And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.”
Tennyson (The Poet’s Song).
This often-quoted verse does not give the highest view of poetry, as Tennyson’s own poems show. The poet sings of a Universe,
Which moves with light and life informed,
Actual, divine and true.
He sings of Nature, Man, God, Immortality. (This note is from an early letter of Hodgson’s. His quotation is from The Prelude, Bk. XIV.)