"I don't know what they means," said the boy, "but p'licemen often seen him walking about a-making of 'em under the stars."
After Mr. Tennyson's marriage he settled at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight. This home of the poet is described as "a charmed palace, with green walls without, and speaking walls within. There hung Dante with his solemn nose and wreath; Italy gleamed over the doorways; friends' faces lined the way, books filled the shelves, and a glow of crimson was everywhere; the great oriel drawing-room window was full of green and golden leaves, and the sound of birds and the distant sea. Beautiful in spring-time when all day the lark trills overhead, and when the lark has flown out of our hearing the thrushes begin and the air is sweet with scents from many fragrant shrubs.
"Later, when the health of Mrs. Tennyson required a more quiet place, for Freshwater had become a fashionable summer resort, the family made for themselves a new home on the summit of a high lonely hill in Surrey."
Now I might copy for you some bits out of the poems I like the best; or, I might gather here a cluster of bright gems, but I think you will enjoy the search if you each try this for yourselves instead.
Once I had occasion to select for a literary
exercise "Gems from Tennyson," and I found it a delightful task, only it was hard to choose, and harder to find a stopping place. I will give the boys just one extract:
"Not once or twice in our fair island story,
The path of duty was the way to glory;
He that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Through the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God himself is moon and sun."