The Poet-Laureate's New Po known

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 7, 9 January 1886, Page 4

The Poet-Laureate's New Po known

The Poet-Laureato has seldom wrin '! ' tiling more powerful than the niv^lH the now number of " Maomillatf, , * nzine," to which he has given the ratt ** adequate name of " Vofitness." n *''"' that namo, which botrsiys hia «„ I writing it, we should have Bupn nBo , ''V its drift was not so much to enmS? Sw human mind to hold itfi own, unda n *9 the vast scale of the phenomena and y to which faith must /ipply her ieV(it|i as' to depict tho moral chaos fetfi % should have to face Without that ki >&] which need not stfin us if we tv, Ho paints a wondertnl picture of tlf *' 1 inglesa jumble of greatness and Um~ goodness and wickedness,wisdomanJ \i% which the universe would pr eßent I*%, any divmo background or any 2*" sequel, and then concludes thus... J- " What is it all, if we all of ub end W< ' : our own corpse-co/ltusiit last "W ' Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silenco ,i in the dcops ola meaningless Mh^Bl What but a murmur of gnats in thpSf ; moment's anger of beeg in their M?1' *l Peoco'lel it be! for'l love him and low i- •■■'■ •' ever; the dead are not dead butaUv^lf ■ But without the title which he has I,' ■'■ for his poem, we should hardly have en that Tennyson had meant to lay such £? as ho probably does mean to lay on B, ' scale of the physical univerße as coneflt 70? ' the difficulty of a spiritual faith. Iv }'i that he asks in the earlier part of a poT ? "What is it all but a trouble of ants In tk '"" i:': of a million millions of sun™ heßle «9 ■■■! but then he leaves quickly that uM of the matter, and dwells throughon?? ■ rest of hie poem rather on the moral m'-f^ ingles?ness of human life and histors^i* ''$■■ out, tho sequel of an immortal future h," on the pettiness of the proportion in wv? | it stands to those countless worlds tfl remote corner of the minutest of »bu «* * human race is attached. Indeed thafl i '■■■' of intense conviction which Term throws upon the moral chaos which h/l"1 I summoned up, though it sugo c8 t« f v*". within that moral chaos there may betrf .' II ciples of order, would hardly disnel fi" V alarm with which the sceptic, who . ceived all our moral troubles as the i t' confusions of a mere ant-hill, woofiS H penetrated. He might reply,—" Grant ttt" the dead are not dead, but alive if li please; grant themall immortal; butstm » il to the universe at large they are us ineimlfi H cant as immortal ants would still be ton I supposing every ant we crushed under m •'" feet to have an immortal future, how wmH it be poseible to suppose that they oca "§ pied all that room in the care and loverf &" the Creator to which your faith gives thta P: a claim? Why make such a fusa aboutim I mortal ants, even if immortal ants yoatoi *P Why talk of sin, and repentance, andfaltii< H an if they mattered more than the mist&ta i and errors of the minutest insects? TatS'-iP your imaginations to believe youraelS-i what you are, tho inhabitants of an> in!: 1 finitesiinal corner of an infinitesimal ait 1 hill, and, if you do, wo defy you, whetia itimmortal or not, to deem yourselves of thsi H high importance which conceit alone giva i to your own minds in the counsels of tU M Eternal." Such is the mental attitude to i' which, ■ judging from its title and !" one or two other indications fr p this fine poem, we infer that Tennyita W means it as a sort of rebuke, IW ~w wo Buppose him to mean that the mere &■■ M fiance with which deathless love ignore? tbj' B oblivion of time, implies and includes a: Ml revolt of mind against the tyranny which $ the inconceivable magnitudes of the phjil: H cal universe are apt to exercise over thi S shrinking imaginations of men, If thereli' if no conceit in supposing that love is immor-- P1 tal, should there be any conceit in Blib. posing that God shares with us not only Hi P own duration in the future, but hia own P measures of what is significant and insig. % nilicant in tho present, and his own Mult ® of concentrating into one moment of time H the contents of an immeasurable hereafter S —in a word, his own secret of ignoring ■|§ mere vastness, or rather, perhaps, 0 ( ■ ' finding in what seems momentary and i'ra;i. siont a vastness of its own which cannot h '' adequately expressed in terms either «[■« immeasurable space or of immeasurable 'la time ? Wo imagine Tennyson to desire is'", P to infer that if love be really deathless, a* i! tronomical infinitude must altogether drop, fe out of our view as an adequate measureo! il the relative proportions of the universe- fj for in that case it may easily happen that, if in a single moment and in a single spot that i; shall take place which shall colour with ftitffl meaning all the depths of infinite space, anifffl all the ages of immeasurable time. Doubt |s less, love,_ if it can exist at all, implies thiw quantitative measures of the universe 3p false ; that moro dopends on a spiritual anl than on all the long train of preliminary physical and mental conditions of that act, though they may have stretched through aa immeasurable past; that neither chaos wml cosmos, neither order nor disorder, neither infinite blind forco nor vistas of blinding knowledge, ought to dismay or browbea by their immensity the spirit which has one*; learned that these things are but the preparation for acts which bring us into communion with the divine life. Indeed, the poet might have taken a Btepifurther, and made us feel that if thu* magnificent physical laboratory of thai1 universe ends—in one corner of it, at leasts' —in producing a poor aort of creature, who' can, nevertheless, be sure of the infinite*! spiritual importance of his own inward lifts no matter how puny he may feel when to looks back on the grand paraphernalia of matter, space, and time, which have been necessary in order to bring him into existence, then all this evolution mart' have had its Bpring in a character tnrti is as far above ours in the scope of , ' its spiritual life as it is in the physical ill magnificence of ita material powers, P Tennyson makes the mere consciousness §1 of a deathless love the basis of the de-:|i fiance with which he meets the oppres-'li sive vastness of the universe. AndlS :no doubt, measured merely against that'll vastness, he would be right. But the con- II i ciousness of maD, truly interrogat«| replies, we think, that the best'spirltull life of which he is capable, though it entitlßsß him To defy the pretentions of mere physSH cal grandeur to humiliate him, nevertheless' W. humiliates him even more by its intrinsic fel spiritual poverty than it can encourage hiitlfflS by ita infinite superiority to all pare¥ <m physical magnificence. No one who hu'ffl felt what Tennyson pats so finely can hanw failed to feel, nevertheless, what a; pnnfSli fountain of spiritual life that is which, imM at its best, springs forth in man after-aHH this age-long preparation. It may be, iti||H infinitely greater than to admit of dlsmsflj in the presence of vast astronomicfl^l magnitudes, as if they <had any mow! grandeur in themselves. But how poor h itself, how conscious of periodic fiickeriiiliH how conscious of taint, how conscious of tfcffß immense gulf that has to be passed befowlH it could honestly call itself supreme Oto|B the other elements of our nature, is th^M love on which the poet insists. NolhuiSHj seems to make man seem so great, if be fi'Jfl merely pitting himself against the phyaio|in| universe, as the spiritual life that is in huHsH Nothing seems to make him so small,' if «| will pay the least attention to the upwsri ';""'"-- movements of his own heart, as themufa.'fl bility, the poverty, and the impurity of t'nsi life. We are not sure that TennysoriV $1 climax would not be even greater, if ''Wgm had gone on to compare his prdjrcfl self - consciousness of superiority to a 8 |l mere physical phenomena with his, i» If doubt, equally certain consciousness of thill infinitely deeper, and richer, and wider li1 love of which he felt that he would t's have the evidence in him, thouf h as yetWffi has it not. It is the double consciouinmK of the victory of the spiritual over tin ■ physical, and the humiliation of that verj m same spiritual nature, when we look el I; what we know we ought to be, and msj % yet becomo but are not, which really im- '11 presses on the heart the belief that tbrfij ultimate ends of creation are all apiritniSHl As a spiritual man confronts the msje«jss of the merely physical universe with a JWRbB found sense of his own greater majesty, mi H this Tennyson has impressed upon M with his own incomparable force. BaH it is when he comes to compare hlijiJUß! self as a spiritual being with that for whiei he begins to recognise in his own'W§l§ most heart that he ie intended, that he feWgß how miserably poor is the beginning hel«ij§j made; how vast a distance he has to tr»r«l,K| before he reaches bis goal, and how certain f|j it is that that goal can only be perfeowß reached by full communion with on6'fi|H whom the majesty of the spiritual life'ljl already as infinitely beyond what it is%|iffl as it is beyond, our power to appreciate aSH even conceive the grandeur cf physical croVfjH tion. Sublime, no doubt, is the humangpirttlH when it compares itself only with the forwijß| tho outward world; but it is in the senii Mmm humiliation, when it compares what it'M^ with what it woujd be and ought to be-MJH somehow, we jpay Hope, will b>-th»flaH finds the deepest certainty of the gpiritut! ;; infinitude of God—From "TheSpectaW «, November 7th. . ~