A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 20

Each had so partic.i.p.ated in the other's life: they had looked on Nature with such kindred eyes, having one mind and taste; that the survivor both sees and hears his former companion in all objects and sounds which present themselves.

Everything reminds him of Hallam; but

"Tho' mix'd with G.o.d and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more."

His last declaration of devoted attachment is,

"Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho' I die."

Cx.x.xI.

"O living will"--_free will in man_--that will outlast all present things, surviving and enduring

"When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock,"

which is Christ, the source of all life and strength; and flowing through our deeds, "make them pure;" so that out of the dust of death, we may cry to One that hears, and has conquered time, and with us works; and we may put our whole trust in those "truths that never can be proved until we close with all we loved," and with G.o.d Himself, who will be "all in all"--not by the souls of mankind becoming absorbed into the "general Soul"--a notion which Poem xlvii. repudiates--but by the Divine nature being infused into and prevailing in all.

PREFATORY POEM.

To this final confession of faith, worked out through Sorrow by the sustaining help of Love, the prefatory Poem is merely a pendant.

"Strong Son of G.o.d, immortal Love,"

is addressed to Christ, G.o.d Himself upon earth.[88] George Herbert had before called our Saviour

"Immortal Love, author of this great frame;"

and our Poet says, though we have not seen His face, we embrace Him by faith,

"Believing where we cannot prove."

He acknowledges Him as the great Creator, and through all surrounding mysteries and disappointments, is satisfied with this conclusion as to the future,

"Thou art just."

This conviction is enough.

"Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou"--

G.o.d incarnate, to whom we must become spiritually united,

"Our wills are ours, to make them thine,"

as expressed in Poem cx.x.xi., stanza 1.

"Our little systems" "are but broken lights of thee," even as the colours of the rainbow are the broken lights of the sun.

"We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see."

Faith apprehends things which are spiritual, and do not come within the range of our senses; whilst knowledge accepts only what can be seen and understood.

Hence, the Poet would have knowledge advance and increase to the utmost, "a beam in darkness" ever growing. But reverence must grow with it; so that mind which acc.u.mulates knowledge, and soul which is the dwelling-place of faith, according well with each other, may make one music--be in harmony "as before," that is, I presume, as at first; but now "vaster" in their compa.s.s owing to the greater reach of modern thought and research.

This warning against scientific a.s.sumptions, in opposition to spiritual truths, is repeated from Poem cxiv.

The concluding humble prayer, contained in the three last stanzas, has the true ring of devout piety.

"Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

"Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair.

I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.

"Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise."

"What seem'd my sin," would be the Poet's excessive grief for Hallam's death: for he elsewhere says,

"I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch."[89]

"What seem'd my worth," would be his devoted love for his friend, which he felt had enn.o.bled his own life; and so he says,

"To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise."

But this worth was only comparative,

"from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee;"

since no human goodness can be counted as merit in the sight of G.o.d.

SUPPLEMENTARY POEM.

The Epithalamium, or marriage lay, which is added to the great Poem, refers to the wedding of a younger sister, Cecilia Tennyson, who, about the year 1842, married Edmund Law Lushington, sometime Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.

The strong domestic affections of the Poet are prominently shown throughout _In Memoriam_, and his pleasure at this bridal is very charming. He just recalls that Hallam had appreciated the Bride in her childhood:

"O when her life was yet in bud, He too foretold the perfect rose."

The worth of the Bridegroom is acknowledged in this address:

"And thou art worthy; full of power; As gentle; liberal-minded, great, Consistent; wearing all that weight Of learning[90] lightly like a flower."

The whole Poem is pleasant and jocund and _was meant to be a kind of Divina Commedia_--_ending cheerfully_--but it scarcely harmonizes with the lofty solemnity of _In Memoriam_, whose Author might rejoice in the thought, that he would leave behind him a rich legacy of comfort to all future generations of mourners.

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.