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 God 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 Incumbent 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 breasts and beaded eyes”—