The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in. હું વ

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

In the preceding hymn Tennyson expressed a general appeal for better conditions. In the following poem the

newly appointed laureate complimented the great sovereign who was regarded by her contemporaries as the epitome of an age of morality and idealism. A dedication in verse is difficult. Swinburne's self-dedication in his Poems and Ballads, First Series, displays high metrical skill. Whittier's "Proem," Morris's "An Apology," and Masefield's "A Consecration" ably characterize the aims of their respective authors. Happily phrased is William Watson's sonnet offering a volume "To Lord Tennyson." It is safe to say, however, that no dedication has surpassed in felicity the subjoined poem. The reference in the second stanza is to William Wordsworth, who preceded Tennyson as poet laureate.

TO THE QUEEN

Revered, beloved-O you that hold
A nobler office upon earth

Than arms, or power of brain, or birth
Could give the warrior kings of old,

Victoria,-since your Royal grace
To one of less desert allows

This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base;

And should your greatness, and the care
That yokes with empire, yield you time
To make demand of modern rhyme
If aught of ancient worth be there;

Then-while a sweeter music wakes,

And thro' wild March the throstle calls,

Where all about your palace-walls
The sun-lit almond-blossom shakes-

Take, Madam, this poor book of song;
For tho' the faults were thick as dust
In vacant chambers, I could trust
Your kindness. May you rule us long,

And leave us rulers of your blood
As noble till the latest day!
May children of our children say,
"She wrought her people lasting good;

"Her court was pure; her life serene;

God gave her peace; her land reposed;

A thousand claims to reverence closed
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen;

"And statesmen at her council met

Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet

"By shaping some august decree

Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people's will,
And compass'd by the inviolate sea!"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

As Tennyson lay on his death-bed, Henry van Dyke, author, clergyman, professor, and later ambassador to Holland and Luxemburg, penned the following poem, felicitous in its reference to "Crossing the Bar," and carrying in the fourth and fifth lines the noblest conceivable tribute. The trochaic octame

ter lines harmonize well with the tone of stately dignity.

TENNYSON

In Lucem Transitus, October, 1892

From the misty shores of midnight, touched with splendors of

the moon,

To the singing tides of heaven, and the light more clear than

noon,

Passed a soul that grew to music till it was with God in tune.

Brother of the greatest poets, true to nature, true to art;
Lover of Immortal Love, uplifter of the human heart,—
Who shall cheer us with high music, who shall sing, if thou

depart?

Silence here for love is silent, gazing on the lessening sail; Silence here for grief is voiceless when the mighty minstrels

fail;

Silence here-but, far beyond us, many voices crying, Hail! Henry van Dyke (1852- )

Tennyson was buried in London, in the "Poets' Corner" of Westminster Abbey. That venerable Gothic building contains many more immortals now than when Beaumont wrote his poem, and among those recently buried therein are a number of men of letters. Speaking for a British colony, Kipling well terms Westminster "The Abbey that makes us we." Beaumont's name is almost inseparably connected with that of John Fletcher-the two constitute the most famous pair of collaborators in English literature.

ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Mortality, behold and fear,

What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps of stones;

Here they lie, had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, "In greatness is no trust."
Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest royallest seed
That the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:

Here the bones of birth have cried

"Though gods they were, as men they died!"
Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:
Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

Francis Beaumont (1584-1616)

Tennyson strove in The Idylls of the King to do for the obscure dawn of his country what Vergil had done for Rome. His selection by the Mantuans as the nineteenth centenary poet was consequently exceedingly happy, and his response justified the choice. This excellent occasional poem is written in trochaic nonameter catalectic, a very unusual form.

TO VIRGIL

(WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL's death)

Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,