8 A Pay are in the salegte great Vepra Charta da na to drms, and the lack of TAMAN KEBY TAK, CA on as well as the habit of Why that in the leans of poetic art prevents these plays fran taking with his mou satisfactory work. We are disfroad to regret that the force and genius which went to their making hud n be applied in other directions. They conbw many splendid lines and stirring passages, many fine Situations, and masterly delineations of character; but they do and show Tennyson at his best; and the greater a writer is, the more stringent is our demand that he maintain his highest level. ites. To many, Tennyson's shorter pieces will remain the favorSome of them seem the very flower of human speech. "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "The Lady of Shallott," "The Lotus Eaters," "Love and Death,” “A Dream of Fair Women," "The Sleeping Beauty," and that last noble message—"Crossing the Bar;" these and many another as we read them, seem to attain the limits of beauty in measure, rhyme and thought. But it is still too early to decide what of Tennyson is most nearly immortal. He lies in Westminster Abbey; and it is enough for us to know that so long as that historic church stands, his fame is likely to endure. Or we might say that the English language which he has dignified and enriched will not outlast the noble creations which he has incarnated in it. TEARS, IDLE TEARS. TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; Dear as remembered kisses after death, Tile FRCSONTEM SE MOOPITAL, NEW YORK, M. Y OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS. Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: There in her place she did rejoice, Then stept she down thro' town and field Grave Mother of majestic works, Her open eyes desire the truth. That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes. ELAINE'S LETTER TO GUINEVERE. THEN spake the lily maid of Astolat; Not all unhappy, having loved God's best Upon it; I shall guard it even in death. And when the heat is gone from out my heart, She ceased: her father promised; whereupon She grew so cheerful that they deemed her death Was rather in the fantasy than the blood. But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh lack some of its most exquisite graces and most felicitous and penetrating interpretations. Tennyson's outward life was uneventful. He entered Cambridge in 1828, with Hallam (son of the historian), Trench and Houghton; was compelled by his slender income to defer his marriage until 1850, when he was forty-one; was raised to the laureate-ship of England in the same year, and accepted a peerage in 1884. He was no traveler, rarely leaving England, and never realizing the hope of his youth, "To see, before I die, the palms and temples of the south." He died in 1892, well past the age of fourscore, but with the fineness of his genius unabated. His history is that of his mind and heart, which is shadowed forth in his writings, yet ever veiled beneath the reticences of pure art. He was great enough to eschew the individual and singular in the published expression of his thought, and to offer only those ideas and feelings which are catholic in the race. All who have loved and lost have experienced the emotions of "In Memoriam ;" no one who has meditated deeply on the problems of the age can fail to find his best conclusions in "Locksley Hall;" scepticism may find its utterance and its answer in "The Two Voices;" the refusal of the soul to stay in mortal limitations resounds in "Ulysses;" the passion, purity and exaltation of love are portrayed in "Enone," "Maud," "Love and Duty," "Tears, Idle Tears," "The Gardener's Daughter," and many other lovely poems; the mockery of beauty without God is shown in "The Palace of Art;" the grandeur of patriotism, civil and military, is expressed in the "Ode on the Death of Wellington" and in "England;" and so we might continue. In a word, the life of his age flowed through Tennyson, and found in him its broadest utterance. Philosophy, science, history and art were elemental spirits employed by this Prospero to give body, color and pertinence to his harmonious creations; his brain was balanced by his heart, and the first was as lofty as the last was deep. The beginnings of the poet's career were not ambitious. Before he was twenty, he and his brother published a small volume of "Poems by Two Brothers," which showed faculty, but no definite aim. His "Poems Chiefly Lyrical," appear |