A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 14

If a vision revealed Hallam in bodily presence as of old, he would doubt its reality, and ascribe it to "the canker of the brain." If the apparition spoke of the past, he would still call it only "a wind of memory" in himself. Even if it promised what afterwards came true, he would account it to be merely a presentiment--

"such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise."[65]

XCIII.

"I shall not see thee;" for he doubts, though he dares not positively speak, whether a spirit does ever return to this world--at least visibly--so as to be recognised. But he will dare to ask that where "the nerve of sense" is not concerned--that is, where neither sight nor touch are needed--wholly apart from the body--"Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost" may come, so that

"My Ghost may feel that thine is near."[66]

XCIV.

To be fit and capable of a spiritual visitation from the dead, you must be "pure in heart, and sound in head." There will be no answer to your invocation, unless you can say that your "spirit is at peace with all," as they can who are already in "their golden day" in Paradise. The mind and memory and conscience must be calm and still; for

"when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits,"

the departed spirits

"can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within."

This fitness for apprehending any communications from the next world, well describes the condition requisite for intercourse with G.o.d Himself.

XCV.

Here comes another family scene at Somersby.[67]

It may be observed here that Dr. Tennyson, the Poet's father, had died in 1831, but his family remained in their old home for several years afterwards, as the new Inc.u.mbent was non-resident.

The family party are at tea on the lawn in the calm summer evening. No wind makes the tapers flare, no cricket chirrs, only the running brook is heard at a distance, whilst the urn flutters on the table. The bats performed their circular flight;

"And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly b.r.e.a.s.t.s and beaded eyes"--

these are _night moths_ (_Arctica menthrasti_, the ermine moth, answers the description), whilst those a.s.sembled sing old songs, which are heard as far as where the cows are lying under the branching trees.

So pa.s.sed the evening until all have retired to rest, and the Poet is alone, when he takes out Hallam's last-written letters--

"those fall'n leaves which kept their green, The n.o.ble letters of the dead."[68]

He reads them afresh, to renew a sense of their bygone intimacy:

"So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past, And all at once it seem'd at last The living soul was flash'd on mine."

The Poet's mind struggles on "empyreal heights of thought" in incorporeal ecstasy--a sort of trance inexplicable--which lasts till dawn, when

"East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day."

XCVI.

He reproves the young lady, who, whilst tender over killing a fly, does not hesitate to call the hara.s.s of religious doubt "Devil-born."

The Poet says, "one indeed I knew"--who, it may be presumed, was Hallam--and

"He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them."

"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,[69]

At last he beat his music out,"

and found the serenity of faith.

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds."

Unquestioning faith is not the qualification for its champion. True faith is the result of conflict--"the victory that overcometh the world."

G.o.d made and lives in both light and darkness; and is present in the trouble of doubt, as well as in the comfort of belief. The Israelites were making idols when G.o.d's presence in the cloud was manifested by the trumpet. They doubted in the midst of sensible proof of the Divine presence.

The questionings of a speculative mind ought to be tenderly dealt with, not harshly denounced.

XCVII.

This Poem is highly mystical.

"My love has talk'd with rocks and trees."

His own affection for Hallam seems to personate the object of his attachment, and "sees himself in all he sees." Just as the giant spectre, sometimes seen "on misty mountain-ground,"[70] is no more than the vast shadow of the spectator himself.

The Poem proceeds more intelligibly, by drawing a comparison which typifies his own humble relation to his exalted friend. He imagines some meek-hearted and affectionate wife loving and revering a husband, whose high intellect and pursuits exclude her from any real companions.h.i.+p.

But she treasures any little memorials of their early devotion, and feeling that he is

"great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 'I cannot understand: I love.'"

It must be understood that this Poem, as elsewhere, would describe _the relation of one on earth to one in the other and higher world--not the Author's relation to him here. He certainly looked up to the Author, fully as much as the Author to him._

XCVIII.

"You leave us." Some one is going on the very route which the friends had traversed together, and will reach "that City," Vienna, where Hallam died.

All its splendour is to the Poet,

"No livelier than the wisp[71] that gleams On Lethe in the eyes of death;"

so great is his aversion to the place, on account of the loss he had sustained there; and he charges it with all manner of ill.

But Hallam had given him a very different description; saying that in no other metropolis--"mother town"--had he seen such stately carriages of the rich pa.s.s to and fro; and such a contented crowd enjoying themselves with dance and song, amidst a display of coloured fireworks.