roll it in another course."

CXIV.

Wisdom inclusive of reverp:nce and charity
preferable to knowledge. — both met in

ARTHUR.

We have here one of the most important
poems in In Memoriam, so far as making us
acquainted with the thought ot Tennyson on

CANTO CXTV.

219

the great problems of life. It lacks the ex-
quisite beauty and the musical rhythm of many
of the p(jems. Several of the stanzas, indeed,
are far from musical ; for our Poet they are
rough and broken. J3ut what the piece lacks in
smoothness, it gains in force. The Poet be-
comes here again the prophet, and puts his
readers on their guard against the loud preten-
sions of knowledge.

There is, however, no indiscriminate abuse
of knowledge ; on the contrary, the poem opens
with a warm commendation of her, such as
comes fittingly from the pen of one who was
more deeply interested in the advancing science
of the time than any English poet of his age.
By "knowledge" we are to understand that
acquaintance with the universe, its facts and its
laws, with man and with nature, which comes
through the senses and the understanding ; that
to which he has reference in the Prologue, when
he says :— " We have but faith, we cannot know,
for knowledge is of things we see." Tennyson,
as has been said, was himself an enthusiastic
lover of knowledge, and so says,

"Who shall rail
Ag-ainst her beauty ? May she mix
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix
Her pillars?"

I-

220

/N MEMOIUAM.

that must be, so as to stop her progress. " Let
her work prevail."

But like a half-L;ro\vn youth, vain of his
powers, but knowing neither what their limits
are, nor how to guide them, she is reckless, and

'* Leaps into the future chance,
Submit I inj^f all thing's to desire ; "

that is, she is governed by feeling, by passion,
knowing nothing v)f restraint or self-control.
Her insufficiency to be man's guide in life is
seen in this ; she has no consoling assurance
to give regarding the Hereafter;

" She cannot fight the fear of death."

Cut off from love and faith, she is not only
weak, but like some Minerva, sprung " from the
brain," not of Jupiter, but "of demons;" she is
dangerous, animated by a wild, unloving lust of
power. Knowledge must not lead, must be
content to walk side by side with wisdom, like
the younger child, | ,^

'* For she is earthly of the mind.
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul."

The distinction is not exactly that of intellect
and emotion or feeling, though it is not far from
it. The '* mind " as here used is that in man

CANTOS CXIK~-CXV. 221

which deals with the facts and laws of the phe-'
nomenal world ; the " soul " that in him which
IS the seat of faith and revere ce and charity.
His friend, from whom his thought is never
allowed to travel far, or travels at all, only to
bring from its journey some new tribute to his
worth, is the type in his eye of one who had
learned the secret of keeping knowledge and
wisdom in happy partnership.

" I would Ihe ^reat world grew like thee,
Who srewest not alone in power
And knowled^-e, but by year and hour
In reverence and charity."

cxv.

Thk pokts i-keling answering to the rrviv-
ing life of spring.

We have in this poem one of the most charm-
ing pictures of spring which English poetry
supplies. It is introduced not, of course, for its
own sake, but for the purpose of being set in a
certam relation to the Poet's own feeling. Dif-
ferent views may be taken as to wlikt that
relation exactly is. According to Tainsh, " the
poem strikes the keynote of the remainder of
this spiritual history. The summer of former

f^r^mm

222

/N ME MORI AM.

t I I

happiness is over and ^one, the winter of sad-
ness and mourning is past ; life reawakens in
the world, and the glorious summer once more
lies before. Regret is dead, or is changed to
hope. The words of Stopford Hrooke, who
ordinarily interprets the Poet with much wise
discrimination, are to the same port. " And
then last of all in the s()ring()f -36, (cxv., cxvi.)
regret has wholly died. The re-orient life of
the world is the symbol of the departure of the
wintry grief that looks back to a friendship
which seemed lost, and symbol also of the
gain of the new friendship that is to be.'
But it is more than doubtful whether it was the
intention of the poem to set the past and the
future in the exact relation to each other which
these interpretations of it ir 1y. It is not
doubted that the bitterness of ow or regret

is represented as over, when the Poet wrote the
lyric, but one may well doubt whether he meant
to signalize the death of regret and the birth of
hope, in saying,

"... my reji^ret
Becomes an April violet
And buds and blossoms like the rest."

Rather the Poet represents himself in these lines
as in full sympathy with the reviving life of

CANTO CXVf.

223

nature, and finds therefore the regretful sense
of loss which had been dormant for a time, re-
viving likewise within his breast. This is the
view of the poem taken by Genung and Mrs.
Chapman.

The various effects of spring, in earth, sea and
sky, as these appeal to the eye and to the ear ;
the fresh green of the hedge, the bloom of the
violet, the song of the lark, the flocks whitening
the fields, the milky sails floating in the breeze
on stream and sea, are given with striking
beauty. All these " wake answering chords in
the Poet's breast." The last stanza comes on
us with one of those surprises of tender feeling,
of which so many are found in In Memorian.
The lines have been already quoted. They
furnish a fine example of the blending of ex-
ternal nature and human feeling, which is one
of the we, known characteristics of our Poet.

" Now fades the last long streak of snow " (ist stanza); "streak."
often the form whieh the snow assumes just ere it disappe.irs.

"Now burg:eons every maze of quick " (2nd stanza); "burgeons."
huds or sprouts. " Every maze, etc.; " thickly intertwined plants.

"The lark becomes a sightless song" (2nd stanza); the beauty ot
the expression will be noticed.

'>«B

224

TN MEMO RI AM.

CXVI.

Regret and hope mingle ; hope preponderates.

The scope and contents of this poem are
given very fairly by Davidson in these words :
" Blossoming regret " is not the only flower in
the spring-garden of the Poet's heart. F'aith
and hope blossom too. The music, stir and
life of spring

" Cry throug'h the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair."

The Poet's sympathy with nature is such, that
the reviving life of spring stirs feeling within
him, the feeling of regret, first of all (cxv.) ; but
that is not the only feeling, not even the
strongest; "Not all regret." If out of the
past, the loved face still looks, and the loved
voice still speaks, that look, and that voice now
awaken less of regret, more of hope ; the "bond
that is to be " is more eagerly desired than the
severance that has been is regretted.

"Yet less ot'sorrv)\v livos in nie,

P'or days otiiappy comniinie dead ;
Less yearning- for the friendship ^<^{\,
Than some strong- bond which is to be."

'Tlie crescent prime," (ist stanza); ttie growing first part of the

year.

"Still speali to nio of me aiul mine,
sister as well as of himself.

(jnil slani!;i); that is, of liis

CANTO CXVIL

225

CXVII.

Present separation will only enhance the
delight of reunion.

In this brief poem but a poem charged with
intense feeh'ng, the very separation which has
been so touchingly mourned, is viewed with a
kind of thankful rapture, as tending to intensify
the desire for reunion, now regarded as certain,
and to enhance its "delight a hundredfold."'
when it shall be realized. The lapse of time is
even viewed as having this happy result for its
end ; that lapse, whether measured by the sand-
glass, or the sun-dial, by the clock on the wall,
or the sun in the heavens.

" Delight a hundredfold accrue,

For every gfrain of sand that runs.
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels.

And all the courses of the suns."

.l<

2 26

TN ME MORI AM.

CXVIII.

/ I

'mm

\ '11

The changes through which the earth has
passed from ch^os to human life carry
in them the assurance, or the hope of
prolonged existence and continuous
progress for the individual and for

THE RACE.

Nature as contemplated formerly Iv., Ivi,, was
charged with suggestions of despair in regard to
immortality ; as viewed now it is pregnant with
hope, alike for the race and the individual.
The successive stages through which, as science
teaches, this planet has passed, *' the solid
earth " arising from a sea of fire, and under-
going one change after another, until at length
man appeared, the crown, thus far, of nature —
all this continuous progress from lower to
higher — suggests the thought of a like progress
uninterrupted by death, for man. This analogy
between nature in her ever-upward progress,
and man, is viewed in the poem in a twofold
connection ; first in relation to the departed,
awakening the trust,

CANTO CXVIII. 227

" • • • that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends."

and second, in relation to the living man, who
is summoned to arise and "type this work of
time within himself from more to more," and
thus to become

" The her;<'.4 of a hij^her race,
And of himself in higfher place."

The agonies of nature, realized in fire and flood,
are to find their counterpart in man, moving
forward and upward,

*' Crowned with attributes of woe
Like g^lories."

The reference in these words, is no doubt, to
the place which belongs to suffering in further-
ing this upward movement. The figure of ore
purified by fire, and afterwards wrought into
articles of strength and beauty, is then em-
ployed to illustrate the process by which
character is transformed and moulded, and is
carried through with a skill and a felicity of
conception and expression, unsurpassed by any
other passage in the Poem. Man crowned as
above is to show,

228 IN MR MORI AM.

/ I

" That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug' from central gloom,
And hearted hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,

And battered with the shocks of doom

To shape and use."

The ore is purified and moulded by forces ex-
ternal to itself ; man in part at least by a force
within. He is summoned therefore to

** ... Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."

The lower nature, that which betrays a certain
kinship with the beast, is to be subdued ; the
higher, that which shows its kinship with God,
is to become ascendant.

CXIX.

The home of Arthur now revisited without

GRIEF.

This brief poem follows the former very
naturally. With the assurance reached that
his friend has entered on an unending and ever-
advancing life, with the regret of severance

CANTOS CXIX.—CXX.

22g

retiring in presence of the hope of reunion, he
can revisit, whether in fancy or in fact, Arthur's
old home, not now with pain (compare vii.), but
with delight,

* . . . not as one that weeps
I come once more."

It is early morning. The quiet of the city is
still unbroken ; save by the chirp of birds and
the stray wagon, loaded with the sweet-smel-
ling hay and suggesting the summer meadow.
Within his breast, too, there is the calm of sweet
and grateful memories, and the summer of
sunny hopes. In this new and happier mood,
he can say as his friend rises to his imagination^

" And in my thougfhts with scarce a si^h
I take the pressure of thine hand."

cxx.

Renewed assertion of his confidence in the
hereafter.

The words with which this brief poem opens
— " I trust I have not wasted breath "—show us
the importance which the Poet attached to his

230

IN ME MO RT AM.

work, as a vindication of a future life. This is
seen, too, in the last lines of the stanza :

^ I

"... not in vain
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with death. "i

These lines are entirely misunderstood by
Genung, as is indeed the whole force of this
brief poem. The fight is by him supposed to
be " a fight of faith with death," and such a
fight, it is said, " proves man infinitely more
than any mere materialistic therory can ex-
plain." That may be true, or it may not ; it is
not what is expressed in the lines. What the
Poet will express is the confidence, or at least
the hope, that the arguments he has adduced in
favor of a future life are not of no account —
that his fight with death at one point and
another in the course of his work has not been
vain. He thinks he has conquered death. To
understand this claim, which the lines quoted,
advance, it is only necessary to remember that
death is only, and in the full sense of the word,
death, when it is viewed as terminating man's
personal existence.

The Poet's hope of immortality rests on his
belief that the materialistic view of man is

I. See I Cor. 15 : T^i.

CANTO CXX,

231

baseless ; or at least an opposite view of man's
nature is indispensable to his hope and is what
gives life all its value.

((

I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries ; "

"mockeries," that is because we imagine our-
selves to be something more and higher than
on that supposition we reaJly are.

If science could disprove the possession of a
spiritual nature by man, if the Poet could believe
that man was " wholly brain," that thought in
him was a mere function of nerve-fibres, then,
indeed, his hope of any life beyond would
vanish, and with its disappearance, his interest
in science and in all else here.

«i

I would not stny."

All that gives nobility to life has in that case

gone.

The last stanza, "Let him, the wiser man
who springs hereafter, etc.," is spoken ironically.
The whole poem is a protest against material-
ism, but, as Tennyson himself says, as quoted
by Dr. Gatty, " not against evolution." The
consistency of this distinction will depend on
the sense in which the term " evolution " is

232

TN MEMORIAM.

employed. When in the last line he says,
*' But I was born to other things," the force
would seem to be, that he finds himself pos-
sessed by nature of an instinct, which is irrecon-
cilably opposed to a materialist view of man.

CXXI.

" HeSPER - PHOSPHOR. — GRIEF HAS SLOWLY
CHANGED ITS MOOD, AS THE EVENING STAR
PASSES INTO THE MORNING STAR." — F.W.R.

This has been pronounced to be the most
finished poem of conscious art in In Memoriam.
It supplies another example of the skill with
which the Poet makes use of Nature to reflect
his changing and changed feelings. Phosphor,
the Morning Star, heralding the sun's rise,

** Behind thee comes the greater lisrht ; "

and looking down on the awakening life of the
world, is identical with Ilesper, the Evening
Star, which had watched the sun descend be-
neath the wave, and the active life of man go to
sleep ; it is the same planet Venus, however
widel}' contrasted the aspects of human life are
as seen by it, in the evening and in the dawn.

CANTOS CXXI.-CXXIL 2^,^

He, too, like that planet, is unchanged. « His
love IS there, and his loneliness, and the 'deep
relations ' of his grief are ever the same " (Mrs.
Chapman), but his experience has altered. The
gloom of evening becoming -ever dim and
dimmer," has passed from the world to his
eye, and the brightness of morning has arisen
on It.

"Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last.
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is chang-ed ; thou art the same."

The conception is not an original one with the
1 oet, It is found already in Greek poetry, but
the detail with which it is wrought out, the
delineation by a {^v^ vivid touches of the open-
ing and the closing day, is equally simple and
beautiful.

CXXII.

Reminiscence of and longing for blessedness

OF THE ECSTATIC KIND.

The reference in the first stanza may either
be to the experience described in xcv., where
he says " The living soul was flashed on mine

/■

l/ri i

> 1

234

TN MEMOKIAM.

and mine in his was wound," or, more gener-
ally, to the period when he was still struggling
with rebellious feeling, and his skv was dark-
ened by the sense of irreparable loss — " while I
rose up against my doom " — the loss of his
friend, *' and yearned to burst the folded
gloom ; " the gloom composed of many folds
and thus thick. The former reference seems
the more probable. On this supposition we
must regard him as here recalling the occasion,
when his soul was in some way so brought into
contact with " the living soul," as to be lifted
above the gloom which lay on it, as to have his
creative imagination called into play, and to be
made to feel the essential and eternal order and
harmony which prevail. He yearns to have the
experience renewed, to have his friend

*' . Enter in at breast and brow,"

that is at heart and head, at the seat of feeling
and the seat of thought, and thus through the
inspiring presence, " as in the former flash of
joy " — the occasion vvhen on reading the letters
of his friend, he was transported into a state of
ecstasy — he longs to '' slip the thoughts of life
and death," and rise on the wings of fancy into
the realms of pure being. In this state of
ecstatic gladness.

235

CANTOS cxxii.-cxxirr.

" All the breeze of fancy blows

i.e., blooms,

And every dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard iightning-s deeply \r\o\\,
And every thought breaks out a rose."

This will be the happy result of the re-entrance
of his friend into his life, into his thou^^ht and
feeling, now that he is no longer rebellious with
his doom, and no longer under the thick gloom
of grief. All nature will put on brightness and
beauty to his eye.

CXXIII.

Love abides and the spirit in which it

DWELLS, amid ALL THE CHANGES OF THE
MATERIAL UNIVERSE.

The Poet reverts again to the startling changes
which the material universe is ever undergoing.
Some of these are graphically pictured ; the
deep rolls where the tree grew ; the rush and
roar of traffic is heard, where once the depths
of ocean lay in their mibroken stillness ; the
granite hills change their forms, and "the solid
lands melt like mist," or come and go like
clouds. What hope of permanence there either
for love or for the spirit which cherishes it t

1 i^
> I

236

IN ME MORI AM.

None, and the time was (Iv., Ivi.), when the
sight of all this state of flux, this disintegration
of the most solid objects of nature, alarmed
him, threatened to quench the hope of immor-
tality within his breast. Now, as a spiritual
being he contemplates it unmoved.

" But in my spirit will I dwell,

And dream n)y dream, and hold it true ;
For thoujj;)) my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing- farewell."

This brief poem is a very important one, in the
light which it throws on the situation to which
the Poet came in the end. The presence in
him of a spiritual nature of which he is directly
conscious, and the spiritual affections of which
that nature is capable, forbid to him the idea of
extinction of being in death. Amid all change
which we witness, amid all change even which
we experience, there is one thing fixed and
abiding, that which we call spirit. In this
abiding principle, therefore, he will " dwell and
dream " his "dream ;" that must be, his dream
of reunion with the departed ; "and hold it
true." Having such a nature, extinction of
personal being, eternal separation from the
object of affection is unthinkn)*'

'* I cannot think ^ t^*' >>

CANTO CXXIl,

cxxiv.

The heart asserts god in face ok the doibt
OF the sense and of thk intellect.

The consciousness of a spiritual nature, and
the belief in immortality, are very closely con-
nected with belief in a supreme creating and
controlling power, that is, in God. The poem
before us deals with this belief; a belief which
when attained is " our dearest faith ; " when
shaken " our ghastliest doubt" This

" Power in darkness whom we guess,"

is not discoverable by the sense, nor is He
capable of apprehension by the understanding.
Intellect and sense are alike inadequate to givxj
us God, to assure us of His existence or to
determine His character ;

" I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye,
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun."

But if amid this helplessness of sense and of
intellect to ^\vq him God, the Poet was at any
time disposed to entertain the thought of a
Godless world ;

'immaammmmmmm

f
^ I

238 /;V MRhTORTAM.

" Heard an ever-breaking' shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep ;"

the heart within would rise in revolt, and ex-
claim, " I have felt." We are not told what
exactly the feeling was, which asserted itself in
face of the doubt of the intellect, and ultimately
triumphed over that doubt. Perhaps the Poet
himself would have had difficulty in defining it.
It may have been the keen, unmistakable, and
inextinguishable sense of the incompleteness of
life without God, or, that sense of the infinite
which is borne in upon the soul betimes ; Mrs.
Chapman terms it, " the perennial need of the
universal human heart."

" No, like a child in doubt and fear ; "

This " No " is the protest of the heart or of the
spiritual nature against the denials of the sense
or the understanding ; coming short, indeed, of
resolving difficulties, but important nevertheless,

" That blind clamor made me wise ; *'

"clamor" it was, the confused but persistent
voice of inward feeling ; "blind clamor," as not
springing from or guided by intellect ; never-
theless it " made " him *' wise," saved him from
the folly of denying God, at the bidding of the

CANTOS CXXIV.—CXXV.

239

difficulties and doubts which the understandi
will raise.

" Then was I as a child thai cries,
But, cry'xnvr, knows his father near."

These lines surely furnish a touchino- picture of
man's present situation, assured indeed of God,
but confronted by difficulties insurmountable
by the cold reason.

"And what I am," ori<rinally written "what
I seem," " beheld airain what w," that is, God,
real being, as distinguish ':d from phenomenal
existence, ''and no man understands," the
incomprehensible One ; " and out of darkness,''
in which He is shrouded, "came the hands that
reach through nature, moulding rnen." We see
His working, we see not Him.

cxxv.

Hope and love not wanting even when the

MOST regretful LAYS WERE SUNG.

This poem, which is happily named by
Genung the ministry of Poesy, is extremely
important as shewing us the light in which we
are to regard some of the darjcer and more
despairing lyrics of In Memoriam. The Poet

240

/N MEMORIAM.

will have us know, that the doubts ex[)ressed in
these were not always his own, that in the dark-
est hour hope was not extinct,

"She did but look through dimmei eyes ; "

" In his deepest self the Poet has never lost
hope,"

" Or love, but play'd with gracious lies,"

only played with them, did not really entertain
them, and " play'd with them, because he felt
so fixt in truth." Whether the strain v/ere sad,
or sweet and strong, love inspired it, love in the
first place to his friend, a love which is to abide
with him till death shall re-unite them,

((

. . till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps.
And this electric force, that keeps
A thousand pulses dancing, fail."

CXXVI.

Love is king.

This brief poem is at once beautiful and
difficult of interpretation ; difficult, that is,
when we endeavor to give definiteness to the
thought involved. Mrs. Chapman, who so often
expresses accurately and gracefully the main

CANTO CXXVI.

241

lost

purport of the lyrics, seems at fault here Her
reading of the poem is " Love is and was his
Lord and King—no finite sovereign— but that
benign unfathomable Power to whom he conse-
crates his Elegy." These words, if we are not
mistaken, misinterpret both the poem before
us and the Prologue. The reference in the
Prologue, as has been already seen, is to no
mere impersonal " Power," however benign and
unfathomable, but to the personal Christ, in
whom perfect love is embodied. And the m'ain,
if not the exclusive reference of the Poet here is
to the love which has its seat in his own breast
and has for its object, the friend whose high
qualities had been idealized by death. If this
love h.s, perhaps, also to be viewed as typical
of that love which he has come to recognize as
the controlling power in the universe, evidently
this cannot be regarded as anything but a sub-
ordinate thought in the poem. Genung seems
to give its force correctly. His words are,
" What has all along been cherished as a spirit
within, to guide and bless and interpret, is now
recognized as the masterpower of the life."

Love, in the first place for his friend idealized
by death, but widening out to embrace others
as well, has been his inspiration and solace. If

242

/A^ MEMORIAM,

light has come to him on the dark problems
which death raises, it has been shed by or im-
parted to love ; if faith in the great spiritual
verities has been maintained, it has been due to
love; if there has been force and sweetness in
his song, it is because love breathed its spirit.

" Love is and was my lord and king',
And will be."

The fellowship with his friend is maintained
through love. All messages from him came
through or to love, and there are messages of
wider import. He hears

'• . . at times a sentinel

Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space.
In the deep nig-ht, that all is well."

CXXVII.

•' All is well."

This poem begins, where the former closed,
taking up its last words, and explaining and
qualifying them. " All is well," not for him
alone and his friend, but for the world, which
under the guidance of Him who is love, im-
mortal love, is moving an amid convulsion and
s 'rms to a peaceful and happy issue.

)blems
or im-
)iritual
due to
less in
Dirit.

itained

came

Lges of

closed,

and

him

hich

i-e,

im-

and

CANTO CXXVII.

•' All is well, thougrh faith and form
Be sur.der'd in the ni^ht of fear ; "

243

The " form '' of faith, as we have already seen
IS those definite doctrinal propositions in which
men's conceptions of God, and the spiritual
verities generally, had come to be expressed
The Poet contemplates the loss of these, as tak-
ing place in the case of many «' in the night of
tear or doubt, and yet the faith itself^*n its
substance as retained by them. Thus far
therefore, "all is well," however appearances
might seem to belie it.

The Poet anticipates, too, great and violent
changes in society, fierce revolutions in which
all that IS most stable shall be upturned, and in
the accomplishment of which the extremes of
society, the very rich and the very poor, shall
especially suffer. These impending changes are
described in language, highly figurative and of
great force.

" The brute earth lig-htens to the sky,
And the g-reat ^on sinks in blood.

And compass'd by the fires of hell ;"
The reference in the last line mav perhaps be
to the violent passions as well as to the dreadful
sufferings of the time foreseen.

But " to those that hear, a deeper voice across

I i

/ 1

244

/N MEMORIAM.

the storm " proclaims the spread of truth and
justice ; truth and justice between man and
man. " Things that are made " — the institutions
of human device and workmanship — " are
shaken, that those things which cannot be
shaken may remain." And he, his friend, look-
ing with the light of the higher world in his
eye, and knoiving therefore, not simply believ-
ing in, but knowing, the goal of good to which
all is tending, smiles at the convulsions and
conflicts by which that goal is being reached.

CXXVIII.
" The struggle and victory of love with

DOUBT have given AN INSIGHT INTO THE
COURSE OF HUMAN THINGS AND TAUGHT
TRUST IN THE FINAL ISSUE." — F.W.R.

The love which grappled with Death and
overcame him ; which not only defied death to
quench it, but which in its quenchless vigor
helped the Poet to maintain his faith in God
and the Hereafter, spite of death's ravages —
this love out of which faith in God and the
Hereafter is in a manner born — has as its
" comrade " " the lesser faith," that, namely,
'* which is concerned with the course of human

CANTO CXXVIIl.

245

affairs, as distinguished from the eternal reah*-
ties." This '' lesser faith " thus accompanied is
"not overborne by present confusions," is not
upset by the degradation and the disappear-
ance of imperial races, such as those of Greece
and Rome; "no doubt vast eddies in the
flood ; " it holds on to the hope of a happy
consummation notwithstanding. And what it
expects is not repetitions of the past in altered
forms; if this were all which "the wild hours"
bring, as it sometimes appears to be,

" To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,"

useless, viz., on the supposition that no real
progress was being reached,

** To fool the crowd with gflorious lies,"

lies, that is, which feed the crowd's love of glory
or,

" To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with ^-rass a feudal tower ; "

a fine figure to set forth the mere external
adornment of institutions or of usages, the
essential injustice of which remains unchanged,
—if this were all— then his scorn might well
fall on these " wild hours." But what it expects
IS real progress towards a goal of ultimate good.

246

IN MEMORIAM.

Nay, with eyes made wise by love, the Poet
sees in part, sees dimly

" That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil ciJoperant to an end."

I \

CXXIX.

His friend minglks with all his expecta-
tions OF COMING GOOD.

In this poem the departed friend is addressed
in terms of the most tender and reverent affec-
tion ; terms which find their only explanation
in the fact that he has become idealized to the
imagination o{ the poet by death. He is the
same, and yet he is changed. His noble traits
of character are irradiated by the glory of
immortality ; while in the Poet's case, all trace
of sorrow has vanished, and there remains only
an intense, ennobling and undying affection.

The explanation of the widely contrasting
expressions applied to the departed should not
be difficult.

'* So far, so near, in woe and weal ; "

"so far," as having passed beyond sight into
another scene of being; "so near," i.e.^ to thought
and feeling, while remote to sense ;

" Known and unknown ; human, divine

CANTO CXXJX.

247

" known," as still retaining the individuality
which had become familiar in the earthly life ;
" unknown," since the individuality has been
inconceivably transfigured; "human" as ever,
retaining all the human feelings; "divine," as
" mixt with God " (cxxx.), in his thought ;

"Loved deepHer, diirklier understood ; "

" loved dceplier," more intensely loved, since
removed from sight : " darklier understood,"
less fully comprehended, since eternity has
claimed him ;

" O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higfher ; "

that is, the object of most ardent affection to
the Poet, when he is most alive to the great
moral distinctions which obtain. It must ever
be so, when the love is really moral.

" Behold, T dream a dream of good,
And ming-le all the world with thee."

It is of the very nature of true and ardent love,
one of its most common workings, thus to
carry the thought of its object, and all the
more if that object has been removed out of
life, into any hope or experience of good.
There is, however, something more specific

248

IN MEMO R I AM,

here. The good of which the Poet dreams foi
the world is moral good, the ascendency as we
have seen, of truth and justice ; the dream of
it could accordingly all the more readily recall
him, who was the type to the writer of all he
would have man become.

All this is far short of what some of the
interpreters of Tennyson, with what appear
Pantheistic leanings, have found in this and the
following poem. For example, Genung says :
"The immortal friend, in whom Divine Love
has assumed a mysterious personality, is ad-
dressed as the type from which the world's
ideal may be interpreted." While Davidson,
going still farther, says: "The Poet now ad-
dresses his friend as an omnipresent spirit."
There is nothing in the poem to justify, cer-
tainly nothing tt necessitate, such an interpre-
tation.

CANTO CXXX.

249

CXXX.

His prksknck felt evrrywhk

RR IN NATURE.

This IS a companion poem to the precedinjr
01^, reasserting and amplifying the truth with
which that poem closed. Nature, as observed
everywhere recalls his friend. That friend is
present to his thought, his fancy, but surely to
his thought and fancy only, in ''the rolling air"
the running stream, the rising and the setting
sun. Tainsh says : " The dear, dead friend has
become to the imagination of him who on earth
loves him one with Nature and with God
humanizing them, yet not losing his own per-
sonality, but in that personality tender and
near as ever, rising to the divine, and pervading
the universal. Seen in all things, felt at all
moments, he makes all things and all moments
dear and holy by his presence."

" What art thou then ? I cannot g-uess ;
But tho* I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not. therefore, love thee less." '

These words, it must be admitted, have a very
Pantheistic cast, but as the personality of his

I 1

I
I I

250

IN MEAfONlAM.

friend evidently remains unbroken, and is the
object of a love as real, only vaster than
before, the Pantheism cannot be more than
seeming, the blending with God and Nature
ran only be in the fancy or imagination of the
Poet. The last stanza corroborates this view :

*' Far off thoii 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.

Faith in the spiritual and the divine, in-
capable OF establishment by logical

PROOF, IS CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH A
PURE AND WELL-ORDERED LIFE.

In Memoriam ends with a prayer, or what
seems such. The " living will " which is in-
voked, might very naturally be regarded as the
will of the Eternal, the will of God. It is so
taken by Mrs. Chapman, who says : ** The Poet's
prayer ascends to that Eternal Power, who is
over all, and through all, and in us all, that we
may be purified." Unfortunately for this view,
the Poet himself in a note inserted in Dr.
Gatty's book, gives as the meaning " free will

CANTO CXXXL

i5»

in man." In this statement of his meaninj? he
was anticipated by Davidson, who says the
prayer is addressed to that '•heaven-descended"
"living will," which is the essence of human
personality, and which shall endure,

*' When al! that seems shall suffer shock."

The Poet summoned this " Iivinj,T will " to " rise
like a fountain" in "the spiritual rock," with
obvious reference to i. Cor. lo: 4, "flow thro'
our deeds and make them pure," so that with
action and character purified, our cry may rise
from these earthly scenes

" To One that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,

And all we flow from, soul in soul."

Obviously the time to which the two closing
lines point, is that of death ; death beinjr
viewed not as the absorption of all souls into
God, a conception expressly repudiated in poem
xlvii., but as the close union of all with one
another in God, the union even with the living,
from whom in death " we flow."

Till then, the highest attainment within

2s2

IN MEMORIAM.

I ■

reach is to " trust the truths," which are mean-
while incapable of intellectual proof or
vetification. This trust, according to the view
presented in this poem, is not one to be easily
or indolently reached. It comes, if it come at
all, by the living will expressing itself in pure
deeds and exercising full self-control. The
closing poem of the series, therefore, bears
testimony to the intensely moral character of
the faith, which emancipates the soul from
doubt and fear, and carries with it the assur-
ance of future bliss.

THE EPILOGUE OR EPITHALAMIUM.

This Epilogue is not, properly speaking, a
part of In Memoriam. Its occasion, its subject,
one may say, was the marriage of a younger
sister of the Poet, Cecilia, about the year 1842,
to Edmund Law Lushington, for some time
Professor of Greek in the University of Glas-
gow. Tennyson himseU says, '' it was meant
to be a kind of Divina Commedia, ending
cheerfully." The friend, whom he has en-
shrined in his Poem, is not forgotten in this
Epilogue. The regret for him is dead ; the
love for him has grown. The bride was one,

CANTO CXXXI,

253

whose opening beauty as a child he admired,
His silent, speechless presence at the marriage
is imagined. And he reappears in the end as
the type of the better race for which the world
waits. The last lines are in complete harmony
with the thought which he has reached towards
the close of the Poem, and up to its highest
level in loftiness.

** That friend of mine, who lives in God,

T.hat God, which ever lives and loves,

One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.