scapes, in which either nature or man has accumulated a lavish variety of effects. It is in the scenery of the mill, the garden, the chase, the down, the rich pastures, the harvest-field, the palace pleasure-grounds, the Lord of Burleigh's fair domains, the luxuriant sylvan beauty, bearing testimony to the careful hand of man, the summer crisp with shining woods,' that Mr. Tennyson most delights. If he strays to rarer scenes, it is almost in search of richer and more luxuriant loveliness, like the tropical splendors of 'Enoch Arden' and the enervating skies which cheated the Lotos-Eaters of their longing for home."

"Mr. Tennyson,” says a writer in the North British Review,“ deserves an especial study, not only as a poet, but as a leader and a landmark of popular thought and feeling. As a poet, he belongs to the highest category of English writers; for poetry is the strongest and most vigorous branch of English literature. In this literature his works are evidently destined to secure a permanent place; for they express in language refined and artistic, but not unfamiliar, a large segment of the popular thought of the period over which they range. He has, moreover, a clearly marked if not strongly individualized style, which has served as a model for imitators, and as a starting-point for poets who have sought to improve upon it."

Principal Poems of Tennyson: Charge of the Light Brigade, written in 1854; Dora, 1842; The Dying Swan, 1830; Enoch Arden, 1864; Idylls of the King, 1859-1873, - to be read in the following order: The Coming of Arthur; Gareth and Lynette; Geraint and Enid; Merlin and Vivien; Lancelot and Elaine; The Holy Grail; Pelleas and Ettarre; The Last Tournament; Guinevere; The Passing of Arthur; In Memoriam, 1850 (131 parts); Locksley Hall, 1842; Locksley Hall Sixty Years Afterwards, 1886; Maud, 1855 (3 parts); The Princess, 1847 (7 parts); Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 1852.

DRAMATIC PIECES: Queen Mary, 1875; Harold, 1876; The Cup, 1881; The Falcon, 1882; Becket, 1884; The Foresters: Robin Hood and Maid Marian, 1892.

REFERENCES: Stedman's Victorian Poets; Van Dyke's The Poetry of Tennyson; Taine's History of English Literature, vol. IV; Kingsley's Miscellanies; Elsdale's Studies in the Idylls; Buchanan's Master Spirits ; Tainsh's Studies in Tennyson; Hutton's Essays; Chapman's Companion to In Memoriam; Walters's In Tennyson Land.

William Wordsworth.

ODE.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

The Child is father1 of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled2 in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

III.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's 3 sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,6
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,7

And with the heart of May 8

Doth every beast keep holiday.

Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

IV.

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival.

My head hath its coronal,9

The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all.

Oh evil day if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers, while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up 10 on his mother's arm : I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

But there's a tree,11 of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The pansy 12 at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep 13 and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the East

Must travel, still is nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

VI.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII.

Behold the child 14 among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art·
A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song.
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife:

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride