But, in truth, Tennyson has never failed so signally as when he has attempted to be metaphysical, and although his admirers have written many essays to explain the profundity of his ideas, and the beauties of his philosophy, their explanations seem to require some explaining, whilst it also seems that general readers fail to discern the charm in his would-be philosophical writings.
The Higher Pantheism may be taken as an instance. It commences thus:—
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains—
Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the vision He? tho' He be not that which he seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I!"
There are several other couplets which do not tend to unravel the poet's tangled web of thought, whereas if we turn to The Heptalogia (Chatto and Windus, 1880), we find the whole mystery treated with much greater lucidity of expression in The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell.