Alfred Tennyson

ward FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson's later work. Tiresias, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by excess of light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under th

earlier date than the

the crowd

war, whose issu

words among

ruit to lions;

reak, when I

each, and bring

tes, was mine t

our cities an

n'd upon his

that the ty

to the tyr

that the ty

d to the ty

ork'd no good to

th the author, and his blank vers

for

I were gather

ith the famou

t their ocea

he Gods-the wi

by the popul

h worship-and the

, and watch th

al again, an

ion, and the

rowess more tha

ory, while t

unding in

, and every

with the grate

mix all odo

ght in one far

ce on FitzGerald's death, and

hen I fr

ith him into

f earth's

s peaceful

. Like the poet himself, the Sage finds a gleam of light and hope in his own subjective experiences of some unspeakable co

son! for more

ne, revolvi

t is the sym

mit of the Se

o the Namele

n. I touch'd my

mine-and yet no

rness, and thr

large life as m

park-unshadow

shadows of a

et's h

ving i

is the symbo

ism. Thus he emancipates his mind from the influence of the senses, and is enabled to attain an imperfect contact with the spiritual world." Ibn Khaldoun regards the "contact" as extremely "imperfect." He describes similar efforts made by concentrating the gaze on a mirror, a bowl of water, or the like. Tennyson was doubtless unaware that he had stumbled accidental

d the Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. The old fire of the versification is unabated, but the hero has relapsed on the gloom of the hero of Maud. He represents himself, o

sex fading

ray glimps

e request of the Mantuans, by the most

the statel

d by the li

han in this unmatched panegyric, th

anch amid

ms that pass t

ennyson's lifelong abhorrence of the critics and biographers, whose joy is in the futile and the unimportant, in personal gossip and the sweepings of the studio, the salvage of the wastepaper b

alone among poets, believed. "You know," said Tennyson to Mr Leaf; "I never liked that theory of yours about the many poets." It would be at least as easy to prove that there were many authors of Ivanhoe, or perhaps it would be a good deal more easy. However, he admitted that three lines which occur both in the Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of the Iliad are more appropriate in the later book. Similar examples might be found in his own poems. He still wrote, in the intervals of a mala

ears on earth we may think

latest e

d into hue

ferin, appeared in the December of the year. The dedication was the lament for the dead son and the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece of resigned and manly regret. The Demeter and Per

imate-changing

ss the darknes

hreshold of he

answer to the goddess concerning "fate beyond the Fates," and the breaking of the bonds of Hades. The ballad of Owd Ro? is one of the most spirited of the essays in dialect to which Tennyson had of late years inclined. Vastness merely expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson's conviction that, without immortality, life is a series of worthless contrasts.

an, the Ghost t

olly free its

to each othe

earth has ever

and the Voic

oss the Voice

en, nor sudden

ill of One who

owledge is b

lution, sw

pheres-an ever

lessenin

egend told by Mr Lowell about a house near where

low throbbing

ling weights t

bells that ran

rn'd when none

rs that open'd

the passion of the tale. The lines to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, and worthy of a poet

r had

not w

g who l

annot

at

ut in

The G

n his eighty-first year, when there "came in a moment" the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, Crossing the Bar. It is hardly less majestic and musical in the perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For once at least a poem has been "poured from the golden to the silver cup" w