Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson Part 21

CI

"In the garden, looking round on tree and shrub and flower and brook--all the friends of many years--a fresh pang comes with the sight of each.

All these will be unwatched, unloved, uncared for; till, perhaps, they find a home in a stranger's heart, growing dear to him and his, while the memory fades of those who love them now."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

10. THE BROOK. The brook at Somersby flowed past the bottom of the parsonage grounds. It is constantly mentioned in Tennyson's poems.

Hallam Tennyson says that the charm and beauty of the brook haunted his father through life.

11. LESSER WAIN. Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear; a small constellation containing the pole star. Wain means "wagon," another name for the constellation.

14. HERN AND CRAKE. Heron and corn-crake.

21. LABOURER. He does not move away, but stays always there.

22. GLEBE. Soil.

CXIV

"The world now is all for the spread of knowledge: and I should be the last to demur. But knowledge has an ardent impetuosity, which in its present immature condition may be fraught with many perils. Knowledge by itself, so far from being of necessity heavenly, may even become devilish in its selfish violence. Everything depends upon its being held in due subordination to those higher elements in our nature which go to make wisdom. Would that the ideal aim of our education were to produce such as he was, in whom every increase in intellectual ability was accompanied by the growth of some finer grace of the spirit."--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

4. HER PILLARS. "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars."--_Proverbs_ 9: 1.

5. A FIRE. The fire of inspiration.

6. SETS. Hard, like a flint.

6. FORWARD. Bold, without reverence.

7. CHANCE. Of success.

8. TO DESIRE. Governed by pa.s.sion, without restraint or self-control.

10. FEAR OF DEATH. Knowledge does not know what is beyond the grave and therefore fears death.

11. CUT FROM LOVE, ETC. Wallace says: "Knowledge, in its own nature, can have no love, for love is not of the intellect, and knowledge is all of the intellect: so, too, she can have no faith, for faith in its nature is a confession of ignorance, since she believes what she cannot know."

12. PALLAS. Pallas Athene, the G.o.ddess of wisdom among the Greeks, was fabled to have sprung, fully grown and fully armed, from the brain of Zeus. Wild Pallas means "false wisdom."

17. A HIGHER HAND. Wisdom.

23. THY GOAL. The goal of wisdom.

28. REVERENCE, ETC. In faith and love.

CXV

"Another spring has come, and all its lovely sights and sounds wake answering chords in the poet's breast. The life within him stirs and quickens in responsive harmony with the world without. But his regret, too, blossoms like a flower,"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

2. BURGEONS. Buds.

2. MAZE OF QUICK. Quick-set tangle.

3. SQUARES. Fields.

8. SIGHTLESS. Invisible.

14. GREENING. s.h.i.+ning out on the sea.

CXVIII

"Do not believe that man's soul is like mere matter, or has been produced, like lower forms in the earlier ages of the earth, only to perish. Believe that he is destined both to advance to something higher on the earth, and also to develop in some higher place elsewhere, if he repeats the process of evolution by subduing the lower within him to the uses of the higher, whether in peaceful growth or through painful struggle."--_A. C. Bradley_.

2. HIS YOUTH. "Limited time, however old or long, must be always young, compared with the h.o.a.ry age of eternity."

4. EARTH AND LIME. Flesh and bone.

10. SEEMING-RANDOM. But in reality shaped and guided.

11. CYCLIC STORMS. "Periodic cataclysms," or "storms lasting for whole ages."

16. TYPE. Exemplify.

18. ATTRIBUTES OF WOE. Trial and suffering are the crown of man in this world.

20. IDLE. Useless.

22. HEATED HOT. A reference to the tempering of steel.

26. REELING FAUN. Human beings with horns, a tail, and goats' feet.

They were more than half-brutish in their nature.

28. THE APE AND THE TIGER. A reference to the theory of evolution, although Darwin's _Origin of Species_ did not appear until 1859.

CXXIII

"Again the mysterious play of mighty cosmic forces arrests his thought.

Everything in the material universe is changing, transient; all is in a state of flux, of motion, of perpetual disintegration or re-integration.

But there is one thing fixed and abiding--that which we call spirit--and amid all uncertainty, one truth is certain--that to a loving human soul a parting which shall be eternal is unthinkable."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

4. STILLNESS. Hallam Tennyson remarks that balloonists say that even in a storm the middle sea is noiseless. It is the s.h.i.+p that is the cause of the howling of the wind and the las.h.i.+ng of the storm.

4. CENTRAL SEA. Far from land.

8. LIKE CLOUDS, ETC. A reference to geological changes.