the Prophet_, which (thank God) completely--as I think and as very
many will think with me--disposes of the rickety and crotchety
arguments of those who vainly thought they had found a [Greek: pou
stô] in him whereby to upheave all prophecy and miracle. It is a noble
book from its learning and its logic. I knew he was a holy and
noble-minded and erudite man, but for some reason I had not credited
him with such 'act offence' and powers of righteous satire.... I have
never in my old desultory reading days found such a charm and interest
as in the study of the Queen Science, as Trench calls Theology, and
those who assume that they will find there no food for the mature
reason will be surprised at its large provision for the intellect and
rich satisfaction of the highest imagination. It is reading round
about a subject and not the subject itself which damages the intellect
so much. Maurice said the study of the Prophets had saved him from the
Tyranny of books."
He and his wife also spent much time in the study of Italian, in which
they were assisted by their occasional visits to and from the Frederick
Tennysons. Charles's Italian Grammar is annotated with numberless quaint
rhymes made to fix its rules in his memory. On one page one finds in his
wonderfully neat fluent hand (strangely like those of Frederick and
Alfred):
From use of the following is no ban,
"The fair of the fair is Mistress Ann"
or "Smith's a learned, learned man"
In English or Italian,
Though the English use is far less common
Speaking of Doctor or fine woman.
On another:
Say profeta, profeti
Or else I shall bate ye.
On another a couplet which has all the subtle romance of Edward Lear:
Rare and changeless, firm and few,
Are the Italian nouns in U.
The life at Grasby Vicarage was of the simplest. The hall-floor rattled
with loose tiles, the furniture was reduced to the barest necessities.
Breakfast and lunch were movable feasts, for Charles had all a poet's
carelessness of time, lingering over morning prayers while his agonized
guest saw the bacon cooling to the consistency of marble before his eyes,
and prolonging his mid-day walk to such distances in the study of flower
and bird and butterfly that it sometimes took a half-hour's tolling of the
outdoor bell to recall him. The cook (who in times of scarcity was at the
service of the whole village) must have led a life of irritation, yet
servants stayed long at the Vicarage.
This sweet, even life knew little variety. The days of quiet service
filled the year, and were succeeded by evenings no less quiet in the
book-lined study, or, if the season were warm, in the hayfield near the
house, where husband and wife would sit reading and talking to each other
till the evening glow died away and left the haycocks and the steep side
of the wold, which backed the red-brick Vicarage, gray and cold and
silent.
Troubles they had beyond the recurrent anxiety for Charles's health. A
rascally agent, a man of great plausibility and charm of manner, pillaged
them for some years, and they were only able to recover a portion of his
plunderings (most of which Charles subsequently devoted to the repair of
the church) after a great deal of trouble. It is characteristic that in
after years they always spoke of this gentleman as though _he_ had been
the person who had suffered most in the transaction and deserved most
pity. Charles was indeed possessed of an almost saintly patience, and no
crisis could ever wring from him any ejaculation more forcible than a
half-humorous "I wish we were all in heaven." His wife's letters
occasionally give us glimpses of days when the wish must often have been
upon his lips, as when he was reluctantly compelled to join in a
Harvest-Festival gathering in another parish. First of all we read how
"poor Cubbie" (his wife's pet name for him) "was caught and dressed in a
surplice which hung about him like a clothes bag." "Then he must join in a
procession, with much singing and chanting, and then read the lessons in
spite of a bad cold and hoarseness, and finally at the end of the day, in
the full hubbub of a garden party, at which all the neighbourhood were
present in their finery (poor Cubbie!), a cannon, which had been charged
with blank cartridge for the occasion, went off unexpectedly and knocked
down three boys who were standing in front of it. The boys, whose clothes
were torn to rags and their faces burnt black, shrieked as though in the
death agony, women fainted and men stampeded--and Cubbie 'wished we were
all in heaven.'"
But Charles Turner's poems are, after all, the best mirror of his life.
With Frederick it is otherwise. In spite of his great lyric gift,
Frederick lacked the persistence and enthusiasm necessary for full
self-expression. The want of proportion, which gave his ardent, erratic
personality so much charm, prevented his longer poems being really
successful. In spite of much beauty of phrase and richness of feeling,
they lack architecture and have not sufficient unity to make them vital.
Had he continued to work at lyrical writing after his first volume, he
might have avoided falling into the desultory method, which marred his
later work, and left a really large body of first-class poetry.
