SIR JOHN SIMEON
By Aubrey de Vere
| The world external knew thee but in part: It saw and honoured what was least in thee; The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy; The ways so winning, yet so pure from art; The cordial reverence, keen to all desert, All save thine own; the accost so frank and free; The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee, And shunned alike base praise, and hireling’s mart. These things men saw; but deeper far than these The under-current of thy soul worked on Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze, And unbeheld its way to ocean won: Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death. |
TENNYSON
By Arthur Sidgwick, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
(Read in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, October 30, 1909.[84])
We are met here to-day to do honour to the memory and the life’s work of one of the greatest of Trinity’s sons, who has also won for himself—few lovers of poetry here or anywhere can feel a doubt—a high and secure place in the glorious roll of English Poets, that roll which records the poetic achievements of over 500 years.
In accepting (with whatever misgivings) the request of the College authorities to speak some preliminary words in appreciation of the Poet, I do not propose to deal in any detail with the history of his life and work, on which the biography has thrown such interesting and welcome light. The most that can here be attempted is to select a few aspects and illustrations of Tennyson’s life-long devotion to his art, such as may serve to bring out something of those gifts and qualities which, wherever English poetry is read, are felt to give to his work its special charm and value.