Who, if not I, for questing here hath power? 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, I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?— 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, Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door, Unmoor'd our skiff when through the Wytham flats, Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her slowly chilling breath invade The check 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 meet the morning dew, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again. And long the way appears, which seem'd so short And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall; And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, But hush the upland hath a sudden loss From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come. Into yon farther field!-'Tis done; and see, I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil, The white fog creeps from bush to bush about, Yet, happy omen, hail! Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!— 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 !— In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing; His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes - 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 Neath the mild canopy of English air 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 stil; 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, Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired; Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound; Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest, Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields, Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime! What though the music of thy rustic flute 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, 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 |