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.

The

MAUD; A MONODRAMA

This poem grew out of the lines, ‘O, that 't were possible,' etc., printed in The Tribute' in 1837, and now forming (with some alterations) the fourth section of Part II. of the poem. Sir John Simeon, to whom Tennyson read these lines in the earlier days of their friendship, suggested that something was needed to explain the story. On this hint the poem was founded, and the greater part of it was written under a certain cedar in Sir John's grounds at Swainston. For the additions made in 1856, and minor alterations made afterwards, see the Notes.

The earlier critics of the poem failed to recognize its dramatic character. They ascribed to the author the thoughts and sentiments which he puts into the mouth of the morbid young man who is the dramatis persona; for, as in recent editions it has been designated, the poem is a monodrama,' and, in that respect, unique. Tennyson, when reading it to Mr. Knowles, said (as in substance he said when reading it to me): 'It should be called "Maud, or the Madness." It is slightly akin to "Hamlet." No other poem (a monotone with plenty of change and no weariness) has been made into a drama where successive phases of passion in one person take the place of successive persons. At the end of Maud' he declared, 'I've always said that “Maud” and “Guinevere" were the finest things I've written.'

To Dr. Van Dyke, who in the first edition of 'The Poetry of Tennyson' had called · Maud' a'splendid failure,' he said: 'I want to read this to you because I want you to feel what the poem means. It is dramatic; it is the story of a man who has a morbid nature, with a touch

The The

of inherited insanity, and very selfish. poem is to show what love does for him. war is only an episode. You must remember that it is not I myself speaking. It is this man with the strain of madness in his blood, and the memory of a great trouble and wrong that has put him out with the world.'

I felt, when I heard the poet read 'Maud,' that it was the best possible commentary on the poem. I had not misunderstood it, as Dr. Van Dyke did at first, but the reading made me see heights and depths in it of which I had had no conception before. Especially was I amazed, as my friend was, at the intensity with which the poet had felt, and the tenacity with which he had pursued, the moral meaning of the poem. It was love, but not love in itself alone, as an emotion, an inward experience, a selfish possession, that he was revealing. It was love as a vital force, love as a part of life, love as an influence, - nay, the influence which rescues the soul from the prison, or the madhouse, of self, and leads it into the larger, saner existence. This was the theme of "Maud." And the poet's voice brought it out, and rang the changes on it, so that it was unmistakable and unforgettable, -the history of a man saved from selfish despair by a pure love.' For his last reading of the poem, see the 'Memoir,' vol. i. page 395.

The motto of Maud' might well have been the lines from Locksley Hall' which the poet was fond of copying when friends asked for his autograph:

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, past in music out of sight.