Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hiding in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's - he takes the lead

In summer luxury, he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant wood.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

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Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

ALFRED TENNYSON

1809-1892

TENNYSON was born in Lincolnshire, in the eastern part of England. He was the son of a clergyman. After receiving his early training from his father he went to Cambridge University. While there he received the Chancellor's Prize for the best English poem. His first volume of poems, too, was published while he was still an undergraduate, and the poetic activity which began so early continued to the end of a long life.

Tennyson's life presents, in many respects, a striking parallel to that of Wordsworth. Each took himself very seriously from the start; each devoted his whole soul to poetry and wrote voluminously; each was appointed Poet Laureate; each won his way to fame slowly but surely, and each lived to see himself regarded at the end of a long life as the foremost poet of his generation.

Among the best known of Tennyson's poems are Enone, A Dream of Fair Women, The Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Revenge, The Princess, Maud, In Memoriam, Enoch Arden, The Idylls of the King, and many short songs.

Tennyson was, by almost common consent, the chief poet of the Victorian era. He seemed to gather up in himself nearly all the poetic excellences which the other poets of his time, and of the preceding age, showed individually. He had Wordsworth's dignity and grace, while his imagination was more brilliant; he had Keats's love of beauty, as well as his gifts of language and of melody; and he also fell heir to Shelley's lyric note. In epic power he was beyond any of these, and he surpasses in moral force all except Wordsworth. In the drama, however, he was not successful. Even his best plays, Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket, do not add

ts

to his fame. But his age was not a dramatic age, and few pocts are great enough to rise above their surroundings.

In tender sentiment, however, in lyric grace, in epic power, in charm of imagery, in the witchery of melody, and in the mastery of language, Tennyson is the fittest representative of the manysided Victorian age.

MORTE D'ARTHUR

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land:
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
'The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights.
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep the men I loved.

I think that we

Shall never more, at any future time,

Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls.
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made, -
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more; but let what will be, be.

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I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm

That without help I cannot last till morn.

Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,

Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword - and how I row'd across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king;
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known:
But now delay not: take Excalibur,

And fling him far into the middle mere:

Watch what thou seëst: and lightly bring me word.'

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:

'It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm
A little thing may harm a wounded man;
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word.'

So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang

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Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down

By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,

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Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,

And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon,

Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt;

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For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewelry. He gazed so long

That both his eyes were dazzled as he stood,
This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw but at the last it seem'd
Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted water-flags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded King.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?'

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

'I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag.'

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:
'Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight:
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again,
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing
I bad thee; watch, and lightly bring me word.'

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,

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