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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. J ur IN DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF 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. I 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 X. 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 1 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. i 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, i ** And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness, let it grow." us 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." 8 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 ]/ \ lO 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. P' 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; U 12 IN MEMORIAM. I I 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 5 i i •'•■ i iS $ " Let love clasp grief lest both," CANTO I. 13 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. 15 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." i6 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. ^7 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 \\ 'i T^ ■^ i8 IN MEMO Rl AM. I 1 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, 19 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?" I P 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, T 20 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. 21 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. i " With morning- wakes the will and cries, Thou shah not be the fool of loss." V. 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 i 22 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." m CANTOS v.— VI. 23 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. i 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 I H 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. 25 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. if ■'I •J \\h' r . 26 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. 27 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." i d ^, 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 m 28 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. 29 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." 11 ii X. 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 ll 30 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. 31 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 $ 32 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 i ill f Ht (( • . and haste away O'er ocean mirrors rounded large," /I 34 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, 35 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 \^ f! 11 36 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 \ V 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, 37 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 a lii 38 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. 39 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. m \\\ ¥ 40 IN MEMCRFAM. I 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 n ¥ 42 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 MllWt '/. CANTOS X 11 1.— .Will. 43 viewed as in some way affecting the fates of men. Compare " ill-starr'd." 11 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 id i Ill \i * 44 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. 45 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 ! I 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 li 46 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. 47 /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 i' 48 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, 49 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 u\ i tf /I k ' 50 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. 51 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! " \ V. i* •jm
  • - 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 ] : r 64 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. G 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. 6c 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 1 I ( 66 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. 67 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." 68 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 f ■ ~- ' _ 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' ) ■ yo 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. 71 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 X A "Whose loves in higher love endure," It 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 7a IN MEMORIAM, .^ K 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. 1^ CANTO XXXIII. 73 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 ( J 1/ -♦se^' 74 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 ^S / ^^ V^ '/I V£ w CANTOS xxxiir.—xxxi V, 75 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 - ( r 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 ; fi'- '■ p* '■ < IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 7 ^ A // &"< .<> 4? L^^ 1.0 I.I ^^ IM 11111^ 1 2.0 1.8 m 1.25 1.4 1.6 M 6" — ► ff w /} m. % & e-l -p ej .^, '^# .'> '^a / ///, Photographic Sciences Corporation 8o 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. 8i 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 6 ■r 82 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. 83 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." 1/ 84 IN MEMORIAM. \\k i II 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. 85 : of ; it He 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 86 IN MEMO RI AM. I I 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 ; K . . 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." 88 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. h ^\ 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 89 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 i( . 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. h i n 90 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. if m 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 i CANTO XLII. 91 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 I i\ n 92 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. I CANTO XLin. 93 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";! U 3( 94 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/. 95 >» 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 N 96 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 yj CANTO XLIV. 97 dec! the jred Dan- E s- 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 T1 :>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. r 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 of 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 i i Ma I04 IN MEMORIAM. r^ 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. \f io6 IN MEMORIAM, ! k 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," m 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. n 'f5 •-"p!* 1 08 IN MEMORIAM L. I \, 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 ?" i\ f'< no 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 T m 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). or " 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 It ' ii .,' I ii6 IN MEMORIAM. I "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." tl 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 I 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 It 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 i I20 TN MEMORIAM. (\ l\ 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 n. II 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). i f 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". II If 124 fN MEMORIAM, I, 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. y 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 i^ rl: I 126 IN MEMOKIAM. 6 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. u 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 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 II 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. 1 fl 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 r 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 t I 1 136 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. I 138 IN MEMORIAM. LXIX. Mis (;uikk, a crown ov thorns, is chani;k[) INTO m:ak by thk glory <:^v a hani\ or 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 at 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 •' 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 U I 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. .^, % ,0. Q -,%t,%^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) y // 4i. <. %° w- / (/. i.O I.I IM III 2.5 IIIIM |||||Z2 1^ mil 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" _ ^ V2 <9 // ^;. VI c^. c*] ^a / O 7 M Photographic Sciences Corporation 4" <$s iV k iV \ \ ^v 6^ U % 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 % £P l^- 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. T 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 ft 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 H 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 J 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," i f 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 I 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. I' %' 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, k. 1; • i 1 ST ( 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." i 1 86 IN MEMORIAM. I 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 \\ « M 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— 5, 'f 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. 1 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 I 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. I' :] V 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. .1 f 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. c. 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 r ( 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. N' 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 n ^if ;; I 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^'^ i| !! r ^ .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." i 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 ■ ). IT II 15 111 F 208 IN MEMO RI AM. h 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 M f 210 IN ME MORI AM. hi 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. m CANTO CVIII. 211 11 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^*" h 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." it M r h "iB= 2r6 /N ME MO RT AM. The poem is a sweet and gracious picture of a character itself gracious and beautiful. 1 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- 1 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 h tt tf 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. 1 '>«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." <5 .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 F 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, m 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 ng 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