The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1892-10-20
Tennyson in Westminster Abbey,

Westminster Abbey, that ancient ant
splendid pile within whose historic pre-
cincts rest the ashes of so many great
OF notable Englishmen, Wednesday re
celved another illustrious tenant be
meath its magnificent but solemn arches
The remains of Tennyson have joined
the noble assembly of men royal by
blood or brains who sleep within it,
shades. There, with kings and queens
soldiers and statesmen, poets and phi
iosophers, of widely separated genera.
lions and times, he may slumber until
that great day in which we shall all be
contemporaries Blunt old Sir Godfrey
Kneller, with no fear of princes before
his eyes, expressed his disdain for the
sepulchrai pomp and pageantry of the
historic structure, declaring that he
would not be buried in Westminster
Abbey because they do bury fools there $
Doubtless the old painter had seen
| enough of the shaIlowness and empti-
ness OF courtly life and royal living to
cause him to prefer to make his bed in
| death with the common sons of Adam
rather than with kings But to escape
contact with the bones of fools he must
have found some place of sepulture not
yet discovered, some new world to which
the human race has failed to penetrate.
Such fools as lie in the old abbey are in
goodly company now. and, if there is
any virtue in association, should rise
from their princely touches at the last
summons with considerable stronger
intellects than when they lay down
which may Heaven grant for the great
majority Of us. And who are some of
the quiet neighbors of the poet laureate
in the English temple of fame? The
grave, even in it's highest estate, makes
strange bedfellows, and the cbiseIed urn
and costly tomb tell the same story as
the common cemetery of the Potter's
Field-the blotting out of the enmities
and petty jealousies of life in that sweet
sleep in which nature gathers all her
children together in her bosom. In the
words of Charles Kingsley, .'old person.
al feuds, old party chickering's, old differ
ences of creed-and hatreds in the name
of the God of Lcve-all those are past in
that world of which the abbey is to me
a symbol and a sacrament. Pitt and
Fox, warren Hastings and Macauley,
they can afford to be near each other in
the abbey, for they understand each
other now elsewhere; and the Romish
abbot's bones do not stir in their grave
Beside the bones of the Protestant di,
vine" Mary Stuart and Queen Eliza
beth are not far apart in death, though
in heart so far asunder during hfe-let
us hope, with Mr.. Kingsley, that "they
have made up the quarrel now'' which
separated them during their mortal ex,
istence. But there are greater people
than kings and queens to welcome Ten
nyson to the distinguished and ghostly
gathering in the British pantheon
There he will find memorials of Dryden,
Congreve, Prior, Gay, Ben johnson,
Chaucer, Spenser, Grattan, Peel, Pal
merston, Golden, Locke, Grote, Thack>
cray, Dickens, and hosts of others who
have Illuminated the English tongue
with their genius, not to speak of the
invincible soldiers and sailors who have
made glorious the Anglo-Saxon name
and rendered formidable the Anglo-Sax-
on arm in every quarter of the globe
But the ashes of many of the foremost in
English song and story are missing from
the abbey. To begin with, Shakes
peare, the mighty master of them all, to
quote a writer who enunerates those
whose bodies do not repose.... there. lis
absent-he rests on the banks of the
Avon. Milton is absent-he is under
the pavement of st. Giles Church, Grips
plegate. Defoe is absent--he is lodged
at Bunhill Fields. Fielding is absent
he has lonely grave at Lisbon. Smol>
let is absent-he, too, is in foreign soil
at Leghorn. Scott Is absentee reposes
under the ivied ruins at Dryburgh.-
Burns is absent-the heather is growing
over him at Dumfries Byron is absent
he finds eternal calm at Huckwell
Church, near his ancestral homestead. |
Rope is absent-he is at Twickenham.
Gray is absent-he is with his mother
at Stoke Pogis. Swift is absent-he is
by the side of poor Stella in ST. Pat
rick's, Dublin. Wordsworth is absent
near the bright waters of his own loved
lakes. Coleridge is absent-He is in the |
at Highgate. Lamb is abb
sent-the daisies are blooming above |
him in the rural retreat where his life of |
elf-sacrificing toll was finished" Yet |
we may fancy that in spirit they are all
present, as are many of them in bust or
sculptured stone, and that they give
royal greeting to the latest son of genius
whom death has set free from the bur>
den of mortality. With them the living
world joins in the acclaim, All hail! For
poets like Tennyson there is no such
word as farewell"