Part 17 (1/2)
”Faint as a cliht across the darkness, and at dawn Falls on the threshold of her native land”
The spring, the restored Persephone, coean than to ours All Tennyson's own is Demeter's awe of those ”ihter, couests The hyrey heads of the Fates, and their answer to the Goddess concerning ”fate beyond the Fates,” and the breaking of the bonds of Hades The ballad of Owd Roa is one of the most spirited of the essays in dialect to which Tennyson had of late years inclined Vastness merely expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson's conviction that, without immortality, life is a series of worthless contrasts An opposite opinion ht to express his ohich, co of attention; or, at least, is hardly deserving of reproof The poet's idea is also stated thus in The Ring, in terms which perhaps do not fall below the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into ”the utterly unpoetical”:-
”The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, But cannot wholly free itself froer than earth has ever seen; the veil Is rending, and the Voices of the day Are heard across the Voices of the dark
No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules - And utter knowledge is but utter love - AEonian Evolution, swift or slow, Thro' all the Spheres--an ever opening height, An ever lessening earth”
The Ring is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend told by Mr Lowell about a house near where he had once lived; one of those houses vexed by
”A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, A noise of falling weights that never fell, Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door, And bolted doors that open'd of themselves”
These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale The lines to Mary Boyle are all of the nor Merlin and the Gleaory of the poet's own career:-
”Arthur had vanish'd I knew not whither, The king who loved me, And cannot die”
So at last
”All but in Heaven Hovers The Gleam,”
whither the wayfarer was soon to follow There is a marvellous hope and pathos in the s, re lish poet has thus rounded all his life with hty-first year, when there ”came in athe Bar It is hardly lessby his brother-in-law, Mr Lushi+ngton For once at least a poeolden to the silver cup” without the spilling of a drop The new book's appearance was coincident with the death of Mr Browning, ”so loving and appreciative,” as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, however the partisans of either poet ht strive to stir eenius
CHAPTER X--1890
In the year 1889 the poet's health had per the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its whiteness, he had named ”Taliessin,” ”the splendid brow” His end (of which the source is nothow ”despair and death cah to try to probe the secret of the universe” He also thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, ”God bless Tristraland!” But early in 1890 Tennyson suffered from a severe attack of influenza In May Mr Watts painted his portrait, and
”Divinely through all hindrance found the reat admirer of Miss Austen's novels: ”The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid”
He was therefore pleased to find apple-blosso with ripe strawberries on June 28, as Miss Austen has been bla this coarden party in Ereat, read novels eagerly, and excited himself over the confire Of Scott, ”the ure of the century, and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare,” he preferred Old Mortality, and it is a good choice
He hated ”morbid and introspective tales, with their oceans of sham philosophy” At this time, with catholic taste, he read Mr Stevenson and Mr Meredith, Miss Braddon and Mr Henry James, Ouida and Mr Thomas Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall
Not everybody can peruse all of these very diverse authors with pleasure He began his poeladiatorial combats; indeed his years, fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness as unimpaired as that of Goethe ”A crooked share,” he said to the Princess Louise, ” waltz with M- in the ballroo of
”All the char in a lonely word”
in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the cunctanteh, in the Sixth AEneid The choice is odd, because the Sibyl has just told AEneas that, if he be destined to pluck the branch of gold, ipse volens facilisque sequetur, ”it will come off of its own accord,” like the sacred ti branches of the Fijians, which bend down to be plucked for the Fire rite Yet, when the predestined AEneas tries to pluck the bough of gold, it yields reluctantly (cunctanteton, therefore, thought the phrase a slip on the part of Virgil ”People accused Virgil of plagiarising,” he said, ”but if a reat poets, Shakespeare included)” Tennyson, like Virgil, made much that was ancient his own; his verses are often, and purposefully, a mosaic of classical reminiscences But he was vexed by the hunters after reies between his lines and those of others He complained that, if he said that the sun went down, a parallel was at once cited from Homer, or anybody else, and he used a very powerful phrase to condes of the hos”