Found yesterday-forgotten mine own rhyme By mine own self, As I shall be forgotten by old Time, Laid on the shelf A rhyme that flower'd betwixt the whitening sloe And more than half-a-hundred years ago. The poem was written at the time when the war between capital and labour was at its fiercest, and the burning of the farmers' ricks was the easiest way for the labourers to manifest their hostility. All this time of riot and trouble came back to the poet's recollection, and he remembered That red night When thirty ricks, All flaming, made an English homestead Hell - These hands of mine Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well Along the line, When this bare dome had not begun to gleam Thro' youthful curls. In these lines To Mary Boyle the poet dedicated "this song of Spring." It is almost a pity to make extracts from the exquisite lyric, and one fears to hear a cry of pain as when Dante broke a branch from the living trees. Let this one stanza suffice: She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours, But in the tearful splendour of her smiles And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam, Miss Boyle, a life-companion of the poet's, died very shortly after these verses to her had been published. She could claim among her close and honoured friends, Landor, Browning, and Dickens, and was both a novelist and poetess herself, some verses of hers in the Tribute, entitled Our Father's at the Helm, having exceeded in popularity the contribution of Tennyson himself to that miscellany. The poem, which was of the didactic order, with a very obvious "moral," is not one which would be likely to suit the taste of readers now. Mary Boyle will owe her fame to the monument fashioned for her in exquisite verse by the Laureate, who remembered her when she was A lover's fairy dream, and to whom he could then say— Close are we, dear Mary, you and I though how close the one was he knew not. CHAPTER XII. THE SWAN-SONGS. "Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, Twilight and evening bell And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark." -Crossing the Bar. IT is recorded that when Tennyson heard Byron was dead he "thought the whole world was at an end." "I thought," he said, "everything was over and finished for everyonethat nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone and carved Byron is dead' into the sandstone." In October 1892 came the news that Tennyson was dead, and we too felt that there was a void, a gap, a "something lost" so great, so commanding, that for the moment everything seemed over and finished, nothing mattered, the impenetrable darkness of night enveloped us. “Tennyson is dead" were words that carved themselves upon many a heart. The sweetest singer, the purest poet, had passed into the silent land, and left us longing in vain for the touch of a vanished hand, craving in despair for a sound of the voice that is still. The "spectre fear'd of man" came in no dread guise to the aged poet, whose greatest work was to prove the glory and the excellence of death. Fitting indeed was it for him who had sung the psalm of triumph In Memoriam that the grave should have no terrors. The silvery light of the moon fell upon the dying poet's face; now and then a smile flitted across his tranquil features; an open volume of Shakespeare lay in his hand; and as the gray October morning broke "God's finger touched him, and he slept." The flood had borne him onward, and, crossing the bar, he saw his Pilot face to face. For forty-two years he had worn the laurel crown, receiving it "greener from the brows of him who uttered nothing base." Scholar, philosopher, idealist as he was, he had still been the poet of the people, voicing their hopes and fears, espousing their cause, expressing their sorrows, proclaiming their joys, finding fitting words for all emotions. The foremost fact in Tennyson's long life was his consistency. He pursued one ideal, and he might have said with the voyagers of whom he sang One fair Vision ever fled Down the waste waters day and night, And fixt upon the far sea-line; The poet never doubted his mission and never swerved The Faery Queen gushed from the soul of Edmund Spenser, and the consummate art of the poet could not fail to obtain acknowledgment. Yet the lyrics were no more than the promise of spring: the glory of summer, the abundant autumn harvest, and even the splendour of a long and genial winter, were to follow. Upon which of Tennyson's works will his fame last? Perhaps on all, for he wrote little that was unworthy, though In Memoriam, Maud, and the Arthurian series will stand out as the most conspicuous pillars. These poems are as much for the future as the present, and the pinnacle of the poet's fame will gleam, high and shining, through the ages. The great magician is dead, and the temple of his body deserted. Life and Thought have gone away Side by side. Leaving door and windows wide Careless tenants they ! and we can only cry out with the poet Life and Thought Here no longer dwell; But in a city glorious A great and distant city-have bought Would they could have stayed with us! Three weeks after Tennyson's death his last collection of poems was published-The Death of Enone, Akbar's Dream, and other Poems. This posthumous volume excited the highest interest, and no doubt the pieces included in it will always claim a special attention. They were full of reminiscences, and awakened old memories; they touched anew the sweet familiar chords and gave out the gathered harmony of the minstrel's life. The delight felt when the music of the early lyrics, sixty years before, cast a spell upon the soul stole to us again, and we were amazed and charmed to find that the skill of the minstrel and the freshness of the voice of the singer remained unimpaired. We |