Duke of Wellington was published in November 1852, and a year later Tennyson bought the house and farm of Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, which he made his home. In 1854 he pub

Idylls of the King, which achieved a popular success far exceeding anything experienced by Tennyson before, or by any other poet of his time. It was not generally guessed that these first four idylls ("Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere") were fragments of an epic on the Fall of the Table Round, which Tennyson was preparing all his life. He now turned his attention to another branch of the

summer journeys on the Continent. He became an object of extreme curiosity, and his privacy at Farringford was more and more recklessly intruded upon by unblushing

tourists. Perhaps he exaggerated this nuisance, which however became in the process of time absolutely intolerable to him. He determined to go where he could not easily be found, and in 1867 he bought some land on Blackdown, near Haslemere, where he built a house called Aldworth. Several of his smaller works appeared about this time, The Window, in 1867, Lucretius, in 1868, and The Holy Grail, in 1869. These were followed by Gareth and Lynette and The Last Tournament in 1872, and he supposed

the Idylls of the King to be complete. He now turned his attention to a branch of literature which had always attracted him, but which he had never before seriously attempted the drama. His idea was to illustrate the "Making of England" by a series of great historical tragedies. The critics and the public were opposed to Tennyson's dramatic experiments, but he pursued them with a pertinacity which was really extraordinary. Queen Mary, the earliest, in 1875, was followed by Harold in 1876. In 1879 he reprinted a very early suppressed poem, The Lover's Tale, and produced a third play, The Falcon. An important volume of Ballads, including the incomparable "Rizpah," appeared in 1880.

This was followed by two more dramas, The Cup, in 1881, and The Promise of May, in 1882. In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson went with Gladstone to Copenhagen, and was entertained by the King of Denmark. In 1884 he accepted a peerage, and published the only play of his which has succeeded on the stage, Becket. Tiresias and other Poems, 1885 (in which "Balin and Balan" completed the Idylls of the King); Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886; Demeter and other Poems, 1889; his seventh play, The Foresters, 1892; and the posthumous Death of Enone, 1892, were Tennyson's latest contributions to poetry. His health had recovered, and he entered with a marvellous elasticity of mind and body into old age. His bodily powers failed at last, in his eighty-fourth year, and he passed away, at Aldworth, on the night of the 6th of

He

October 1892. Six days later he received public burial in Westminster Abbey.
Tennyson was a man of unusually
tall stature and powerful physique,
although liable to suffer from ner-
vous forms of indisposition.
was described when at college as
"six feet high, broad-chested, strong-
limbed, his face Shakespearian, with
deep eyelids, his forehead ample,
crowned with dark, wavy hair, his
hand the admiration of sculptors."
He was extremely short-sighted, yet
so keenly observant that he once
saw the moonlight reflected in a
nightingale's eye, as she sat singing
in the hedgerow. Carlyle described
Tennyson as "a fine, large-fea-
tured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured,
shaggy-headed man, most restful,
brotherly, solid-hearted." His voice
was "musical, metallic, fit for loud.

Aldworth, Surrey

laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between."

FROM "THE LOTOS-EATERS."

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:

The Lotos blows by every winding creek:

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat and wine and oil;

!

Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whisper'd-down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

FROM "MORTE D'ARTHUR."

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. 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 who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst-if indeed I go--
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion ;
Where falls not hail, or rain or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

FROM "THE DAISY."

Remember how we came at last

To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,

The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,

Like ballad-burthen music, kept,
As on The Lariano crept

To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept ;

Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,

The moonlight touching o'er a terrace
One tall Agavè above the lake.

Farringford,
Freshwater.

Isle of Wight.

The throttle.

"Summer is coming, Summer is coming.
I know it, I knew it, I know it.
light agains, leat again sipe again, love again.
Yes, my wild its boer.

Sing the new year in under the blue.
dast
year you sang it as gladly.
"New, Dew, New, Ren!" Is it then so new

VOL. IV.

That you

should carol so madly?

aquis?"

"Love again song agrin, nest again, young

never a prophet to wezy

And hardly a dairy as yet, wire friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.

"Here again here, here, here, happy year
O warble, unchidden, untidden.
Summer in the coming, is coming, my dear,

And all the winters are

hidden

MS. of the "Throstle," entirely in Tennyson's handwriting

TO EDWARD LEAR, ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE.

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls

Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,

With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there :