which comes on the true heart with advancing years, towards the world of actual man. In the first volume there are indications that the poet, calm as he is, and apart as he seems from the crowded path of human life, is still one of the true spirits who live for and feel with all. The poem of Lady Clara Vere de Vere is a stern lesson to the heartlessness of aristocratic pride, shrouded as it may be under the fairest of forms. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred earls, You are not one to be desired. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name; Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that doats on truer charms, A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats of arms. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Some meeker pupil you must find, For were you queen of all that is, I could not stoop to such a mind. You sought to prove how I could love, And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. O your sweet eyes, your low replies; A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat, Which you had hardly cared to see. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view. She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear, Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. "Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a spectre in your hall: The guilt of blood is at your door, You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse. To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare, And slew him with your noble birth. "Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent., Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. "I know you, Clara Vere de Vere; You pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these. "Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, The poems which immediately follow this, The May Queen and New Year's Eve, are practical examples of the truth just enunciated, "A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats of arms." The natural beauty of The May Queen, and the exquisite pathos of the New Year's Eve, have made them universally known. In the second volume, the poet seems particularly to have endeavoured to enforce his ideas of the dignity of a virtuous nature, which stands in its own divine worth, far above all artificial distinctions. His Gardener's Daughter, the ballad of Lady Clara, and that most delightful one of The Lord of Burleigh, all teach it. Lady Godiva is an example of that high devotion to the public good, which is prepared to make the most entire sacrifice of self; and of which history, here and there, amid its mass of selfishness and crime, presents us with some glorious examples-none more glorious than that of the beautiful Godiva. But Locksley Hall and The Two Voices are the most brilliant of all Tennyson's productions, and amongst the most perfect things in the language. We can scarcely conceive anything more perfectly musical and intrinsically poetical than Locksley Hall. It is the soliloquy of a wronged, high, and passionate nature. The speaker, a young man capable of great things, wars against the false maxims of the present time, yet sees how it is advancing into something better and greater. He perceives how mind is moving forward into its destined empire. He feels and makes us feel how great is this age and this England in which we live. Some of the thoughts and expressions stand prominent even amid the superb beauty of the whole, and have never been surpassed in their felicitous truth and pictorial power. The description of his life at that country hall, and the love of himself and his cousin Amy, are fine; but how much finer these stanzas, the result of the fickle cousin's marrying a mere clod with a title. The certain consequence of the wife's mind, which would have soared and strengthened in the association with his own, sinking to the level of the brute she had allied herself to, is most admirably told How constantly do we see this effect in life, but where has it been, and in so few words, so fully expressed? "Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring. It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought: Cursed be the sickly forms that err from Nature's honest rule! With a lover's fancy he would seek comfort in persuading himself that his love was dead, but quickly spurns from him this idea. Every line which follows this-the picture of the repentant wife, and the drunken husband, “hunting in his dreams,” the child that roots out regret, the mother grown into the matron schooling this child, a daughter, into the world's philosophy-all is masterly. Not less so the portraiture of the age "What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are rolled in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. How finely, in the next stanzas, are portrayed the expectations of the ardent youth, the light of London, and the imagined progress of scenic and real life! "Can I but re-live in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be: Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm. So I triumphed, ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry, Disappointed in love, and sickened in hope of civilized life, the speaker dreams, for a moment, of flying to some savage land, and leading the exciting life of a tropical hunter. In the reaction of his thoughts how vividly is expressed the precious preeminence of European existence, with all its attendant evils! Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild, I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Mother-Age! (for mine I knew not,) help me as when life begun; OI see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set; Who shall say, after this, that Alfred Tennyson wants power? There speaks the man of this moving age. There speaks the spirit baptized into the great spirit of progress. In the silence of his meditative retreat the poet sees the world rolling before him, and is struck with the majesty of its mind subduing its physical mass to its uses, and trampling on time, space, and the far greater evilsprejudice, false patriotism, and falser ideas of glory. Brotherhood, peace, and comfort advance out of the school and the shop, and happiness sits securely beneath the guardianship of "The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." Alfred Tennyson has given many a fatal blow to many an old and narrow maxim in his poems; he has breathed into his later ones the generous and the victorious breath of noblest philanthropy, the offspring of the great renovator-the Christian religion. This will give him access to the bosoms of the multitude "Men his brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;" and his vigorous song will cheer them at their toil, and nerve them to more glorious efforts. Of the hold which his poetry has already taken on the public heart, a striking instance was given some time ago. The anonymous author of The New Timon stepped out of his way and his subject to represent Tennyson's muse as a puling school-miss The universal outburst of indignation from the press scared the opprobrious lines speedily out of the snarler's pages. A new edition was quickly announced, from which they had wisely vanished. Perhaps, however, the crown of all Tennyson's verse is The Two Voices. I have said that he is not metaphysical. He is better. Leaving to others to build and rebuild theories of the human mind, Tennyson deals with its palpable movements like a genuine philo sopher, and one of the highest order, a Christian philosopher The Two Voices are the voice of an animated assurance in the heart, and the voice of scepticism. In this poem there is no person who has passed through the searching, withering ordeal of religious doubts and fears as to the spiritual permanency of our existence and who has not ?—but will find in these simple stanzas the map and history of their own experience. The clearness, the graphic power, and logical force and acumen which distinguish this poem are of the highest order. There is nothing in the poems of Wordsworth which can surpass, if it can equal it. Let us take, as our last quotation, the closing portion of this lyric, the whole of which cannot be read with too much attention. Here the combat with Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is most simply and beautifully put an end to by the buoyant spirit of nature, and man walking amid his human ties hand in hand with her and piety. "The still voice laughed. 'I talk,' said he, 'Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee Thy pain is a reality.' 'But thou,' said I, 'hast missed thy mark Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark By making all the horizon dark. 'Why not set forth if I should do This rashness, that which might ensue With this old soul in organs new? 'Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death for which we pant: More life, and fuller that I want.' I ceased, and sat as one forlorn. Then said the voice in quiet scorn, 'Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.' And I arose, and I released The casement, and the light increased With freshness in the dawning east. Like softened airs that blowing steal, When meres begin to uncongeal, The sweet church-bells began to peal. On to God's house the people prest; Passing the place where each must rest, Each entered like a welcome guest. One walked between his wife and child, With measured footfall firm and mild, And now and then he gravely smiled. The prudent partner of his blood Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good, Wearing the rose of womanhood. And in their double love secure, The little maiden walked demure, Pacing with downward eyelids pure. These three made unity so sweet, My frozen heart began to beat, Remembering its ancient heat. I blessed them, and they wandered on; 'A hidden hope,' the voice replied. * Suicide. |