[71] Some extracts from the paper on Tennyson in Studies and Memories are included in this chapter by kind permission of Messrs. Constable & Co.
[72] [First published as a preface to Tennyson as a Student and Poet of Nature in 1910, and republished here by the kind permission of Sir Norman Lockyer and Messrs. Macmillan.—Ed.]
[73] See the fine Parsee Hymn to the Sun (written by Tennyson when he was 82) at the end of “Akbar’s Dream”:
I
Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise.
Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes.
Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee,
Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.
II
Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime,
Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure
Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!
[74] [See Tennyson: a Memoir, p. 259. “It is impossible,” he said, “to imagine that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next life, what your particular form of creed was: but the question will rather be ‘Have you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of cold water to one of these little ones?’” Yet he felt that religion could never be founded on mere moral philosophy; that there were no means of impressing upon children systematic ethics apart from religion; and that the highest religion and morality would only come home to the people in the noble, simple thoughts and facts of a Scripture like ours.—Ed.]
[75] [He added, “The Son of Man is the most tremendous title possible.”—Ed.]
[76] From Tennyson’s last published sonnet, “Doubt and Prayer.”
[77] [Toward the end of his life he would say, “My most passionate desire is to have a clearer vision of God.”—Ed.]
[78] [The eldest daughter of Sir John Simeon, who was my father’s most intimate friend in later life—a tall, broad-shouldered, genial, generous, warm-hearted, highly gifted, and thoroughly noble country gentleman; in face like the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Holbein.—Ed.]
[79] This MS. was given back to Tennyson at his request after Sir John Simeon’s death, and after Tennyson’s death presented by his son and Catherine, Lady Simeon, to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.