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To have looked, though but in a dream, upon eyes so fair, That had been in a weary world my one thing bright; And it was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair, When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right." England's redemption was to come through war. Not through the suffering of war (though this also may be needed by nations as by men), but through those reawakened sympathies, through that departure from self-centredness, which could lead her to voluntarily enter into the loss and suffering of war. For it cannot but be true that, as a man is incapable of nobility while his own life and interests monopolise his attention, so also it must be with a nation. There is a truth in the principle of non-intervention; but also it may easily pass into a lie; and a nation has consented to be ignoble when it has resolved that for no causes outside the circle of its own interests it will risk the issues or incur the sacrifices of war.

Love and Death might have been put into the mouth of Maud's lover.

Love and Duty strikes a new chord. Princess love "found its earthly close." did not through the death of one.

In The In Maud it

In Aylmer's

Field (if we may anticipate) through a bitter parting and the death of both, it did not.

In Love and Duty

it did not, through the interposition of

"Duty, loved of Love,

beloved but hated,"

and the obedience of the lovers to its commands. What then, asks the poem ?

"What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
Or all the same as if it had not been ?"

"Not so," it answers, "but that it is better to have loved and lost," even in this fashion, than not to have loved. This, and that not love-"love" in the narrower sense under consideration-but duty is lord, these are the two teachings of the poem. These together keep the love of man and woman in its right place, from which it is always being removed, to baseness by the base, to usurpation by the spiritually lawless. That the love of man and woman, "when they love their best and truest," is the noblest of natural things, but that the noblest must be in subjection to Divine law, these two, fully believed, would remake the world.

Whether "behold thy bride" is literal does not appear. One asks, because it seems difficult to imagine a duty which should part these two, and yet allow the scene opening

"The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good."

And this scene having taken place, the exhortation beginning

"Live happy; tend thy flowers"

seems a very sanguine one.

H

CHAPTER VIII

POLITICAL POEMS

THERE is no sturdier aspect of Tennyson's mind and teaching than the political and social aspect. Reverence, willingness to a lofty calling, love of country, courage, freedom, loyalty, obedience—these make his prescription for national and social well-being. Freedom, not that obedience may be escaped from, but that it may be more worthily fulfilled; loyalty, not as an abject submission on the part of those below, but as a hearty and joyful devotion on the part of each, whether above or below, to the others, and of all to the whole. Not, he holds, by the old machinery, as such, nor by new machinery, as such; not by the retention of power in the hands of one set of persons, nor by its transference to the hands of another set, but by the presence in the nation of these ancient all-time virtues Iwill it be well with a land. This puts the poet outside and above all party clamour, and exhibits politics not as war or as a low art, but as one aspect of noble living. This is true poet's teaching.

With the foolish notion that those who have no power to do a thing have some inherent right to mis-do it, Tennyson, it need hardly be said, has no sympathy.

"Russia bursts our Indian barrier! Shall we fight her? Shall

we yield?

Pause, before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.

"Those three hundred millions, under one imperial sceptre

now,

Shall we hold them? Shall we loose them? Take the suffrage of the plough."

But this might be mere scorn. In Tennyson it is

not

"Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth, if only you and

you,

Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly

true.

Ploughmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,

Sons of God, and kings of men, in utter nobleness of mind.

"Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings

liar;

So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher."

Keen to the true relation of man and woman, our poet is equally keen to the true relation of rich and poor, reverencing both, but not shutting his eyes to the difference between them.

His

But a

Akin to this is his strong love of country. sympathies are large and go out to all men. nation is a fact, a great human fact, a divine-human fact. Love of it, like family love, does not fight against the larger love. And whether in smaller minds it does or does not fail to help the larger love, the thing itself is nature, and he is poorer who is

without it. And so the full patriotic flush of our poet's writings is a refreshment and a tonic.

And last, I may remark upon his deep conviction that the true progress of freedom is an organic growth, not a revolution.

Glances towards these political topics occur in many places, but the poems that are largely or wholly political are the following. I extract some leading thought from each—

"You ask me, why, though ill at ease."

"Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent."

"Deliver not the tasks of might

To weakness, neither hide the ray

From those, not blind, who wait for day,
Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

"Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky

Bear seed of men and growth of minds."

This last is a dominant thought with Tennyson: I have

dwelt upon it in another chapter.