Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages.
The Globe remarked:—
“It is to be feared that the Laureate’s Jubilee Ode will sadly disappoint all his admirers. It has a certain rhetorical neatness, no doubt; but it cannot be regarded as adequate to the occasion. The poet has chosen, for the most part, very prosaic rhythms, and the Ode, trite and even common in ideas, is not even endowed with occasional felicities of expression, On the contrary, it is sometimes positively unlucky in its phraseology, as when the world is most unnecessarily assured that Her Majesty has about her—
‘Nothing of the lawless, of the Despot,
Nothing of the vulgar, or vain-glorious.’
“By no means happy are the references to those who ‘wanton in affluence’ (why ‘wanton?’) to the ‘Lord manufacturers,’ and to the ‘Imperial Institute,’ which latter surely savours a little of bathos? The six concluding lines have more inspiration, perhaps, than most; but they do not harmonise very well in their allusion to ‘thunders moaning in the distance,’ with the Laureate’s allusion elsewhere to the ‘prosperous auguries’ of the Jubilee. On the whole, Lord Rosslyn, Mr. Morris, and Lord Tennyson having all spoken, it must be confessed that the Jubilee still lacks a vates sacer.”
Another Ode.
Fifty times the Laureate sharpened his pencil:
Fifty times he turned over the Rhyming Dictionary: