Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil,

I know the Fyfield tree,

I know what white, what purple fritillaries

The grassy harvest of the river-fields,

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,
And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?—
But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,

With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees, Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by

The coronals of that forgotten time;

Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,
And only in the hidden brookside gleam
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door,
Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoor'd our skiff when through the Wytham flats,
Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among
And darting swallows and light water-gnats,
We track'd the shy Thames shore?
Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

I see her veil draw soft across the day,

I feel her slowly chilling breath invade

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;

I feel her finger light

Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train;

The foot less prompt to mect the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,

And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

And long the way appears, which seem'd so short
To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;

And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,
The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!
Unbreachable the fort

Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush the upland hath a sudden loss
Of quiet!-Look, adown the dusk hill-side,
A troop of Oxford hunters going home,
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.
Quick! let me fly, and cross

Into yon farther field!-'Tis done; and see,
Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify
The orange and pale violet evening-sky,
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!

I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,

The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.
I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,

Yet, happy omen, hail!

Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale
(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under the flowery oleanders pale),

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine (And purer or more subtle soul than thee,

I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see) Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!-
Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,
For thee the Lityerses-song again

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;
Sings his Sicilian fold,

His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes -
And how a call celestial round him rang,

And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang,

And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here
Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.
Despair I will not, while I yet descry
Neath the mild canopy of English air
That lonely tree against the western sky.
Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,

Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee!

Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay, Woods with anemones in flower till May, Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,

Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.

This does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honour, and a flattering crew;
'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold-
But the smooth-slipping weeks

Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;
Out of the hced of mortals he is gone,
He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,
If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,
If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.
And this rude Cumner ground,

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,
Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time,

Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!
And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.

What though the music of thy rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy, country tone;
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,

Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat

It fail'd, and thou wast mute!

Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light,

And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,
And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,

Left human haunt, and on alone till night.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!

'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,

Thyrsis in reach of sheep-bells is my home. -Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar, Let in thy voice a whisper often come,

To chase fatigue and fear;

Why faintest thou? I wander'd till I died.

Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.

Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill,

Our Scholar travels yet the loved hill-side.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

[ALFRED TENNYSON was born on Aug. 6, 1809, at Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire. He was the third son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., Rector of Somersby; his mother was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche. After education at Louth Grammar School, and at home, he went in 1828 to Trinity College, Cambridge. His Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' appeared in 1830. In 1850, having meanwhile won the foremost place among living English poets, he succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate (Nov. 19). In June of the same year he married Miss Emily Sellwood. His first home after marriage was at Twickenham, where his eldest son, Hallam, was born in 1852. In 1853 he removed to Farringford, near Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, where his second son, Lionel, was born in 1854. From the year 1869 onwards he had also a second home, Aldworth, near Haslemere, in Surrey, where he usually passed the summer and early autumn. In January, 1884, he was created a peer, by the title of Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth and Farringford. He died at Aldworth on Oct. 6, 1892, aged eighty-three years and two months; and on Oct. 12 was buried in Westminster Abbey.]

The gifts by which Tennyson has won, and will keep, his place among the great poets of England are pre-eminently those of an artist. His genius for vivid and musical expression was joined to severe self-restraint, and to a patience which allowed nothing to go forth from him until it had been refined to the utmost perfection that he was capable of giving to it. And his 'law of pure and flawless workmanship' (as Matthew Arnold defines the artistic quality in poetry) embraced far more than language the same instinct controlled his composition in the larger sense; it is seen in the symmetry of each work as a whole, in the due subordination of detail, in the distribution of light and shade, in the happy and discreet use of ornament. His versatility is not less remarkable: no English poet has left masterpieces in so many different kinds of verse. On another