PREFACE.

When any one has survived the allotted age of man, there is a long past to remember, and a short future to expect; and it is the period of youth which is then found most clearly recorded on the tablets of the brain—the days, probably, of school and college, and the first establishment of a self-made home.

Middle life, with its work and anxieties, is by comparison only feebly retained; as though there had been found no room for fuller records on the preoccupied mind. But, in the indistinct interval of forty or fifty years, the loss by death of those whom we have loved cannot be forgotten; and when one dearer than any friend is also taken away, then, under such bereavement, may be found an amount of comfort and support in the Poet Laureate’s In Memoriam which no other secular writing can supply.

To me, this Poem has been an additional buttress to the faith, which my education and sacred profession had sustained.

When a great mind, at once so speculative and so untrammelled, runs over the whole field of thought, and comes to the conviction that the hope of the Christian is the one sure prospect beyond the grave; this imparts to the mourner a consolation, to which nothing earthly can compare.

My own interest in this great Poem has been farther enhanced by the fact that I and mine, long years ago, enjoyed friendly intercourse with the Poet at Freshwater; and this was afterwards renewed in the lives of his younger son and mine.

The incidents of the Poem have also slightly touched me, inasmuch as I was a contemporary of Arthur H. Hallam, at Eton; and I was in Chapman’s house, at Charterhouse, with Edmund Law Lushington, when he was, at a very early age, captain of the school. The associates of Hallam’s schooldays I well recall, for they included several who became eminent in the service of the state, and in the ranks of literature; and most of these have now passed away. In Memoriam has thus, in a measure, been the means of recalling my own early youth; and I have felt that the subject of the Poem befitted the study of my advanced life.

The scenery of In Memoriam being principally laid either at Somersby or Clevedon—the birth-place of the Poet or the burial-place of his friend—I had long been desirous of visiting these somewhat retired spots; and my wish has at length been gratified.

After sleeping at Horncastle, we drove six miles across a flat uninteresting country, where the fields betrayed signs of agricultural depression, until a short steep descent brought us into a more sheltered and wooded region, where was the sound of running water;[1] and the little old church, with its square stumpy moss-covered tower, told us that we were in the village of Somersby—

And one could well fancy that the roomy comfortable residence, in which the Rev. Dr. Tennyson reared a large family, was a cherished home, and is still held in fond remembrance.

This house is not the Rectory, though for a long time it was so tenanted: it is rather the Manor House of the Burton family, who for centuries[2] have owned the land and been patrons of the living. The present possessor now occupies it, and he received our visit of interested enquiry with much courtesy and kindness.

The house stands a little back from the road, with a drive to the door which may be called the front entrance; though the principal rooms are behind, and look into the garden. Here are the

and the lawn may still be called flat, (see note, page 96), though it slopes slightly downward with the natural leaning of the ground. The four poplars have been blown down.

Beyond the lawn stretches the garden, and yet a little farther is a pond, on which, they say, the young inhabitants of the pseudo-Rectory learned to skate. The largest room in this Manor House was added by Dr. Tennyson: it is the dining-room, with an open groined roof; and the walls of it are now covered with apparently old paintings—heirlooms, one may suppose, of the Burton family.

In the centre of the hamlet, where three roads meet, with a guide-post directing the wayfarer to Louth, Horncastle, and Alford, there stands a fine witch-elm; and at Bag Enderby, also in the middle of the road, is another still larger witch-elm, with a huge arm that craves support. Both these trees were carried and planted, about a century ago, by the grandfather of Mr. Burton, the present proprietor of the estate.

Somersby and Bag Enderby are hamlets about one quarter of a mile apart, and are held by one Rector, who now resides at the latter place. Their ancient churches are structures of more strength than beauty; and though neither of them is larger than a good sized chamber, it quite suffices for the few inhabitants. At both churches we found the key in the door, and could therefore investigate the sacred buildings at our leisure; and coming from a populous manufacturing district, with a grand mediæval parish church, we found the contrast very striking.

Somersby churchyard adjoins the road, but the ground is higher. The first object which greets you on entering through a short shaded path, is a most remarkable crucifix, which has fortunately escaped the hand of Puritan violence. On a thin stone shaft, which is at least twelve feet high, there is the carved figure of our Lord on the Cross, still plainly traceable; and behind is a full-length draped female figure. This antique gem is sheltered under a narrow-pointed roof of stone. It is a curious and rare memorial of ante-Reformation times; and within the porch there is a contemporary relic—a shallow stone basin for holy water—which still seems to invite the finger to dip, and mark the holy sign. Over the porch entrance is a plain dial with the motto, “Time passeth.”

The interior of the church has lost something of the primitive character that still reigns at Enderby: there has been a partial restoration: both nave and chancel are now floored with coloured tiles, and the old pews have been superseded by open sittings of red pine. There is a plain solid font lined with lead; and having seen the chamber in which the great Poet was born, we could not help thinking that here was the birth-place of that name,[3] which not even his well-earned peerage will ever obliterate.

Over the porch door inside are the royal arms, and at the west end two bell ropes depend, which are the means of summoning the few worshippers to the Sunday service. In the sacrarium is a small brass, showing a kneeling figure and an armorial shield, dedicated to George Littlebury, 1612. A more modern marble monument, to one of the Burtons, is fixed on the wall near the pulpit.

The exterior of the church shows strong coarse stone masonry, which is here and there repaired and patched by local art with bricks. In the small graveyard are two altar tombs, which drew our attention. They seem to cover a vault, and are railed round; and the inscription on one records that Dr. Tennyson held the livings of Somersby, Bag Enderby, Benniworth, and Great Grimsby, and that he died on 16th March, 1831, aged 52.[4] Wild violets were in flower encircling the base of this tomb. A successor was buried near, the Rev. L. B. Burton, who had held the two adjoining benefices for more than forty years.

Immediately opposite the church, and closely adjacent to the Manor House, is a very remarkable building, of considerable architectural pretension; as will be credited when it is told that Sir J. Vanbrugh designed it! It is entirely composed of brick—sombre and solid in character—it has a flat roof and is battlemented. If differently placed, it might have suggested Mariana’s “Moated Grange.” It is an edifice of more exterior grandeur than the adjoining Manor House, and the rooms are lined with oak panelling; but it is unsuited to the habits of modern life, and now stands empty.

The village of Enderby is, like its sister hamlet, absolutely rural, with an antiquated little church, much needing such material repair as times and circumstances do not seem to allow. It is dedicated to S. Margaret, and has a fine old font, octagonal in shape, and each side has rudely carved figures upon it. The flat modern ceiling cuts off the point of the chancel arch, and the same disfigurement occurs at the west end, where the two bells are rung from the floor. In neither village did we see either a nonconformist chapel or a public-house.

In giving some account of Clevedon, I would tell how my own interest in the subject of this little work has drawn forth the friendly notice of one who fully participates in all the enthusiasm and admiration that In Memoriam can excite.

Edward Malan, himself a fine scholar and son of a most scholarly father, has greatly assisted me, especially with classical illustrations of the text; and as he visited Clevedon before I went there, and has described Hallam’s burial-place so appreciatively, I shall freely use his words when I come to that part of my subject.

How the friendship came about which has found such undying record in this Poem, is soon told. Alfred Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam met, as undergraduates, at Trinity College, Cambridge, about the year 1828. Tennyson, born in 1809, was the older by one year and a half. Both these young men were inheritors of remarkable ability—the one being a son of the distinguished historian, and the other a son of an accomplished divine—both, too, were themselves highly educated, and one at least was possessed of the highest genius. Their friendship was not founded on a common participation in the ordinary interests of youth, but they sympathized in poetical temperament and philosophical taste. The mental stature of Hallam, and his pure and beautiful disposition in their college life, are recalled by the Poet in many places, but especially in Poems cix. and following.

In 1829, the two friends competed for the Chancellor’s gold medal for the English Prize Poem, the subject being “Timbuctoo,” and Tennyson gained it. This College intimacy was continued at both their homes, and Hallam became engaged in marriage to one of Tennyson’s sisters. This alliance may have deepened the attachment of the friends; but was not needed to account for the survivor writing of the departed as “more than my brothers are to me.”

Arthur Hallam took his degree at Cambridge in January, 1832, and then lived with his father in London; having been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple, as a student of Law. At the beginning of August, 1833, they went a short tour into Germany, and, in returning to Vienna from Pesth, a wet day caused a slight attack of intermittent fever in Arthur, which was apparently subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood to the head put an instantaneous end to his life, on the 15th September, 1833.

A subsequent “examination showed a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a want of sufficient energy in the heart.” Mr. Hallam adds this sad tribute to his son’s memory: “Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears, and whose hopes on this side the tomb are broken down for ever, may cling, as well as they can, to the poor consolation of believing that a few more years would, in the usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail union of his graceful and manly form, with the pure spirit it enshrined. The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on the 3rd January, 1834, in the chancel[5] of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, belonging to his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton; a place selected not only from the connexion of kindred, but on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel.”

My friend, Edward Malan, gives the following graphic account of his visit to Hallam’s grave—

“The chief attraction for visitors to Clevedon is the obscure and solitary parish church of St. Andrew, where the great historian and his eldest son, Arthur Hallam, are interred. You seek it by the beach and through the fields, and you find it at last, an old and lonely church beside the sea, in a hollow between two green headlands. The path up to it, bordered with ash trees and hawthorns, winds along the side of Church Hill, the first of the two headlands, which shuts it from view until, rounding a green shoulder, you come suddenly upon it, like a ghost. Even then, unless you have brought a mind in harmony, there is little to see, for the spot is so deserted and so lifeless that you seem to have stepped back through centuries, and to be moving in some old-world time. A weird sensation creeps over you, gazing on the ivy and wall-rue, and the path trodden by cottagers—a feeling akin to awe, which reminds you somehow of the poems of Ossian. You are in the presence of these three grey sisters, grey thought, grey silence, grey repose: only clouds, like a troop of mourners, hurrying up over the waste, only a solemn dirge as the wind sweeps wailing by, only the low faint murmur of the sea. The sun’s last beams are on the distant hills, and the tide is ebbing dim and shadowy to the shadowy ocean beyond.

“Inside, the church is old and dim, and filled with a faint odour of age. As the wind rises, mysterious pulses of sound awaken in the rafters overhead. The monuments of the Hallams are not in the chancel, but they are in the manor aisle affixed to the western wall. There are four of them, Arthur Hallam’s being one of the two centre tombs.

“A new organ now stands on the vault. The familiar names—familiar, that is, in the classical sense—are those of the Elton family, Hallam’s relations. A memorial brass near at hand bears the name of Hallam’s maternal grandfather, the Rev. Sir Abraham Charles Elton, fifth baronet, together with the names of the four preceding baronets; and a marble tablet, close to the site of the old family pew, records the death by drowning of Hallam’s two cousins, Abraham and Charles, in 1819, at Weston-super-Mare, when Hallam himself was eight years old. This unhappy occurrence has been commemorated by their father in an elegy entitled The Brothers. The moon, when high in the heavens (24 Dec. 1882), strikes through the south window of the aisle, slanting-wise on the monuments of the dead.”

Mr. Malan goes on wisely to say: “No apology is necessary for calling attention to In Memoriam. It has become an heirloom. We may affirm of it, as has been affirmed of another great poem, that it was the work of the Poet’s life, his favourite child, for which he stored up the riches of his science and the fruits of his inspiration. He carried it in his bosom like a lover’s secret, and added to it from time to time as the tide of sorrow ebbed and flowed. If the insight thus gained into the workings of a great intellect, brought suddenly to the verge of sorrow, were all the reward that the poem offered, it would still be worth serious study. But we feel as we read that the man has not arrived at his view of truth without much labour, that we are witnessing an endeavour to escape from the coils of doubt, and that we have a victor who has faced and fought his troubles and difficulties.”

I may state that we had an interesting conversation with the sexton at Clevedon, Augustus James. He had held the office for about eighteen years, and perfectly remembered the interment of Arthur Hallam. His father, who was sexton for forty-three years, made the vault, and officiated at the burial.

Being astonished by the account of a hearse and mourning coaches traversing the whole distance from Dover to Clevedon, and employing sixteen horses for the journey, I ventured to ask the late Sir A. H. Elton, if he could corroborate the report, and he replied: “I think there may have been some truth in the statement of the old sexton. I believe that on the Continent very great precautions are required by the authorities, before the remains of a deceased person are permitted to be removed from the place in which the death occurred. I can easily believe that the heavy amount of lead, and other precautions, rendered it necessary to use a large force of horses.” A. James says, that “the coffin was carried in every night where they stopped.”

Clevedon itself is a semi-seaside place, by no means interesting, at least as we saw it; for the water was thick and had none of the bold features of the genuine ocean. But Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Edmund H. Elton, to whom we had an introduction, is a picturesque rambling mansion, of which the most beautiful part is many centuries old, and the grounds are lovely. And I cannot pass by the interest and pleasure we derived from an insight into Sir Edmund’s workshop, where, self-taught, he manufactures with his own hands, aided by a crippled lad who is his pupil, the beautiful pottery now well known to connoisseurs as the “Elton ware,” and of which he kindly gave us a specimen.

Since this autumn visit (1884), which led to my appealing to Lady Lennard—a surviving sister of Arthur Hallam—on the point of obtaining a portrait of her brother, I have received from this lady the gift of a copy of the volume known as the “Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam,” edited by his father, and which was privately printed. The interest of its contents was much enhanced to me by there being a portrait of Arthur from a bust by Chantrey, which Lady Lennard considers most like her brother, and therefore most suitable as a frontispiece to my book.

I must add that the plate on which the portrait is engraved is in the possession of Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, to whom was entrusted the production of the volume, and he has been most kind in affording facilities for my having a number of copies of the engraving.

But to no one am I so much indebted as to the late Lord Tennyson himself, who examined a previous edition of my “Key,” and made some invaluable corrections, which are all printed in italics. I would not imply that I have now dived into the metaphysical depths of this marvellous poem; or that its author gave his imprimatur to all he did not alter; but as my “Key” was for some time in his possession, I feel sure that it contains nothing which he disapproved: and it is enough for me, if it shall open the door of comfort and sympathy to any who either mourn or doubt.

“I, in these poems, is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him. A. T.”

A KEY TO LORD TENNYSON’S “IN MEMORIAM.”

I.

It may be stated, on the highest authority, that the special passage alluded to in the opening stanza, cannot be identified, but it is Goethe’s creed.

St. Augustine wrote, that we can rise higher on the ladder of life, by trampling down our vices. His words, in a Sermon on the Ascension, are, De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.

Longfellow published a Poem, not earlier than 1842, which he called “The Ladder of St. Augustine;” and more recently, Lowell, another American Poet, and Minister Plenipotentiary in London, adopted a similar idea when he said,

The “dead selves” of Tennyson are neither our vices nor our calamities; but, rather, our general experiences, which all perish as they happen; and of these, in his own case, the special loss he had sustained in the death of Hallam (his “more than brother”—his dimidium sui, “bosom-friend and half of life”) ought to rouse him to soar into “higher things;” rather than leave him to be pointed at, as “the man that loved and lost” (see Poems xxvii., 4, and lxxxv., 1); and all that he had before been, as now “over-worn,” and prostrated by this one bereavement.

But it was difficult to anticipate in the future a gain to match the loss he had sustained; and to appropriate interest, i.e., reap the fruit of tears that he was now shedding. Love, however, shall uphold his grief with sustaining power; for it is better to be grief-mad, and “dance with death”—(singing and dancing being a custom at ancient funerals)—than become a spectacle of scorn for “the victor Hours” to deride, after they have effaced his love-born sorrow.

II.

But the struggle back to past contentment and happiness is difficult; and the “Old Yew” of the churchyard seems to typify his present state of feeling.

Its roots and fibres stretch downward, and hold the skull and bones of the dead; like as his thoughts cling to his departed friend. Its “dusk” or shadow is before the church clock,[6] which strikes the hours of mortality, and this harmonizes with his life of mourning.

The tree preserves its “thousand years of gloom,” unchanged by the seasons which affect other things—the “old yew” continues always the same—

“Sick for” means, desirous of.

It might seem as if the Poet, whose scientific allusions are always so striking and correct, had overlooked, when he wrote this Poem, that the yew bore blossom and seed, like other trees: but it was not so. Of course, the Poet always knew, that a tree which bears a berry must have a blossom; but Sorrow only saw the winter gloom of the foliage.

Observe the recent introduction of Poem xxxix.; also the description, near the beginning of “The Holy Grail”—

It will be seen, in the later Poem, how a comparison with the gloomy yew has been modified.

III.

“Sorrow, cruel fellowship,” from which he cannot disengage himself, now reigns within him, and distorts with “lying lip”[7] all Nature and her beneficent workings; making these seem to have no purpose or end. All which is but an echo of his own dark feelings. Shall he then believe this false guide—

reject, and turn away from the impostures of a sorrowing imagination?

IV.

In sleep there is no struggle of the will; and he communes with his own heart, which is beating so low; a condition that must be caused by a sense of “something lost.”

“Break,” he says, still addressing his heart, but in metaphor;

This must refer to the scientific fact, that water can be lowered in temperature below the freezing point, without solidifying; but it expands at once into ice if disturbed; and the suddenness of the expansion breaks the containing vessel.

Clouds of undefined trouble, such as “dreams are made of,” pass “below the darken’d eyes,” that is, figure themselves on the brain under the eyelids; but on awaking, the will reasserts its power, and protests against the folly of such mourning. He would therefore dismiss the phantom, Sorrow.

V.

He sometimes hesitates, as at something half sinful, when giving expression to his sadness; because words at best only partially declare what the Soul feels; just as outward Nature cannot fully reveal the inner life.

But “after all” words act like narcotics, and numb pain: so, as if putting on “weeds,” the garb of mourning, he will wrap himself over in words; though these, like coarse clothes on the body, give no more than an outline of his “large grief.”

VI.

The “common” expressions of sympathy with our trouble are very “commonplace”—

A friend asks, “Why grieve?” “Other friends remain;” “Loss is common to the race;” as Hamlet’s mother says, “All that live must die.” Is this comfort? rather the contrary. We know it is so—

The father drinks his son’s health at the war, in the moment when that son is shot.

The mother prays for her sailor-boy when

The girl is dressing before the glass, and strives to array herself most becomingly for her expected lover; and he meanwhile is either drowned in the ford, or killed by a fall from his horse—

These were all as unconscious of disaster as was the Poet, who, “to please him well,” was writing to Hallam in the very hour that he died.

There is a fine passage in Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Dying,” which contains a like rumination on the uncertainty of life.

“The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in the folds of his garments, and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to find a grave; and it cast him into some sad thoughts; that peradventure this man’s wife in some part of the Continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man’s return; or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old man’s cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his father’s arms.

“These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs; a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck.”

VII.

He persists in indulging his melancholy, and so creeps, “like a guilty thing,” at early morning to the door of the house in London where Hallam had lived—Wimpole Street—but this only serves to remind him that

The revival of busy movement on a wet morning in “the long unlovely street,”[8] is vividly described—

VIII.

He next compares himself to the disappointed lover who “alights” from his horse, calls at the home of his mistress,

So, as the disappointed lover, to whom the whole place has at once become a desert, wanders into the garden, and culls a rain-beaten flower, which she had fostered; even thus will he cherish and plant “this poor flower of poesy” on Hallam’s tomb,[9] because his friend when alive had been pleased with his poetic power.

IX.

This poem commences an address to the ship that brings Hallam’s body from Vienna to England—

No words can be more touching than his appeal to the vessel,[10] for care and tenderness in transporting its precious freight. He bids it come quickly; “spread thy full wings,” hoist every sail; “ruffle thy mirror’d mast;” for the faster the ship is driven through the water, the more will the reflected mast be “ruffled” on its agitated surface. May no rude wind “perplex thy sliding keel,” until Phosphor the morning star, Venus shines; and during the night may the lights[11] above and the winds around be gentle as the sleep of him—

until my life, bereaved of its first affection, be over.

In Poem xvii., 5, the same line occurs—“Till all my widow’d race be run,” and it agrees with St. Paul’s declaration, 2 Tim., iv., 7, “I have finished my course.” The words race and course are synonymous, and refer to the foot-races of the ancients. “More than my brothers are to me,” is repeated in P. lxxix., 1.

X.

Very beautifully is the picture continued of the ship’s passage, and he appeals to it for safely conducting

The placid scene, which he had imagined as attending the vessel, harmonizes with the home-bred fancy, that it is sweeter

that is, to be buried in the open churchyard;

that is, in the chancel of the church, near the altar rails; than if, together with the ship, “the roaring wells” of the sea

XI.

This Poem would describe a calm and quiet day in October—late autumn.

No doubt, the scenery described does not refer to Clevedon, but to some Lincolnshire wold, from which the whole range from marsh to the sea was visible.

The stillness of the spot is just broken by the sound of the horse chestnut falling[14] through the dead leaves, and these are reddening to their own fall. No time of the year is more quiet, not even is the insect abroad: the waves just swell and fall noiselessly, and this reminds him of

XII.

An ecstacy follows: in which the soul of the Poet seems to mount, like a dove rising into the heavens with a message of woe tied under her wings; and so the disembodied soul leaves its “mortal ark”—“our earthly house of this tabernacle”—(2 Cor. v., 1) and flees away

(the sea line constantly expanding and always being circular), until the ship comes in sight, when it lingers “on the marge,” the edge of the sea, weeping with the piteous cry—

Then it flies in sport about the prow of the vessel, and after this seems to

XIII.

The tears shed by the widower, when he wakes from a dream of his deceased wife, and “moves his doubtful arms” to find her place empty; are like the tears he himself is weeping over “a loss for ever new,” a terrible void where there had been social intercourse, and a “silence” that will never be broken. For he is lamenting

Hallam is now only a remembrance—no longer endowed with bodily functions, and the survivor cannot quite accept what has happened.

He therefore asks Time to teach him “many years”—for years to come—the real truth, and make him feel that these strange things, over which his tears are shed, are not merely a prolonged dream; and he begs that his fancies, hovering over the approaching ship, may quite realise that it brings no ordinary freight, but actually the mortal remains of his friend.

XIV.

The difficulty in apprehending his complete loss is further shown by his address to the ship, saying, that if it had arrived in port, and he saw the passengers step across the plank to shore; and amongst them came Hallam himself, and they renewed all their former friendship; and Hallam, unchanged in every respect, heard his tale of sorrow with surprise:

Both this and the previous Poem express the difficulty we feel in realising the death of some one who is dear to us. So Cowper wrote, after losing his mother, and in expectation that she would yet return:

XV.

A stormy change in the weather occurs: the winds “roar from yonder dropping day,” that is, from the west, into which the daylight is sinking. And all the sights and sounds of tempest alarm him for the safety of the ship, and

Yet, in fear that it may not be so—the sea calm and the wind still—“the wild unrest” would lead him to “dote and pore on” the threatening cloud, and the fiery sunset.

XVI.

This Poem is highly metaphysical. He asks whether Sorrow, which is his abiding feeling, can be such a changeling, as to alternate in his breast betwixt “calm despair” (see P. xi., 4) and “wild unrest?” (see P. xv., 4); or does she only just take this “touch of change,” as calm or storm prevails? knowing no more of transient form, than does a lake that holds “the shadow of a lark,” when reflected on its surface.

Being distinct from bodily pain, Sorrow is more like the reflection than the thing reflected. But the shock he has received has made his mind confused, and he is like a ship that strikes on a rock and founders. He becomes a

XVII.

He hails the ship—“thou comest”—and feels as if his own whispered prayer for its safety, had been helping to waft it steadily across the sea. In spirit, he had seen it move

the horizon at sea being always circular (see P. xii., 3)—and he would wish its speedy arrival, inasmuch as it brings “all I love.”

For doing this, he invokes a blessing upon all its future voyages. It is now bringing

XVIII.

The ship arrives, the “dear remains” are landed, and the burial is to take place.

It is something, worth the mourner’s having, that he can stand on English ground where his friend has been laid, and know that the violet will spring from his ashes.

Laertes says of Ophelia,

A beautiful invitation follows to those, who are sometimes irreverent bearers:

Even yet, before the grave is closed, he would like, as Elisha did on the Shunammite woman’s child, to cast himself, and

but still he resolves to form the firmer resolution, and to submit; though meanwhile treasuring the look and words that are past and gone for ever.

XIX.

From the Danube to the Severn—from Vienna to Clevedon—the body has been conveyed, and was interred by the estuary of the latter river, where the village of Clevedon stands.[19]

The Wye, a tributary of the Severn, is also tidal; and when deepened by the sea flowing inward, its babbling ceases; but the noise recurs when the sea flows back.

So does the Poet’s power of expressing his grief alternate: at times he is too full in heart to find utterance; he “brims with sorrow”—but after awhile, as when “the wave again is vocal in its wooded” banks,

XX.

He knows the “lesser grief” that can be told, also the “deeper anguish which cannot be spoken:” his spirits are thus variably affected.

In his lighter mood, he laments as servants mourn for a good master who has died:

But he is also visited by a sense of deeper deprivation, such as children feel when they lose a father, and

XXI.

This Poem opens as if Hallam’s grave was in the churchyard, where grasses waved; but it was not so, he was buried inside Clevedon church.

The Poet imagines the reproofs, with which passers-by will visit him for his unrestrained grief. He would “make weakness weak:” would parade his pain to court sympathy, and gain credit for constancy; and another says, that a display of private sorrow is quite inappropriate at times, when great political changes impend, and Science every month is evolving some new secret.

He replies, that his song is but like that of the linnet—joyous indeed when her brood first flies, but sad when the nest has been rifled of her young.

XXII.

For “four sweet years,” from flowery spring to snowy winter, they had lived in closest friendship;

“the Shadow fear’d of man,” grim Death, “broke our fair companionship.”

Hallam died on the 15th September, 1833, and the survivor, eagerly pursuing, can find him no more, but

His own spirit becomes darkened by gloomy apprehensions of superimpending calamity.

XXIII.

Feeling his extreme loneliness, yet “breaking into songs by fits” (which proves that In Memoriam was written at intervals),[20] he wanders sometimes to where the cloaked Shadow is sitting—Death,

inasmuch as only when we die shall we know the whole truth; and “falling lame” on his way, that is, stumbling in his vain enquiries as to whence he came and whither he is going, he can only grasp one feeling, which is, that all is miserably changed since they were in company—friends enjoying life together, travelling in foreign lands, and indulging in scholarly communion on classic subjects.

XXIV.

But, after all, was their happiness perfect? No, the very sun, the “fount of Day,” has spots on its surface—“wandering isles of night.” If all had been wholly good and fair, this earth would have remained the Paradise it has never looked, “since Adam left his garden,” as appears in the earlier editions; but now the line runs,

Does “the haze of grief” then magnify the past, as things look larger in a fog?[21] Or does his present lowness of spirits set the past in relief, as projections are more apparent when you are beneath them? Or is the past from being far off always in glory, as distance lends enchantment to the view; and so the world becomes orbed

We are told that, if we were placed in the moon, we should see the Earth as—“the perfect star”—having a shining surface, and being thirteen times larger than the moon itself.

XXV.

All he knows is, that whilst with Hallam, there was Life. They went side by side, and upheld the daily burden.

He himself moved light as a carrier bird in air, and delighted in the weight he bore because Love shared it; and since he transferred half of every pain to his dear companion, he himself was never weary in either heart or limb.

XXVI.

Dismal and dreary as life has become, he nevertheless wishes to live, if only to prove the stedfastness of his affection. And he asks that if the all-seeing Eye, which already perceives the future rottenness of the living tree, and the far off ruin of the now standing tower, can detect any coming indifference in him—any failure of Love—then may the “Shadow waiting with the keys” “shroud me from my proper scorn;”[22] may Death hide me from my own self-contempt!

“In Him is no before.” Jehovah is simply, I am, to whom foresight and foreknowledge cannot be attributed, since past and future are equally present.

The morn breaks over Indian seas, because they are to the east of us.

XXVII.

He neither envies the cage-born bird “that never knew the summer woods,” and is content without liberty; nor the beast that lives uncontrolled by conscience; nor the heart that never loved; “nor any want-begotten rest,” that is, repose arising from defective sensibility.

On the contrary,

Seneca in Epistle 99 says, Magis gauderes quod habueras quam mæreres quod amiseras.—See P. lxxxv., 1.

The Poem seems to halt here, and begin afresh with a description of Christmastide.

XXVIII.

Christmas Eve at Somersby, and possibly at the end of the year 1833. If so, throughout the year he had been at ease, until the blow came—he had “slept and woke with pain,” and then he almost wished he might never more hear the Christmas bells.

But a calmer spirit seems to come over him: as he listens to the Christmas peals rung at four neighbouring[23] churches, and the sound soothes him with tender associations:

Yule is Christmas, a jubilee which brings glad tidings of great joy to all people.

XXIX.

Having such “compelling cause to grieve” over the decease of Hallam,

for death is ever invading some home—how can they venture to keep Christmas Eve as usual? He is absent, who when amongst them was so eminently social. But it must be done. “Use and wont,” “old sisters of a day gone by,” still demand what has been customary. “They too will die,” and new habits succeed.

To the fourteenth chapter of Walter Scott’s “Pirate,” there is the following motto from “Old Play,” which meant Scott’s own invention:

XXX.

The Christian festival proceeds, and there is the family gathering, with such games as are common at this season; but sadness weighs on all, for they entertain “an awful sense of one mute shadow”—Hallam’s wraith—being present and watching them.

They sit in silence, then break into singing

This seems to identify the time to be Christmas, 1833, as Hallam died on 15th September, 1833, but was not buried until January, 1834.

They comfort themselves with the conviction that the dead retain “their mortal sympathy,” and still feel with those they have left behind. The soul, a “keen seraphic flame,” pierces

and so traverses the universe.

Was the anniversary of our Saviour’s birth ever hailed in terms more sublime and beautiful!

XXXI.

The mind of the poet has now taken a more strictly religious view of the situation; and he would like to learn the secrets of the grave from the experience of Lazarus.

Did Lazarus in death yearn to hear his sister Mary weeping for him? If she asked him, when restored to life, where he was during his four days of entombment;

which, if given, might have “added praise to praise”—that is, might have sealed and confirmed the promise that “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.”

As it was, the neighbours met and offered congratulations, and their cry was,

It is only St. John who records the miracle.

XXXII.

At a subsequent visit to Simon’s house in Bethany, where both Lazarus and Mary were present, Mary’s eyes, looking alternately at her brother who had been restored to life, and at our Lord who had revived him, are “homes of silent prayer;” and one strong affection overpowers every other sentiment, when her “ardent gaze” turns from the face of Lazarus, “and rests upon the Life”—Christ, the author and giver of life. Vita vera, vita ipsa.

Her whole spirit is then so “borne down by gladness,” that

No lives are so blessed as those which consist of “faithful prayers:” no attachments so enduring as those which are based on the higher love of God.

But are there any souls so pure as to have reached this higher range of feeling; or, if there be, what blessedness can equal theirs?

XXXIII.

This Poem is abstruse, and requires thought and care for the interpretation of the Poet’s meaning.

It seems to be an address of warning and reproof to a moral pantheist, who fancies that he has attained a higher and purer air, by withholding his faith from all “form,” and recognising Deity in everything—his faith having “centre everywhere.”

This sceptic is warned from disturbing the pious woman, who is happy in her prayers to a personal God; for they bring an “early heaven” on her life. Her faith is fixed on “form;” and to flesh and blood she has linked a truth divine, by seeing God incarnate in the person of Christ.

The pantheist must take care for himself, that, whilst satisfied

the guidance of his own reason, he does not after all fail in a sinful world, “for want of such a type,” as the life of Christ on earth affords.

“A life that leads melodious days,” is like that of Vopiscus, in his Tiburtine villa, as described by his friend, Statius, I., iii., 20.

XXXIV.

His own dim consciousness should teach him thus much, that Life will never be extinguished. Else all here is but dust and ashes. The earth, “this round of green,” and sun, “this orb of flame,” are but “fantastic beauty”—such as a wild Poet might invent, who has neither conscience nor aim.

Even God can be nothing to the writer, if all around him is doomed to perish; and he will not himself wait in patience, but rather “sink to peace;” and, like the birds that are charmed by the serpent[25] into its mouth, he will “drop head-foremost in the jaws of vacant darkness,” and so cease to exist.

XXXV.

And yet, if a trustworthy voice from the grave should testify, that there is no life beyond this world; even then he would endeavour to keep alive so sweet a thing as Love, during the brief span of mortal existence.

But still there would come

and the sound of streams disintegrating and washing down the rocks to form future land surfaces—“Æonian hills,” the formations of whole æons being thus dissolved—and Love itself would languish under

those new lands in which all things are obliterated and forgotten—knowing that its own death was impending.

But the case is idly put. If such extinguishing Death were from the first seen as it is when it comes, Love would either not exist; or else would be a mere fellowship of coarse appetites, like those of the Satyr, who crushes the grape for drunken revelry, and basks and battens in the woods.

XXXVI.

Although, even in manhood, the great truths of Religion only

since at best we only see as through a glass darkly: we nevertheless bless His name, who “made them current coin,” so as to be generally intelligible. This was done by the teaching of Parables.

For Divine Wisdom, having to deal with mortal powers, conveyed sacred truth through “lowly doors,” by embodying it in earthly similitudes; because “closest words” will not explain Divine things, owing to the imperfection of human language; “and so the Word had breath,” “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. iii., 16, and 1 John, 14), and by good works wrought the best of all creeds, which the labourer in the field, the mason, the grave-digger,

even the savage of the Pacific Islands, can see and understand, being conveyed to him through both the miracles and parables of the Gospel.

XXXVII.

He imagines Urania, the heavenly Muse, to reprove him for venturing on sacred ground, and commenting on religious themes; as she would have him confine his steps to his own Parnassus, and there earn the laurel crown.

But his own tragic Muse, Melpomene, replies with the apology, that though unworthy to speak of holy mysteries, yet with his earthly song he had striven to soothe his own aching heart, and render a due tribute to human love; and inasmuch as the comfort he had drawn was “clasp’d in truth reveal’d,” had its foundation in the Gospel: he daringly

Many readers of In Memoriam will have thanked its author for these trespasses upon the Holy Land, feeling indeed there was no profane intrusion.

Some will regret that he has changed the original line, “and dear as sacramental wine,” into “and dear to me as sacred wine:” the purpose, one supposes, was that the reader should see that he spoke only for himself—“to me”—the meaning is unchanged, but the sound is rather flat.

XXXVIII.

The sadness of his heart has fully returned, and the journey of life is dull and weary. The skies above and the prospect before him are no longer what they used to be, when Hallam was by. “The blowing season,” when plants are blossoming: the “herald melodies of spring,” when the birds proclaim that winter is past, give him no joy; but in his own songs he finds a “gleam of solace;” and if after death there be any consciousness retained of what has been left upon earth,

XXXIX.

This Poem has been recently introduced, as already stated (see P. ii.). The Yew tree does really blossom, and form fruit and seed like other trees, though we may not notice it.

The Poet now says, that his “random stroke” on the tree brings off

Also that at the proper season

The fact is, that the flower is bright yellow in colour, but very minute; and when the tree is shaken, the pollen comes off like dust, and then the tree seems to resume its old gloom.

So the spirit of the Poet may brighten for a moment, and then return to its accustomed melancholy.

XL.

He wishes “the widow’d hour” when he lost his friend, could be forgotten, or rather recalled like an occasion when the bride leaves her first home for “other realms of love.” There are tears then, but April tears—rain and sunshine mixed; and as the bride’s future office may be to rear and teach another generation—uniting grandparents with grand-children—so he has no doubt that to Hallam

But then comes this difference. The bride will return in course of time with her baby, and all at her old home will be happier for her absence—whereas

XLI.

Whilst together upon earth they could advance in company, though Hallam’s spirit and intellect were ever soaring upwards. Now, the links which united them are lost, and he can no longer partake in his friend’s transformations. So, (folly though it be,) he wishes that, by an effort of will, he could

For, though he has no vague dread of death and “the gulfs beneath,” yet the chilling thought comes over him, that in death he may not be able to overtake his friend, but evermore remain “a life behind” him,

all future ages: and that so he shall be his mate no more, which is his great trouble.

is probably a classical allusion to those “fields” of mystic horror, over which the spirits of the departed were supposed to range, uttering wild shrieks and cries. Has Dante no such allusion?[26]

This Poem intimates the idea of progress and advancement after death.

XLII.

He reproaches himself for these fancies; for inasmuch as it was only unity of place which gave them the semblance of equality here—Hallam being always really ahead—why may not “Place retain us still,”[27] when I too am dead, and can be trained and taught anew by this “lord of large experience?”

There are no pleasures so sweet, as the imbibings of instruction from the lips of those who are both superior and dear to us.

It is evident that Hallam’s translation in death, had exalted his friend’s estimation of him whilst living, for see the Poet’s note at the end of Poem xcvii.

XLIII.

If, in the intermediate state, we find that

as St. Paul himself might lead us to believe—

—the slumbering soul being like a flower which closes at night—reposed, unconscious of the passage of time, but with silent traces of the past marked upon it;[28] then the lives of all, from the beginning of time, would contain in their shut-up state a record of all that had ever happened;

At the resurrection, the old affection will revive.

XLIV.

How fare the happy dead? Here man continuously grows, but he forgets what happened

that is, before the skull of the infant closed. Yet sometimes

suggests the possibility of a previous existence.[29] “If death so taste Lethean springs,” as to leave a trace on the soul of what had happened upon earth—the Poet here makes Lethe produce remembrance, instead of forgetfulness, which is its normal effect. Dante describes the double power of the mythic stream in Purgatory (Can. xxviii., l. 134)—

And so, “in the long harmonious years” of death, some dim touch of earthly things may reach Hallam whilst ranging with his equals. If this should be allowed, “O turn thee round,” “resolve the doubt,” whether thou art conscious of a previous life, and listen to my guardian angel, who will tell thee all about us here.

XLV.

The child, still in its mother’s arms, has no consciousness of its own individual life and identity; and it is with its growth that it acquires a sense of separate and isolated being, independent of all around.

The acquisition of this consciousness may be the use of “blood and breath,” which otherwise would have achieved no worthy end; as we should have to learn ourselves afresh after the second birth of death, if these had not assured us of our indisputable personality.

XLVI.

In this life we experience “thorn and flower,” grief and joy; and the past becomes mercifully shaded as time goes on, otherwise the retrospect would be intolerable. But hereafter all shadow on what has happened will be removed, and all will be “clear from marge to marge;” and the five years of earthly friendship will be the “richest field” in the “eternal landscape.”

Yet this would be a limited range for Love, which ought to extend without any circumscription,

its expansion interminable.

XLVII.

This great and religious Poem has been absurdly said to teach Pantheism, which these stanzas refute; or perhaps they rather deny the doctrine of Spinoza, if that be clearly understood.

At any rate, to be conscious of “a separate whole”—a distinct individuality—and yet merge at last

St. Paul is not more distinct and emphatic upon our individuality hereafter, when he says, we shall “be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven,” 2 Cor. v., 2; that is, we shall put on a spiritual body, that will give identity and form.

Delighting in the thought of

he feels to have attracted the approving Shade of Hallam, and this reluctantly fades away, with the tender parting:

If indeed we are to be merged in the universal Soul, let us have at least one more parting, before we lose our individualities in the Great Being.

XLVIII.

This Poem disclaims any attempt at settling religious difficulties. The verses are of “sorrow born,” the result of private grief; and if misunderstood, and open to the charge of attempting to solve such grave questions of doubt as affect some minds, they would deserve the scorn of men.

Sorrow does not undertake severe argument; but if a “slender shade of doubt” flits before it, it would make this doubt a “vassal unto love,” and yield to Love’s supreme authority.

Love ought to be our ruler and guide, and these lays of sadness are merely

XLIX.

He compares the “random influences” of Art, Nature, and the Schools, to light breaking in shivered lances on the dappled water. For even so does “the sullen surface” of the mind become “crisp” and curled with the wave of thought, the eddy of fancy, the air of song.

The transient passenger may look and go on his way, but must not blame such mental perturbations: for

L.

He invokes Hallam’s spirit to be near him in his various moods of distress—when he is filled with nervous apprehensions, when faith seems gone, and Time to be only “a maniac scattering dust,” and Life to be “a Fury slinging flame:” when men also appear to be no more than flies, that sting and weave their cells and die. But above all,

The idea is sustained, that we shall go through the darkness of death, when Time will be lost, into the dawning light of Eternity; and the Poet would have his friend be near him at this translation.

LI.

Dare we indeed challenge the dead to inspect us? Have we “no inner vileness” that we would not have them discover? Would the Poet be lessened in Hallam’s esteem and affection, when “some hidden shame” was exposed? No,

LII.

He complains of his own inability to love Hallam as he ought, that is, worthily; because, if he did so, he would be equal to his friend,

whereas his words are words only, the “froth of thought.”

The Spirit of love reproves this self-accusation:

There is no ideal of excellence, which we may conceive, that will ensure our attaining to it:

not the life of Christ, in the clear atmosphere of Palestine, keeps any spirit “wholly true” to that pattern of perfection.

So be not “like an idle girl,” fretting over little faults—“flecks of sin.” But wait, thy wealth will be gathered in—thy worth shown

when the flesh has left the Soul free from its contaminating influence.

LIII.

He has often known a father, now

whose youth was noisy and foolish. Are we then to conclude from his example, that had there been no wild oats sown, there scarcely would have come

If we ventured to name such a doctrine among the old, who have “outlived heats of youth,” would we preach it to the young, who still “eddy round and round?”

Hold fast what is good, and define it well; and take care that “divine Philosophy” does not exceed her legitimate bound and become

by advocating sin as the path to sanctity.

LIV.

This Poem expresses a hope in Universalism—

that natural propensities, wilful sins, imperfect faith, and inherited weakness, may all find a pardonable solution.

He hopes that nothing has been made in vain—

But how reverently does he touch this mysterious subject!

In Poem cxxiv., stanza 5, he says,

LV.

He pursues the awful theme, and asks whether the wish for an universal restoration to life, does not spring from what is “likest God” in our own souls, His unlimited goodwill towards men, which would have all come to a knowledge of the truth?

for we find Nature, whilst careful in preserving the type of each species, utterly reckless of the separate members. We find, too, that out of “fifty (myriad)[31] seeds” sown, only one perhaps germinates. He falters and falls down

but still he stretches forth “lame hands of faith”

the hope of a final restitution of all things.

LVI.

He said that Nature preserved each type; but no, some species are already extinct; and Nature says that she cares not for preserving anything, and so, in geological strata, we find the fossil remains of creatures that no longer exist.[33] Why then may not man,

also perish, and have his dust blown about the desert,

If he be “no more”[34]—if there be nothing beyond this life for him—then is man but a monster, a dream, a discord—“dragons of the prime,” the Ichthyosauri that lived in the slime of chaos, were his betters!

LVII.

“Peace, come away,” may possibly be addressed to his sister, whom he now calls away from the sad subject which his earthly song had treated.

He says his companion’s cheeks are pale, so it is time that they should turn to other things, though in doing so, he must leave half his own life behind. His “friend is richly shrined;” but what will become of himself? “I shall pass; my work will fail.”

The author speaks of these poems—“me-thinks, I have built a rich shrine for my friend, but it will not last.” At any rate, so long as he lives will the tolling of Hallam’s passing bell[36] be in his ears; and the strokes on the bell, “Ave” and “Adieu,” hail and farewell, are like the notes of perpetual separation. They seem to be parted “for evermore.”[37] He is in the lowest depth of woe.[38]

LVIII.

It has been thought that there might have been an interval after the composition of the previous Poem; and that the author resumed his task in a more hopeful state of mind.

He now compares the words of his late farewell to the echoes of dropping water in burial vaults, and he says that other hearts besides his own were affected by his lamentation.

Urania reproaches him for thus distributing a fruitless grief amongst those who had shared his sense of loss; and, exhorting him to wait with patience for a more resigned feeling, she assures him that it will come to his great relief—

be able to speak with more confidence of their meeting again.

LIX.

He invites Sorrow to live with him as a wife, always and constant, not as a casual mistress: being his “bosom-friend and half of life,” even as it were Hallam himself.

Sorrow must remain his centred passion which cannot move; nevertheless it will not always be gloomy: but rather allow occasional playfulness, so that it would not be commonly known that he had a life-long affliction.[39]

LX.

He cannot dismiss the memory of his loss, and calls Hallam “a soul of nobler tone,” superior to himself, who is feeling “like some poor girl” that has fixed her affections on a man of higher rank than her own. She compares her state with his, and sighs over her own inferior circumstances, and repines at her humbler lot. The neighbours jeer at her disappointment, and she says

No doubt, the passing into a higher world gave Hallam a superior dignity in the Poet’s estimation.[40]

LXI.

If Hallam, in the intermediate state be exchanging replies with the great intellects there assembled from all time,—“the spirits of just men made perfect”—how dwarfed and insignificant must seem any intercourse with his friend still left here—

This figure of speech will be taken from the blanching of vegetables in the dark. Still, he would have him turn to

that is, to this world, distinguishing it from that “second state sublime,” into which Hallam had been admitted; for not even there can more affection be found, than I conceived and yet cherish:

This is all that even Shakespeare can do, if he and thou be now compeers.

LXII.

If looking down on the object of his affection makes his friend ashamed, then let their friendship be to him but as an idle tale or legend of the past. And Hallam may feel as one might, who having once had a low attachment, did afterwards wed an equal mind.[42]

The first love then either wholly dies out, or

a subject for ridicule.

LXIII.

Still, if I can pity an overdriven horse, or love my dog, without robbing heaven of its dues of reverence, when these animals are as much below me as I am thy inferior; why mayest not thou “watch me, where I weep,” from thy circuits of higher heights and deeper depths than mine?

LXIV.

He asks whether Hallam is looking back on this life,

who has burst through all the adverse circumstances of his humble birth, by genius and labour; making

as Lord Beaconsfield did.

Does not such a hero in his elevation,

sometimes feel tender memories of the scenes of his early life—

when he “play’d at counsellors and kings” with some lad long ago left behind in his native obscurity; and who now resting on his plough, musingly asks,

LXV.

He clings to the memory of Hallam, yet would resign himself to his loss—

All that he can resolve is, to cherish every grain of love; and in doing so, there springs up the “happy thought,” that if his own nature has been elevated by intercourse with Hallam, why may not a like result have been reflected from himself on his friend?

LXVI.

He accounts for his cheerfulness to some one, who had wondered that being so far diseased in heart he could ever be gay.

He says that his own grief has made him feel kindly towards others; and that he is like a blind man, who though needing a hand to lead him, can still jest with his friends, take children on his knee and play with them, and dream of the sky he can no longer see:

LXVII.

He pictures in his mind, as he lies in bed, how the moonlight that fills his chamber is passing its “silver flame” across the marble tablet in Clevedon Church,[43] which is inscribed to the memory of Hallam. The tablet is not in the chancel of the church, as erroneously stated in Mr. Hallam’s private memoir of his son, and consequently so described in the earlier editions of this Poem, but it rests on the west wall of the south transept; and “the letters of thy name,” and “the number of thy years,” are thus most affectingly recorded:

“TO THE MEMORY OF ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, of Trinity College, Cambridge, b.a., eldest son of Henry Hallam, Esquire, and of Julia Maria, his wife, daughter of Sir Abraham Elton, Bart., of Clevedon Court, who was snatched away by sudden death, at Vienna, on September 15th, 1833, in the 23rd year of his age. and now, in this obscure and solitary church, repose the mortal remains of one too early lost for public fame, but already conspicuous among his contemporaries for the brightness of his genius, the depth of his understanding, the nobleness of his disposition, the fervour of his piety, and the purity of his life. Vale dulcissime, vale dilectissime, desideratissime, requiescas in pace. Pater ac mater hic posthac requiescamus tecum, usque ad tubam.”[44]

When the moonlight dies he falls asleep, “closing eaves of wearied eyes;” and awakens to know how the grey break of day is drawn from “coast to coast,” from Somersetshire to Wales, across the estuary of the Severn,[45]

LXVIII.

A succession of dreams now occurs. When at night he presses “the down” of his pillow, sleep, “Death’s twin-brother,”[46] “times my breath”—takes possession of him and regulates his breathing. But, though so closely related to Death, sleep cannot make him dream of Hallam “as dead.” He again walks with him, as he did before he was left “forlorn;” and all nature is bright around them.

But, looking at his friend, he discovers “a trouble in thine eye”—an expression of sadness, which his dream will not account for. The light of day reveals the truth. He awakes, and perceives that his own grief, the trouble of his youth, had transferred itself to the image he saw in his dream.

LXIX.

He dreams again, and nature seems to have become distorted, and will not answer to the seasons. Smoke and frost fill the streets, and hawkers chatter trifles at the doors.

He wanders into a wood, and finds only “thorny boughs.” Of these he forms a crown, which he places on his head. For wearing this, he is scoffed at and derided; but an angel comes and touches it into leaf, and speaks words of comfort, “hard to understand,” being the language of a higher world.

The occurrences in this dream seem to have been suggested by the indignities offered to our Lord before His crucifixion.

LXX.

The confusion of nightmare, with hideous imagery, follows his effort to discern the features of Hallam; till all at once the horrid shapes disperse, and his nerves are composed by a pleasanter vision:

LXXI.

Sleep, from its capturing power over the brain, is called “kinsman to death and trance and madness;” and is here acknowledged as affording

by reviving in a dream of the night a tour they had made together “thro’ summer France.”

The Poet asks that, if sleep has “such credit with the soul,” as to produce this temporary illusion; it may be farther extended by giving him a stronger opiate, so as to make his pleasure complete, in prolonging this renewal of their pedestrian tour, and reviving other cherished associations.

This reference to their foreign excursion recalls the charming verses, “In the Valley of Cauteretz,” which evidently relate to their being together during this happy holiday:

LXXII.

The dreams are over, and he addresses the sad anniversary of Hallam’s death, which took place on the 15th of September, 1833—the day having just dawned with stormy accompaniments. The poplar tree[47] is blown white, through having its leaves reversed by the wind; and the window-pane streams with rain. It is a day on which his “crown’d estate,” his life’s happiness, began to fail; and that the rose is weighed down by rain, and the daisy closes her “crimson fringes,”[48] are effects quite in harmony with his feelings.

But, if the day had opened with no wind, and the sun had chequered the hill sides with light and shadow; it would still have looked

It is a disastrous “day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,” he can therefore only say, “hide thy shame beneath the ground,” in sunset, when the recalling anniversary will be past.

We are reminded of Job’s imprecation on his own birthday—“Let the day perish on which I was born.”

LXXIII.

He says there are so many worlds, and so much to be done in them—since so little has already been accomplished—that he thinks Hallam may have been needed elsewhere. The earthly career of usefulness and distinction is over; but he finds no fault, piously submitting—

all is overruled. We pass away, and what survives of human deeds?

The hollow ghost of Hallam’s reputation may wholly fade here; but his exulting soul carries away unexpended powers for higher purposes,

had he been permitted to live.

LXXIV.

This Poem will certainly not bear a literal interpretation. We cannot suppose that the writer ever looked on the face of his friend after death; for nearly four months had elapsed before the body reached England.

What he saw, therefore, was with “the mind’s eye.” And as Death often brings out a likeness,[49] which was never before recognized; so, contemplating the character of the departed, he sees

I can perceive worth in thee equal to theirs!

The last stanza is mystical; the darkness of death hides much; what he can see he cannot or will not explain: enough, that thou hast made even this darkness of death beautiful by thy presence.

LXXV.

The Poet leaves the praises of his friend unexpressed, because no words can duly convey them; and the greatness thus unrecorded must be guessed, by the measure of the survivor’s grief.

Indeed, he does not care

The world only applauds accomplished success, and does not care for what might have been done, had opportunity been given. It is therefore sufficient that silence should guard Hallam’s fame here; because the writer is assured, that what he is elsewhere doing

One cannot but feel that were it not for this immortal elegy, its subject would have been long since forgotten, like other promising youths who have died in their Spring.

LXXVI.

“Take wings of fancy,” and imagine that you have the whole “starry heavens of space” revealed to one glance—“sharpen’d to a needle’s end.”[51]

“Take wings of foresight,” and see in the future how thy best poems are dumb, before a yew tree moulders; and though the writings of the great early Poets—“the matin songs that woke the darkness of our planet”—may last, thy songs in fifty years will have become vain; and have ceased to be known by the time when the oak tree has withered into a hollow ruin.[52]

LXXVII.

Looking at what has already happened,

may bind a book, or line a box, or be used by some girl for curl papers; or before a century has passed, they may be found on a stall, telling of

Nevertheless, these considerations shall not deter the Poet—

LXXVIII.

Another Christmas Eve arrives, with snow and calm frosty weather. Though, as of old, they had games, and tableaux vivants, and dance, and song, and “hoodman blind”[53]—blindman’s bluff—yet in spite of these recreations,

There were no visible signs of distress—no tears or outward mourning. Could regret then have died out?

LXXIX.

he had used this expression in the last stanza of Poem ix., and in repeating it he would apologize to his brother Charles Tennyson, we may presume.

for thou art holding “the costliest love in fee,” even a wife’s affection—we may again suppose.

The Rev. Charles Tennyson married Miss Sellwood,[54] and changed his name to Turner, for property left to him by a relation, and was vicar of Grasby, in Lincolnshire. The brothers,[55] in their boyhood, shared one home with all its endearing associations; and now each has his special object of affection: “my wealth resembles thine;” except that Hallam

LXXX.

If any vague wish visits the Poet, that he had himself been the first to be removed by Death (when the dust would have dropt on “tearless eyes,” which, as it is, have now so sorely wept over Hallam’s departure); then the grief of the survivor would have been

because Hallam would have found comfort in pious resignation.

So he minutely ponders over this holy submission, and invokes contentment from the contemplation—

LXXXI.

If, whilst Hallam was with him, it could be said that love had its full complement and satisfaction, and could not range beyond; still he torments himself with “this haunting whisper,”

My attachment would have expanded with the enlargement of his powers.

The change in death instantly exalted its victim;

A sudden frost will ripen grain or fruit, but will not impart the flavour to fruit which the sun gives.

In Hallam’s sudden transition, what might have been drawn from subsequent experience was at once fully accomplished.

LXXXII.

A fine burst of Faith in the future. He does not reproach Death for any corruption by it “on form or face.” No decay of the flesh can shake his trust in the survival of the soul. “Eternal process” is ever “moving on;” the Spirit walks through a succession of states of being; and the body dropt here is but a case, the “ruin’d chrysalis of one” state left behind.[56]

Nor does he find fault with Death for taking “virtue out of earth:” he knows that it will be transplanted elsewhere to greater profit.

What he is angry with Death for is, their separation—

This Poem expresses a comforting belief in progress and advancement hereafter.

LXXXIII.

“The northern shore” must simply mean our northern region.

He reproaches the New Year for “delaying long.” Its advent would cheer him, bringing the light and sweetness of Spring—for

He would have the New Year bring all its customary flowers—

a sight of these would set free the sorrow in his blood,

LXXXIV.

This Poem is a very charming conception of what their lives might have domestically been, if Hallam had been spared. The picture is almost too beautiful: detailing more than life ever allows—and there came the crushing sorrow.

Engaged in marriage to the Poet’s sister,[57] death intervened—

It is remarkable how the imagination of the Poet glows over the tender scenes of home affection, and the great results which he presumes were arrested by the removal of his friend, who he had hoped would have attained “to reverence and the silver hair” in company with himself—and then, in their full old age,

The mere thought of this forbidden consummation of their friendship shocks him; it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and stops

LXXXV.

The first stanza merely repeats the sentiment expressed in Poem xxvii., that the deepest grief has only more fully convinced him, that to have loved and lost is better than never to have loved.

It is the friend to whom the epithalamium is addressed—E. L. Lushington—“true in word and tried in deed,” who asks how he is affected—if his faith be still firm, and he has still room in his heart for love? He answers, that all was well with him, until that fatal “message” came, that

He then recounts what he thinks may have occurred to Hallam, when translated through various stages of spiritual being; and he repeats his sorrowful regrets for his loss. But “I woo your love,” he seems to say to his future brother-in-law, for he holds it wrong

still, so deep is his attachment to Hallam, that he calls himself

their intimacy would be eternal; and he imagines some sort of intercourse still carried on betwixt them, which he describes in language that has much of the spirit and character of Dante.

He then seems to turn again to his living friend, and says,

But he is not wholly disconsolate—

The concluding stanza offers the primrose of autumn to the surviving friend, whilst that of spring must be reserved for the friend whom he has lost.

LXXXVI.

He asks the ambrosial air of evening, which is so “sweet after showers,” and is “slowly breathing bare the round of space,”[60] clearing the sky of clouds, and “shadowing” the divided stream by raising ripples on its surface, to fan the fever from his cheek, till Doubt and Death can no longer enchain his fancy, but will let it fly to the rising star, in which

This Poem is remarkable as being one sustained sentence.

LXXXVII.

He revisits Cambridge, the chief scene of past intimacy with Hallam, and roams about the different colleges.

The expression “high-built organ,” probably alludes to the organ being here, as in some cathedrals, reared above the screen which separates the choir from the nave.

refers to the stained glass windows, and more particularly to those, perhaps, in King’s College chapel. The scenery at the back of the colleges is vividly recalled.

He stops at the door of Hallam’s old room, now occupied by a noisy wine party. It was there that his friend used to achieve such controversial triumphs—ever as the master-bowman hitting the mark in argument, when

like the martyr Stephen’s;

whose brow was straight and prominent—the sign of intellectual power.

Michael Angelo had a strong bar of bone over his eyes.

Mrs. Frances A. Kemble in Record of a Girlhood, vol. ii. p. 3, thus describes young Hallam’s appearance. “There was a gentleness and purity almost virginal in his voice, manner, and countenance; and the upper part of his face, his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness for his early translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still must wear in heaven. Some time or other, at some rare moments of the divine Spirit’s supremacy in our souls, we all put on the heavenly face that will be ours hereafter, and for a brief lightning space our friends behold us as we shall look when this mortal has put on immortality. On Arthur Hallam’s brow and eyes this heavenly light, so fugitive on other human faces, rested habitually, as if he was thinking and seeing in heaven.”

LXXXVIII.

He asks the “wild bird,” probably the nightingale, whose liquid song brings a sense of Eden back again, to define the feelings of the heart, its emotions and passions. In the “budded quicks” of Spring the bird is happy; in the “darkening leaf,” amid the shadowing foliage, though its happiness be gone, its grieving heart can still cherish “a secret joy.” The notes of the nightingale are supposed to be both sorrowful and joyous.

Even so, the Poet cannot wholly govern his own muse; for, when he would sing of woe,

the grandeur of life’s experience, will sometimes rule the chords.

LXXXIX.

This Poem is like a picture by Watteau of a summer holiday in the garden or the woods.

He recalls the lawn of Somersby Rectory, with the trees[61] that shade it, and Hallam as being present on one of his repeated visits. He has come down from his law readings in the Temple,

and now, in a golden afternoon, sees

as he lies and reads Dante, or Tasso, aloud to his companions; until later on, when some lady of the group would bring her harp, and fling

Or the family party may have strayed farther away, for a picnic in the woods; and are there discussing the respective merits of town and country.

They are described as returning home,

that is, before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea—“her father’s grave.”—This planet is evolved from the Sun—La Place’s theory.

The evening sounds are very charming—

when the bees were gathering their last stores of the day. Tender recollections of the past!

XC.

He is indignant at the idea that if the dead came back to life again, they would not be welcome; and declares that whoever suggested this, could never have tasted the highest love.

Nevertheless, if the father did return to life, he would probably find his wife remarried, and his son unwilling to give up the estate. Even if matters were not so bad as this, still

Though all this may be true,

XCI.

When the larch is in flower, and the thrush “rarely pipes”—exquisitely sings; and “the sea-blue bird of March,”[64] the kingfisher, “flits by;” come, my friend, in thy spirit form, with thy brow wearing the tokens of what thou hast become. Come to me also in the summer-time, when roses bloom and the wheat ripples in the wind. Don’t come at night, but whilst the sunbeam is warm, that I may see thee,

XCII.

If a vision revealed Hallam in bodily presence as of old, he would doubt its reality, and ascribe it to “the canker of the brain.” If the apparition spoke of the past, he would still call it only “a wind of memory” in himself. Even if it promised what afterwards came true, he would account it to be merely a presentiment—

XCIII.

“I shall not see thee;” for he doubts, though he dares not positively speak, whether a spirit does ever return to this world—at least visibly—so as to be recognised. But he will dare to ask that where “the nerve of sense” is not concerned—that is, where neither sight nor touch are needed—wholly apart from the body—“Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost” may come, so that

XCIV.

To be fit and capable of a spiritual visitation from the dead, you must be “pure in heart, and sound in head.” There will be no answer to your invocation, unless you can say that your “spirit is at peace with all,” as they can who are already in “their golden day” in Paradise. The mind and memory and conscience must be calm and still; for

the departed spirits

This fitness for apprehending any communications from the next world, well describes the condition requisite for intercourse with God Himself.

XCV.

Here comes another family scene at Somersby.[67]

It may be observed here that Dr. Tennyson, the Poet’s father, had died in 1831, but his family remained in their old home for several years afterwards, as the new Incumbent was non-resident.

The family party are at tea on the lawn in the calm summer evening. No wind makes the tapers flare, no cricket chirrs, only the running brook is heard at a distance, whilst the urn flutters on the table. The bats performed their circular flight;

these are night moths (Arctica menthrasti, the ermine moth, answers the description), whilst those assembled sing old songs, which are heard as far as where the cows are lying under the branching trees.

So passed the evening until all have retired to rest, and the Poet is alone, when he takes out Hallam’s last-written letters—

He reads them afresh, to renew a sense of their bygone intimacy:

The Poet’s mind struggles on “empyreal heights of thought” in incorporeal ecstasy—a sort of trance inexplicable—which lasts till dawn, when