Man and his noble nature, as it is The gift which God has placed within his power, Capable of clear truth, the one to break Bondage, the other to build liberty The tide retreats But to return out of his hiding-place -Book IX. In the great deep; all things have second birth. Heaven's best aid is wasted upon men -Book X. -Book X. Man is only weak through his mistrust Proclaims to him that hope should be most sure. A mind whose rest Is where it ought to be, in self-restraint, In circumspection and simplicity, Falls rarely in entire discomfiture Below its aim, or meets with, from without, --Book X. A treachery that foils it or defeats. -Book X. If from the affliction somewhere do not grow If new strength be not given nor old restored, There is One great society alone on earth; The noble Living and the noble Dead. So feeling comes in aid -Book X. --Book XI. Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong. Thou must give Else never canst receive. -Book XII. -Book XII. SELECTION FROM THE ODE ON PRINCE ALBERT. [Written after being appointed Laureate.] ALBERT, in thy race we cherish A Nation's strength that will not perish True to the King of Kings is found; Like that wise ancestor of thine Who threw the Saxon shield o'er Luther's life What shield more sublime E'er was blazoned or sung? That hails him for our own! Again, and yet again, For the Church, the State, the Throne, And that presence fair and bright, Ever blest wherever seen, Who deigns to grace our festal rite, The pride of the islands, VICTORIA THE QUEEN. 1847. ALFRED TENNYSON. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. in 1892. Made Laureate in 1850. Died (Reign of Victoria.) IT is in the works of men like Wordsworth and Tennyson that the breadth, the sanctity, the power of genius are made clearer to the race at large; it is in the lives of men like them that humanity is lifted up, made stronger, made to grasp more firmly the meaning of existence. Their influence is sanative, gracious; they attune the soul to high and noble states of feeling; they minister to the purest instincts. They are an abiding blessing to the world. Tennyson's life, like that of Wordsworth's, was a fine refutation of that false theory of art,-held, alas! too often by critics of otherwise trustworthy judgment,-the theory that the great poet "needs a license and an indulgence not accorded to other men"; that the true poetic or artistic temperament cannot exist with moral sanity; and therefore the poet need not be bound by the laws which are the safeguards of the race at large. Tennyson had more the artistic temperament than Wordsworth, but he was also evenly poised, moraliy sane, "actively and securely virtuous." 'We needs must love the highest when we see it," he wrote in one of his most perfect Idylls. He himself sought the highest, found his pleasure and his duty in it, and in love for it lies the secret of the power of his poetry, the secret of the beauty and the dignity of his life. We need to make no excuses for Tennyson. He never "debased the sacred art of verse," like Byron, nor condescended to actions at variance with his character, like Shelley. He can be honoured for the moral influence of his life as well as the matchless grace of his art. Wordsworth wrote to Lady Beaumont in answer to her solicitude in regard to the public reception of his poems: "Of what moment is their present reception compared to what I trust is their destiny? To console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and to feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous, this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully |