The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 2 | Page 2

connected with sufficient closeness to form a continuous piece. There is also an invocatory introduction, and a closing marriage poem, written on the wedding of one of the writer's sisters, which, strange as it may seem, serves again to introduce the memory of the departed. The intervening poems are as various as a miscellaneous collection; but the remembrance of the dead ever mingles with the thought of the living. His birth-day, his death-day, the festive rejoicings of Christmastide and the New Year, recall him; the scenes in which he was a companion, the house where he was a welcome guest, the season when the lawyer's vacation gave him leisure for a long visit, revive him to the mind. The Danube, on whose banks he died--the Severn, by whose banks he appears to have been buried--nay, the points of the compass--are associated with him. Sometimes the association is slighter still; and in a few pieces the allusion is so distant that it would not have been perceived without the clew. Such is the following (one of several poems) on the New Year.
CIV.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.
"The following is of more direct bearing on the theme, and is moreover one of those charming pieces of domestic painting in which Tennyson excels.
LXXXVII.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair. And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusky purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking through the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
O bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, Beyond the bounding hill to stray. And break the livelong summer day With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, Discuss'd the books to love or hate, Or touch'd the changes of the state, Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town, He loved to rail against it still, For 'ground' in yonder social mill We rub each other's angles down.
'And merge,' he said, 'in form and loss The picturesque of man and man.' We talk'd: the stream beneath us ran, The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss,
Or cool'd within the glooming wave; And last, returning from afar, Before the crimson-circled star Had fallen into her father's grave.
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine vail The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honeyed hours.
"The volume is pervaded by a religious feeling, and an ardent aspiration for the advancement of society,--as may be gathered from our first quotation. These two sentiments impart elevation, faith, and resignation; so that memory, thought, and a chastened tenderness, generally predominate over deep grief. The grave character of the theme forbids much indulgence in conceits such as Tennyson sometimes