deathbed the power to read failed him. In a Cyclopædia of English Literature it is appropriate to record that the most perfect master of musical English verse thought the stateliest English prose was, after the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, that of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, De Quincey, and Ruskin, with some of Sir Thomas Browne.

He enjoyed travel; thus he made short journeys to the Pyrenees in 1831 and 1861, and, between 1853 and 1892, to the Western Highlands, Staffa, and Iona, Portugal, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, Weimar and Dresden, Dartmoor and Salcombe, North Wales, Suffolk, Ireland, Stonehenge, Venice, Verona, and the Italian lakes, Dovedale, and sea-trips to Orkney, Norway, and Denmark, and the Channel Islands.

In January 1884 Queen Victoria created Tennyson a peer of the United Kingdom, and the poetlaureate became Baron Tennyson of Freshwater and Aldworth. It was in April 1886 that his younger son Lionel died as he was returning from India, a young man of high promise, his life too early quenched by untimely death-'a grief as deep as Life or Thought.' After 1887 the poetpeer suffered attack upon attack of illness, until the last illness which ended in his death at Aldworth on the 6th October 1892, in his eighty-fourth year. At Aldworth, too, his widow passed away, in her eighty-fourth year, on the 10th of August 1896. June Bracken and Heather, quoted below, was the last poem written to her. The nation buried its great poet in Westminster Abbey: his wife lies in the God's acre of that island village where, as she had herself said, they spent their happiest days. On the tablet to his father's memory in Freshwater Church, the inscription ends with these fine lines by the present Lord Tennyson : Speak, living Voice! to thee death is not death; Thy life outlives the life of dust and breath.

The Bridal-after reading the 'Bride of Lammermoor.'

The lamps were bright and gay

On the merry bridal-day,

When the merry bridegroom
Bore the bride away!

A merry, merry bridal,

A merry bridal-day!
And the chapel's vaulted gloom
Was misted with perfume.
'Now, tell me, mother, pray,
Why the bride is white as clay,
Although the merry bridegroom
Bears the bride away,

On a merry, merry bridal,

A merry bridal-day?

And why her black eyes burn
With a light so wild and stern?'
In the hall, at close of day,

Did the people dance and play,
For now the merry bridegroom
Hath borne the bride away.

...

He from the dance hath gone,

But the revel still goes on. Then a scream of wild dismay Thro' the deep hall forced its way, Altho' the merry bridegroom

Hath borne the bride away; And, starting as in trance,

They were shaken from the dance.Then they found him where he lay Whom the wedded wife did slay, Tho' he a merry bridegroom

Had borne the bride away, And they saw her standing by, With a laughing crazed eye, On the bitter, bitter bridal, The bitter bridal-day.

(Written in boyhood.)

From 'The Talking Oak.' To yonder oak within the field

I spoke without restraint, And with a larger faith appeal'd

Than Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talk'd with him apart, And told him of my choice, Until he plagiarised a heart, And answer'd with a voice.

Tho' what he whisper'd, under Heaven
None else could understand;

I found him garrulously given,
A babbler in the land.

But since I heard him make reply
Is many a weary hour;
'Twere well to question him, and try
If yet he keeps the power.

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,
Broad Oak of Sumner-chace,
Whose topmost branches can discern
The roofs of Sumner-place!

Say thou, whereon I carved her name,
If ever maid or spouse,

As fair as my Olivia, came

To rest beneath thy boughs.—

'O Walter, I have shelter'd here Whatever maiden grace

The good old Summers, year by year,
Made ripe in Sumner-chace :

'Old Summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek,

'Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence,
And number'd bead, and shrift,
Bluff Harry broke into the spence,
And turn'd the cowls adrift :

'And I have seen some score of those Fresh faces, that would thrive When his man-minded offset rose

To chase the deer at five;

'I wish'd myself the fair young beech
That here beside me stands,
That round me, clasping each in each,
She might have lock'd her hands.

'Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet As woodbine's fragile hold,

Or when I feel about my feet
The berried briony fold.'

O muffle round thy knees with fern,
And shadow Sumner-chace !
Long may thy topmost branch discern
The roofs of Sumner-place!

But tell me, did she read the name
I carved with many vows
When last with throbbing heart I came
To rest beneath thy boughs?

'O yes, she wander'd round and round
These knotted knees of mine,

And found, and kiss'd the name she found, And sweetly murmur'd thine.

'A teardrop trembled from its source, And down my surface crept.

My sense of touch is something coarse, But I believe she wept.

'Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light, She glanced across the plain; But not a creature was in sight:

She kiss'd me once again.

'Her kisses were so close and kind,
That, trust me on my word,
Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,
And yet my sap was stirr'd:

And even into my inmost ring
A pleasure I discern'd,

Like those blind motions of the Spring,

That show the year is turn'd.' .

May never saw dismember thee,
Nor wielded axe disjoint,
That art the fairest-spoken tree
From here to Lizard-point.

O rock upon thy towery top
All throats that gurgle sweet!
All starry culmination drop
Balm-dews to bathe thy feet!
All grass of silky feather grow-
And while he sinks or swells
The full south-breeze around thee blow
The sound of minster bells.

The fat earth feed thy branchy root,
That under deeply strikes!
The northern morning o'er thee shoot,
High up, in silver spikes!

Nor ever lightning char thy grain,

But, rolling as in sleep,

Low thunders bring the mellow rain,

That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath,

That only by thy side

Will I to Olive plight my troth,

And gain her for my bride.

From 'The Lotos-Eaters.'

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives

And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd 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.
Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile :

'Tis hard to settle order once again.

There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labour unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelids still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill-

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak :

The Lotos blows by every winding creek :
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly
curl'd

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—
down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and

oar ;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

Break, Break, Break.

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Ida's Chant of Victory.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed,
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came; The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard A noise of songs they would not understand: They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall, And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came, The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree! But we will make it faggots for the hearth, And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, And boats and bridges for the use of men.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they struck ;
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain:
The glittering axe was broken in their arms,
Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder-blade.

'Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and roll'd
With music in the growing breeze of Time,
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
Shall move the stony bases of the world.

'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary

Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not
To break them more in their behoof, whose arms
Champion'd our cause and won it with a day

Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast, When dames and heroines of the golden year Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, To rain an April of ovation round

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Their statues, born aloft, the three: but come,
We will be liberal, since our rights are won.
Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind,
Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these
The brethren of our blood and cause, that there
Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries
Of female hands and hospitality.'

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms,
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led
A hundred maids in train across the Park.

Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came,
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest by them went
The enamour'd air sighing, and on their curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell,
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche
At distance follow'd: so they came: anon
Thro' open field into the lists they wound
Timorously; and as the leader of the herd
That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun,
And follow'd up by a hundred airy does,
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air,
The lovely, lordly creature floated on

To where her wounded brethren lay; there stay'd;
Knelt on one knee,-the child on one,-and prest
Their hands, and call'd them dear deliverers,
And happy warriors, and immortal names,
And said You shall not lie in the tents but here,
And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served
With female hands and hospitality.'

(From The Princess.)

Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea;

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee? Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye :
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ;
Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd:
I strove against the stream and all in vain :
Let the great river take me to the main :
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.

(From The Princess.)

In Memoriam A. H. H.

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear : But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. 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.

A Dedication.

1849.

Dear, near and true-no truer Time himself
Can prove you, tho' he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
Shoots to the fall-take this and pray that he
Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith in him,
May trust himself; and after praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
And after Autumn past-if left to pass
His autumn into seeming-leafless days—
Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.
(To his wife.)

To the Rev. F. D. Maurice.
Come, when no graver cares employ,
Godfather, come and see your boy;

Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.
For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty thousand college-councils
Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite

At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,

And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine:

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;

Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,

And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin;
Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win :

Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;

Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.

Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet

Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;

But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, Crocus, anemone, violet,

Or later, pay one visit here,

For those are few we hold as dear;

Nor pay but one, but come for many, Many and many a happy year.

January 1854.

From 'The Passing of Arthur.'
And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way

With these thou seëst-if indeed I go

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)-
To the island-valley of Avilion ;

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groan'd, 'The King is gone.'
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
'From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

Whereat he slowly turn'd and slowly clomb
The last hard footstep of that iron crag;
Thence mark'd the black hull moving yet, and cried,
'He passes to be King among the dead,
And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again; but-if he come no more—
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat,
Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three whereat we gazed
On that high day, when, clothed with living light,
They stood before his throne in silence, friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?'

Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go

From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

June Bracken and Heather.

There on the top of the down,

The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue, When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown,

I thought to myself I would offer this book to you,
This, and my love together,

To you that are seventy-seven,

With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven, And a fancy as summer-new

As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.

Crossing the Bar.

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea,