he had used this expression in the last stanza of Poem ix., and in repeating it he would apologize to his brother Charles Tennyson, we may presume.
“Let not this vex thee, noble heart!”
for thou art holding “the costliest love in fee,” even a wife’s affection—we may again suppose.
The Rev. Charles Tennyson married Miss Sellwood,[54] and changed his name to Turner, for property left to him by a relation, and was vicar of Grasby, in Lincolnshire. The brothers,[55] in their boyhood, shared one home with all its endearing associations; and now each has his special object of affection: “my wealth resembles thine;” except that Hallam
“was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.”
LXXX.
If any vague wish visits the Poet, that he had himself been the first to be removed by Death (when the dust would have dropt on “tearless eyes,” which, as it is, have now so sorely wept over Hallam’s departure); then the grief of the survivor would have been
“as deep as life or thought,
But stay’d in peace with God and man;”
because Hallam would have found comfort in pious resignation.
So he minutely ponders over this holy submission, and invokes contentment from the contemplation—