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Found yesterday-forgotten mine own rhyme

By mine own self,

As I shall be forgotten by old Time,

Laid on the shelf

A rhyme that flower'd betwixt the whitening sloe
And kingcup blaze,

And more than half-a-hundred years ago.

The poem was written at the time when the war between capital and labour was at its fiercest, and the burning of the farmers' ricks was the easiest way for the labourers to manifest their hostility. All this time of riot and trouble came back to the poet's recollection, and he remembered

That red night

When thirty ricks,

All flaming, made an English homestead Hell -

These hands of mine

Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well

Along the line,

When this bare dome had not begun to gleam

Thro' youthful curls.

In these lines To Mary Boyle the poet dedicated "this song of Spring." It is almost a pity to make extracts from the exquisite lyric, and one fears to hear a cry of pain as when Dante broke a branch from the living trees. Let this one stanza suffice:

She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours,

But in the tearful splendour of her smiles
I see the slowly-thickening chestnut towers
Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles.
Now past her feet the swallow circling flies,
A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand;
Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes,
I hear a charm of song thro' all the land.
Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad
To roll her North below thy deepening dome;
But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad,

And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam,
Make all true hearths thy home.

Miss Boyle, a life-companion of the poet's, died very shortly after these verses to her had been published. She could claim among her close and honoured friends, Landor, Browning, and Dickens, and was both a novelist and poetess herself, some verses of hers in the Tribute, entitled Our Father's at the Helm, having exceeded in popularity the contribution of Tennyson himself to that miscellany. The poem, which was of the didactic order, with a very obvious "moral," is not one which would be likely to suit the taste of readers now. Mary Boyle will owe her fame to the monument fashioned for her in exquisite verse by the Laureate, who remembered her when she was

A lover's fairy dream,
His girl of girls,

and to whom he could then say—

Close are we, dear Mary, you and I
To that dim gate,

though how close the one was he knew not.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SWAN-SONGS.

"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.

Twilight and evening bell

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark."

-Crossing the Bar.

IT is recorded that when Tennyson heard Byron was dead he "thought the whole world was at an end." "I thought," he said, "everything was over and finished for everyonethat nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out

alone and carved Byron is dead' into the sandstone." In October 1892 came the news that Tennyson was dead, and we too felt that there was a void, a gap, a "something lost" so great, so commanding, that for the moment everything seemed over and finished, nothing mattered, the impenetrable darkness of night enveloped us. “Tennyson is dead" were words that carved themselves upon many a heart. The sweetest singer, the purest poet, had passed into the silent land, and left us longing in vain for the touch of a vanished hand, craving in despair for a sound of the voice that is still. The "spectre fear'd of man" came in no dread guise to the aged poet, whose greatest work was to prove the glory and the excellence of death. Fitting indeed was it for him who had sung the psalm of triumph In Memoriam that the grave should have no terrors. The silvery light of the moon fell upon the dying

poet's face; now and then a smile flitted across his tranquil features; an open volume of Shakespeare lay in his hand; and as the gray October morning broke "God's finger touched him, and he slept." The flood had borne him onward, and, crossing the bar, he saw his Pilot face to face. For forty-two years he had worn the laurel crown, receiving it "greener from the brows of him who uttered nothing base." Scholar, philosopher, idealist as he was, he had still been the poet of the people, voicing their hopes and fears, espousing their cause, expressing their sorrows, proclaiming their joys, finding fitting words for all emotions. The foremost fact in Tennyson's long life was his consistency. He pursued one ideal, and he might have said with the voyagers of whom he sang

One fair Vision ever fled

Down the waste waters day and night,
And still we follow'd where she led,
In hope to gain upon her flight.
Her face was evermore unseen,

And fixt upon the far sea-line;
But each man murmur'd, "O my Queen,
I follow till I make thee mine."

The poet never doubted his mission and never swerved
from his purpose.
Known or unknown, rich or poor,
courted or neglected, he was a poet always, feeling within
himself something of a sacred designation and distinction.
Carlyle discovered that he was "a true human soul to
whom your soul can say Brother." When his triumph
came the triumph over prejudice, indifference, and all
those other obstacles which the world loves to place in the
path of genius--it was unequivocal. His songs, with their
delicious cadences, their dreamy sensuousness, and their
suffusion of exquisite colour, were at once a revelation and
an enchantment. The stanzas had a haunting melody;
the very words seemed to sparkle to the eye; a sense of
luxury and rest was borne on the languorous lines. There
had been nothing like it since the music-laden verses of

The Faery Queen gushed from the soul of Edmund Spenser, and the consummate art of the poet could not fail to obtain acknowledgment. Yet the lyrics were no more than the promise of spring: the glory of summer, the abundant autumn harvest, and even the splendour of a long and genial winter, were to follow. Upon which of Tennyson's works will his fame last? Perhaps on all, for he wrote little that was unworthy, though In Memoriam, Maud, and the Arthurian series will stand out as the most conspicuous pillars. These poems are as much for the future as the present, and the pinnacle of the poet's fame will gleam, high and shining, through the ages. The great magician is dead, and the temple of his body deserted.

Life and Thought have gone away

Side by side.

Leaving door and windows wide

Careless tenants they !

and we can only cry out with the poet

Life and Thought

Here no longer dwell;

But in a city glorious

A great and distant city-have bought
A mansion incorruptible.

Would they could have stayed with us!

Three weeks after Tennyson's death his last collection of poems was published-The Death of Enone, Akbar's Dream, and other Poems. This posthumous volume excited the highest interest, and no doubt the pieces included in it will always claim a special attention. They were full of reminiscences, and awakened old memories; they touched anew the sweet familiar chords and gave out the gathered harmony of the minstrel's life. The delight felt when the music of the early lyrics, sixty years before, cast a spell upon the soul stole to us again, and we were amazed and charmed to find that the skill of the minstrel and the freshness of the voice of the singer remained unimpaired. We

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