"Old summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek,
Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's pence,
And numbered bead, and shrift.
Bluff Harry broke into the spence,
And turned the cowls adrift."
In conning his verse, therefore, the Catholic mind is at ease; it lights on no charges to be repelled, and (so far as we know, after long and close study of every line he has published) no mistakes regarding our faith which require to be rectified. There are those who imagine that in St. Simeon Stylites, he has wilfully misrepresented the character of a Catholic saint; but we venture to entertain a more lenient opinion, and shall endeavor presently to justify it. It is in a tone of irony, such as we must admire, that he describes the "heated pulpiteer in chapel, not preaching simple Christ to simple men," but fulminating "against the scarlet woman and her creed," and swinging his arms violently, as if he held the apocalyptic millstone, while he predicts the speedy casting of great Babylon into the sea. (Sea Dreams.) Nor are there wanting points of contact between Tennyson's ideas on religious matters and some of those dwelt on by Catholic divines. Thus he, like Dr. Newman, finds the arguments for the existence of God drawn from the power and wisdom discoverable in the works of nature, cold and inconclusive in comparison with that one which arises from the voice of conscience and the feelings of the heart. The cxxiiid section of In Memoriam runs singularly parallel with this beautiful passage in the Apologia, (p. 377:)
"Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist or a polytheist, when I looked into the world. ... I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society; but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice."
The arguments adduced by infidels, in support of their unbelief, have never been rebutted in verse more cleverly than by Tennyson. His blade flashes like lightning, and severs with as fine a stroke as Saladin's scimitar. The Two Voices may be cited in proof, and also the following passages in the matchless elegy on Arthur Hallam:
| The Fates not blind, | (In Memoriam) iii. |
| Life shall live for evermore. | (In Memoriam) xxxiv. |
| If Death were death, love would not be true love, | (In Memoriam) xxxv. |
| Individuality defies the tomb, | (In Memoriam) xlvi. |
| Immortality, | (In Memoriam) liv. lv. |
| Doubt issuing in belief. | (In Memoriam) xcv. |
| Knowledge without wisdom. | (In Memoriam) cxiii. |
| Progress, | (In Memoriam) cxvii. |
| We are not all matter. | (In Memoriam) cxix. |
| The course of human things, | (In Memoriam) cxxvii |
These verses are no doubt the record of a mental conflict carried on during some years of the author's earlier life—a battle between materialism and spiritualism, between faith and unbelief, reason and sense. The Two Voices is philosophy singing, as In Memoriam is philosophy in tears. The English Cyclopaedia well calls the last poem "wonderful," and adds: "In no language, probably, is there another series of elegies so deep, so metaphysical, so imaginative, so musical, and showing such impassioned, abnormal, and solemnizing affection for the dead."
But it is now time to point to those passages in which Tennyson may be said to have, more particularly, Catholic aspects. Be they few or many, they are worth noticing, even though they prove nothing but that a Protestant poet of the highest order has such aspects, intense, striking, and lovely in no ordinary degree. Every true poet is in a certain sense a divine creation, and nothing but a celestial spark could ignite a Wordsworth, a Longfellow, or an Emerson. It has ever been the delight of the ancient church and her writers to discover portions of her truth among those who are separated from her visible pale. Far from grudging them these precious fragments, she only wishes they were less scanty, and would willingly add to them till they reached the full measure of the deposit of the faith. It would be easy to make out a complete cycle of her doctrine in faith and morals from the poems of Protestant and Mohammedan authors, but it would be only by combining extracts from many who, in matters of belief, differ widely from each other. In looking through the Laureate's volumes for traces of the church's teaching, we are in a special manner struck by his treatment of the invocation of the departed. With what deep feeling does he invite the friend, who is the subject of his immortal elegy, to be near him when his light is low, when pain is at its height, when life is fading away. (In Memoriam, xlix.) It reminds us of good Dr. Johnson's prayer for the "attention and ministration" of his lost wife, as Boswell has given it us. Can any Catholic express more fully than the Laureate the frame of mind becoming those who desire that the departed should still be near them at their side? (In Memoriam, 1.)
"How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold.
Should be the man whose thoughts would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.
"In vain shall thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
"They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest.
"But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits.
They can but listen at the gates.
And hear the household jar within."
In Memoriam, xciii.
"If I can," says the dying May Queen in New Year's Eve—
"If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place;
Though you'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face;
Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you say,
And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away."