In the best of Charles's Sonnets, in all, that is, which spring from his
daily experience, there breathes a spirit perpetually quickened by the
beauty and holiness of common life and common things, an imagination which
saw a life and a purpose not only in the ways of men and of all wild
creatures and growing things, but in the half-human voice of the buoy-bell
ringing on the shoals, the sad imprisoned heart-beat of the water-ram in
the little wood-girt field, the welcome of the sunbeam in the copse
running through the yielding shade to meet the wanderer, in the "mystic
stair" of the steam thrashing-machine:
Accepting our full harvests like a God
With clouds about his shoulders.
and the "mute claim" of the old rocking-horse:
In the dim window where disused, he stands
While o'er him breaks the flickering limewalks' shade;
No provender, no mate, no groom has he--
His stall and pasture is your memory.[14]
But in spite of the intimate correspondence between Charles Turner's life
and his art, an intimacy which only the seclusion of that life made
possible, one cannot help regretting that fortune did not force upon him
some calling which would have afforded a progressive stimulus to his
creative powers. These years of devotion amongst the bleak hill-sides and
flowery dingles of his remote parish did for him what a life of ease and
sunshine did for Frederick. Both had great talents, but neither the tender
felicity of Charles nor Frederick's heart of cloud and fire ever came to
full development. They represent two extremes of the Tennyson temperament,
the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred. In the elder the
lyric fury, in the younger the craftsman's humility of the more perfect
poet were developed to excess, and both suffered for the affection and
respect in which they held him whom they knew to be their master. Yet each
has left himself a monument, some part at least of which is worthy to rank
with the more complete achievement of their younger brother.
TENNYSON ON HIS CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS
[Illustration: A. H. H. Obiit 1833.]
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro' the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard once more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon'd on the panes;
And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door:
I linger'd; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crash'd the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly-wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
TO JAMES SPEDDING
ON THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER
The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.
And me this knowledge bolder made,
Or else I had not dared to flow
In these words toward you, and invade
Even with a verse your holy woe.
'Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost:
Those we love first are taken first.
God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.
This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief I am not all unlearn'd;
Once thro' mine own doors Death did pass;
One went, who never hath return'd.
He will not smile--not speak to me
Once more. Two years his chair is seen
Empty before us. That was he
Without whose life I had not been.
Your loss is rarer; for this star
Rose with you thro' a little arc
Of heaven, nor having wander'd far
Shot on the sudden into dark.
I knew your brother; his mute dust
I honour and his living worth:
A man more pure and bold and just
Was never born into the earth.
I have not look'd upon you nigh,
Since that dear soul hath fall'n asleep.
Great Nature is more wise than I:
I will not tell you not to weep.
And tho' mine own eyes fill with dew,
Drawn from the spirit thro' the brain,
I will not even preach to you,
"Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain."
Let Grief be her own mistress still.
She loveth her own anguish deep
More than much pleasure. Let her will
Be done--to weep or not to weep.
I will not say, "God's ordinance
Of Death is blown in every wind";
For that is not a common chance
That takes away a noble mind.
His memory long will live alone
In all our hearts, as mournful light
That broods above the fallen sun,
And dwells in heaven half the night.
Vain solace! Memory standing near
Cast down her eyes, and in her throat
Her voice seem'd distant, and a tear
Dropt on the letters as I wrote.
I wrote I know not what. In truth,
How _should_ I soothe you anyway,
Who miss the brother of your youth?
Yet something I did wish to say:
For he too was a friend to me:
Both are my friends, and my true breast
Bleedeth for both; yet it may be
That only silence suiteth best.
Words weaker than your grief would make
Grief more. 'Twere better I should cease
Although myself could almost take
The place of him that sleeps in peace.
Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace:
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
TO EDWARD FITZGERALD
(Dedication of "Tiresias," written in 1882)
Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And while your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
And seem'd at first "a thing enskied"
(As Shakespeare has it) airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
One night when earth was winter-black,
And all the heavens flash'd in frost;
And on me, half-asleep, came back
That wholesome heat the blood had lost,
And set me climbing icy capes
And glaciers, over which there roll'd
To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes
Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold
Without, and warmth within me, wrought
To mould the dream; but none can say
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,
Who reads your golden Eastern lay,
Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your Omar; and your Omar drew
Full-handed plaudits from our best
In modern letters, and from two,
Old friends outvaluing all the rest,
Two voices heard on earth no more;
But we old friends are still alive,
And I am nearing seventy-four,
While you have touch'd at seventy-five,
And so I send a birthday line
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt
In some forgotten book of mine
With sallow scraps of manuscript,
And dating many a year ago,
Has hit on this, which you will take
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know
Less for its own than for the sake
Of one recalling gracious times,
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes,
And I more pleasure in your praise.
EPILOGUE AT END OF "TIRESIAS"
"One height and one far-shining fire"
And while I fancied that my friend
For this brief idyll would require
A less diffuse and opulent end,
And would defend his judgment well,
If I should deem it over nice--
The tolling of his funeral bell
Broke on my Pagan Paradise,
And mixt the dream of classic times
And all the phantoms of the dream,
With present grief, and made the rhymes,
That miss'd his living welcome, seem
Like would-be guests an hour too late,
Who down the highway moving on
With easy laughter find the gate
Is bolted, and the master gone.
Gone into darkness, that full light
Of friendship! past, in sleep, away
By night, into the deeper night!
The deeper night? A clearer day
Than our poor twilight dawn on earth--
If night, what barren toil to be!
What life, so maim'd by night, were worth
Our living out? Not mine to me
Remembering all the golden hours
Now silent, and so many dead,
And him the last; and laying flowers,
This wreath, above his honour'd head,
And praying that, when I from hence
Shall fade with him into the unknown,
My close of earth's experience
May prove as peaceful as his own.
TO JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE
My hope and heart is with thee--thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
TO J. W. BLAKESLEY
AFTERWARDS DEAN OF LINCOLN
I
Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,
Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain
The knots that tangle human creeds,
The wounding cords that bind and strain
The heart until it bleeds,
Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn
Roof not a glance so keen as thine:
If aught of prophecy be mine,
Thou wilt not live in vain.
II
Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;
Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow:
Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now
With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.
Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords
Can do away that ancient lie;
A gentler death shall Falsehood die,
Shot thro' and thro' with cunning words.
III
Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,
Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,
Thy kingly intellect shall feed,
Until she be an athlete bold,
And weary with a finger's touch
Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;
Like that strange angel which of old,
Until the breaking of the light,
Wrestled with wandering Israel,
Past Yabbok brook the livelong night,
And heaven's mazed signs stood still
In the dim tract of Penuel.
TO R. C. TRENCH
AFTERWARDS ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN
(Dedication of "The Palace of Art")
I send you here a sort of allegory,
(For you will understand it) of a soul,
A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind)
And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sunder'd without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay ta'en from the common earth
Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.
TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD
Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony--is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier, Jaques, past away!
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark:
[Greek: Skias onar]--dream of a shadow, go--
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.
TO EDMUND LUSHINGTON
ON HIS MARRIAGE WITH CECILIA TENNYSON
O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho' I since then have number'd o'er
Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,
And yet is love not less, but more;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower,
That must be made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower:
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out: the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
And me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
And watch'd her on her nurse's arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
The "wilt thou" answer'd, and again
The "wilt thou" ask'd, till out of twain
Her sweet "I will" has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign'd, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them--maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho' in silence, wishing joy.
But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour'd horses wait;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look'd, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.
Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the wealth
Of words and wit, the double health,
The crowning cup, the three-times-three,
And last the dance;--till I retire:
Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o'er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro' the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro' life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER
_Midnight, June 30, 1879_
I
Midnight--in no midsummer tune
The breakers lash the shores:
The cuckoo of a joyless June
Is calling out of doors:
And thou hast vanish'd from thine own
To that which looks like rest,
True brother, only to be known
By those who love thee best.
II
Midnight--and joyless June gone by,
And from the deluged park
The cuckoo of a worse July
Is calling thro' the dark:
But thou art silent underground,
And o'er thee streams the rain,
True poet, surely to be found
When Truth is found again.
III
And, now to these unsummer'd skies
The summer bird is still,
Far off a phantom cuckoo cries
From out a phantom hill;
And thro' this midnight breaks the sun
Of sixty years away,
The light of days when life begun,
The days that seem to-day,
When all my griefs were shared with thee,
As all my hopes were thine--
As all thou wert was one with me,
May all thou art be mine!
[Illustration: EDMUND LUSHINGTON (Who married Cecilia Tennyson, and was
Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow).]
TENNYSON AND LUSHINGTON
By Sir HENRY CRAIK, K.C.B., M.P.
Amongst the group of men attached to Lord Tennyson by bonds of early and
life-long friendship, and of reverent affection, there is none in whose
case the tie is surrounded with more of peculiar interest than Edmund
Lushington. Those who in later years were privileged to know the Poet's
brother-in-law, and learned to appreciate his character, could well
understand the closeness of the sympathy between them.