And here's to him who guards our right And him who sleeps in watch fire-light If changing fate has frown'd of late, Wisdom's helmet strapped too tight And Folly's bells on Christmas night Then once again, once again, Let holly crown each portal; THE WELCOME BACK. Sweet is the hour that brings us home, Oh! joyfully dear is the homeward track When the world hath spent its frowns and wrath, And care been sorely pressing, 'Tis sweet to leave our roving path, Oh! joyfully dear is the homeward track What do we reck on a dreary way, If we know there are lips to chide our stay, Oh! joyfully dear is the homeward track THE HAPPY MIND. Oh! out upon the calf, I say, Who turns his grumbling head away, Give to me the happy mind, Give me the heart that spreads its wings, 'Tis a bank that never breaks, 'Tis a rock that never shakes, Miss F. Brown. Miss Frances Brown is a striking example of genius forcing its way, in spite of the most adverse circumstances. Born in the year 1816, in the small village of Stranorlar, in the north-west of Ireland, and blind from her earliest infancy, she managed to educate herself by getting friends and relatives to read her such books as she could obtain in that remote locality. She soon began to contribute short pieces to the Dublin Penny Journal, and in 1841 at last ventured to send some small poems to the Athenaeum. These offerings were so favourably received by the public, that she was encouraged to publish a volume of poems in 1844, and a second in 1847. Miss Brown is, we think, most successful in lyrical poetry. She has also furnished the magazines with some short tales, which, though not of the highest class, are surprising productions for a blind lady. One of these, we recollect, was called the Kendal Illumination. As a sample of her poetry, we quote a couple of stanzas from a piece called the last Friends, in which an Irish exile returns to see once more the hills of his country, all his other friends being gone. I come to my country, but not with the hope That brightened my youth like the cloud-lighting bow, For the vigour of soul that seemed mighty to cope With time and with fortune hath fled from me now; And love, that illumined my wand'rings of yore, When my path was afar by the Tanais' lone track; The lands of old story, they summoned me back; They rose on my dreams through the shades of the west, They breathed upon sands which the dew never wet, For the echoes were hushed in the home I loved bestBut I knew that the mountains would welcome me yet! Lord Tennyson. Alfred Tennyson is generally considered to be the greatest poet of the Victorian Age, and at least he is by far the most read of them all. The son of a clergyman in Lincolnshire, he was born at Somersby, near Spilsby, in 1810; and studied at Cambridge, where, while still an undergraduate, he published his first volume of poems, chiefly lyrical, in 1830. At that time his two brothers, Charles and Septimus, were his rivals in poetry, but he very soon outstripped them both. This first volume contained, among other short poems, Claribel, Oriana, the Merman, and Mariana, but though a promising book for a young author, it met with rather a chilly reception. It must be admitted that the subjects were mostly wanting in human interest; and even in one of the best pieces, Mariana, the lone and desolate woman, sitting in a crazy old house, in such a bleak and sterile landscape as the poet Crabbe has so wonderfully painted, and continually repeating to herself: "My life is dreary," and "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead" is not an agreeable picture to dwell upon. Three years later Tennyson re-published this volume with omissions, alterations and decided improvements, but still it did not satisfy the critics, and Tennyson, mortified, remained silent for nine years. In 1842 he again appeared before the public with two volumes of poems; and it was quite evident that he had made a great advance in poetical power since 1833. Some of the poems in this third series were reprints of his older verses, altered and polished, but many of them, such as the Morte d'Arthur, Godiva, and Locksley Hall, were new. Tennyson now began to find favour with the reviews, and was soon quite as much praised as he had previously been ridiculed. It was already whispered, too, that the Queen and Prince Albert were among his admirers, and this not a little contributed to procure him readers among the general public. In 1847 appeared the Princess, which, when first announced, gave room to all sorts of conjectures, as it was generally though quite erroneously believed, that it was some way or other connected with the royal family. In 1850 appeared In Memoriam, a series of short poems or sonnets in memory of his friend, Arthur H. Hallam, son of the historian; and on the death of Wordsworth, in the same year, Tennyson succeeded to the laureateship. The great London exhibition was opened the next year, and it was generally expected that the new laureate would hail it with a poetical greeting; but Thackeray forestalled him with an admirable ode, which appeared in the Times, and Tennyson lost his chance till the opening of the second London exhibition in 1862. When the Duke of Wellington died, however, in 1852, he wrote some verses on his funeral which he has never since surpassed. Three years later he published Maud, a poem which, as we learn from some of his friends, he regards as the best thing he ever wrote; but authors often err in their judgment of their own compositions. In 1859 he returned to the Arthurian legends, and produced the Idylls of the King, which were completed by the successive addition of the Holy Grail, Pelleas and Ettarre, the Coming of Arthur, the Last Tournament, and finally Gareth and Lynette, which appeared in 1872, Enoch Arden he had already published in 1864. Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur is given as a fragment of an unfinished poem, read aloud by a young poet, Everard Hall, to a cheerful company assembled At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve. The incidents are much the same as in the old French poem, of which we have an English version in the Percy Reliques. After a disastrous battle, in which King Arthur's table, man by man Had fallen in Lyonness about their Lord, the King, mortally wounded, is borne by Sir Bedivere to a place of safety, but feeling the approach of death he bids the knight cast his famous sword. Excalibur -the gift of the Lady of the Lake into the neighbouring mere, and bring him word what he sees. Sir Bedivere twice attempts to deceive the King by a false report, and retain the sword for himself, but at last, stung by Arthur's reproaches, he throws it far out into the water: The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea: So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur. On returning to the King, the knight finds him dying, and in obedience to the request: Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, he bears him tenderly to the edge of the mere, where a dusky bark, manned by black-hooded phantoms, among whom stand three queens with crowns of gold, now lies. The ladies receive the dying monarch: But she that rose the tallest of them all, And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, The mysterious crew join in the lamentation: A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars; and the barge moves slowly off on its way to the happy island-valley of Avilion, |