TENNYSON

POETRY AS INTERPRETING THE DIVINE ORDER

FEW poets have given so early promise of greatness as did Alfred Tennyson. At five years of age in his father's garden, when caught and swept along by a gale, he exclaimed: "I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind!" His first verses were inscribed upon a slate at home, while his elders were at church. "Yes, you can write!" said his brother Charles, after he had read them. The grandfather was not so hopeful. He gave Alfred a half-sovereign for a few lines upon his grandmother's death, with the words: "That is the first money you have earned by your poetry and, my word for it, it will be your last." He little thought that the manuscript of the "Poems by Two Brothers," including Alfred's first productions, would be one day sold for two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, and that a single copy of the published work would bring one hundred and twenty dollars.

At Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where the poet was born and where he gained the most of his preparatory training for the university, he spent his youth in the still air of delightful studies. The father was variously learned, with gifts for painting, architecture, and music, as well as for poetry and the classic languages. A sweet and gentle mother bound the household together

by ties of reverence and love, so that faith in womankind beat henceforth with the poet's blood. There were twelve children in the rectory family, and of the seven sons the two older than himself were poets also. The village numbered scarcely a hundred souls. It was far removed from the noise of politics or trade. But there were books in plenty, and there was endless storytelling at the table and around the hearth. The news of the battle of Waterloo never penetrated to that remote corner of the earth; but there were mimic battles fought on the lawn, with rods stuck in the ground for kings, with knights on either side to defend them, and with an inexhaustible artillery of stones for their overthrow.

The "Ode to Memory" is still printed among the juvenile works of the author, but it has touches that are worthy of his prime. It tells of the strong impressions that were made upon him by his English home, that haunt of ancient peace:

Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside,

The seven elms, the poplars four,

That stand beside my father's door,

And chiefly from the brook that loves

To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn,
In every elbow and turn,

The filtered tribute of the rough woodland.
O hither lead thy feet!

Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds,
Upon the ridged wolds,

When the first matin-song hath wakened loud
Over the dark dewy earth forlorn,

HIS CONCEPTION OF POETRY

What time the amber morn

Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud.

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Here are a keen observation of nature, a sparkling freshness of phrase, and a pure affection for the scenes of childhood. None of these, however, are sure proofs of coming greatness. There are other lines of greater significance in this same "Ode to Memory":

In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest
Thou leddest by the hand thy infant Hope.
The eddying of her garments caught from thee
The light of thy great presence; and the cope
Of the half-attained futurity,

Though deep, not fathomless,

Was cloven with the million stars that tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
Small thought was there of life's distress;

For sure she deemed no mist of earth could dull
Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful.
Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from

The illimitable years.

These last words are repeated and preserved from "Timbuctoo," the first poem of the author published under his own name. They are in the grand style, and they disclose the central thought of the poet's life and work. He has in mind something larger than the fabled music of the spheres, namely, the ordered march of the ages and of all their histories. He found within him an impulse to measured speech. But this would have been child's play if he had not felt it to correspond with rhythmical realities in the universe. There is an order which pervades all time as well as all space.

It

is the function of the poet to discover that order, and to

interpret it to men.

Tennyson began his work with a

right theory of art. His position in literature and his influence upon his generation cannot be understood without recognizing this.

What is merely intimated in the "Ode to Memory is clearly expressed elsewhere. Not often has a great singer in his first lays so fully spread out the programme of his career as has our author in another early poem, "The Poet." Rarely has the after-harvest given so abundant witness to the quality of the seed. And never, I believe, has any literary sower committed this seed more daringly or more tremblingly to the earth :

The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.

He saw through life and death, through good and ill

He saw through his own soul.

The marvel of the everlasting Will,

An open scroll,

Before him lay with echoing feet he threaded

The secretest walks of fame :

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed

And winged with flame.

So, many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
Though one did fling the fire;

Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams
Of high desire.

Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
Like one great garden show'd,