Tennyson and his friends

by Unknown

that loved and honour’d him, and yet
Was no disciple, richly garb’d, but worn
From wasteful living...

The younger man has set down his reflections on the philosophy of life in a set of verses which the Ancient Sage reads, making his comments as the reading proceeds. There seems to be a deep connection between the personal characteristics of the two men—their habits and modes of living—and their respective views. The younger man is wearied with satiety, impatient for immediate pleasure:

Yet wine and laughter, friends! and set
The lamps alight, and call
For golden music, and forget
The darkness of the pall.

He is dismayed by the first appearance of difficulty and pain in the world, as he had been satisfied for a time with the immediate pleasures within his reach. He is unable to steady the nerve of his brain (so to speak), and trace the riddle of pain and trouble in the universe to its ultimate solution. In thought, as in conduct, he is filled and swayed by the immediate inclination and the first impression, without self-restraint and without the habits of concentrated reflection which go hand in hand with self-restraint. Failing, in consequence, to have any steady view of his own soul or of the spiritual life within, he is impressed, probably by experience, with this one truth, that uncontrolled self-indulgence leads to regret and pain; and he is consequently pessimistic in his ultimate view of things. The absence of spiritual light makes him see only the immediate pain and failure in the universe. He has no patience to look beyond or to reflect if there be not an underlying and greater purpose which temporary failure in small things may further, as the death of one cell in the human organism is but the preparation for its replacement by another, and a part of the body’s natural development. It is a dissipated character and a dissipated mind. The intangible beauty of moral virtue finds nothing in the character capable of assimilating it; the spiritual truth of Gods existence and the spiritual purpose of the universe elude the mind.

In marked contrast stands forth the “Ancient Sage.” He has no taste for the dissipations of the town:

I am wearied of our city, son, and go
To spend my one last year among the hills.

His gospel is a gospel of self-restraint and long-suffering, of action for high ends.

Let be thy wail and help thy fellow-men,
And make thy gold thy vassal, not thy king,
And fling free alms into the beggar’s bowl,
And send the day into the darken’d heart;
Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men,
A dying echo from a falling wall:
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Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue,
Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine.
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And more—think well! Do-well will follow thought.

And the patience and self-control which enable him to work for great purposes and spiritual aims, characterize also his thought. “Things are not what they seem,” he holds. The first view is ever incomplete, though he who has not patience of thought will not get beyond the first view. That concentration and that purity of manners which keep the spiritual soul and self undimmed, and preserve the moral voice within articulate, are indispensable if we are to understand anything beyond the most superficial phenomena about us. The keynote is struck in the very first words which the Seer speaks:

This wealth of waters might but seem to draw
From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,
Yon summit half-a-league in air—and higher,
The cloud that hides it—higher still, the heavens
Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout
The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.