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 A KEY TO LORD TENNYSON'S 
 "IN MEMORIAM."
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS, 
 LONDON : YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN 
 NEW YORK: 6<5, FIFTH AVENUE, AND 
 BOMBAY: 53, ESPLANADE ROAD 
 CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTOX, BELL & CO
 
 Vfafctrv??/. (^z/^zr/ts 
 -/^^ 

 
 A KEY TO 
 
 LORD TENNYSON'S 
 
 "IN MEMORIAM" 
 BY ALFRED GATTY, D.D. 
 
 VICAR OF ECCLESFIELD 
 
 AND 
 SUB-DEAN OF YORK 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS 
 1900
 
 First Published, 1 88 1 . 
 
 Second Edition, 1885,- Third Edition, 1891^ 
 Fourth Edition, 1894,- Reprinted, 1897, 1900.
 
 IBeDicatton. 
 
 TO THE CHERISHED MEMORY OF THE MOTHER 
 OF MY CHILDREN, I DEDICATE THIS BRIEF 
 LABOUR OF LOVE. A. G. 
 
 2052604
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN any one has survived the allotted 
 age of man, there is a long past to remem- 
 ber, and a short future to expect ; and it 
 is the period of youth which is then found 
 most clearly recorded on the tablets of the 
 brain the days, probably, of school and 
 college, and the first establishment of a 
 self-made home. 
 
 Middle life, with its work and anxieties, 
 is by comparison only feebly retained ; as 
 though there had been found no room for 
 fuller records on the preoccupied mind. 
 But, in the indistinct interval of forty or fifty 
 years, the loss by death of those whom we 
 have loved cannot be forgotten ; and when 
 one dearer than any friend is also taken
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 away, then, under such bereavement, may 
 be found an amount of comfort and sup- 
 port in the Poet Laureate's In Memoriam 
 which no other secular writing can supply. 
 
 To me, this Poem has been an addi- 
 tional buttress to the faith, which my edu- 
 cation and sacred profession had sustained. 
 
 When a great mind, at once so specula- 
 tive 'and so untrammelled, runs over the 
 whole field of thought, and comes to the 
 conviction that the hope of the Christian 
 is the one sure prospect beyond the grave ; 
 this imparts to the mourner a consolation, 
 to which nothing earthly can compare. 
 
 My own interest in this great Poem has 
 been farther enhanced by the fact that I 
 and mine, long years ago, enjoyed friendly 
 intercourse with the Poet at Freshwater ; 
 and this was afterwards renewed in the 
 lives of his younger son and mine. 
 
 The incidents of the Poem have also 
 slightly touched me, inasmuch as I was a 
 contemporary of Arthur H. Hallam, at
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 Eton ; and I was in Chapman's house, at 
 Charterhouse, with Edmund Law Lushing- 
 ton, when he was, at a very early age, cap- 
 tain of the school. The associates of 
 Hallam's schooldays I well recall, for they 
 included several who became eminent in 
 the service of the state, and in the ranks of 
 literature; and most of these have now 
 passed away. In Memoriam has thus, in 
 a measure, been the means of recalling my 
 own early youth ; and I have felt that the 
 subject of the Poem befitted the study of 
 my advanced life. 
 
 The scenery of In Memoriam being 
 principally laid either at Somersby or 
 Clevedon the birth-place of the Poet or 
 the burial-place of his friend I had long 
 been desirous of visiting these somewhat 
 retired spots; and my wish has at length 
 been gratified. 
 
 After sleeping at Horncastle, we drove 
 six miles across a flat uninteresting country, 
 where the fields betrayed signs of agricul-
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 tural depression, until a short steep descent 
 brought us into a more sheltered and 
 wooded region, where was the sound of 
 running water ; a and the little old church, 
 with its square stumpy moss-covered tower, 
 told us that we were in the village of 
 Somersby 
 
 " the well-beloved place 
 Where first we gazed upon the sky." 
 
 And one could well fancy that the roomy 
 comfortable residence, in which the Rev. 
 Dr. Tennyson reared a large family, was a 
 cherished home, and is still held in fond 
 remembrance. 
 
 This house is not the Rectory, though 
 for a long time it was so tenanted : it is 
 rather the Manor House of the Burton 
 family, who for centuries b have owned the 
 land and been patrons of the living. The 
 
 The brook alone far off was heard." P. xcv. s. 2. 
 
 b In Bag Enderby Church is a stone memorial tablet to the 
 Burton family, let into the wall, and dated 1591. Upon it are 
 carved, in bold relief, parents and children in a kneeling pos- 
 ture. It has a Latin motto, signifying, that all begins with 
 the dust of the earth, and ends with it.
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 present possessor now occupies it, and he 
 received our visit of interested enquiry with 
 much courtesy and kindness. 
 
 The house stands a little back from the 
 road, with a drive to the door which may 
 be called the front entrance ; though the 
 principal rooms are behind, and look into 
 the garden. Here are the 
 
 " Witch-elms that counterchange the floor 
 Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; " 
 
 and the lawn may still be called flat, (see 
 note, page 96), though it slopes slightly 
 downward with the natural leaning of the 
 ground. The four poplars have been 
 blown down. 
 
 Beyond the lawn stretches the garden, 
 and yet a little farther is a pond, on which, 
 they say, the young inhabitants of the 
 pseudo-Rectory learned to skate. The 
 largest room in this Manor House was 
 added by Dr. Tennyson : it is the dining- 
 room, with an open groined roof; and the
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 walls of it are now covered with apparently 
 old paintings heirlooms, one may sup- 
 pose, of the Burton family. 
 
 In the centre of the hamlet, where three 
 roads meet, with a guide-post directing the 
 wayfarer to Louth, Horncastle, and Alford, 
 there stands a fine witch-elm ; and at Bag 
 Enderby, also in the middle of the road, is 
 another still larger witch-elm, with a huge 
 arm that craves support. Both these trees 
 were carried and planted, about a century 
 ago, by the grandfather of Mr. Burton, the 
 present proprietor of the estate. 
 
 Somersby and Bag Enderby are hamlets 
 about one quarter of a mile apart, and are 
 held by one Rector, who now resides at the 
 latter place. Their ancient churches are 
 structures of more strength than beauty; 
 and though neither of them is larger than 
 a good sized chamber, it quite suffices for 
 the few inhabitants. At both churches we 
 found the key in the door, and could 
 therefore investigate the sacred buildings
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 at our lei-sure ; and coming from a popu- 
 lous manufacturing district, with a grand 
 mediaeval parish church, we found the con- 
 trast very striking. 
 
 Somersby churchyard adjoins the road, 
 but the ground is higher. The first object 
 which greets you on entering through a 
 short shaded path, is a most remarkable 
 crucifix, which has fortunately escaped the 
 hand of Puritan violence. On a thin stone 
 shaft, which is at least twelve feet high, 
 there is the carved figure of our Lord on 
 the Cross, still plainly traceable ; and be- 
 hind is a full-length draped female figure. 
 This antique gem is sheltered under a 
 narrow-pointed roof of stone. It is a 
 curious and rare memorial of ante-Refor- 
 mation times ; and within the porch there 
 is a contemporary relic a shallow stone 
 basin for holy water which still seems to 
 invite the finger to dip, and mark the holy 
 sign. Over the porch entrance is a plain 
 dial with the motto, " Time passeth." 
 b
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 The interior of the church has lost 
 something of the primitive character that 
 still reigns at En derby : there has been a 
 partial restoration : both nave and chancel 
 are now floored with coloured tiles, and the 
 old pews have been superseded by open 
 sittings of red pine. There is a plain solid 
 font lined with lead ; and having seen the 
 chamber in which the great Poet was born, 
 we could not help thinking that here was 
 the birth-place of that name,* which not 
 even his well-earned peerage will ever 
 obliterate. 
 
 Over the porch door inside are the 
 royal arms, and at the west end two bell 
 ropes depend, which are the means of sum- 
 moning the few worshippers to the Sunday 
 service. In the sacrarium is a small 
 brass, showing a kneeling figure and an 
 armorial shield, dedicated to George 
 Littlebury, 1612. A more modern marble 
 
 The name is happily preserved in his patent of nobility, 
 which runs thus ' Al red, ist Baron Tennyson of Aid worth, 
 in the County of Sussex."
 
 PREFACE. xv 
 
 monument, to one of the Burtons, is fixed 
 on the wall near the pulpit. 
 
 The exterior of the church shows strong 
 coarse stone masonry, which is here and 
 there repaired and patched by local art 
 with bricks. In the small graveyard are 
 two altar tombs, which drew our attention. 
 They seem to cover a vault, and are railed 
 round ; and the inscription on one records 
 that Dr. Tennyson held the livings of 
 Somersby, Bag Enderby, Benniworth, and 
 Great Grimsby, and that he died on i6th 
 March, 1831, aged 52.* Wild violets were 
 in flower encircling the base of this tomb. 
 A successor was buried near, the Rev. L. 
 B. Burton, who had held the two adjoining 
 benefices for more than forty years. 
 
 Immediately opposite the church, and 
 closely adjacent to the Manor House, is a 
 very remarkable building, of considerable 
 
 About the time of Dr. Tennyson's death, the population 
 of Somersby was 61, the church accommodation 60, and the 
 annual value of the benefice ,92. The population of 
 Bag Endeiliy was 115, church accommodation 100, and value
 
 xvi PREFACE. 
 
 architectural pretension; as will be cre- 
 dited when it is told that Sir J. Vanbrugh 
 designed it ! It is entirely composed of 
 brick sombre and solid in character it 
 has a flat roof and is battlemented. If 
 differently placed, it might have suggested 
 Mariana's "Moated Grange." It is an 
 edifice of more exterior grandeur than the 
 adjoining Manor House, and the rooms 
 are lined with oak panelling ; but it is un- 
 suited to the habits of modern life, and 
 now stands empty. 
 
 The village of Enderby is, like its sister 
 hamlet, absolutely rural, with an antiquated 
 little church, much needing such material 
 repair as times and circumstances do not 
 seem to allow. It is dedicated to S. Mar- 
 garet, and has a fine old font, octagonal in 
 shape, and each side has rudely carved 
 figures upon it. The flat modern ceiling 
 cuts off the point of the chancel arch, and 
 the same disfigurement occurs at the west 
 end, where the two bells are rung from the
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 floor. In neither village did we see either 
 a nonconformist chapel or a public-house. 
 
 In giving some account of Clevedon, I 
 would tell how my own interest in the 
 subject of this little work has drawn forth 
 the friendly notice of one who fully parti- 
 cipates in all the enthusiasm and, admira- 
 tion that In Memoriam can excite. 
 
 Edward Malan, himself a fine scholar 
 and son of a most scholarly father, has 
 greatly assisted me, especially with classical 
 illustrations of the text ; and as he visited 
 Clevedon before I went there, and has 
 described Hallam's burial-place so appre- 
 ciatively, I shall freely use his words 
 when I come to that part of my subject. 
 
 How the friendship came about which 
 has found such undying record in this 
 Poem, is soon told. Alfred Tennyson and 
 Arthur H. Hallam met, as undergraduates, 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, about the 
 year 1828. Tennyson, born in 1809, was 
 the older by one year and a half. Both
 
 xviii PREFACE. 
 
 these young men were inheritors of remark- 
 able ability the one being a son of the 
 distinguished historian, and the other a son 
 of an accomplished divine both, too, were 
 themselves highly educated, and one at 
 least was possessed of the highest genius. 
 Their friendship was not founded on a com- 
 mon participation in the ordinary interests 
 of youth, but they sympathized in poetical 
 temperament and philosophical taste. The 
 mental stature of Hallam, and his pure and 
 beautiful disposition in their college life, are 
 recalled by the Poet in many places, but 
 especially in Poems cix. and following. 
 
 In 1829, the two friends competed for 
 the Chancellor's gold medal for the Eng- 
 lish Prize Poem, the subject being " Tim- 
 buctoo," and Tennyson gained it. This 
 College intimacy -was continued at both 
 their homes, and Hallam became engaged 
 in marriage to one of Tennyson's sisters. 
 This alliance may have deepened the 
 attachment of the friends; but was not
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 needed to account for the survivor writing 
 of the departed as "more than my brothers 
 are to me." 
 
 Arthur Hallam took his degree at Cam- 
 bridge in January, 1832, and then lived 
 with his father in London ; having been 
 entered on the boards of the Inner Tem- 
 ple, as a student of Law. At the be- 
 ginning of August, 1833, they went a short 
 tour into Germany, and, in returning to 
 Vienna from Pesth, a wet day caused a 
 slight attack of intermittent fever in 
 Arthur, which was apparently subsiding, 
 when a sudden rush of blood to the head 
 put an instantaneous end to his life, on the 
 1 5th September, 1833. 
 
 A subsequent "examination showed a 
 weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a 
 want of sufficient energy in the heart." 
 Mr. Hallam adds this sad tribute to his 
 son's memory : " Those whose eyes must 
 long be dim with tears, and whose hopes 
 on this side the tomb are broken down for
 
 xx PREFACE. 
 
 ever, may cling, as well as they cai, to the 
 poor consolation of believing that a few 
 more years would, in the usual chances of 
 humanity, have severed the frail union of 
 his graceful and manly form, with the pure 
 spirit it enshrined. The remains of Arthur 
 were brought to England, and interred on 
 the 3rd January, 1834, in the chancel'' of 
 Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, belong- 
 ing to his maternal grandfather, Sir Abra- 
 ham Elton; a place selected not only 
 from the connexion of kindred, but on ac- 
 count of its still and sequestered situation, 
 on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol 
 Channel." 
 
 My friend, Edward Malan, gives the fol- 
 lowing graphic account of his visit to Hal- 
 lam's grave 
 
 "The chief attraction for visitors to 
 Clevedon is the obscure and solitary parish 
 church of St. Andrew, where the great his- 
 
 a The use of this word misled the Poet himself, who has 
 since exchanged the term " chancel " for "dark church."
 
 PREFACE. xxi 
 
 torian and his eldest son, Arthur Hallam, 
 are interred. You seek it by the beach and. 
 through the fields, and you find it at last, 
 an old and lonely church beside the sea, 
 in a hollow between two green headlands. 
 The path up to it, bordered with ash trees 
 and hawthorns, winds along the side of 
 Church Hill, the first of the two headlands, 
 which shuts it from view until, rounding a 
 green shoulder, you come suddenly upon 
 it, like a ghost. Even then, unless you 
 have brought a mind in harmony, there is 
 little to see, for the spot is so deserted and 
 so lifeless that you seem to have stepped 
 back through centuries, and to be moving 
 in some old-world time. A weird sensa- 
 tion creeps over you, gazing on the ivy and 
 wall-rue, and the path trodden by cottagers 
 a feeling akin to awe, which reminds you 
 somehow of the poems of Ossian. You are 
 in the presence of these three grey sisters, 
 grey thought, grey silence, grey repose : 
 only clouds, like a troop of mourners,
 
 xxii PREFACE. 
 
 hurrying up over the waste, only a solemn 
 dirge as the wind sweeps wailing by, only 
 the low faint murmur of the sea. The 
 sun's last beams are on the distant hills, 
 and the tide is ebbing dim and shadowy 
 to the shadowy ocean beyond. 
 
 " Inside, the church is old and dim, and 
 filled with a faint odour of age. As the wind 
 rises, mysterious pulses of sound awaken 
 in the rafters overhead. The monuments 
 of the Hallams are not in the chancel, but 
 they are in the manor aisle affixed to the 
 western wall. There are four of them, 
 Arthur Hallam's being one of the two 
 centre tombs. 
 
 " A new organ now stands on the vault. 
 The familiar names familiar, that is, in 
 the classical sense are those of the Elton 
 family, Hallam's relations. A memorial 
 brass near at hand bears the name of 
 Hallam's maternal grandfather, the Rev. 
 Sir Abraham Charles Elton, fifth baronet, 
 together with the names of the four pre-
 
 PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 ceding baronets ; and a marble tablet, close 
 to the site of the old family pew, records 
 the death by drowning of Hallam's two 
 cousins, Abraham and Charles, in 1819, 
 at Weston-super-Mare, when Hallam him- 
 self was eight years old. This unhappy 
 occurrence has been commemorated by 
 their father in an elegy entitled The 
 Brothers. The moon, when high in the 
 heavens (24 Dec. 1882), strikes through 
 the south window of the aisle, slanting- 
 wise on the monuments of the dead." 
 
 Mr. Malan goes on wisely to say : " No 
 apology is necessary for calling attention to 
 In Memoriam. It has become an heir- 
 loom. We may affirm of it, as has been 
 affirmed of another great poem, that it 
 was the work of the Poet's life, his favourite 
 child, for which he stored up the riches of 
 his science and the fruits of his inspiration. 
 He carried it in his bosom like a lover's 
 secret, and added to it from time to time 
 as the tide of sorrow ebbed and flowed.
 
 xxiv PREFACE. 
 
 If the insight thus gained into the workings 
 of a great intellect, brought suddenly to 
 the verge of sorrow, were all the reward 
 that the poem offered, it would still be 
 worth serious study. But we feel as we 
 read that the man has not arrived at his 
 view of truth without much labour, that we 
 are witnessing an endeavour to escape 
 from the coils of doubt, and that we have 
 a victor who has faced and fought his 
 troubles and difficulties." 
 
 I may state that we had an interesting 
 conversation with the sexton at Clevedon, 
 Augustus James. He had held the office 
 for about eighteen years, and perfectly re- 
 membered the interment of Arthur Hallam. 
 His father, who was sexton for forty-three 
 years, made the vault, and officiated at the 
 burial. 
 
 Being astonished by the account of a 
 hearse and mourning coaches traversing 
 the whole distance from Dover to Cleve- 
 don, and employing sixteen horses for the
 
 PREFACE. xxv 
 
 journey, I ventured to ask the late Sir 
 A. H. Elton, if he could corroborate the 
 report, and he replied : " I think there 
 may have been some truth in the state- 
 ment of the old sexton. I believe that on 
 the Continent very great precautions are 
 required by the authorities, before the 
 remains of a deceased person are per- 
 mitted to be removed from the place in 
 which the death occurred. I can easily 
 believe that the heavy amount of lead, 
 and other precautions, rendered it neces- 
 sary to use a large force of horses." A. 
 James says, that "the coffin was carried 
 in every night where they stopped." 
 
 Clevedon itself is a semi-seaside place, 
 by no means interesting, at least as we saw 
 it ; for the water was thick and had none 
 of the bold features of the genuine ocean. 
 But Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Ed- 
 mund H. Elton, to whom we had an intro- 
 duction, is a picturesque rambling mansion, 
 of which the most beautiful part is many
 
 xxvi PREFACE. 
 
 centuries old, and the grounds are lovely. 
 And I cannot pass by the interest and 
 pleasure we derived from an insight into 
 Sir Edmund's workshop, where, self-taught, 
 he manufactures with his own hands, aided 
 by a crippled lad who is his pupil, the 
 beautiful pottery now well known to con- 
 noisseurs as the " Elton ware," and of 
 which he kindly gave us a specimen. 
 
 Since this autumn visit (1884), which led 
 to my appealing to Lady Lennard a sur- 
 viving sister of Arthur Hallam on the 
 point of obtaining a portrait of her brother, 
 I have received from this lady the gift of a 
 copy of the volume known as the "Re- 
 mains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry 
 Hallam," edited by his father, and which 
 was privately printed. The interest of its 
 contents was much enhanced to me by 
 there being a portrait of Arthur from a bust 
 by Chantrey, which Lady Lennard con- 
 siders most like her brother, and therefore 
 most suitable as a frontispiece to my book.
 
 PREFACE. xxYii 
 
 I must add that the plate on which the 
 portrait is engraved is in the possession of 
 Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, to whom 
 was entrusted the production of the 
 volume, and he has been most kind in af- 
 fording facilities for my having a number 
 of copies of the engraving. 
 
 But to no one am I so much indebted 
 as to the late Lord Tennyson himself, who 
 examined a previous edition of my " Key," 
 and made some invaluable corrections, 
 which are all printed in italics. I would 
 not imply that I have now dived into the 
 metaphysical depths of this marvellous 
 poem ; or that its author gave his impri- 
 matur to all he did not alter ; but as my 
 " Key " was for some time in his posses- 
 sion, I feel sure that it contains nothing 
 which he disapproved : and it is enough for 
 me, if it shall open the door of comfort 
 and sympathy to any who either mourn or 
 doubt.
 
 "I, in these poems, is not always the 
 author speaking of himself, but the voice 
 of the human race speaking through him. 
 A. T."
 
 A KEY TO LORD TENNYSON'S 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 
 
 i. 
 
 IT may be stated, on the highest authority, 
 that the special passage alluded to in the 
 opening stanza, cannot be identified, but 
 /'/ is Goethe's creed. 
 
 St. Augustine wrote, that we can rise 
 higher on the ladder of life, by trampling 
 down our vices. His words, in a Sermon 
 on the Ascension, are, De vitiis nostris 
 scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus. 
 
 Longfellow published a Poem, not earlier 
 than 1842, which he called "The Ladder 
 of St. Augustine;" and more recently, 
 Lowell, another American Poet, and 
 Minister Plenipotentiary in London, 
 adopted a similar idea when he said, 
 i
 
 2 A KEY TO 
 
 "'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
 Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
 Whereon our feet firm planting, nearer God 
 The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unseal'd." 
 
 The "dead selves" of Tennyson are 
 neither our vices nor our calamities ; but, 
 rather, our general experiences, which all 
 perish as they happen ; and of these, in 
 his own case, the special loss he had sus- 
 tained in the death of Hallam (his " more 
 than brother " his dimidium sui, " bosom- 
 friend and half of life ") ought to rouse him 
 to soar into " higher things ; " rather than 
 leave him to be pointed at, as " the man 
 that loved and lost " (see Poems xxvii., 4, 
 and Ixxxv., i) ; and all that he had before 
 been, as now " over-worn," and prostrated 
 by this one bereavement. 
 
 But it was difficult to anticipate in the 
 future a gain to match the loss he had sus- 
 tained; and to appropriate interest, i.e., 
 reap the fruit of tears that he was now 
 shedding. Love, however, shall uphold his
 
 "IN MEMO RI AM:' 3 
 
 grief with sustaining power ; for it is better 
 to be grief-mad, and " dance with death " 
 (singing and dancing being a custom at 
 ancient funerals) than become a spectacle 
 of scorn for " the victor Hours " to deride, 
 after they have effaced his love-born sorrow. 
 
 n. 
 
 But the struggle back to past content- 
 ment and happiness is difficult; and the 
 "Old Yew" of the churchyard seems to 
 typify his present state of feeling. 
 
 Its roots and fibres stretch downward, 
 and hold the skull and bones of the dead ; 
 like as his thoughts cling to his departed 
 friend. Its " dusk " or shadow is before 
 the church clock, 8 which strikes the hours 
 of mortality, and this harmonizes with his 
 life of mourning. 
 
 The tree preserves its "thousand years 
 of gloom," unchanged by the seasons which 
 
 a The scene is not laid in Somersby Churchyard, as there 
 is no clock in the Church tower.
 
 4 A KEY TO 
 
 affect other things the "old yew" con- 
 tinues always the same 
 
 "And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 
 Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
 I seem to fail from out my blood, 
 
 And grow incorporate into thee." 
 
 " Sick for " means, desirous of. 
 
 It might seem as if the Poet, whose 
 scientific allusions are always so striking 
 and correct, had overlooked, when he 
 wrote this Poem, that the yew bore blos- 
 som and seed, like other trees : but it was 
 not so. Of course, the Poet always knew, 
 that a tree which bears a berry must have a 
 blossom ; but Sorrow only saw the winter 
 gloom of the foliage. 
 
 Observe the recent introduction of 
 Poem xxxix. ; also the description, near 
 the beginning of " The Holy Grail " 
 
 " They sat 
 
 Beneath a world-old yew tree, darkening half 
 The cloisters, on a gustful April morn 
 That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 5 
 
 O, brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke, 
 Spring after spring, for half a hundred years." 
 
 It will be seen, in the later Poem, how a 
 comparison with the gloomy yew has been 
 modified. 
 
 in. 
 
 "Sorrow, cruel fellowship," from which 
 he cannot disengage himself, now reigns 
 within him, and distorts with " lying lip " a 
 all Nature and her beneficent workings; 
 making these seem to have no purpose or 
 end. All which is but an echo of his own 
 dark feelings. Shall he then believe this 
 false guide 
 
 " Embrace her as my natural good ; 
 Or crush her, like a vice of blood, 
 Upon the threshold of the mind ? " 
 
 reject, and turn away from the impostures 
 of a sorrowing imagination ? 
 
 Critics have regarded the term "lying lip " as too harsh ; 
 but in Poem xxxix. it is again applied to sorrow 
 
 "What whisper'd from her lying lips?" 
 See also Psalm cxx. a.
 
 6 A KEY TO 
 
 IV. 
 
 In sleep there is no struggle of the will ; 
 and he communes with his own heart, 
 which is beating so low ; a condition that 
 must be caused by a sense of " something 
 lost." 
 
 "Break," he says, still addressing his 
 heart, but in metaphor; 
 
 " Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 
 That grief hath shaken into frost." 
 
 This must refer to the scientific fact, that 
 water can be lowered in temperature below 
 the freezing point, without solidifying ; but 
 it expands at once into ice if disturbed ; 
 and the suddenness of the expansion 
 breaks the containing vessel. 
 
 Clouds of undefined trouble, such as 
 "dreams are made of," pass "below the 
 darken'd eyes," that is, figure themselves 
 on the brain under the eyelids ; but on 
 awaking, the will reasserts its power, and
 
 "IN MEMO RI AM." ^ 
 
 protests against the folly of such mourning. 
 He would therefore dismiss the phantom, 
 Sorrow. 
 
 v. 
 
 He sometimes hesitates, as at something 
 half sinful, when giving expression to his 
 sadness ; because words at best only par- 
 tially declare what the Soul feels ; just as 
 outward Nature cannot fully reveal the 
 inner life. 
 
 But "after all" words act like narcotics, 
 and numb pain : so, as if putting on 
 "weeds," the garb of mourning, he will 
 wrap himself over in words ; though these, 
 like coarse clothes on the body, give no 
 more than an outline of his " large grief." 
 
 VI. 
 
 The "common" expressions of sym- 
 pathy with our trouble are very " common- 
 place " 
 
 " Vacant chaff well-meant for grain."
 
 8 A KEY TO 
 
 A friend asks, " Why grieve ? " " Other 
 friends remain ; " " Loss is common to the 
 race ; " as Hamlet's mother says, " All 
 that live must die." Is this comfort? 
 rather the contrary. We know it is so 
 
 "Never morning wore 
 To evening, but some heart did break." 
 
 The father drinks his son's health at the 
 war, in the moment when that son is shot. 
 The mother prays for her sailor-boy 
 when 
 
 "His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 
 Drops in his vast and wandering grave. " 
 
 The girl is dressing before the glass, and 
 strives to array herself most becomingly for 
 her expected lover ; and he meanwhile is 
 either drowned in the ford, or killed by a 
 fall from his horse 
 
 " O what to her shall be the end? 
 
 And what to me remains of good ? 
 
 To her perpetual maidenhood, 
 And unto me no second friend."
 
 "IN MEMORIAM," 9 
 
 These were all as unconscious of disaster 
 as was the Poet, who, "to please him 
 well," was writing to Hallam in the very 
 hour that he died. 
 
 There is a fine passage in Jeremy Tay- 
 lor's " Holy Dying," which contains a like 
 rumination on the uncertainty of life. 
 
 " The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon 
 a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he 
 was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a 
 man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted 
 with sand in the folds of his garments, and carried 
 by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to find 
 a grave ; and it cast him into some sad thoughts ; 
 that peradventure this man's wife in some part of 
 the Continent, safe and warm, looks next month for 
 the good man's return ; or it may be his son knows 
 nothing of the tempest ; or his father thinks of that 
 affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good 
 old man's cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, 
 and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he 
 shall be when his beloved boy returns into the 
 circle of his father's arms. 
 
 "These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the 
 end and sum of all their designs ; a dark night and 
 an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, 
 an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces
 
 io A KEY TO 
 
 the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall 
 weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered 
 into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck." 
 
 VII. 
 
 He persists in indulging his melancholy, 
 and so creeps, "like a guilty thing," at 
 early morning to the door of the house in 
 London where Hallam had lived Wim- 
 pole Street but this only serves to remind 
 him that 
 
 " He is not here ; but far away." 
 The revival of busy movement on a wet 
 morning in " the long unlovely street," a is 
 vividly described 
 
 " The noise of life begins again, 
 And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 
 On the bald street breaks the blank day." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 He next compares himself to the disap- 
 
 It is said of a celebrated clerical wit, that almost his last 
 words were, " All things come to an end " a pause "ex- 
 cept Wimpole Street."
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." n 
 
 pointed lover who " alights" from his horse, 
 calls at the home of his mistress, 
 
 "And learns her gone and far from home." 
 
 So, as the disappointed lover, to whom the 
 whole place has at once become a desert, 
 wanders into the garden, and culls a rain- 
 beaten flower, which she had fostered ; 
 even thus will he cherish and plant " this 
 poor flower of poesy " on Hallam's tomb, a 
 because his friend when alive had been 
 pleased with his poetic power. 
 
 IX. 
 
 This poem commences an address to the 
 ship that brings Hallam's body from Vienna 
 to England 
 
 " My lost Arthur's loved remains." 
 No words can be more touching than 
 
 a This reminds one of the Jour des marts M\ Souls' 
 Day, or The Day of the Dead, when it is a Continental cus- 
 tom to visit the graves of relatives and friends, with pious 
 offerings of flowers, &c.
 
 12 A KEY TO 
 
 his appeal to the vessel, a for care and ten- 
 derness in transporting its precious freight. 
 He bids it come quickly; "spread thy 
 full wings," hoist every sail ; "ruffle thy mir- 
 ror'd mast ;" for the faster the ship is driven 
 through the water, the more will the re- 
 flected mast be "ruffled" on its agitated 
 surface. May no rude wind " perplex thy 
 sliding keel," until Phosphor the morning 
 star, Venus shines ; and during the night 
 may the lights' 3 above and the winds around 
 be gentle as the sleep of him 
 
 " My Arthur, whom I shall not see, 
 Till all my widow'd race be run " 
 
 until my life, bereaved of its first affection, 
 be over. 
 
 In Poem xvii., 5, the same line occurs 
 
 This invocation to the ship reminds one of Horace's 
 appeal to the vessel that was to bring Virgil home : 
 
 Navis, qua tibi creditum 
 
 Debes Virgiliitm,finibusAtticis 
 Reddas incolumem, precor; 
 Et serves animce dimidium meet. 
 
 Lib. I., Ode 3. 
 * " Sphere " glomcrn.
 
 "IN MEMO Rl AM." 13 
 
 " Till all my widow'd race be run," and it 
 agrees with St. Paul's declaration, 2 Tim., 
 iv., 7, " I have finished my course." The 
 words race and course are synonymous, and 
 refer to the foot-races of the ancients. 
 " More than my brothers are to me," is re- 
 peated in P. Ixxix., i. 
 
 x. 
 
 Very beautifully is the picture continued 
 of the ship's passage, and he appeals to it 
 for safely conducting 
 
 " Thy dark freight, a vanish'd life." 
 
 The placid scene, which he had ima- 
 gined as attending the vessel, harmonizes 
 with the home-bred fancy, that it is sweeter 
 
 " To rest beneath the clover sod, 
 That takes the sunshine and the rains ; " 
 
 that is, to be buried in the open church- 
 yard; 
 
 " Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
 The chalice of the grapes of God. " a 
 
 * This fruit of the vine, Matt, xxvi., 29.
 
 I4 A KEY TO 
 
 that is, in the chancel of the church, near 
 the altar rails ; than if, together with the 
 ship, " the roaring wells " of the sea 
 
 " Should gulf him fathom deep in brine ; 
 
 And hands so often clasp'd in mine, 
 Should toss with tangle a and with shells." 
 
 XI. 
 
 This Poem would describe a calm and 
 quiet day in October late autumn. 
 
 No doubt, the scenery described does 
 not refer to Clevedon, but to some Lincoln- 
 shire wold, from which the whole range from 
 marsh to the sea was visible. 
 
 The stillness of the spot is just broken 
 by the sound of the horse chestnut fall- 
 
 "Tangle," or "oar-weed," Lantinaria digitata, says 
 the Algologist, "is never met with but at extreme tide- 
 limits, where some of its broad leather-like fronds may be 
 seen darkly overhanging the rocks, while others, a little 
 lower down, are rising and dipping in the water like sea-ser- 
 pents floated by the waves." Plato, Rep., x. ; has a noble 
 comparison from the story of Glaucus (498) : " We must re- 
 gard the soul as drowned (Jiaxf^svov) like the sea-god, 
 Glaucus : who, buffetted and insulted by the waves, sank, 
 clustered with orrffa , xai (frjxia, xai nvrfaf."
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 15 
 
 ing a through the dead leaves, and these are 
 reddening to their own fall. No time of 
 the year is more quiet, not even is the in- 
 sect abroad : the waves just swell and fall 
 noiselessly, and this reminds him of 
 
 " The dead calm in that noble breast 
 Which heaves but with the heaving deep." 
 
 XII. 
 
 An ecstacy follows : in which the soul of 
 the Poet seems to mount, like a dove rising 
 into the heavens with a message of woe 
 tied under her wings ; and so the disem- 
 bodied soul leaves its "mortal ark" 
 " our earthly house of this tabernacle " 
 (2 Cor. v., i) and flees away 
 
 "O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large" 
 
 (the sea line constantly expanding and 
 
 In the month of October, 1884, I walked in the thickly 
 wooded precincts of Hughenden Manor, the seat of the Earl 
 of Beaconsfield ; and I never heard the horse chestnuts patter 
 to the ground as then and there. Quite ripe, they were con- 
 stantly falling ; and as they touched the gravelled walk the 
 shell opened, and out sprang the richly coloured chest- 
 nut. A. G.
 
 16 A KEY TO 
 
 always being circular), until the ship comes 
 in sight, when it lingers "on the marge," 
 the edge of the sea, weeping with the 
 piteous cry 
 
 "Is this the end of all my care? 
 Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " 
 
 Then it flies in sport about the prow of the 
 vessel, and after this seems to 
 
 " return 
 
 To where the body sits, and learn, 
 That I have been an hour away. " 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The tears shed by the widower, when he 
 wakes from a dream of his deceased wife, 
 and " moves his doubtful arms " to find 
 her place empty; are like the tears he 
 himself is weeping over "a loss for ever 
 new," a terrible void where there had been 
 social intercourse, and a "silence" that 
 will never be broken. For he is lamenting
 
 "IN MEMO RI AM." 17 
 
 " the comrade of my choice, 
 An awful thought, a life removed, 
 The human-hearted man I loved, 
 A Spirit, not a breathing voice." 
 
 Hallam is now only a remembrance no 
 longer endowed with bodily functions, and 
 the survivor cannot quite accept what has 
 happened. 
 
 He therefore asks Time to teach him 
 " many years " for years to come the 
 real truth, and make him feel that these 
 strange things, over which his tears are 
 shed, are not merely a prolonged dream ; 
 and he begs that his fancies, hovering over 
 the approaching ship, may quite realise 
 that it brings no ordinary freight, but 
 actually the mortal remains of his friend. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The difficulty in apprehending his com- 
 plete loss is further shown by his address 
 to the ship, saying, that if it had arrived in 
 2
 
 i8 A KEY TO 
 
 port, and he saw the passengers step across 
 the plank to shore; and amongst them 
 came Hallam himself, and they renewed all 
 their former friendship ; and Hallam, un- 
 changed in every respect, heard his tale of 
 sorrow with surprise : 
 
 " I should not feel it to be strange." 
 
 Both this and the previous Poem express 
 the difficulty we feel in realising the death 
 of some one who is dear to us. So Cowper 
 wrote, after losing his mother, and in ex- 
 pectation that she would yet return : 
 
 "What ardently I wish'd, I long believed, 
 And disappointed still, was still deceived." 
 
 XV. 
 
 A stormy change in the weather occurs : 
 the winds "roar from yonder dropping 
 day," that is, from the west, into which the 
 daylight is sinking. And all the sights and 
 sounds of tempest alarm him for the safety 
 of the ship, and
 
 "77V MEMORIAM." 19 
 
 " But for fancies which aver 
 That all thy motions gently pass 
 Athwart a plane of molten glass, a 
 I scarce could brook the strain and stir 
 That makes the barren branches loud." 
 
 Yet, in fear that it may not be so the sea 
 calm and the wind still " the wild un- 
 rest " would lead him to " dote and pore 
 on " the threatening cloud, and the fiery 
 sunset. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 This Poem is highly metaphysical. He 
 asks whether Sorrow, which is his abiding 
 feeling, can be such a changeling, as to 
 alternate in his breast betwixt " calm de- 
 spair" (see P. xi., 4) and "wild unrest?" 
 (see P. xv., 4) ; or does she only just take 
 this " touch of change," as calm or storm 
 prevails ? knowing no more of transient 
 form, than does a lake that holds "the 
 
 a In Job xxxvii., 18, we read, " Hast thou with him spread 
 out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking 
 glass ? " This term applies equally well to the sea.
 
 20 A KEY TO 
 
 shadow of a lark," when reflected on its 
 surface. 
 
 Being distinct from bodily pain, Sorrow 
 is more like the reflection than the thing 
 reflected. But the shock he has received 
 has made his mind confused, and he is 
 like a ship that strikes on a rock and 
 founders. He becomes a 
 
 ' ' delirious man, 
 
 Whose fancy fuses old and new, 
 And flashes into false and true, 
 And mingles all without a plan."* 
 
 XVII. 
 
 He hails the ship " thou comest " 
 and feels as if his own whispered prayer 
 for its safety, had been helping to waft it 
 steadily across the sea. In spirit, he had 
 seen it move 
 
 " thro' circles of the bounding sky " 
 
 the horizon at sea being always circular 
 (see P. xii., 3) and he would wish its 
 
 See 2 Cor. xii., i.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." zi 
 
 speedy arrival, inasmuch as it brings " all 
 I love." 
 
 For doing this, he invokes a blessing 
 upon all its future voyages. It is no\\ 
 bringing 
 
 " The dust of him I shall not see 
 Till all my widowed race be run." a 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The ship arrives, the " dear remains " 
 are landed, and the burial is to take place. 
 
 It is something, worth the mourner's 
 having, that he can stand on English 
 ground where his friend has been laid, and 
 know that the violet will spring from his 
 ashes. 
 
 Laertes says of Ophelia, 
 
 " Lay her in the earth 
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring ! " 
 
 A beautiful invitation follows to those, 
 who are sometimes irreverent bearers : 
 
 See P. ix., 5.
 
 22 A KEY TO 
 
 "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." a 
 
 Even yet, before the grave is closed, he 
 would like, as Elisha did on the Shunam- 
 mite woman's child, to cast himself, and 
 
 " thro' his lips impart 
 The life that almost dies in me ; " 
 
 but still he resolves to form the firmer reso- 
 lution, and to submit ; though meanwhile 
 treasuring the look and words that are past 
 and gone for ever. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 From the Danube to the Severn from 
 Vienna to Clevedon the body has been 
 conveyed, and was interred by the estuary 
 
 The tenant farmers on the Clevedon estate were the 
 bearers. The Rev. William Newland Pedder, who was 
 Vicar of Clevedon for forty years, and died in 1871, read the 
 burial service. The "familiar names" are those of the 
 Elton family, which are recorded both on brass and marble 
 in the church.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 23 
 
 of the latter river, where the village of 
 Clevedon stands.* 
 
 The Wye, a tributary of the Severn, is 
 also tidal ; and when deepened by the sea 
 flowing inward, its babbling ceases; but 
 the noise recurs when the sea flows back. 
 
 So does the Poet's power of expressing 
 his grief alternate : at times he is too full 
 in heart to find utterance; he "brims with 
 sorrow " but after awhile, as when " the 
 wave again is vocal in its wooded " banks, 
 
 " My deeper anguish also falls, 
 And I can speak a little then." 
 
 The corpse was landed at Dover, and was brought by 
 sixteen black horses all the way to Clevedon so says 
 Augustus James, who, when a boy, witnessed the interment. 
 Sir A. H. Elton, the late Baronet, kindly corroborated this 
 statement. Besides the coffin, there was a square iron box, 
 deposited in the vault, which may have contained 
 
 "The darken'd heart that beat no more." 
 
 It is certain that the Poet always thought that the ship put 
 in at Bristol. 
 
 Hallam's family resided in London, which accounts for 
 the mourners coming from so great a distance. Augustus 
 James told me, that the funeral procession consisted of a 
 hearse and three mourning coaches, each of which was 
 drawn by four horses ; and he saw the sixteen animals under 
 cover after their journey. My friend, Mr. Edward Malan, 
 heard the same story from A. James.
 
 24 A KEY TO 
 
 XX. 
 
 He knows the " lesser grief" that can be 
 told, also the " deeper anguish which can- 
 not be spoken : " his spirits are thus vari- 
 ably affected. 
 
 In his lighter mood, he laments as ser- 
 vants mourn for a good master who has 
 
 died : 
 
 " It will be hard, they say, to find 
 Another service such as this." 
 But he is also visited by a sense of deeper 
 deprivation, such as children feel when 
 they lose a father, and 
 
 "see the vacant chair, and think, 
 How good ! how kind ! and he is gone." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 This Poem opens as if Hallam's grave 
 was in the churchyard, where grasses 
 waved ; but it was not so, he was buried 
 inside Clevedon church. 
 
 The Poet imagines the reproofs, with 
 which passers-by will visit him for his un 
 restrained grief. He would " make weak-
 
 ' ' IN MEMORIAM. " 25 
 
 ness weak : " would parade his pain to 
 court sympathy, and gain credit for con- 
 stancy ; and another says, that a display of 
 private sorrow is quite inappropriate at 
 times, when great political changes im- 
 pend, and Science every month is evolving 
 some new secret. 
 
 He replies, that his song is but like that 
 of the linnet joyous indeed when her 
 brood first flies, but sad when the nest has 
 been rifled of her young. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 For "four sweet years," from flowery 
 spring to snowy winter, they had lived in 
 closest friendship ; 
 
 " But where the path we walk'd began 
 To slant the fifth autumnal slope," 
 
 " the Shadow fear'd of man," grim Death, 
 " broke our fair companionship." 
 
 Hallam died on the i'5th September, 
 1833, and the survivor, eagerly pursuing, 
 can find him no more, but
 
 26 A KEY TO 
 
 "thinks, that somewhere in the waste 
 The Shadow sits and waits for me." 
 
 His own spirit becomes darkened by 
 gloomy apprehensions of superimpending 
 calamity. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Feeling his extreme loneliness, yet 
 "breaking into songs by fits" (which 
 proves that In Memoriam was written at 
 intervals), 3 he wanders sometimes to where 
 the cloaked Shadow is sitting Death, 
 
 " Who keeps the keys of all the creeds " 
 
 inasmuch as only when we die shall we 
 know the whole truth ; and " falling lame " 
 on his way, that is, stumbling in his vain 
 enquiries as to whence he came and 
 whither he is going, he can only grasp one 
 feeling, which is, that all is miserably 
 changed since they were in company 
 
 It is a fact, that the Poem was written at both variant 
 times and places through a course of years, and whete 
 their author happened to be, in Lincolnshire, London, 
 Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere, as the spirit 
 tn/rved him.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 27 
 
 friends enjoying life together, travelling in 
 foreign lands, and indulging in scholarly 
 communion on classic subjects. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 But, after all, was their happiness per- 
 fect? No, the very sun, the "fount of 
 Day," has spots on its surface " wander- 
 ing isles of night." If all had been wholly 
 good and fair, this earth would have re- 
 mained the Paradise it has never looked, 
 " since Adam left his garden," as appears 
 in the earlier editions ; but now the line 
 runs, 
 
 " Since our first sun arose and set." 
 
 Does "the haze of grief" then fnagnify 
 the past, as things look larger in a fog ? a 
 Or does his present lowness of spirits set 
 the past in relief, as projections are more 
 
 The effect of vapour in magnifying objects is shown to- 
 wards the end of the Idyll, " Guinevere," where it says 
 
 " The moony vapour rolling round the King, 
 Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it." 
 
 Can "the haze of grief " refer to the tear, which acts as a 
 magnifying lens?
 
 28 A KEY TO 
 
 apparent when you are beneath them ? Or 
 is the past from being far off always in 
 glory, as distance lends enchantment to 
 the view; and so the world becomes 
 orbed 
 
 " into the perfect star 
 We saw not, when we moved therein ? " 
 
 We are told that, if we were placed in the 
 moon, we should see the Earth as "the 
 perfect star" having a shining surface, 
 and being thirteen times larger than the 
 moon itself. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 All he knows is, that whilst with Hallam, 
 there was Life. They went side by side, 
 and upheld the daily burden. 
 
 He himself moved light as a carrier 
 bird in air, and delighted in the weight he 
 bore because Love shared it; and since 
 he transferred half of every pain to his 
 dear companion, he himself was never 
 weary in either heart or limb.
 
 IN MEMORIAM." 29 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Dismal and dreary as life has become, 
 he nevertheless wishes to live, if only 
 to prove the stedfastness of his affection. 
 And he asks that if the all-seeing Eye, 
 which already perceives the future rotten- 
 ness of the living tree, and the far off ruin 
 of the now standing tower, can detect any 
 coming indifference in him any failure of 
 Love then may the " Shadow waiting 
 with the keys " " shroud me from my pro- 
 per scorn ; " a may Death hide me from my 
 own self-contempt ! 
 
 "In Him is no before." Jehovah is 
 simply, / am, to whom foresight and 
 foreknowledge cannot be attributed, since 
 past and future are equally present. 
 
 The morn breaks over Indian seas, be- 
 cause they are to the east of us. 
 
 "My proper scorn" proprius~\s scorn of myself, an 
 imprecation. See Lancelot's self-condemnation at the end 
 of "Lancelot and Elaine."
 
 30 A KEY TO 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 He neither envies the cage-born bird 
 -'that never knew the summer woods," 
 and is content without liberty; nor the 
 beast that lives uncontrolled by con- 
 science ; nor the heart that never loved ; 
 " nor any want-begotten rest," that is, re- 
 pose arising from defective sensibility. 
 
 On the contrary, 
 
 " I hold it true, whate'er befall; 
 
 I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. " 
 
 Seneca in Epistle 99 says, Magis gauderes 
 quod habueras quam mcereres quodamiseras. 
 See P. Ixxxv., i. 
 
 The Poem seems to halt here, and 
 begin afresh with a description of Christ- 
 mastide. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Christmas Eve at Somersby, and pos- 
 sibly at the end of the year 1833. If so, 
 throughout the year he had been at ease,
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 31 
 
 until the blow came he had " slept and 
 woke with pain," and then he almost wished 
 he might never more hear the Christmas 
 bells. 
 
 But a calmer spirit seems to come over 
 him : as he listens to the Christmas peals 
 rung at four neighbouring a churches, and 
 the sound soothes him with tender associa- 
 tions : 
 
 " But they my troubled spirit rule, 
 For they controll'd me when a boy; 
 They biing me sorrow touch'd with joy, 
 
 The merry, merry bells of Yule." 
 
 Yule is Christmas, a jubilee which brings 
 glad tidings of great joy to all people. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Having such " compelling cause to 
 grieve " over the decease of Hallam, 
 " as daily vexes household peace " 
 for death is ever invading some home 
 
 a The churches are not to be identified. Those in the 
 neighbourhood of Somersby have too small belfries to allow 
 of change ringing. The sounds may have been only in the 
 Poet's mind.
 
 32 A KEY TO 
 
 how can they venture to keep Christmas 
 Eve as usual ? He is absent, who when 
 amongst them was so eminently social. 
 But it must be done. " Use and wont," 
 "old sisters of a day gone by," still de- 
 mand what has been customary. " They 
 too will die," and new habits succeed. 
 
 To the fourteenth chapter of Walter 
 Scott's "Pirate," there is the following 
 motto from "Old Play," which meant 
 Scott's own invention : 
 
 " We'll keep our customs. What is law itself 
 But old establish'd custom ? What religion 
 (I mean with one half of the men that use it) 
 Save the good use and wont that carries them 
 To worship how and where their fathers wor- 
 
 shipp'd ? 
 All things resolve to custom. We'll keep ours." 
 
 XXX. 
 
 The Christian festival proceeds, and 
 there is the family gathering, with 
 such games as are common at this 
 season; but sadness weighs on all, for 
 they entertain "an awful sense of one
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 33 
 
 mute shadow " Hallam's wraith being 
 present and watching them. 
 
 They sit in silence, then break into 
 singing 
 
 " A merry song we sang with him 
 Last year." 
 
 This seems to identify the time to be 
 Christmas, 1833, as Hallam died on i5th 
 September, 1833, but was not buried 
 until January, 1834. 
 
 They comfort themselves with the con- 
 viction that the dead retain "their mortal 
 sympathy," and still feel with those they 
 have left behind. The soul, a "keen 
 seraphic flame," pierces 
 
 " From orb to orb, from veil to veil," 
 and so traverses the universe. 
 
 Was the anniversary of our Saviour's 
 birth ever hailed in terms more sublime 
 and beautiful ! 
 
 " Rise, happy morn, rise, holy mom, 
 Draw forth the cheerful day from night : 
 O Father, touch the east, and light 
 
 The light that shone when Hope was born." 
 
 3
 
 34 A KEY TO 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 The mind of the poet has now taken a 
 more strictly religious view of the situation ; 
 and he would like to learn the secrets of 
 the grave from the experience of Lazarus. 
 
 Did Lazarus in death yearn to hear his 
 sister Mary weeping for him ? If she asked 
 him, when restored to life, where he was 
 during his four days of entombment; 
 
 " There lives no record of reply," 
 
 which, if given, might have " added praise 
 to praise " that is, might have sealed and 
 confirmed the promise that "blessed are 
 the dead which die in the Lord." 
 
 As it was, the neighbours met and 
 offered congratulations, and their cry was, 
 
 " Behold a man raised up by Christ 1 
 The rest remaineth unreveal'd ; 
 He told it not ; or something seal'd 
 
 The lips of that Evangelist. " 
 
 It is only St. John who records the 
 miracle.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 35 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 At a subsequent visit to Simon's house 
 in Bethany, where both Lazarus and Mary 
 were present, Mary's eyes, looking alter- 
 nately at her brother who had been restored 
 to life, and at our Lord who had revived 
 him, are " homes of silent prayer ;" and one 
 strong affection overpowers every other sen- 
 timent, when her " ardent gaze " turns from 
 the face of Lazarus, " and rests upon the 
 Life " Christ, the author and giver of life. 
 Vita vera, vita ipsa. 
 
 Her whole spirit is then so "borne 
 down by gladness," that 
 
 " She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 
 With costly spikenard and with tears. " a 
 
 No lives are so blessed as those which 
 consist of " faithful prayers : " no attach- 
 ments so enduring as those which are 
 based on the higher love of God. 
 
 But are there any souls so pure as to 
 
 John, xii., 3
 
 36 A KEY TO 
 
 have reached this higher range of feeling ; 
 or, if there be, what blessedness can equal 
 theirs ? 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 This Poem is abstruse, and requires 
 thought and care for the interpretation of 
 the Poet's meaning. 
 
 It seems to be an address of warning 
 and reproof to a moral pantheist, who 
 fancies that he has attained a higher and 
 purer air, by withholding his faith from all 
 "form," and recognising Deity in every- 
 thing his faith having "centre every- 
 where." 
 
 This sceptic is warned from disturbing 
 the pious woman, who is happy in her 
 prayers to a personal God ; for they bring 
 an " early heaven " on her life. Her faith 
 is fixed on "form;" and to flesh and 
 blood she has linked a truth divine, by 
 seeing God incarnate in the person of 
 Christ.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 37 
 
 The pantheist must take care for him- 
 self, that, whilst satisfied 
 
 "In holding by the law within," 
 
 the guidance of his own reason, he does 
 not after all fail in a sinful world,, "for 
 want of such a type," as the life of Christ 
 on earth affords. 
 
 "A life that leads melodious days," is 
 like that of Vopiscus, in his Tiburtine 
 villa, as described by his friend, Statius, I., 
 iii., 20. 
 
 ceit veritus turbare Vopisci 
 Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 His own dim consciousness should 
 teach him thus much, that Life will never 
 be extinguished. Else all here is but dust 
 and ashes. The earth, " this round of 
 green," and sun, " this orb of flame," are 
 but " fantastic beauty " such as a wild 
 Poet might invent, who has neither con- 
 science nor aim.
 
 38 A KEY TO 
 
 Even God can be nothing to the writer, 
 if all around him is doomed to perish ; 
 and he will not himself wait in patience, 
 but rather " sink to peace ; " and, like the 
 birds that are charmed by the serpent* 
 into its mouth, he will "drop head-fore- 
 most in the jaws of vacant darkness," and 
 so cease to exist. 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 And yet, if a trustworthy voice from the 
 grave should testify, that there is no life 
 beyond this world; even then he would 
 endeavour to keep alive so sweet a thing 
 as Love, during the brief span of mortal 
 existence. 
 
 But still there would come 
 
 " The meanings of the homeless sea," 
 and the sound of streams disintegrating 
 and washing down the rocks to form future 
 
 A South African snake b-ucephalus Capensis com- 
 monly called the " Boom-slange " attracts birds into its 
 mouth as prey, drawing them by an irresistible fascination. 
 Dr. Smith, in his " Zoology of South Africa," describes the 
 process.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 39 
 
 land surfaces " Ionian hills," the forma- 
 tions of whole aeons being thus dissolved 
 and Love itself would languish under 
 " The sound of that forgetful shore," 
 
 those new lands in which all things are 
 obliterated and forgotten knowing that 
 its own death was impending. 
 
 But the case is idly put. If such ex- 
 tinguishing Death were from the first seen 
 as it is when it comes, Love would either 
 not exist ; or else would be a mere fellow- 
 ship of coarse appetites, like those of the 
 Satyr, who crushes the grape for drunken 
 revelry, and basks and battens in the 
 woods. 
 
 xxxvi. 
 
 Although, even in manhood, the great 
 truths of Religion only 
 
 " darkly join, 
 Deep-seated in our mystic frame " 
 
 since at best we only see as through a glass
 
 40 A KEY TO 
 
 darkly : we nevertheless bless His name, 
 who " made them current coin," so as to 
 be generally intelligible. This was done 
 by the teaching of Parables. 
 
 For Divine Wisdom, having to deal 
 with mortal powers, conveyed sacred truth 
 through "lowly doors," by embodying it 
 in earthly similitudes; because "closest 
 words" will not explain Divine things, 
 owing to the imperfection of human lan- 
 guage; "and so the Word had breath," 
 "God was manifest in the flesh" (i Tim. 
 iii., 1 6, and i John, 14), and by good 
 works wrought the best of all creeds, 
 which the labourer in the field, the mason, 
 the grave-digger, 
 
 " And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
 In roarings round the coral reef," 
 
 even the savage of the Pacific Islands, can 
 see and understand, being conveyed to 
 him through both the miracles and para- 
 bles of the Gospel.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 41 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 He imagines Urania, the heavenly Muse, 
 to reprove him for venturing on sacred 
 ground, and commenting on religious 
 themes; as she would have him confine 
 his steps to his own Parnassus, and there 
 earn the laurel crown. 
 
 But his own tragic Muse, Melpomene, 
 replies with the apology, that though 
 unworthy to speak of holy mysteries, yet 
 with his earthly song he had striven to 
 soothe his own aching heart, and render a 
 due tribute to human love ; and inasmuch 
 as the comfort he had drawn was " clasp'd 
 in truth reveaFd," had its foundation in the 
 Gospel : he daringly 
 
 "loiter'd in the Master's field, 
 And darken'd sanctities with song." 
 
 Many readers of In Memoriam will have 
 thanked its author for these trespasses 
 upon the Holy Land, feeling indeed there 
 was no profane intrusion.
 
 42 A KEY TO 
 
 Some will regret that he has changed the 
 original line, "and dear as sacramental 
 wine," into "and dear to me as sacred 
 wine : " the purpose, one supposes, was 
 that the reader should see that he spoke 
 only for himself " to me " the meaning 
 is unchanged, but the sound is rather flat. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 The sadness of his heart has fully re- 
 turned, and the journey of life is dull and 
 weary. The skies above and the prospect 
 before him are no longer what they used to 
 be, when Hallam was by. "The blowing 
 season," when plants are blossoming: the 
 "herald melodies of spring," when the 
 birds proclaim that winter is past, give him 
 no joy; but in his own songs he finds a 
 "gleam of solace;" and if after death 
 there be any consciousness retained of 
 what has been left upon earth, 
 
 "Then are these songs I sing of thee 
 Not all ungrateful to thine ear."
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 43 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 This Poem has been recently introduced, 
 as already stated (see P. ii.). The Yew 
 tree does really blossom, and form fruit 
 and seed like other trees, though we may 
 not notice it. 
 
 The Poet now says, that his "random 
 stroke " on the tree brings off 
 
 " Fruitful cloud and living smoke ; " 
 Also that at the proper season 
 
 "Thy gloom is kindled at the tips." 
 
 The fact is, that the flower is bright 
 yellow in colour, but very minute; and 
 when the tree is shaken, the pollen comes 
 off like dust, and then the tree seems to 
 resume its old gloom. 
 
 So the spirit of the Poet may brighten 
 for a moment, and then return to its accus- 
 tomed melancholy.
 
 44 A KEY TO 
 
 XL. 
 
 He wishes " the widow'd hour " when he 
 lost his friend, could be forgotten, or rather 
 recalled like an occasion when the bride 
 leaves her first home for " other realms of 
 love." There are tears then, but April 
 tears rain and sunshine mixed; and as 
 the bride's future office may be to rear and 
 teach another generation uniting grand- 
 parents with grand-children so he has no 
 doubt that to Hallam 
 
 " is given 
 
 A life that bears immortal fruit 
 In such great offices as suit 
 The full-grown energies of heaven." 
 
 But then comes this difference. The 
 bride will return in course of time with her 
 baby, and all at her old home will be 
 happier for her absence whereas 
 
 "thou and I have shaken hands, 
 Till growing winters lay me low ; 
 My paths are in the fields I know, 
 
 But thine in undiscover'd lands."
 
 "IN A1EMORIAM." 45 
 
 XLI. 
 
 \Vhilst together upon earth they could 
 advance in company, though Hallam's 
 spirit and intellect were ever soaring up- 
 wards. Now, the links which united them 
 are lost, and he can no longer partake in 
 his friend's transformations. So, (folly 
 though it be,) he wishes that, by an effort 
 of will, he could 
 
 "leap the grades of life and light, 
 And flash at once, my friend, to thee." 
 
 See P. xcv., 9. 
 
 For, though he has no vague dread of 
 death and "the gulfs beneath," yet the 
 chilling thought comes over him, that in 
 death he may not be able to overtake his 
 friend, but evermore remain "a life be- 
 hind " him, 
 
 " Through all the secular to be " 
 all future ages : and that so he shall be his 
 mate no more, which is his great trouble. 
 
 " The howlings of forgotten fields "
 
 46 A KEY TO 
 
 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. 
 Has Dante no such allusion ? a 
 
 This Poem intimates the idea of progress 
 and advancement after death. 
 
 XLH. 
 
 He reproaches himself for these fancies ; 
 for inasmuch as it was only unity of place 
 which gave them the semblance of equality 
 here Hallam being always really ahead 
 why may not " Place retain us still," b when 
 I too am dead, and can be trained and 
 taught anew by this "lord of large ex- 
 perience ? " 
 
 In Gary's translation of Dante's " Hell," canto in., line 
 21, we find this note on what Dante and Virgil encountered 
 in the infernal shades " Post hac omnia ad loco, tartarea, 
 et ad os infernalis baratri deduct us sum, qui simile vide- 
 baturputeo, loca vetoeadem horridis tenebris,fiztoribus ex- 
 halantibus, stridoribus quoque et nimiis plena erant ejula- 
 tibus, jiixta quern infe>num i>ermis erat infinite magnitu- 
 dinis, ligatus maxima catena." Alberici Virio, 5 9- 
 
 * If time be merged and lost in eternity, why may not 
 place, all sense of locality, be equally lost in infinitude of 
 space ?
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 47 
 
 "And 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 ? " 
 
 There are no pleasures so sweet, as the 
 imbibings of instruction from the lips of 
 those who are both superior and dear to us. 
 It is evident that Hallam's translation in 
 death, had exalted his friend's estimation of 
 him whilst living, for see the Poet's note at 
 the end of Poem xcvii. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 If, in the intermediate state, we find that 
 
 " Sleep and death be truly one " 
 as St. Paul himself might lead us to 
 believe 
 
 " And every spirit's folded bloom " 
 the slumbering soul being like a flower 
 which closes at night reposed, uncon- 
 scious of the passage of time, but with 
 silent traces of the past marked upon it ; a 
 
 I remember holding a serious conversation with an en- 
 lightened physician, some years ago, who said, " I hardly
 
 4 8 A KEY TO 
 
 then the lives of all, from the beginning of 
 time, would contain in their shut-up state 
 a record of all that had ever happened ; 
 
 "And love will last as pure and whole, 
 As when he loved me here in Time, 
 And at the spiritual prime 
 
 Rewaken with the dawning soul." 
 
 At the resurrection, the old affection will 
 revive. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 How fare the happy dead ? Here man 
 continuously grows, but he forgets what 
 happened 
 
 " before 
 God shut the doorways of his head ; " 
 
 that is, before the skull of the infant 
 closed. Yet sometimes 
 
 " A little flash, a mystic hint " 
 
 like to venture the theory, but it almost seems to me, as if 
 what is now said and thought becomes written on the physi- 
 cal brain, like a result of photography, and that a revelation 
 of this transcript, may be our real accuser at the day of judg- 
 ment." Had Shakespeare any such notion, in making Mac- 
 beth say, 
 
 " Raze out the written troubles of the brain ? "
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 49 
 
 suggests the possibility of a previous exist- 
 ence.* " If death so taste Lethean 
 springs," as to leave a trace on the soul of 
 what had happened upon earth the Poet 
 here makes Lethe produce remembrance, 
 instead of forgetfulness, which is its normal 
 effect. Dante describes the double power 
 of the mythic stream in Purgatory (Can. 
 xxviii., 1. 134) 
 
 " On this, devolved with power to take away 
 Remembrance of offence ; on that, to bring 
 Remembrance back of every good deed done. 
 From whence its name of Lethe on this part ; 
 On the other, Eunoe." GARY'S Translation. 
 
 Wordsworth entertains the notion of our having lived 
 before in his fine Ode, " Intimations of Immortality," where- 
 in he says, 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar," &c. 
 
 ack 
 
 See Sir W. Scott's " Journal," where a like impression is 
 knowledged on i?th February, 1828. 
 
 Tennyson also says in " The Two Voices : " 
 
 " Moreover, something is or seems 
 That touches me with mystic gleams, 
 Like glimpses of forgotten dreams 
 
 Of something felt, like something here, 
 Of something done, I know not where, 
 Such as no language may declare."
 
 50 A KEY TO 
 
 And so, " in the long harmonious years " 
 of death, some dim touch of earthly things 
 may reach Hallam whilst ranging with his 
 equals. If this should be allowed, "O 
 turn thee round," " resolve the doubt," 
 whether thou art conscious of a previous 
 life, and listen to my guardian angel, who 
 will tell thee all about us here. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The child, still in its mother's arms, has 
 no consciousness of its own individual life 
 and identity; and it is with its growth that 
 it acquires a sense of separate and isolated 
 being, independent of all around. 
 
 The acquisition of this consciousness 
 may be the use of "blood and breath," 
 which otherwise would have achieved no 
 worthy end; as we should have to learn 
 ourselves afresh after the second birth of 
 death, if these had not assured us of our 
 indisputable personality.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM:* 51 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 In this life we experience "thorn and 
 flower," grief and joy ; and the past be- 
 comes mercifully shaded as time goes on, 
 otherwise the retrospect would be intoler- 
 able. But hereafter all shadow on what 
 has happened will be removed, and all will 
 be " clear from marge to marge ; " and the 
 five years of earthly friendship will be the 
 " richest field " in the " eternal landscape." 
 
 Yet this would be a limited range for 
 Love, which ought to extend without any 
 circumscription, 
 
 "A rosy warmth from marge to marge," 
 its expansion interminable. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 This great and religious Poem has been 
 absurdly said to teach Pantheism, which 
 these stanzas refute; or perhaps they rather 
 deny the doctrine of Spinoza, if that be 
 clearly understood.
 
 52 A KEY TO 
 
 At any rate, to be conscious of " a sepa- 
 rate whole " a distinct individuality and 
 yet merge at last 
 
 "in the general Soul, 
 Is faith as vague as all unsweet : 
 Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside ; 
 And I shall know him when we meet." 
 
 St. Paul is not more distinct and emphatic 
 upon our individuality hereafter, when he 
 says, we shall " be clothed upon with our 
 house which is from heaven," 2 Cor. v., 2 ; 
 that is, we shall put on a spiritual body, that 
 will give identity and form. 
 Delighting in the thought of 
 
 " Enjoying each the other's good," 
 
 he feels to have attracted the approving 
 Shade of Hallam, and this reluctantly fades 
 away, with the tender parting : 
 
 " Farewell, we lose ourselves in light." 
 
 If indeed we are to be merged in the uni- 
 versal Soul, let us have at least one more
 
 "IN ME MORI AM. 53 
 
 parting, before we lose our individualities in 
 the Great Being. 
 
 XLvni. 
 
 This Poem disclaims any attempt at 
 settling religious difficulties. The verses 
 are of " sorrow born," the result of private 
 grief; and if misunderstood, and open to 
 the charge of attempting to solve such 
 grave questions of doubt as affect some 
 minds, they would deserve the scorn of 
 men. 
 
 Sorrow does not undertake severe argu- 
 ment ; but if a " slender shade of doubt " 
 flits before it, it would make this doubt a 
 " vassal unto love," and yield to Love's 
 supreme authority. 
 
 Love ought to be our ruler and guide, 
 and these lays of sadness are merely 
 
 " Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
 Their wings in tears, and skim away."
 
 54 A KEY TO 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 He compares the " random influences " 
 of Art, Nature, and the Schools, to light 
 breaking in shivered lances on the dappled 
 water. For even so does " the sullen sur- 
 face " of the mind become " crisp " and 
 curled with the wave of thought, the eddy 
 of fancy, the air of song. 
 
 The transient passenger may look and 
 go on his way, but must not blame such 
 mental perturbations : for 
 
 " Beneath all fancied hopes and fears, 
 Ay me, a the sorrow deepens down, 
 Whose muffled motions blindly drown 
 
 The bases of my life in tears. " 
 
 L. 
 
 He invokes Hallam's spirit to be near 
 him in his various moods of distress when 
 he is filled with nervous apprehensions, 
 when faith seems gone, and Time to be 
 
 1 " Ay " must have the force of the Greek au " alas " and 
 "ay me " be as the Latin hei mihi. " woe is me ! " See also 
 P. xl., 6.
 
 "IN MRMORIAM" 55 
 
 only " a maniac scattering dust," and Life 
 to be " a Fury slinging flame : " when men 
 also appear to be no more than flies, that 
 sting and weave their cells and die. 
 But above all, 
 
 " Be near me when I fade away, 
 To point the term of human strife, 
 And on the low dark verge of life, 
 
 The twilight of eternal day." 
 
 The idea is sustained, that we shall go 
 through the darkness of death, when Time 
 will be lost, into the dawning light of 
 Eternity; and the Poet would have his 
 friend be near him at this translation. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Dare we indeed challenge the dead to 
 inspect us? Have we "no inner vileness " 
 that we would not have them discover? 
 Would the Poet be lessened in Hallam's 
 esteem and affection, when " some hidden 
 shame " was exposed ? No,
 
 56 A KEY TO 
 
 " There must be wisdom with great Death 
 The dead shall look me thro' and thro'." 
 
 "They watch, like God, the rolling hours 
 With larger other eyes than ours, 
 To make allowance for us all." 
 
 LII. 
 
 He complains of his own inability to 
 love Hallam as he ought, that is, worthily ; 
 because, if he did so, he would be equal to 
 his friend, 
 
 " For love reflects the thing beloved;" 
 whereas his words are words only, the 
 " froth of thought." 
 
 The Spirit of love reproves this self- 
 accusation : 
 
 "Thou canst not move me from thy side, 
 Nor human frailty do me wrong. " 
 
 There is no ideal of excellence, which we 
 may conceive, that will ensure our attaining 
 to it: 
 
 " not the sinless years 
 That breathed beneath the Syrian blue >:
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 57 
 
 not the life of Christ, in the clear atmos- 
 phere of Palestine, keeps any spirit "wholly 
 true " to that pattern of perfection. 
 
 So be not "like an idle girl," fretting 
 over little faults " flecks of sin." But 
 wait, thy wealth will be gathered in thy 
 worth shown 
 
 " When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl " 
 
 when the flesh has left the Soul free from 
 its contaminating influence. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 He has often known a father, now 
 " A sober man among his boys," 
 
 whose youth was noisy and foolish. Are 
 we then to conclude from his example, that 
 had there been no wild oats sown, there 
 scarcely would have come 
 
 " The grain by which a man may live?" 
 
 If we ventured to name such a doctrine 
 among the old, who have " outlived heats
 
 58 A KEY TO 
 
 of youth," would we preach it to the young, 
 who still " eddy round and round ? " 
 
 Hold fast what is good, and define it 
 well ; and take care that " divine Philo- 
 sophy " does not exceed her legitimate 
 bound and become 
 
 " Procuress to the lords of hell " 
 by advocating sin as the path to sanctity. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 This Poem expresses a hope in Univer- 
 salism 
 
 "that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill " 
 
 that natural propensities, wilful sins, imper- 
 fect faith, and inherited weakness, may all 
 find a pardonable solution. 
 
 He hopes that nothing has been made 
 in vain 
 
 " That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 ' Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete."
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 59 
 
 But how reverently does he touch this 
 mysterious subject ! 
 
 " Behold, we know not anything ; 
 
 I can but trust that good shall fall 
 
 At last far off at last, to all, 
 And every winter change to spring. 
 
 So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
 
 An infant crying in the night : 
 
 An infant crying for the light : 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 In Poem cxxiv., stanza 5, he says, 
 
 "Then was I as a child that cries, 
 But, crying, knows his father near." 
 
 LV. 
 
 He pursues the awful theme, and asks 
 whether the wish for an universal restora- 
 tion to life, does not spring from what is 
 " likest God " in our own souls, His un- 
 limited goodwill towards men, which would 
 have all come to a knowledge of the truth ? 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife ? " 
 for we find Nature, whilst careful in pre- 
 serving the type of each species, utterly
 
 60 A KEY TO 
 
 reckless of the separate members. We 
 find, too, that out of "fifty (myriad'} 9 - seeds" 
 sown, only one perhaps germinates. He 
 falters and falls down 
 
 " Upon the great world's altar-stairs, b 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God ; " 
 
 but still he stretches forth " lame hands of 
 faith " 
 
 " To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope " 
 
 the hope of a final restitution of all things. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 He said that Nature preserved each 
 type ; but no, some species are already ex- 
 tinct ; and Nature says that she cares not 
 for preserving anything, and so, in geolo- 
 gical strata, we find the fossil remains of 
 creatures that no longer exist. 6 Why then 
 may not man, 
 
 The early purple orchi> is said to bear 200,000 seeds, and 
 perhaps one grows to a plant. 
 
 b Coleridge says : " The Jacob's ladder of Truth let down 
 from heaven to earth, with all its numerous rounds, is now 
 the common highway on which we are content to toil 
 upward." Friend, viii. 
 
 "The doctrine of evolution may dispute this statement, 
 and tell us that the type, or form, of the winged lizard of
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 61 
 
 " Who seemed so fair, 
 Su:h splendid purpose in his eyes," 
 
 also perish, and have his dust blown about 
 the desert, 
 
 ' ' Or seal'd within the iron hills ? " 
 If he be " no more " a if there be 
 nothing beyond this life for him then is 
 man but a monster, a dream, a discord 
 " dragons of the prime," the Ichthyosauri 
 that lived in the slime of chaos, were his 
 betters ! 
 
 " O life as futile, then, as frail ! 
 
 O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! b 
 What hope of answer or redress ? 
 
 Behind the veil, behind the veil." 
 
 LVII. 
 
 "Peace, come away," may possibly be 
 addressed to his sister, whom he now calls 
 away from the sad subject which his earthly 
 song had treated. 
 
 chaos, now fossilized in the rock, has been developed and 
 continued in the reptile of the ditch ; but its living self has 
 perished, and its type is gone. 
 
 " To die, to sleep, no more." Hamlet. 
 
 * " But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still. "
 
 62 A KEY TO 
 
 He says his companion's cheeks are 
 pale, so it is time that they should turn to 
 other things, though in doing so, he must 
 leave half his own life behind. His "friend 
 is richly shrined ; " but what will become of 
 himself? "I shall pass ; my work will fail." 
 
 The author speaks of these poems " me- 
 thinks, I have built a rich shrine for my 
 friend, but it will not 'last." At any rate, 
 so long as he lives will the tolling of Hal- 
 lam's passing bell a be in his ears ; and the 
 strokes on the bell, " Ave " and " Adieu," 
 hail and farewell, are like the notes of per- 
 petual separation. They seem to be parted 
 "for evermore."" He is in the lowest 
 depth of woe. 
 
 The term " toll " is correct 
 
 " When we lament a departed soul 
 
 We toll." 
 
 b Dixitqite novissfma verba, JE. iv., 650. 
 A poem by Catullus (Carmen ci.) who visits his brother's 
 grave, concludes with these lines : 
 
 " Accipe fratemo multum manantia fletu, 
 Atque in perpetuum,f rater, Ave, atque Pafe." 
 Ave is the morning greeting : Vale that of the evening. 
 1 his seems the like idea to that of the morning and evening 
 star. See P. cxxi., 5.
 
 "AV MEMOR7AM." 63 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 It has been thought that there might 
 have been an interval after the composition 
 of the previous Poem ; and that the author 
 resumed his task in a more hopeful state of 
 mind. 
 
 He now compares the words of his late 
 farewell to the echoes of dropping water in 
 burial vaults, and he says that other hearts 
 besides his own were affected by his lamen- 
 tation. 
 
 Urania reproaches him for thus distri- 
 buting a fruitless grief amongst those who 
 had shared his sense of loss ; and, exhort- 
 ing him to wait with patience for a more 
 resigned feeling, she assures him that it 
 will come to his great relief 
 
 " Abide a little longer here, 
 And thou shalt take a nobler leave " 
 
 be able to speak with more confidence of 
 their meeting again.
 
 64 A KEY TO 
 
 LIX. 
 
 He invites Sorrow to live with him as a 
 wife, always and constant, not as a casual 
 mistress : being his " bosom-friend and half 
 of life," even as it were Hallam himself. 
 
 Sorrow must remain his centred passion 
 which cannot move ; nevertheless it will 
 not always be gloomy : but rather allow 
 occasional playfulness, so that it would not 
 be commonly known that he had a life-long 
 affliction. 8 
 
 LX. 
 
 He cannot dismiss the memory of his 
 lots, and calls Hallam "a soul of nobler 
 tone," superior to himself, who is feeling 
 " like some poor girl " that has fixed her 
 affections on a man of higher rank than 
 her own. She compares her state with 
 
 There is often great charm in the cheerfulness of those 
 who we know have suffered.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 65 
 
 his, and sighs over her own inferior circum- 
 stances, and repines at her humbler lot. 
 The neighbours jeer at her disappoint- 
 ment, and she says 
 
 "How vain am I ! 
 How should he love a thing so low ? " 
 
 No doubt, the passing into a higher world 
 gave Hallam a superior dignity in the 
 Poet's estimation. 8 
 
 LXI. 
 
 If Hallam, in the intermediate state be 
 exchanging replies with the great intel- 
 lects there assembled from all time, "the 
 spirits of just men made perfect" how 
 dwarfed and insignificant must seem any 
 intercourse with his friend still left here 
 " How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! " 
 
 This figure of speech will be taken from 
 the blanching of vegetables in the dark. 
 Still, he would have him turn to 
 
 See the Poet's own words on this point at the end of 
 Poem xcvu.
 
 66 A KEY TO 
 
 " the doubtful shore,* 
 Where thy first form was made a man ; " 
 
 that is, to this world, distinguishing it from 
 that "second state sublime," into which 
 Hallam had been admitted ; for not even 
 there can more affection be found, than I 
 conceived and yet cherish : 
 
 " I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can 
 The soul of Shakespeare love thee more." 
 
 This is all that even Shakespeare can do, 
 if he and thou be now compeers. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 If looking down on the object of his af- 
 fection makes his friend ashamed, then let 
 their friendship be to him but as an idle 
 tale or legend of the past. And Hallam 
 may feel as one might, who having once 
 
 b "Doubtful shore" may mean that here there may be 
 doubt, whether there has not been a previous existence.
 
 "7JV MEMO RI AM." 67 
 
 had a low attachment, did afterwards wed 
 an equal mind." 
 
 The first love then either wholly dies 
 out, or 
 
 " Is matter for a flying smile " 
 a subject for ridicule. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Still, if I can pity an overdriven horse^ 
 or love my dog, without robbing heaven of 
 its dues of reverence, when these animals 
 are as much below me as I am thy inferior; 
 why mayest not thou " watch me, where I 
 weep," from thy circuits of higher heights 
 and deeper depths than mine ? 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 He asks whether Hallam is looking back 
 on this life, 
 
 "As some divinely gifted man," 
 
 a " Thou, as one that once declined," recalls in Hamlet, 
 Act I., s. 5, " To decline upon a wretch, whose natural gifts 
 were poor to those of mine."
 
 68 A KEY TO 
 
 who has burst through all the adverse cir- 
 cumstances of his humble birth, by genius 
 and labour ; making 
 
 " by force his merit known, 
 And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
 To mould a mighty state's decrees, 
 And shape the whisper of the throne ; " 
 
 as Lord Beaconsfield did. 
 
 Does not such a hero in his elevation, 
 <t "When all his active powers are still," 
 sometimes feel tender memories of the 
 scenes of his early life 
 
 " The limit of his narrower fate " 
 when he " play'd at counsellors and kings " 
 with some lad long ago left behind in his 
 native obscurity ; and who now resting on 
 his plough, musingly asks, 
 
 " Does my old friend remember me?" 
 
 LXV. 
 
 He clings to the memory of Hallam, yet 
 would resign himself to his loss 
 
 " Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt."
 
 "IN MEMORIAAL" 69 
 
 All that he can resolve is, to cherish 
 every grain of love ; and in doing so, there 
 springs up the " happy thought," that if his 
 own nature has been elevated by inter- 
 course with Hallam, why may not a like 
 result have been reflected from himself on 
 his friend ? 
 
 "Since we deserved the name of friends, 
 And thine effect so lives in me, 
 A part of mine may live in thee, 
 And move thee on to noble ends." 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 He accounts for his cheerfulness to some 
 one, who had wondered that being so far 
 diseased in heart he could ever be gay. 
 
 He says that his own grief has made him 
 feel kindly towards others ; and that he is 
 like a blind man, who though needing a 
 hand to lead him, can still jest with his 
 friends, take children on his knee and play 
 with them, and dream of the sky he can no 
 longer see : 
 
 " His inner day can never die, 
 His night of loss is always there ."
 
 7 o A KEY TO 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 He pictures in his mind, as he lies in 
 bed, how the moonlight that fills his cham- 
 ber is passing its " silver flame " across the 
 marble tablet in Clevedon Church, 3 which 
 is inscribed to the memory of Hallam. 
 The tablet is not in the chancel of the 
 church, as erroneously stated in Mr. Hal- 
 lam's private memoir of his son, and conse- 
 quently so described in the earlier editions 
 of this Poem, but it rests on the west wall of 
 the south transept , and " the letters of thy 
 name, "and "the number of thy years," are 
 thus most affectingly recorded : 
 
 Clevedon Church, which is dedicated to St. Andrew, is 
 quaint and picturesque in appearance, but not architectu- 
 rally beautiful. It is an irregular structure, which has evi- 
 dently been added to at various times, the chancel being the 
 original fisherman's church, and it has a solid square timer. 
 Within the sanctuary is the Hallam vault, on which the 
 organ now stands. Two cliffs, known as Church Hill and 
 Wains Hill, rounded and grass-grown, that rise on either 
 side, seem to guard and shelter it, with its surrounding 
 churchyard that holds the quiet dead. There are only two 
 bells in Clevedon Church a small one, on which are three 
 initial letters L. A. C., and a larger one, weighing 25 cwt. 
 which is inscribed 
 
 " I to the church the living call, 
 
 And to the grave do summon all." 1725.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 71 
 
 "TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, 
 
 OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, B.A., 
 
 ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM, ESQUIRE, 
 
 AND OF JULIA MARIA, HIS WIFE, 
 DAUGHTER OF SlR ABRAHAM ELTON, BART., 
 
 OF CLEVEDON COURT, 
 
 WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH, 
 AT VIENNA, ON SEPTEMBER ISTH, 1833, 
 
 IN THE 23RD YEAR OF HIS AGE. 
 AND NOW, IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY 
 
 CHURCH, 
 
 REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 
 ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME, 
 BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS 
 
 CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS, 
 THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING, 
 THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION, 
 
 THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY, 
 AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 Vale dulcissime, 
 vale dilectlssime, desideratissime, 
 
 requiescas in pace. 
 
 Pater ac mater hie posthac requiescamus teciun, 
 usque ad tubatn." a 
 
 There are other tablets in this church, which contain 
 touching memorials of the Hallam family. The historian's 
 own death is recorded as having taken place on 2ist January, 
 1859. Mrs. Hallam died 28th April, 1840. Their son
 
 72 A KEY TO 
 
 When the moonlight dies he falls asleep, 
 "closing eaves of wearied eyes;" and 
 awakens to know how the grey break of 
 day is drawn from " coast to coast," from 
 Somersetshire to Wales, across the estuary 
 of the Severn, 8 
 
 "And in the dark church like a ghost 
 Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn." 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 A succession of dreams now occurs. 
 When at night he presses " the down " of 
 his pillow, sleep, " Death's twin-brother," b 
 " times my breath " takes possession of 
 
 Henry Fitzmaurice died at Sienna. 25th October, 1850, aged 
 26 ; and he is said, by one who knew him, to have had all 
 the charm and talent of Arthur. On i3th June, 1837, in her 
 2ist year, Lleanor Hallam was suddenly called away, and 
 was buried in the vault where her brother, Arthur, had been 
 laid. 
 
 It was after this sad bereavement, that Mr. and Mrs. 
 H.illam made a brief sojourn at Sevenoaks, then unspotted 
 by villas, where they lived in strict retirement. Mr. Hallam 
 only associated with Sir John Bayley, the retired judge, who 
 was a kind friend of my own youth. I see the sorrowing 
 couple at church in garments of the deepest mourning : and 
 the fine brow of Mr. Hallam resting on his hand, as he stood 
 during the service in pensive devotion. A G. 
 
 a The Severn is nine miles wide at Clevedon. 
 
 b Consangnineus leti sopor. JEn. vi. 278. See also Iliad 
 xiv., 231, and xvi., 672.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 73 
 
 him and regulates his breathing. But, 
 though so closely related to Death, sleep 
 cannot make him dream of Hallam "as 
 dead." He again walks with him, as he 
 did before he was left "forlorn;" and all 
 nature is bright around them. 
 
 But, looking at his friend, he discovers 
 "a trouble in thine eye" an expression of 
 sadness, which his dream will not account 
 for. The light of day reveals the truth. 
 He awakes, and perceives that his own 
 grief, the trouble of his youth, had trans- 
 ferred itself to the image he saw in his 
 dream. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 He dreams again, and nature seems to 
 have become distorted, and will not answer 
 to the seasons. Smoke and frost fill the 
 streets, and hawkers chatter trifles at the 
 doors. 
 
 He wanders into a wood, and finds only
 
 74 A KEY TO 
 
 "thorny boughs." Of these he forms a 
 crown, which he places on his head. . For 
 wearing this, he is scoffed at and derided ; 
 but an angel comes and touches it into 
 leaf, and speaks words of comfort, "hard 
 to understand," being the language of a 
 higher world. 
 
 The occurrences in this dream seem to 
 have been suggested by the indignities 
 offered to our Lord before His crucifixion. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 The confusion of nightmare, with 
 nideous imagery, follows his effort to dis- 
 cern the features of Hallam ; till all at 
 once the horrid shapes disperse, and his 
 nerves are composed by a ' pleasanter 
 vision : 
 
 " I hear a wizard music roll, 
 And thro' a lattice on the soul 
 Looks thy fair face and makes it still. " 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Sleep, from its capturing power over the
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 75 
 
 brain, is called " kinsman to death and 
 trance and madness ; " and is here ac- 
 knowledged as affording 
 
 " A night-long Present of the Past," 
 
 by reviving in a dream of the night a tour 
 they had made together "thro' summer 
 France." 
 
 The Poet asks that, if sleep has " such 
 credit with the soul," as to produce this 
 temporary illusion ; it may be farther ex- 
 tended by giving him a stronger opiate, so 
 as to make his pleasure complete, in pro- 
 longing this renewal of their pedestrian 
 tour, and reviving other cherished associa- 
 tions. 
 
 This reference to their foreign excursion 
 recalls the charming verses, " In the Val- 
 ley of Cauteretz," which evidently relate to 
 their being together during this happy 
 holiday : 
 
 " All along the valley, stream that flashest white, 
 Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the 
 night,
 
 76 A KEY TO 
 
 All along the valley, where thy waters flow, 
 
 I walk'd with one I loved two-and-thirty years 
 
 ago. 
 
 All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, 
 The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls 
 
 away ; 
 
 For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, 
 Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the 
 
 dead, 
 
 And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, 
 The voice of the dead was a living voice to me." 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 The dreams are over, and he addresses 
 the sad anniversary of Hallam's death, 
 which took place on the i5th of September, 
 1833 the day having just dawned with 
 stormy accompaniments. The poplar 
 tree a is blown white, through having its 
 leaves reversed by the wind ; and the 
 window-pane streams with rain. It is a 
 day on which his " crown'd estate," his 
 
 In Tennyson's "Ode to Memory " the lines occur 
 
 " The seven elms, the poplars four. 
 That stand beside my father's door."
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 77 
 
 life's happiness, began to fail ; and that the 
 rose is weighed down by rain, and the 
 daisy closes her " crimson fringes," a are 
 effects quite in harmony with his feelings. 
 
 But, if the day had opened with no 
 wind, and the sun had chequered the hill 
 sides with light and shadow ; it would still 
 have looked 
 
 "As wan, as chill, as wild as now." 
 
 It is a disastrous " day, mark'd as with 
 some hideous crime," he can therefore 
 only say, " hide thy shame beneath the 
 ground," in sunset, when the recalling an- 
 niversary will be past. 
 
 We are reminded of Job's imprecation 
 on his own birthday " Let the day perish 
 on which I was born." 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 He says there are so many worlds, and 
 so much to be done in them since so 
 
 The foot of " Maud " opened these fringes by treading 
 on the daisies. " Her feet have touched the meadows, and 
 left the daisies rosy."
 
 7 8 A KEY TO 
 
 little has already been accomplished that 
 he thinks Hallam may have been needed 
 elsewhere. The earthly career of useful- 
 ness and distinction is over ; but he finds 
 no fault, piously submitting 
 
 " For nothing is that errs from law ; " 
 
 all is overruled. We pass away, and what 
 survives of human deeds ? 
 
 " It rests with God." 
 
 The hollow ghost of Hallam's reputation 
 may wholly fade here ; but his exulting 
 soul carries away unexpended powers for 
 higher purposes, 
 
 "And self-infolds the large results 
 Offeree that would have forged a name," 
 
 had he been permitted to live. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 This Poem will certainly not bear a 
 literal interpretation. We cannot suppose
 
 "IN MEMO RI AM." 79 
 
 that the writer ever looked on the face of 
 his friend after death ; for nearly foar 
 months had elapsed before the body 
 reached England. 
 
 What he saw, therefore, was with " the 
 mind's eye." And as Death often brings 
 out a likeness, 3 which was never before re- 
 cognized ; so, contemplating the character 
 of the departed, he sees 
 
 "Thy likeness to the wise below, 
 Thy kindred with the great of old." 
 
 I can perceive worth in thee equal to theirs ! 
 The last stanza is mystical ; the darkness 
 of death hides much ; what he can see he 
 cannot or will not explain : enough, that 
 thou hast made even this darkness of 
 death beautiful by thy presence. 
 
 LXXV. 
 The Poet leaves the praises of his friend 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne, in his " Letter to a Friend," says, 
 with reference to some one recently dead, that " he lost his 
 own face, and looked like one of his near relations : for he 
 maintained not his proper countenance, but looked like his 
 uncle."
 
 8o A KEY TO 
 
 unexpressed, because no words can duly 
 convey them ; and the greatness thus un- 
 recorded must be guessed, by the measure 
 of the survivor's grief. 
 Indeed, he does not care 
 
 " in these fading days 
 To raise a cry that lasts not long, 
 And round thee with the breeze of song, 
 To stir a little dust a of praise. " 
 
 The world only applauds accom- 
 plished success, and does not care for 
 what might have been done, had oppor- 
 tunity been given. It is therefore suffi- 
 cient that silence should guard Hallam's 
 
 In "The Two Voices," Tennyson says, 
 
 " I know that age to age succeeds, 
 Blowing a noise of tongues and dseds, 
 A dust of systems and of creeds." 
 
 And again, in " The Vision of Sin," 
 
 "All the windy ways of men 
 Are but dust that rises up, 
 
 And is lightly laid again." 
 
 Also in Poem LXXI., 3. 
 
 "the dust of change."
 
 "IN MEMO Rl AM." 81 
 
 fame here ; because the writer is assured, 
 that what he is elsewhere doing 
 
 " Is wrought with tumult of acclaim." 
 
 One cannot but feel that were it not for 
 this immortal elegy, its subject would have 
 been long since forgotten, like other pro- 
 mising youths who have died in their 
 Spring. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " Take wings of fancy," and imagine that 
 you have the whole "starry heavens of 
 space" revealed to one glance "shar- 
 pen'd to a needle's end." a 
 
 " Take wings of foresight," and see in 
 the future how thy best poems are dumb, 
 before a yew tree moulders ; and though 
 
 Shakespeare says, " Till the diminution of space had 
 pointed him sharp as my needle." Cymbeline, Act i., s. 4. 
 Chaucer says, 
 
 " And all the world as to mine eye 
 No more seemed than a prike." 
 
 Temple of Fame. 
 
 6
 
 82 A KEY TO 
 
 the writings of the great early Poets " the 
 matin songs that woke the darkness of our 
 planet " may last, thy songs in fifty years 
 will have become vain ; and have ceased to 
 be known by the time when the oak tree 
 has withered into a hollow ruin. a 
 
 LXXVII. 
 " What hope is here for modern rhyme ? " 
 
 Looking at what has already happened, 
 "These mortal lullabies of pain," 
 
 may bind a book, or line a box, or be used 
 by some girl for curl papers ; or before a 
 century has passed, they may be found on 
 a stall, telling of 
 
 " A grief then changed to something else, 
 Sung by a long forgotten mind." 
 
 "The Poet Laureate has written his own song on the 
 hearts of his countrymen that can never die. Time is power- 
 less against him," said Mr. Gladstone, in returning thanks at 
 Kirkwall for himself and Mr. Tennyson. To both of whom 
 the freedom of the borough was nesented, on the occasion 
 of their visit 13 Sept., 1883.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 83 
 
 Nevertheless, these considerations shall 
 not deter the Poet 
 
 " But what of that ? My clarken'd ways 
 Shall ring with music all the same ; 
 To breathe my loss is more than fame, 
 
 To utter love more sweet than praise." 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Another Christmas Eve arrives, with 
 snow and calm frosty weather. Though, 
 as of old, they had games, and tableaux 
 vivants, and dance, and song, and " hood- 
 man blind"* blindman's bluff yet in 
 spite of these recreations, 
 
 " over all things brooding slept 
 The quiet sense of something lost." 
 
 There were no visible signs of distress no 
 tears or outward mourning. Could regret 
 then have died out ? 
 
 This term is Shakespearean, 
 
 "What devil was't 
 That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind." 
 
 Hamlet, Act iii., s. 4.
 
 84 A KEY TO 
 
 " No mixt with all this mystic frame, 
 Her deep relations are the same, 
 But with long use her tears are dry." 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " More than my brothers are to me " 
 he had used this expression in the last 
 stanza of Poem ix., and in repeating it he 
 would apologize to his brother Charles 
 Tennyson, we may presume. 
 
 " Let not this vex thee, noble heart ! " 
 for thou art holding " the costliest love in 
 fee," even a wife's affection we may again 
 suppose. 
 
 The Rev. Charles Tennyson married 
 Miss Sellwood, a and changed his name to 
 Turner, for property left to him by a rela- 
 tion, and was vicar of Grasby, in Lincoln- 
 shire. The brothers, 1 " in their boyhood, 
 shared one home with all its endearing 
 associations ; and now each has his special 
 
 a A younger sister of Lady Tennyson. 
 
 b Their scholarly father gave them their first classical 
 training. He was a strict tutor, and would make them repeat 
 some odes of Horace before breakfast.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 85 
 
 object of affection : " my wealth resembles 
 thine ; " except that Hallam 
 
 " was rich where I was poor, 
 And he supplied my want the more 
 As his unlikeness fitted mine." 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 If any vague wish visits the Poet, that he 
 had himself been the first to be removed 
 by Death (when the dust would have dropt 
 on " tearless eyes," which, as it is, have 
 now so sorely wept over Hallam's depar- 
 ture) ; then the grief of the survivor would 
 have been 
 
 "as deep as life or thought, 
 But stay'd in peace with God and man ;" 
 
 because Hallam would have found comfort 
 in pious resignation. 
 
 So he minutely ponders over this holy 
 submission, and invokes contentment from 
 the contemplation 
 
 " Unused example from the grave 
 Reach out dead hands to comfort me."
 
 86 A KEY TO 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 If, whilst Hallam was with him, it could 
 be said that love had its full complement 
 and satisfaction, and could not range be- 
 yond ; still he torments himself with "this 
 haunting whisper," 
 
 " More years had made me love thee more." 
 
 My attachment would have expanded with 
 the enlargement of his powers. 
 
 " But Death returns an answer sweet : 
 My sudden frost was sudden gain " 
 
 The change in death instantly exalted its 
 victim ; 
 
 " And gave all ripeness to the grain, 
 It might have drawn from after-heat." 
 
 A sudden frost will ripen grain or fruit, 
 but will not impart the flavour to fruit 
 which the sun gives. 
 
 In Hallam's sudden transition, what
 
 " IN ME MORI 'AM." 87 
 
 might have been drawn from subsequent 
 experience was at once fully accomplished. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 A fine burst of Faith in the future. He 
 does not reproach Death for any corruption 
 by it " on form or face." No decay of the 
 flesh can shake his trust in the survival of 
 the soul. " Eternal process " is ever 
 " moving on ; " the Spirit walks through a 
 succession of states of being; and the 
 body dropt here is but a case, the " ruin'd 
 chrysalis of one " state left behind." 
 
 Nor does he find fault with Death for 
 taking " virtue out of earth : " he knows 
 that it will be transplanted elsewhere to 
 greater profit. 
 
 What he is angry with Death for is, their 
 separation 
 
 In " The Two Voices " we find the idea that man may 
 pass "from state to state," and forget the one he leaves be- 
 hind : 
 
 " As old mythologies relate, 
 
 Some draught of Lethe might await 
 
 The slipping thro' from state to state."
 
 88 A KEY TO 
 
 " He put our lives so far apart 
 We cannot hear each other speak. " 
 
 This Poem expresses a comforting be- 
 lief in progress and advancement hereafter. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 " The northern shore " must simply 
 mean our northern region. 
 
 He reproaches the New Year for " de- 
 laying long." Its advent would cheer him, 
 bringing the light and sweetness of Spring 
 for 
 
 " Can trouble live with April days, 
 Or sadness in the summer moons ? " 
 
 He would have the New Year bring all 
 its customary flowers 
 
 "Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 
 Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire " 
 
 a sight of these would set free the sorrow 
 in his blood, 
 
 "And flood a fresher throat with song." 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 This Poem is a very charming concep-
 
 "77V MEMORIAM." 89 
 
 tion of what their lives might have domes- 
 tically been, if Hallam had been spared. 
 The picture is almost too beautiful : de- 
 tailing more than life ever allows and 
 there came the crushing sorrow. 
 
 Engaged in marriage to the Poet's 
 sister,* death intervened 
 
 " that remorseless iron hour 
 
 Made cypress of her orange flower, 
 
 Despair of Hope, and earth of thee." 
 
 It is remarkable how the imagination of 
 the Poet glows over the tender scenes of 
 home affection, and the great results which 
 he presumes were arrested by the removal 
 of his friend, who he had hoped would 
 have attained " to reverence and the silver 
 hair " in company with himself and then, 
 in their full old age, 
 
 " He that died in Holy Land 
 Would reach us out the shining hand, 
 And take us as a single soul." 
 
 Miss Emily Tennyson eventually married a naval officer, 
 Captain Jesse.
 
 90 A KEY TO 
 
 The mere thought of this forbidden con- 
 summation of their friendship shocks him ; 
 it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and 
 stops 
 
 " The low beginnings of content." * 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 The first stanza merely repeats the sen- 
 timent expressed in Poem xxvii., that the 
 deepest grief has only more fully convinced 
 him, that to have loved and lost is better 
 than never to have loved. 
 
 It is the friend to whom the epithalamium 
 
 In this Poem occurs the line 
 
 " Arrive at last the blessed goal." 
 
 " Arrive " is thus made an active verb : but there are good 
 authorities for this use, which has the meaning of ' ' attain," 
 or "reach." 
 
 " But ere we could arrive the point proposed, 
 Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink." 
 
 Julius Ccesar, Act i., s. 2. 
 
 " I mean, my lords, those powers that the queen 
 Hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast." 
 
 3 Henry VI., Act v., s. 3. 
 
 " Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive 
 The happy isle." 
 
 Paradise Lost, B. II., 1. 409.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 91 
 
 is addressed E. L. Lushington "true in 
 word and tried in deed," who asks how he 
 is affected if his faith be still firm, and he 
 has still room in his heart for love ? He 
 answers, that all was well with him, until 
 that fatal " message " came, that 
 
 " God's finger touch'd him, and he slept." 
 
 He then recounts what he thinks may 
 have occurred to Hallam, when translated 
 through various stages of spiritual being ; 
 and he repeats his sorrowful regrets for his 
 loss. But " I woo your love," he seems to 
 say to his future brother-in-law, for he 
 holds it wrong 
 
 "' to mourn for any over much : " 
 
 still, so deep is his attachment to Hallam, 
 that he calls himself 
 
 " the divided half of such 
 A friendship as had master'd Time ; " 
 
 their intimacy would be eternal ; and he 
 imagines some sort of intercourse still car- 
 ried on betwixt them, which he describes
 
 92 A KEY TO 
 
 in language that has much of the spirit and 
 character of Dante. 
 
 He then seems to turn again to his living 
 friend, and says, 
 
 " If not so fresh, with love as true, 
 I, clasping brother-hands, aver 
 I could not, if I would, transfer 
 
 The whole I felt for him to you." 
 
 But he is not wholly disconsolate 
 
 " My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest 
 Quite in the love of what is gone, a 
 But seeks to beat in time with one 
 
 That warms another living breast." 
 
 The concluding stanza offers the primrose 
 of autumn to the surviving friend, whilst 
 that of spring must be reserved for the 
 friend whom he has lost. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 He asks the ambrosial air of evening, 
 
 This Poem was written "through a course of years," 
 and during that long period the author was devotedly attached 
 to the lady whom he ultimately married, but they were not 
 allowed to meet. May not this separation have tinctured, 
 with double sadness, this wonderful elegy in memory of his 
 friend ? Lord Tennyson's marriage, and the first publication 
 of " In Memonam," both occurred in 1850.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 93 
 
 which is so " sweet after showers," and is 
 "slowly breathing bare the round of 
 space, " a clearing the sky of clouds, and 
 "shadowing" the divided stream by rais- 
 ing ripples on its surface, to fan the fever 
 from his cheek, till Doubt and Death can 
 no longer enchain his fancy, but will let it 
 fly to the rising star, in which 
 
 "A hundred spirits whisper, ' Peace.' " 
 This Poem is remarkable as being one 
 sustained sentence. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 He revisits Cambridge, the chief scene 
 of past intimacy with Hallam, and roams 
 about the different colleges. 
 
 The expression " high-built organ," pro- 
 bably alludes to the organ being here, as in 
 some cathedrals, reared above the screen 
 which separates the choir from the nave. 
 " The prophets blazon'd on the panes," 
 
 "all things rare 
 
 That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet XXI.
 
 94 A KEY TO 
 
 refers to the stained glass windows, and 
 more particularly to those, perhaps, in 
 King's College chapel. The scenery at the 
 back of the colleges is vividly recalled. 
 
 He stops at the door of Hallam's old 
 room, now occupied by a noisy wine party. 
 It was there that his friend used to achieve 
 such controversial triumphs ever as the 
 master-bowman hitting the mark in argu- 
 ment, when 
 
 " we saw 
 The God within him light his face," 
 
 like the martyr Stephen's ; 
 
 ' ' And over those ethereal eyes 
 The bar of Michael Angelo " 
 
 whose brow was straight and prominent 
 the sign of intellectual power. 
 
 Michael Angdo had a strong bar of bone 
 over his eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Frances A. Kemble in Recordofa Girlhood, vol. ii. 
 p. 3, thus describes young Hallam's appearance. " There 
 was a gentleness and purity almost virginal in his voice, 
 manner, and countenance ; and the upper part of his face, 
 his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness for his early 
 translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still must
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 95 
 
 wear in heaven. Some time or other, at some rare moments 
 of the divine Spirit's supremacy in our souls, we all put on 
 !he heavenly face that will be ours hereafter, and for a brief 
 lightning space our friends behold us as we shall look when 
 this mortal has put on immortality. On Arthur Hallam's 
 brow and eyes this heavenly light, so fugitive on other 
 human faces, rested habitually, as if he was thinking and 
 seeing in heaven." 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 He asks the " wild bird," probably the 
 nightingale, whose liquid song brings a 
 sense of Eden back again, to define the 
 feelings of the heart, its emotions and pas- 
 sions. In the " budded quicks " of Spring 
 the bird is happy ; in the " darkening 
 leaf," amid the shadowing foliage, -though 
 its happiness be gone, its grieving heart 
 can still cherish " a secret joy." The 
 notes of the nightingale are supposed to be 
 both sorrowful and joyous. 
 
 Even so, the Poet cannot wholly govern 
 his own muse ; for, when he would sing of 
 woe, 
 
 " The glory of the sum of things," 
 the grandeur of life's experience, will 
 sometimes rule the chords.
 
 96 A KEY TO 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 This Poem is like a picture by Watteau 
 of a summer holiday in the garden or the 
 woods. 
 
 He recalls the lawn of Somersby Rec- 
 tory, with the trees a that shade it, and 
 Hallam as being present on one of his re- 
 peated visits. He has come down from 
 his law readings in the Temple, 
 
 " The dust and din and steam of town ; " 
 and now, in a golden afternoon, sees 
 
 " The landscape winking thro' the heat" 
 as he lies and reads Dante, or Tasso, 
 aloud to his companions ; until later on, 
 when some lady of the group would bring 
 her harp, and fling 
 
 "A ballad to the brightening moon." 
 
 Or the family party may have strayed 
 
 The ' ; towering sycamore " must be a notable tree on the 
 lawn, again alluded to in P. xcv., s. 14. It is cut down, 
 and the four poplars are gone, and the lawn is no longer a 
 flat one.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 97 
 
 farther away, for a picnic in the woods ; 
 and are there discussing the respective 
 merits of town and country. 
 
 They are described as returning home, 
 
 " Before the crimson-circled star a 
 Had fall'n into her father's grave," 
 
 that is, before the planet Venus had sunk 
 into the sea "her father's grave." This 
 planet is evolved from the Sun La Place's 
 theory. 
 
 The evening sounds are very charming 
 
 " The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
 And buzzings of the honied hours," 
 
 when the bees were gathering their last 
 stores of the day. Tender recollections of 
 the past ! 
 
 xc. 
 
 He is indignant at the idea that if the 
 dead came back to life again, they would 
 not be welcome ; and declares that who- 
 
 * " Tn summer twilight she, as evening stdr, is seen sur- 
 rounded with the glow of sunset, crimson-circled." 
 
 SPEDDING'S Bacon, vol. vi., p. 615.
 
 9 3 A KEY TO 
 
 ever suggested this, could never have 
 tasted the highest love. 
 
 Nevertheless, if the father did return to 
 life, he would probably find his wife re- 
 married, and his son unwilling to give up 
 the estate. Even if matters were not so 
 bad as this, still 
 
 " the yet-loved sire would make 
 Confusion worse than death, and shake 
 The pillars of domestic peace. " * 
 
 Though all this may be true, 
 
 " I find not yet one lonely thought 
 That cries against my wish for thee ." 
 
 XCI. 
 
 When the larch is in flower, and the 
 thrush " rarely pipes " exquisitely sings ; 
 and "the sea-blue bird of March," b the 
 
 In the " Lotus Eaters," we read 
 
 " all hath suffered change ; 
 
 For surely now our household hearths are cold : 
 Our sons inherit us : our looks are strange : 
 And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy." 
 
 b The kingfisher is here meant, which, like other birds, 
 puts on its best plumage in early spring see " Locksley 
 Hall " 
 
 " In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's 
 breast ;
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 99 
 
 kingfisher, " flits by ; " come, my friend, in 
 thy spirit form, with thy brow wearing the 
 tokens of what thou hast become. Come 
 to me also in the summer-time, when roses 
 bloom and the wheat ripples in the wind. 
 Don't come at night, but whilst the sun- 
 beam is warm, that I may see thee, 
 
 " beauteous in thine after form, 
 And like a finer light in light." 
 
 XCII. 
 
 If a vision revealed Hallam in bodily 
 presence as of old, he would doubt its 
 reality, and ascribe it to "the canker of the 
 
 In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another 
 
 crest ; 
 In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove." 
 
 Longfellow sings in " It is not always May : " 
 
 " The sun is bright the air is clear, 
 The darting swallows soar and sing, 
 
 And from the stately elms 1 hear 
 The blue-bird prophesying spring." 
 
 I can positively say that the kingfisher is the bird to which 
 the poet refers. Another parallel passage may be quoted : 
 
 " The fields made golden with the flower of March, 
 The throstle singing in the feather'd larch, 
 And down the river, like a flame of blue, 
 Keen as an arrow flies the water-king." 
 
 ' The little halcyon's azure plume 
 Was never half so blue." SHtNSTONE.
 
 ioo A KEY TO 
 
 brain." If the apparition spoke of the past, 
 he would still call it only "a wind of me- 
 mory" in himself. Even if it promised 
 what afterwards came true, he would ac- 
 count it to be merely a presentiment 
 
 " such refraction of events 
 As often rises ere they rise."* 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 " I shall not see thee ; " for he doubts, 
 though he dares not positively speak, 
 whether a spirit does ever return to this 
 world at least visibly so as to be recog- 
 nised. But he will dare to ask that where 
 " the nerve of sense " is not concerned 
 that is, where neither sight nor touch are 
 needed wholly apart from the body 
 
 Campbell says, " Coming events cast their shadows be- 
 fore." The sun, by refraction, still appears in full size above 
 the horizon, after it has really sunk below it ; and reappears 
 in full, when only just the upper edge has reached the horizon. 
 
 "As the sun, 
 
 Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image 
 In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits 
 Of great events stride on before the events, 
 And in to-day already walks to-morrow." 
 
 Death of IVallensU-in, Act v. Scene i.
 
 "IN MEMOR1AM." 101 
 
 "Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost" may 
 come, so that 
 
 " My Ghost may feel that thine is near." 3 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 To be fit and capable of a spiritual visi- 
 tation from the dead, you must be "pure 
 in heart, and sound in head." There will 
 be no answer to your invocation, unless 
 you can say that your " spirit is at peace 
 with all," as they can who are already in 
 " their golden day" in Paradise. The mind 
 and memory and conscience must be calm 
 and still ; for 
 
 " when the heart is full of din, 
 And doubt beside the portal waits," 
 
 the departed spirit.? 
 
 " can but listen at the gates, 
 And hear the household jar within." 
 
 This fitness for apprehending any communi- 
 cations from the next world, well describes 
 
 The wish realized. See Poem xcv. s. 9.
 
 102 A KEY TO 
 
 the condition requisite for intercourse with 
 God Himself. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Here comes another family scene at 
 Somersby." 
 
 It may be observed here that Dr. Ten- 
 nyson, the Poet's father, had died in 1831, 
 but his family remained in their old home 
 for several years afterwards, as the new In- 
 cumbent was non-resident. 
 
 The family party are at tea on the lawn 
 in the calm summer evening. No wind 
 makes the tapers flare, no cricket chirrs, 
 
 Somersby may be described as being utterly secluded 
 from the " madding crowd" the most rural retirement that 
 the most agricultural country can show. I find the population 
 was recorded in 1835, when the family still resided there, as 
 being sixty-one, whilst the church accommodation was for 
 sixty. Small, however, as both church and parish were, and 
 still are, the so-called Rectory is a roomy family house, with 
 its back to the road, on which there can be but little traffic, 
 and it fronts a very extensive stretch of country, on which 
 you enter by a steep slope of ground. There are no striking 
 features in this expanse of soft undulations, but you feel a 
 consciousn-ss that the sea is not far off, and that the scenery 
 is well adapted for fine cloud and sunset effects. The air 
 seems to have a bracing tone, and the several equally small 
 churches around, tell of thin populations, and a general 
 condition of rustic simplicity and peace.
 
 "7A T MEMORIAM." 103 
 
 only the running brook is heard at a dis- 
 tance, whilst the urn flutters on the table. 
 The bats performed their circular flight ; 
 
 "And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes 
 That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 
 And woolly breasts and beaded eyes " 
 
 these are night moths (Arctica menthrasti, 
 the ermine moth, answers the description), 
 whilst those assembled sing old songs, 
 which are heard as far as where the cows 
 are lying under the branching trees. 
 
 So passed the evening until all have re- 
 tired to rest, and the Poet is alone, when 
 he takes out Hallam's last-written letters- 
 
 " those fall'n leaves which kept their green, 
 The noble letters of the dead." a 
 
 * " They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead : 
 They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears 
 
 to shed ; 
 
 I wept, as I remember'd how often you and I 
 Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky. 
 
 " And now that thou are lying, my dear old Carian guest, 
 A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest, 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake, 
 For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. " 
 
 I cannot resist quoting these touching lines, which are 
 translated from the Greek of Callimachus, librarian of Alex- 
 andria, 260 B.C., on his friend Heraclitus of Halicarnassus.
 
 104 A KEV TO 
 
 He reads them afresh, to renew a sense 
 of their bygone intimacy : 
 
 " So word by word, and line by line, 
 The dead man touch 'd me from the past, 
 
 And all at once it seem'd at last 
 The living soul was flash'd on mine." 
 
 The Poet's mind struggles on "empy- 
 real heights of thought " in incorporeal 
 ecstasy a sort of trance inexplicable 
 which lasts till dawn, when 
 
 " East and West, without a breath, 
 Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 
 To broaden into boundless day." 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 He reproves the young lady, who, whilst 
 tender over killing a fly, does not hesitate 
 to call the harass of religious doubt "Devil- 
 born." 
 
 The Poet says, " one indeed I knew " 
 who, it may be presumed, was Hallam 
 and
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 105 
 
 " He faced the spectres of the mind 
 And laid them." 
 
 " Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, a 
 At last he beat his music out,'' 
 
 and found the serenity of faith. 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 Unquestioning faith is not the qualification 
 for its champion. True faith is the result 
 of conflict " the victory that overcometh 
 the world." 
 
 God made and lives in both light and 
 darkness ; and is present in the trouble of 
 doubt, as well as in the comfort of belief. 
 The Israelites were making idols when 
 God's presence in the cloud was manifested 
 by the trumpet. They doubted in the 
 midst of sensible proof of the Divine pre 
 sence. 
 
 The questionings of a speculative mind 
 ought to be tenderly dealt with, not harshly 
 denounced. 
 
 See P. cix., s. 3.
 
 io6 A KEY TO 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 This Poem is highly mystical. 
 
 " My love has talk'd with rocks and trees." 
 His own affection for Hallam seems to per- 
 sonate the object of his attachment, and 
 "sees himself in all he sees." Just as the 
 giant spectre, sometimes seen "on misty 
 mountain-ground," a is no more than the 
 vast shadow of the spectator himself. 
 
 The Poem proceeds more intelligibly, 
 by drawing a comparison which typifies his 
 own humble relation to his exalted friend. 
 He imagines some meek-hearted and affec- 
 tionate wife loving and revering a husband, 
 whose high intellect and pursuits exclude 
 her from any real companionship. 
 
 But she treasures any little memorials of 
 their early devotion, and feeling that he is 
 
 "great and wise, 
 
 She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 
 ' I cannot understand : I love.' " 
 
 * "Jocund day 
 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, Act iii., s. 5.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 107 
 
 It must be understood that this Poem, 
 as elsewhere, would describe the relation of 
 one on earth to one in the other and higher 
 world not the Author 's relation to him here. 
 He certainly looked up to the Author, fully 
 as much as the Author to him. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 . "You leave us." Some one is going on 
 the very route which the friends had tra- 
 versed together, and will reach "that City," 
 Vienna, where Hallam died. All its splen- 
 dour is to the Poet, 
 
 " No livelier than the wisp a that gleams 
 On Lethe in the eyes of death ; " 
 
 so great is his aversion to the place, on ac- 
 count of the loss he had sustained there ; 
 and he charges it with all manner of ill. 
 
 But Hallam had given him a very diffe- 
 rent description i; saying that in no other 
 metropolis " mother town " had he seen 
 such stately carriages of the rich pass to 
 
 Ignis fatnns"Vf\\\ o'the Wisp."
 
 loS A KEY TO 
 
 and fro ; and such a contented crowd en- 
 joying themselves with dance and song, 
 amidst a display of coloured fireworks. 
 
 xcix. 
 
 This Poem is an address to the recurring 
 anniversary of Hallam's death, which had 
 before been commemorated in Poem 
 Ixxii. 
 
 " Day, when I lost the flower of men." 
 
 The early signs of Autumn are very 
 sweetly described, in personifying a day 
 that will remind many of births and 
 bridals, but still more of deaths ; and 
 wherever the sorrowing survivors may re- 
 side, they are on this day " kindred souls " 
 with himself though they be utter stran- 
 gers 
 
 "They know me not, but mourn with me." 
 This applies to all 
 
 " Betwixt the slumber of the poles," 
 from one end of the world to the other.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 109 
 
 The poles of the earth are the ends of 
 the axis on which the world revolves. 
 These never move, but " slumber." 
 
 Autumn laying "a fiery finger on the 
 leaves," is an expression similar to 
 
 " This maple burn itself away." P. ci. , r. 
 
 " And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands 
 drove thro' the air." "Maud," stanza 3. 
 
 Rising from his night's rest shortly be- 
 fore quitting the old home, and looking 
 over the familiar landscape, which his 
 friend had known so well ; there is not a 
 feature but recalls some gracious memory 
 of Hallam's presence. 
 
 The various objects in the surrounding 
 country are enumerated, and present a 
 beautiful rural picture to the mind; and 
 he says, 
 
 " But each 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."
 
 no A KEY TO 
 
 To take leave of them is to renew the more 
 bitter separation. 
 
 In recent editions this poem commences 
 " I climb the hill," instead of " I wake, I 
 rise." 
 
 CI. 
 
 A sad reflection comes over him at the 
 thought of bidding farewell to Somersby. 
 
 Unwatched and unloved will the flowers 
 in the garden bloom with their fragrance, 
 although the family be gone : and the trees 
 will put forth, and afterwards shed their 
 foliage. The rose-carnation, too, will 
 
 " feed 
 With summer-spice the humming air," 
 
 in which the bees are busy. 
 
 Uncared for, the brook will babble 
 
 " At noon, or when the lesser wain a 
 
 Is twisting round the polar star ; " 
 
 also when the sailing moon's reflection in 
 
 That is, the ursa minor, or little bear, which is a small 
 constellation that contains the pole star, and never sets in our 
 latitude.
 
 "IN MEMO R I AW in 
 
 the water becomes broken into silver 
 arrows.* 
 
 All this will go on, until garden and wild 
 become familiar to the succeeding stranger: 
 
 "And year by year our memory fades 
 From all the circle of the hills." 
 
 Future generations will nevertheless visit 
 Somersby, with something of the reverence 
 that still attracts the stranger to Stratford- 
 on-Avon. 
 
 CII. 
 
 " We leave the well-beloved place 
 Where first we gazed upon the sky." 
 
 The mother, and the members of her 
 family, quit what had been the Rectory, 
 and seek a new home. 
 
 But, " ere we go," the Poet walks in the 
 garden, and seems to be in the company of 
 two spirits, who 
 
 This is a favourite figure. In Poem xlix., stanza r, we 
 read, 
 
 " Like light in many a shiver'd lance 
 That breaks about the dappled pools."
 
 112 A KEY TO 
 
 "Contend for loving masterdom." 
 
 They do not represent persons, but the 
 place with different associations. The 
 first is the love of the native place ; the 
 second, the same lore enhanced by the memory 
 of the friend. 
 
 The former pleads 
 
 " here thy boyhood sung 
 Long since its matin song." 
 
 The rival affection urges 
 
 "Yea, but here 
 
 Thy feet have stray'd in after hours 
 With thy lost friend among the bowers, 
 And this hath made them trebly dear." 
 
 Through half the day each one prefers a 
 separate appeal by endearing circumstance; 
 but the contest affords no superiority to 
 either; and, as the Poet turns away from 
 the illusion, 
 
 " They mix in one another's arms 
 To one pure image of regret." 
 
 This picture is very beautiful.
 
 "AY MEMORIAM." 113 
 
 cm. 
 
 A dream is described, 
 
 " Which left my after-morn content ;" 
 it imparted comfort. 
 
 The Poet seemed to be in a hall, where 
 maidens were singing before a veiled 
 statue 
 
 "known to me, 
 The shape of him I loved." 
 
 A dove flies in and summons him to the 
 sea, where, together with his female com- 
 panions, he enters a boat. As the boat 
 glides away with them, they all seem to ex- 
 pand into greater size and strength ; and a 
 vast ship meets them, on the deck of which, 
 in giant proportions, stands " the man we 
 loved." 
 
 The maidens weep, as they fear being 
 left behind ; but all enter the ship, and 
 
 " We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud 
 That land-like slept along the deep." 
 8
 
 H4 A KEY TO 
 
 The teaching is allegorical of the voyage, 
 and of those on board, and we may take 
 this interpretation : / rather believe the 
 maidens are the Muses > Arts, &*c. Every- 
 thing that made Life beautiful here, we may 
 hope may pass on with us beyond the grave. 
 The description somewhat reminds one 
 of the passage of king Arthur to the island 
 of Avilion. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 Christmastide again ; and he hears the 
 bells from 
 
 " A single church below the hill ; " 
 
 this is at the place to which the family 
 had moved, and the church is Waltham 
 Abbey church. It is a fresh and strange 
 locality, and the bells sound like strangers' 
 voices, recalling nothing of his previous 
 life ; no memory can stray in the surround- 
 ing scenery ; 
 
 " But all is new unhallow'd ground." 
 The Poet's mother lived for several years
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 115 
 
 with her sister, Miss Fytche, in Well Walk, 
 Hampstead; but this new home was at 
 High Beach) Epping Forest. 
 
 cv. a 
 
 It is Christmas Eve, but the holly out- 
 side their new home shall stand ungathered. 
 He deprecates repeating their old obser- 
 vances of this season in a new place. He 
 thinks of his father's grave " under other 
 snows " than those he looks on ; and how 
 the violet will blow there, "but we are 
 gone." 
 
 What was done in the old home cannot 
 be repeated in the new habitation, 
 
 " For change of place, like growth of time^ 
 Has broke the bond of dying use." b 
 
 " This holly by the coUage-eave, 
 
 To-night, ungather'd, shall it stand." ' 
 
 Changed in later editions to 
 
 "To-night ungather'd let us leave 
 This laurel, let this holly stand." 
 
 b "Use an J Wont, 
 
 Old sisters of a day gone by. 
 
 They too will die." Poem xxix.
 
 ii6 A KEY TO 
 
 He would have this Christmas Eve kept 
 with reverent solemnity : no joyous forms 
 retained from which the spirit has gone; 
 no music, dance, or motion, 
 
 "save alone 
 
 What lightens in the lucid East 
 Of rising worlds by yonder wood." 
 
 This refers to the scintillation of the stars 
 rising. Let these run out their 
 
 "measured arcs, and lead 
 The closing cycle rich in good ; " 
 
 bringing Christ's second advent. 
 
 cvi. 
 
 The old year is rung out by " wild bells 
 to the wild sky ; " and he would have these 
 ring out all abuses and evils, and ring in 
 all good, and the various blessings which he 
 enumerates 
 
 " Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
 Ring in the thousand years of peace, "
 
 "//V MEMORIAM" 117 
 
 the millennium ; and last of all, 
 
 "Ring in the Christ that is to be ; " 
 God Himself again upon earth. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 "It is the day when he was born," 
 the anniversary of Hallam's birth, which 
 took place in Bedford Place, London, on 
 ist February, 1811. 
 
 One may suppose this Poem to have 
 been written at night, because the descrip- 
 tion is of 
 
 "A bitter day that early sank 
 
 Behind a purple frosty bank 
 
 Of vapour, leaving night forlorn. *' 
 
 Indeed, the time is determined by the poe- 
 try, for " yon hard crescent " shows that 
 the moon was up when he was writing. 
 
 Ice making "daggers at the sharpen'd 
 eaves" is a common sight. Such icicles 
 may be sometimes seen a yard long, pen- 
 dent from any eave or ledge.
 
 n8 A KEY TO 
 
 " Brakes " means bushes; " grides " may 
 mean " grates ; " and " iron horns " must 
 be the dry hard forked boughs ; but how 
 distinguished from the "leafless ribs" of 
 the wood, unless as descriptive 'of the 
 forms of different trees in the wood, is 
 difficult to understand. 
 
 " The drifts that pass 
 To darken on the rolling brine 
 That breaks the coast " 
 
 must allude to drifts of snow, which falling 
 into water, immediately blacken before they 
 dissolve. 
 
 " Bring in great logs and let them lie." 
 This birthday shall no more be kept as 
 a day of mourning, but shall be joyously 
 observed, 
 
 "with festal cheer, 
 With books and music, surely we 
 Will drink to him whate'er he be, 
 And sing the songs he loved to hear. " a 
 
 " Ligna super foco large reponens." Thackeray sang, 
 
 " Care, like a dun, 
 Lurks at the gate, 
 Let the dog wait ! 
 Happy we'll be.
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 119 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 A noble resolution seems to be now 
 formed, not to become morbid and misan- 
 thropic ; he will not " stiffen into stone : " a 
 and this feeling appears to sustain and 
 animate the Poet throughout the re- 
 mainder of his loving tribute. 
 
 He admits that " barren faith and vacant 
 yearning " are profitless ; although they 
 may carry him in thought to the highest 
 height of heaven, or to the deepest depth 
 of Death. And this being so, his upward 
 glance only reveals 
 
 " Mine own phantom chanting hymns ;" 
 or, gazing below, he sees 
 
 " The reflex of a human face." 
 His lost friend being, therefore, evcry- 
 
 Drink every one. 
 Pile up the coals, 
 Fill the red bowls, 
 Round the old tree." 
 
 "All stone I felt within," Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 47. 
 Wright's translation. "My heart is turned to stone," 
 Othello, act iv., s. i. Eloisa says. " I have not quite forgot 
 myself to stone."
 
 120 A KEY TO 
 
 where represented, he will try to extract 
 wisdom from the sorrow which he cannot 
 exclude ; though this be not such wisdom 
 as sleeps with Hallam. 
 
 " 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise " 
 is repeated in P. cxiii., i. 
 
 cix. 
 
 Hallam's character and accomplish- 
 ments are recited. Richness of conversa- 
 tion, much imported from an intellectual 
 home ; with critical powers over all poetry. 
 Keen and rapid thought displayed in logi- 
 cal argument. Delighting in what is good, 
 but not ascetic, and pure in life. Loving 
 freedom, but without 
 
 " The blind hysterics of the Celt," a 
 
 and uniting manliness with female grace, 
 which made him such a favourite with 
 children. 
 
 a Lucan has, " ulularunt tristin Galli."
 
 "IN ME MORI AM." 121 
 
 If the survivor, who had seenandadmired 
 all these qualities, had not allowed such 
 wisdom to make him wise, then shame be 
 on him 1 
 
 ex. 
 
 He recalls their former Cambridge dis- 
 cussions; and how Hallam's powers of 
 conversation drew out 
 
 " The men of rathe and riper years ; " 
 
 both the young and older. He gave con- 
 fidence to the timid, the true-hearted held 
 to him, and the deceitful were exposed, 
 
 "While I, thy dearest, a sat apart" 
 
 watching these triumphs, and enjoying 
 them as my own ; and though not possess- 
 ing the tact, and art, and sweetness, and 
 skill, yet I seemed to share in them, from 
 the love and admiration which they in- 
 spired. 
 
 "Nearest "in later editions.
 
 122 A KEY TO 
 
 . "And, born of love, the vague desire 
 That spurs an imitative will," 
 
 rose in me, and made me wish to do like- 
 wise. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 " The churl in spirit " may be found in 
 all ranks of society. Even the king, hold- 
 ing the golden ball of state, may be "at 
 heart a clown." 
 
 The "coltish nature" will break out 
 through all the disguises of fashion : but in 
 
 Hallam 
 
 " God and nature met in light, 
 And thus he bore without abuse 
 The grand old name of gentleman,* 
 Defamed by every charlatan, 
 And soil'd with all ignoble use." 
 
 CXII. 
 
 "High wisdom," which judges ex ca- 
 thedrd, will condemn him for preferring 
 " glorious insufficiencies " to " narrower 
 perfectness." 
 
 * Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Christian Morals," says, 
 " the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer."
 
 "IN MEMOKIAM." 123 
 
 He esteems high purposes after what is 
 unattained, as exhibited in Hallam's short- 
 ened life, more than a complete fulfilment 
 of lesser duties by the " lords of doom," 
 who rule in our social system, and are 
 those that have free will, but less intellect. 
 
 His friend was " some novel power," 
 which 
 
 " Sprang up for ever at a touch, 
 And hope could never hope too much, 
 In watching thee from hour to hour." 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 He persistently dwells on Hallam's capa- 
 bilities. Sorrow may teach wisdom ; but 
 how much more sleeps with him, who 
 would not only have guided the survivor, 
 but served all public ends. 
 
 He thinks his friend might have become 
 a leading statesman of the day a pilot to 
 weather the storm, when the greatest social 
 agonies prevailed.
 
 124 A KEY T0 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 "Who loves not Knowledge"? He 
 would have it pursued to its utmost limits ; 
 but in the keen searchings of the scientific 
 there is this danger, that conclusions are 
 apt to be accepted before they have been 
 proved. 
 
 When "cut from love and faith," Science 
 is no more than "some wild Pallas from 
 the brain of Demons " like Minerva, who 
 sprang all armed and full-grown from the 
 brain of Jupiter. 
 
 Science, too often, 
 
 " leaps into the future chance, 
 Submitting all things to desire. 
 
 Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain " 
 
 and therefore needing caution and re- 
 straint. 
 
 If separated from love and faith, she 
 bursts 
 
 " All barriers in her onward race 
 For power."
 
 "INMRMQRIAM" 125 
 
 Science is " second, not the first," 
 
 " For she is earthly of the mind, 
 But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. " 
 
 He would have the world wise and modest, 
 
 " like thee, 
 
 Who grewest not alone in power 
 And knowledge, but by year and hour 
 In reverence and in charity." 
 
 It may be remarked that, here and else- 
 where, the Poet makes a distinction betwixt 
 mind and soul : the former acquiring know- 
 ledge which 
 
 "is of things we see ; " 
 
 the latter by faith, 
 
 " Believing where we cannot prove ; " 
 
 even those things which St. Paul says " are 
 not seen and are eternal." 
 
 cxv. 
 
 Spring is described, with its sprouting 
 hedges and blowing violets. The whole
 
 126 A KEY TO 
 
 landscape changes in colour, with the 
 warmer weather ; 
 
 " And drown'd in yonder living blue 
 The lark becomes a sightless song." a 
 
 Who has not heard the lark, after it has 
 become invisible in the heavens ? 
 
 The migratory " birds that change their 
 sky " b return and build their nests ; 
 
 "and my regret 
 Becomes an April violet, 
 And buds and blossoms like the rest." 
 
 He is cheered by the opening season. 
 
 cxvi. 
 Is it regret for buried time grief for 
 
 In Measure for Measure, act in., s. i, we read 
 "To be imprison'd in the viewless winds." 
 ' Sightless " and " viewltss " are alike used for " invisible." 
 
 " O, therefore, from thy sightless range." 
 P. xciii., 3. 
 
 b " Ccehttn mutant, gui trans mare currunt." 
 Hor. Ep. xi., 27.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 127 
 
 the friend whom he has lost which makes 
 him feel so tender and susceptible of the 
 influences of Spring ? Not wholly so : for 
 " life re-orient out of dust," the revival of 
 vegetation, raises his spirits, and "heartens," 
 strengthens his trust in that Power which 
 made the earth beautiful. 
 
 Nor is it altogether " regret " that he 
 feels ; for the face and the voice of his 
 friend come back ; and the voice speaks of 
 me and mine -his sister as well as himself 
 and he is conscious of 
 
 " Less yearning for the friendship fled, 
 Than some strong bond which is to be " 
 
 reunion hereafter. 
 
 cxvn. 
 
 " O days and hours " he declares their 
 work to be the accumulation of joy they 
 will bring to that future meeting, from 
 which at present they are detaining him.
 
 128 A KEY TO 
 
 " Delight a hundredfold " will accrue 
 from this postponement the contribution 
 of every grain of sand through the hour- 
 glass, of " every span of shade " across the 
 sundial, of every click in the watch, and. 
 each day's sun. 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 A friend observes that this Poem is a re- 
 markable exposition of the nebular hypo- 
 thesis, as sanctioned by geologists. 
 
 Look at " this work of Time," its slow 
 growth and effect ; and don't believe that 
 "human love and truth" dissolve and 
 pass away, as being no more than " dying 
 Nature's earth and lime," insensible and 
 finite. 
 
 Rather trust that 
 
 "the dead 
 
 Are breathers of an ampler day 
 For ever nobler ends. "
 
 "77V MEMO RI AM." 129 
 
 If this solid earth came from elements dis- 
 solved by " fluent heat,' 1 and man was the 
 last result ; then he, who is now enduring 
 fears and sorrows and the battering 
 " shocks of doom," typifies " this work of 
 time " on natural objects ; for he must be, 
 as they have been, in process of being 
 moulded for a higher state. He is moving 
 upward, "working out the beast," and 
 letting "the ape and tiger die," while in 
 his present probationary condition. 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 The work of resignation in the mourner's 
 heart is here acknowledged. In Poem 
 vii. he represents himself as standing, 
 " like a guilty thing," at the door of the 
 London house where they used to meet, 
 and he was then all sad and comfortless. 
 
 But now he revisits the spot, at the 
 same early hour, and his feelings have 
 changed and have become reconciled and 
 9
 
 130 A KEY TO 
 
 hopeful. He smells "the meadow in 
 the street," the waggon loads of hay 
 and clover coming in from the country. 
 
 Wimpole Street is here again described, 
 with morning breaking over the house- 
 tops : 
 
 "I see 
 
 Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn 
 A light blue lane of early dawn." 
 
 It was at No. 67 in this street that Mr. 
 Hallam lived, and wrote his great historical 
 works; and his son Arthur used to say, 
 " We are always to be found at sixes and 
 sevens." 
 
 All is now welcome : 
 
 " I think of early days and thee, 
 And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, 
 
 And bright the friendship of thine eye ; 
 
 And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 
 I take the pressure of thine hand." 
 
 cxx. 
 
 He exults in the victory of a higher 
 faith. We are not " magnetic mockeries "
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 131 
 
 simply material " brain " " casts in 
 clay " to perish as soon as the galvanic 
 battery ceases to act, 
 
 " not in vain, 
 Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death." 
 
 Let Science prove the contrary, even that 
 we only exist for this life, and I won't stay 
 here. And Science herself would then be 
 valueless, since she had only taught us our 
 nothingness. 
 
 Let " the wiser man " of the future 
 
 " up from childhood shape 
 His action like the greater ape, 
 But I was born to other things." 
 
 This is spoken ironically, and is a strong 
 protest against materialism, but not against 
 evolution? Nevertheless, the gorilla is not 
 our grandfather ! 
 
 The work begun by Nature is finished by the Super- 
 natural as we are wont to call the higher natural. And as 
 the veil is lifted by Christianity, it strikes men dumb with 
 wonder. For the goal of Evolution is Jesus Christ. The 
 Christian life is the only life that will ever be completed. 
 Apart from Christ, the life of man is a broken pillar, the race 
 of men an unfinished pyramid. " Drummond's Natural Law 
 in the Spiritual World, p. 3 14.
 
 132 A KEY TO 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 "Sad Hesper," the evening star, only 
 rises to "follow the buried sun ;" but, in the 
 " dim and dimmer " light of late afternoon, 
 it watches the conclusion of man's daily 
 labours. The teams are loosened from 
 the waggons, " the boat is drawn upon the 
 shore," the house door is closed, "and 
 life is darken'd in the brain " of the 
 sleeper. 
 
 Phosphor, the morning star, sees the 
 renewal of life; the bird with its early 
 song, the rising sun, the market boat again 
 floating and voices calling to it from the 
 shore, the village blacksmith with his 
 clinking hammer, and the team again har- 
 nessed and at work. 
 
 Hesper and Phosphor are simply the 
 one planet Venus, which according to its 
 position with the sun, becomes the morn- 
 ing or evening star. 
 
 So the Poet sings,
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 133 
 
 "Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name 
 For what is one, the first, the last, 
 Thou, like my present and my past, 
 
 Thy place is changed ; thou art the same." 
 
 Hallam has only been removed : he is 
 not altered into something else "not 
 lost, but gone before." No the writer is 
 rather referring to himself : and as his own 
 " present " and " past " are so different ; 
 the latter, with a bright prospect, may be 
 likened to the morning star, Phosphor; 
 whilst the former, full of gloom and 
 sorrow, is represented by Hesper, the star 
 of evening, and precursor of black night. 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 He seems to recall some former occa- 
 sion, when in wild enquiry he had dared to 
 question the great secrets of life and death 
 now and hereaftei. 
 
 This may not refer to any special time, 
 but to the general uneasiness of his feel-
 
 I 3 4 A KEY TO 
 
 ings before submission had been attained ;* 
 and he now says, 
 
 " If thou wert with me, and the grave 
 Divide us not, be with me now." 
 
 Let me again, "like an inconsiderate 
 boy," "slip the thoughts of life and 
 death," give free rein to a speculative 
 imagination ; for now, in a higher and 
 better frame of mind, it will be that 
 "every thought breaks out a rose" a 
 blossom of truth. 
 
 cxxin. 
 
 The great changes on the earth's sur- 
 face are bewildering, and hint that "no- 
 thing stands " and endures. 
 
 Where the tree now grows, and the 
 long street is full of crowd and noise, there 
 was once 
 
 "The stillness of the central sea." 
 See Poem xcvi.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 135 
 
 The very hills and solid lands are no more 
 than shadows, or 
 
 " Like clouds that shape themselves and go." 
 But our parting is not for ever, 
 
 " For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, 
 I cannot think the thing farewell."* 
 
 I am sure that we shall meet again. 
 
 cxxiv. 
 
 In this Poem we have a profound ac- 
 knowledgment of the revealed Godhead in 
 its triune manifestations, though not ex- 
 pressed in ecclesiastical formula : 
 
 " Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ; 
 He, They, One, All ; within, without ; 
 The Power in darkness whom we guess. " 
 
 This Power lives in our hearts. Eye hath 
 not seen Him, nor is He to be found " in 
 world or sun," or by dissection of what 
 has lived, or by process of reasoning. 
 
 What is the difference of meaning in the two words 
 "adieu " and " farewell "? Byron says in Lara, 
 
 " Farewell to life, but not adieu to thee."
 
 136 A KEY TO 
 
 If ever his own faith faltered, and a 
 voice said, " believe no more," the reprov- 
 ing witness was within himself. 
 
 " A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up and answer'd, I have felt." a 
 
 Still he was 
 
 "as a child that cries, 
 But, crying, knows his father near." b 
 
 His own heart, which is the home of 
 faith, testified to Divine truth, which "no 
 man understands," but he accepts it as the 
 one solution of what exists. 
 
 cxxv. 
 He admits that some "bitter notes" 
 
 " Witli the heart man believeth unto righteousness." 
 
 Romans x., 10. 
 
 * " But as 1 rav'd, and grew more fierce and wihl 
 
 At every word, 
 Methought I heard one calling, Child, 
 
 And I reply 'd, My Lord." 
 
 The Collar, G. Herbert.
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 137 
 
 have sounded from his harp. But though 
 his tongue may at times have seemed to 
 speak with contradiction, Hope was never- 
 theless still alive to better things. 
 
 And if Love " play'd with gracious lies," 
 suggested difficulties, this Love had only 
 dared to do so 
 
 " Because he felt so fixed in truth." 
 
 Love sustained him when his song was 
 " full of care ; " and Love's signet marked 
 it whenever it was " sweet and strong ; " 
 and he implores Love to abide with him 
 till he joins his friend " on the mystic 
 deeps," when his own electric brain no 
 longer "keeps a thousand pulses dancing." 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 Here is a noble testimony to the com- 
 fort and assurance which Love, when 
 made our " Lord and King," can impart. 
 
 In the Poet's estimation, Love is the 
 Charity of St. Paul ; believing, hoping,
 
 138 A KEY TO 
 
 enduring, and never failing.. Love brings 
 us tidings of the dead. Love guards us in 
 life, even in sleep. Through his influence 
 we hear, as from a sentinel, 
 
 " Who moves about from place to place, 
 And whispers to the worlds of space, 
 In the deep night, that all is well." 
 
 CXXVII. 
 
 Yes, "all is well, tho' faith and form be 
 sunder'd" in temporary crises; that is, 
 one must believe in ultimate good, even 
 when the immediate circumstances are 
 most adverse. The storm will rage below 
 on earth, before truth and justice can be 
 firmly established. 
 
 " The red fool-fury of the Seine " 
 
 does not specially refer to the Revolution 
 of 1848, as it was probably written long be- 
 fore '48. 
 
 Such convulsions will cease at last; 
 there is calm beyond; and, even whilst 
 they last,
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 139 
 
 "thou, dear spirit, happy star, 
 O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, 
 And smilest, knowing all is well." 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 The Love, which became stronger in 
 himself, after encountering Death at the 
 departure of Hallam, 
 
 " Is comrade to the lesser faith 
 That sees the course of human things." 
 
 This "lesser faith " attends to the events 
 of time, and is not overborne by present 
 confusions, but reaches, sustained by 
 Love, to a last happy consummation. 
 
 If all that the " wild Hours " of Time 
 had to do was to repeat the past, bring 
 about useless wars, " fool the crowd with 
 glorious lies," cleave religion into sects, 
 disguise language, change governments, 
 cramp learning, patch afresh what is 
 antique and worn if these results were 
 all that could be effected, then would my 
 scorn be well deserved. But
 
 I 4 o A KEY TO 
 
 " I see in part 
 
 That all, as in some piece of art, 
 Is toil co-operant to an end ; " 
 
 that all things are working together for 
 final good. 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 A more touching and tender address to 
 the dead was never uttered than this 
 Poem expresses, a more pure and en- 
 nobling affection was never described. 
 Sorrow is lost in the more exalted senti- 
 ment of their certain reunion, and in the 
 strength derived from a consciousness of 
 the worthiness of their past friendship. 
 
 " Strange friend, past, present, and to be, 
 Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; 
 Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
 
 And mingle all the world with thee." 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 Each had so participated in the other's
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 141 
 
 life : they had looked on Nature with such 
 kindred eyes, having one mind and taste ; 
 that the survivor both sees and hears his 
 former companion in all objects and 
 sounds which present themselves. 
 
 Everything reminds him of Hallam ; 
 but 
 
 " Tho' mix'd with God and Nature them, 
 I seem to love thee more and more." 
 
 His last declaration of devoted attach- 
 ment is, 
 
 " Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 
 
 I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 
 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
 I shall not lose thee tho' I die." 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 "O living vfil\"free will in man 
 that will outlast all present things, surviv- 
 ing and enduring 
 
 " When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
 Rise in the spiritual rock,"
 
 I 4 2 A KEY TO 
 
 which is Christ, the source of all life and 
 strength ; and flowing through our deeds, 
 " make them pure ; " so that out of the 
 dust of death, we may cry to One that 
 hears, and has conquered time, and with 
 us works ; and we may put our whole 
 trust in those "truths that never can be 
 proved until we close with all we loved," 
 and with God Himself, who will be "all in 
 all " not by the souls of mankind becom- 
 ing absorbed into the " general Soul " a 
 notion which Poem xlvii. repudiates but 
 by the Divine nature being infused into 
 and prevailing in all. 
 
 PREFATORY POEM. 
 
 To this final confession of faith, worked 
 out through Sorrow by the sustaining help 
 of Love, the prefatory Poem is merely 
 a pendant. 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love,"
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 143 
 
 is addressed to Christ, God Himself upon 
 earth. a George Herbert had before called 
 our Saviour 
 
 " Immortal Love, author of this great frame;" 
 
 and our Poet says, though we have 
 not seen His face, we embrace Him by 
 faith, 
 
 " Believing where we cannot prove." 
 
 He acknowledges Him as the great 
 Creator, and through all surrounding 
 mysteries and disappointments, is satisfied 
 with this conclusion as to the future, 
 
 " Thou art just." 
 This conviction is enough. 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou" 
 
 Many years ago, I had a conversation with the Poet in 
 his attic study at Farringford, that lasted till nearly day- 
 break. He discoursed on many subjects, and when we 
 
 ureaK. ne discoursed on many suojecis, ana wnen we 
 touched on religion, he said, / am not very fond of creeds : 
 it is enough for me that I know God Himself came down
 
 144 A KEY TO 
 
 God incarnate, to whom we must become 
 spiritually united, 
 
 " Our wills are ours, to make them thine," 
 
 as expressed in Poem cxxxi., stanza i. 
 
 "Our little systems" "are but broken 
 lights of thee," even as the colours of 
 the rainbow are the broken lights of the 
 sun. 
 
 " We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
 For knowledge is of things we see." 
 
 Faith apprehends things which are spiri- 
 tual, and do not come within the range of 
 our senses ; whilst knowledge accepts only 
 what can be seen and understood. 
 
 Hence, the Poet would have knowledge 
 advance and increase to the utmost, "a 
 beam in darkness " ever growing. But 
 reverence must grow with it ; so that mind 
 which accumulates knowledge, and soul 
 which is the dwelling-place of faith, ac- 
 cording well with each other, may make 
 one music be in harmony "as before,"
 
 "IN MEMORIAM." 145 
 
 that is, I presume, as at first ; but now 
 "vaster" in their compass owing to the 
 greater reach of modern thought and 
 research. 
 
 This warning against scientific assump- 
 tions, in opposition to spiritual truths, is 
 repeated from Poem cxiv. 
 
 The concluding humble prayer, con- 
 tained in the three last stanzas, has the 
 true ring of devout piety. 
 
 " Forgive what seem'd my sin in me ; 
 
 What seem'd my worth since I began ; 
 
 For merit lives from man to man, 
 And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 
 
 " Forgive my grief for one removed, 
 Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
 I trust he lives in thee, and there 
 
 I find him worthier to be loved. 
 
 " Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
 
 Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
 
 Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
 And in thy wisdom make me wise." 
 
 " What seem'd my sin," would be the 
 10
 
 146 A KEY TO 
 
 Poet's excessive grief for Hallam's death : 
 for he elsewhere says, 
 
 " I count it crime 
 To mourn for any overmuch." a 
 
 "What seem'd my worth," would be his 
 devoted love for his friend, which he felt 
 had ennobled his own life; and so he 
 
 says, 
 
 " To breathe my loss is more than fame, 
 To utter love more sweet than praise." 
 
 But this worth was only comparative, 
 
 " from man to man, 
 And not from man, O Lord, to thee ; 
 
 since no human goodness can be counted 
 as merit in the sight of God. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY POEM. 
 
 The Epithalamium, or marriage lay, 
 which is added to the great Poem, refers 
 
 Shakespeare says, 
 
 " Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, * 
 Excessive grief the enemy to the living." 
 
 Alfs ^ve^ tkat ends well, act i., s. i.
 
 "IN MEMO RI AM." 147 
 
 to the wedding of a younger sister, Cecilia 
 Tennyson, who, about the year 1842, 
 married Edmund Law Lushington, some- 
 time Professor of Greek at the University 
 of Glasgow. 
 
 The strong domestic affections of the 
 Poet are prominently shown throughout 
 In Memoriam, and his pleasure at this 
 bridal is very charming. He just recalls 
 that Hallam had appreciated the Bride in 
 her childhood : 
 
 " O when her life was yet in hud, 
 He too foretold the perfect rose." 
 
 The worth of the Bridegroom is acknow- 
 ledged in this address : 
 
 " And thou art worthy ; full of power ; 
 As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, 
 Consistent ; wearing all that weight 
 
 Of learning a lightly like a flower." 
 
 The whole Poem is pleasant and jocund 
 
 * The late Sub-Dean Garden said, that E. L. Lushington 
 was the most learned man in England, after Bishop Thiil- 
 wall. Professor Lushington died I3th July, 1893.
 
 148 A KEY TO "IN MEMORIAM." 
 
 and was meant to be a kind of Divina 
 Commedia ending cheerfully but it 
 scarcely harmonizes with the lofty solem- 
 nity of In Memoriam, whose Author might 
 rejoice in the thought, that he would leave 
 behind him a rich legacy of comfort to all 
 future generations of mourners. 
 
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