The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-09-05
TENNYSON'S LAST POEMS.

Even so diligent student of Tennyson
as the writer missed, up to within a few
weeks ago, the last productions of his pen
Ihese consist of eighteen pages of poetry.
and are only to be found in the Macmillan
edition, and seem to have been excluded
from the so-called complete editions pub
lished by Houghton & Co. and the Harpers
by reason of the new international COPY
right law A very great defect in this 9th
erwise admirable edition is it's lack Of an
index. 1t is strange that so necessary a
part of the standard collection of a great
poets work should have been omitted.
one of the gems of this series of poems
is THE Death of Oenone," written some
sixty years after the original "Oenone."
published in 1892. All of Tennysons classic
poems are subjective, and modelled after
the Greek pattern They are as simple as
Doric temple-one idea and no more
carefully, and, for the most part, SUBJ
jectively, elaborated. And so with the
Roman Christian poem, "St Telemachus,"
written at Dean Stanleys suggestion. and
giving the death experience of Christian
martyr of the fourth century. In "Akbar's
Dream we have Tennyson's ideas about
universal religion. Akbar was a great mo-
dying A D. 1905. 1t seems that the great
Italian renaissance and the German refor-
nation reached the depths of Asia, for
here we have in this great semi-C Christian
ruler universal tolerance of Mussulman,
Brahman, Buddhist, Christian, Parsee and
Zoroastrian faiths. All are flowers of the
one spirit:
Shall the rose
Cry to the lotus. No flower thou? The
palm
Call to the cypress, alone am fair?'
The mango spurn the melon at his foot?
Mine is one fruit Allah made for man.
Look how the living pulse of Allah beats
Thro all His world.
There is light in all,
And light, with more or less of shade, in
Man modes of worship
Those lines remind me that a couple of
weeks ago, here in Chautauqua, Bishop
Vincent delivered a very remarkable dis
course in the liberal vein. In it the bishop
said that the last word had not yet been
spoken concerning the inspiration of the
Old Testament He looked upon its mira
cles and the experiences of the Jewish peo-
pie as we look upon kindergarten schools
to-day-a childs education and evolution
through object lessons the ultimate pur-
pose of which was one God, and Christ
His human representative. The bishop
held that miracles were no longer neces-
sary as we now know Jesus Christ and
His personality and teachings. He also re-
marked that Socrates, Epictetus. Marcus
Aurelius, Plato and all the great heather
teachers were inspired by Christ, and were
all saved, using that word saved" in its
ordinary Christian acceptation.
The student Of Tennyson will be espe-
cially interested in the last phases of the
ity. Like George Eliot, in his youth Tenny-
son was an orthodox Church of England
Christian. But both of them, in middle
age, abandoned their early beliefs While
the former died disbeliever in immortal
ity and the divine personality, the latter
was a constant waverer; one day, as in
the "Children's Hospital" Christian, and
the next as in Despair" a skeptic In
his greatest poem, the I'm Memoriam,
Tennyson distinctly rests our faith in the
future upon the justice and love of God
instead of upon revelation and the resur-
rection of our Savior. True both the pro-
logue and stanza No SO seem otherwise.
but per contra, there are one hundred and
thirty other stanzas, and we must not
judge the whole by it's parts. and such
SMALL although greatly quoted, parts as
these two fragments. Here are Tenny-
sons last words upon some phases of this
mighty question of our origin and destiny:
Where is one that born of woman. alto
gether can escape
From the lower world within him, moods
of tiger or of ape?
Man yet is being made, and ere the
browning age Of ages
Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch
him into shape?
All about him shadow still, but, while the
races flower and fade,
Prophet eyes may catch a glory. slowly
gaining on the shade.
Till the peoples all are one, and all their
voices blend in choric
Hallelujah to the, Maker. 1t is finish'd;
man is made
OF death he says:
The face of Death is toward the sun of
Life,
His shadow darkens earth, his truer name
Is Onward; no discordance in the roll
And march Of that Eternal Harmony