"To find its meaning is my meat and drink."
Browning advanced into new fields, while Tennyson was more content to make a beautiful poetic translation of much of the thought of the age. In his youth he wrote:—
"Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time."
From merely reading Tennyson's verse, one could gauge quite accurately the trend of Victorian scientific thought.
The poetry of both Browning and Tennyson is so resonant with faith that they have been called great religious teachers. Rudyard Kipling, the poet of imperialistic England, of her "far-flung battle line," attributes her "dominion over palm and pine" to faith in the "Lord God of Hosts."
In the minor poets, there is often a different strain. Arnold is beset with doubt, and hears no "clear call," such as Tennyson voices in Crossing the Bar. Swinburne, seeing the pessimistic side of the shield of evolution, exclaims:—
"Thou hast fed one rose with dust of many men."
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), Oxford tutor, traveler, and educational examiner, was a poet who struggled with the doubt of the age. He loved—
"To finger idly some old Gordian knot,
Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,
And with much toil attain to half-believe."
His verse would be forgotten if it expressed only such an uncertain note; but his greatest poem thus records his belief in the value of life's struggle and gives a hint of final victory:—