"Our little systems have their day—
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee;
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."
"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch Arden:"
"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees
Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug
His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."
And
"He was not all unhappy. His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul."
And Arthur, dying, whispers:
"More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise, like a fountain, for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves and those that call them friend?
For so the whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
No wonder is there if King Arthur was upheld: such faith makes impotence giant-strengthed. He does not tremble. The earth may know perturbations, but not he. To tournament or battle, or to death, he goes with smiling face. His trust upholds him. So good is faith. "In Memoriam" is the biography of doubt and faith at war. The battle waxes sore, but the day is God's. The battle ebbs to quiet. Calm after tempest. Tennyson could not stay in doubt. 'T is not a goodly land. If trepidation has white lip and cheek, 't is not forever. Living through an age of doubt, Tennyson, so sensitive to every current of thought as that he felt them all, and in that feeling and interpretation and strife for mastery over the doubt that kills, made his book, as Milton has it, "The precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and ends with:
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me.
For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have cross'd the bar."