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;
"And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes"--
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--
"those fall'n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead."[68]
He reads them afresh, to renew a sense of their bygone intimacy:
"So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine."
The Poet's mind struggles on "empyreal heights of thought" in incorporeal
ecstasy--a sort of trance inexplicable--which lasts till dawn, when
"East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day."