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ALFRED TENNYSON.

Poet Laureate since 1850.

BORN 1810.

Critics somewhat divided as to his merits.

Resembles Longfellow; and equally popular at home and abroad. The first of living English poets.

PRINCIPAL PIECES.

"The May Queen;""In Memoriam; ""Locksley Hall;' ""Maud;" "The Idylls of the King;" ""The Princess, a Medley;" "Morte d'Arthur;” “ Godiva;""Enoch Arden;""The Holy Grail."

IN MEMORIAM.*

I.

I HELD it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years,
And find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drowned;
Let Darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah! sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
"Behold the man that loved and lost!
But all he was is overworn."

II.

OLD Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the underlying dead,
Thy fibers net the dreamless head;
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And, in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.

Oh! not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale;
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom.

* A hundred and thirty short poems in memory of the poet's friend, Arthur H. Hallam,

And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood,
And grow incorporate into thee,

III.

O SORROW, cruel fellowship!

O Priestess in the vaults of Death!
O sweet and bitter in a breath!
What whispers from thy lying lip?

"The stars,” she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is woven across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun;

"And all the phantom, Nature, stands,
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,
A hollow form with empty hands."

And shall I take a thing so blind?
Embrace her as my natural good?
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?

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But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these infold
Is given in outline, and no more.

VI.

ONE writes that "other friends remain,"
That loss is common to the race;"
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter; rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son!
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath stilled the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor! while thy head is bowed,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought:
Expecting still his advent home;

And ever met him on his way

With wishes, thinking, "Here to-day,
Or here to-morrow, will he come."

Oh! somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair,
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father's chimney glows

In expectation of a guest;

And thinking, "This will please him best,"

She takes a ribbon or a rose :

For he will see them on to-night;

(And with the thought her color burns :)

And, having left the glass, she turns

Once more to set a ringlet right;

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But, since it pleased a vanished eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,

That, if it can, it there may bloom;
Or, dying, there at least may die.

IX.

FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains

With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain a favorable speed

Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead
Through prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above!
Sleep, gentle heavens! before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds! as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see

Till all my widowed race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

X.

I HEAR the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,

And traveled men from foreign lands,
And letters unto trembling hands,
And thy dark freight, — a vanished life.

So bring him. We have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: oh! to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover-sod

That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God,

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