"In Memoriam" is thought, King Arthur is action; and action is antidote for doubt. Charles Kingsley's advice,
"Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long,"
is always pertinent and reasonable. This is explanation of that profound saying of Jesus, "If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine." Life is exegesis of Scripture. Who do God's will catch sight of God's face, and their hearts are helped. Lowell's "Sir Launfal" urges this same truth. He who, for weary and painful years, had haunted the world, seeking the Holy Grail and finding not the thing he sought, comes home discouraged to find in winter his castle had forgotten him, and he was left a wreck of what he had been in his better days; yet finds, in giving alms to a leprous beggar at his castle gate to whom he had denied alms in the spirit of alms when he set out to hunt the Holy Grail, that in so giving he found the Christ. Action helps God into the heart. Doubts are, many of them, brain-born and academical; and such, service helps to dispel. To Arthur, God was vital fact. To Him he held as tenaciously as to his sword; and he was comforted. All good things are included in religion, and all great things. If men become martyrs, they become at the same time functionaries in the palace of every worthy spirit. I suppose the hunger for discovery and knowledge are nothing other than the soul's hunger after God. He is the secret of great discontent. The soul wants God, and on the way to Him are astronomies, and literatures, and new-found hemispheres. Aspiration finds voice in Christianity. "Columbus," a poem of resonant music, speaks aspiration. Him—
"Who pushed his prows into the setting sun,
And made West East, and sailed the dragon's mouth,
And came upon the mountain of the world,
And saw the rivers roll from paradise,"—
him, God-inspired as himself holds, saying:
"And more than once, in days
Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning hope
Sank all but out of sight, I heard His voice:
Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand;
Fear not,—and I shall hear his voice again—
I know that He has led me all my life,
And I am not yet too old to work His will—
His voice again."
And King Arthur finds God helps him into all things worth while.
Bravery, determination, kindness, purity, magnanimity, safe faith in
God's supremacy,—all spring about him as he walks as flowers about a
path in summer-time. Nothing good was foreign to him.
Christianity is the one philosophy of manhood in whose harness are no vulnerable parts. "The Palace of Art" presents the poet's perception of the failure of culture. Ethics, not aesthetics, compel manhood; and behind ethics, theology. God must live in life, if life shall put on goodness as a royal robe.
And such a man as Arthur has passed into the enduring substance of this world's best thought and purpose. We see him—not saw him. He is never past, but ever present. We see him dying, and with Sir Bedivere, who loved him, cry,
"Thy name and glory cling
To all high places, like a golden cloud,
Forever!"