The Normal Record. March 1902

              THE NORMAL   RECORD.
It was the chief aim of the "Idylls" to
show how the world without God rushes down
to "red ruin and the breaking up of laws."
In the idyl of Guinevere, Tennyson's genius
reached its highest point. The interview
between Arthur and his fallen queen is marked by a moral sublimity and a tragic intensity
which move the soul as nobly as any scene in
modern literature. Here the art is pure
and the effect produced by the simplest
means, and all is just, natural and grand.
" Yet think not   that I  come   to   urge   thy
crimes,
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in happier summers, at my feet.
The wrath which forced my thoughts on that
fierce law
The doom of treason and the   flaming  death,
(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past,
Tha pang—which   while I weigh'd  thy  heart
with one
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn-—is also past, in part.
And all is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I,
Lo!    I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives:    do   thou   for   thine own soul the
rest."
In Arthur we find the embodiment of many
worthy deeds and acts, yet he relied upon
God and ever made it his sole aim to do His
will in all things, even the smallest. In him
we find a man possessed of the highest moral
and religious characteristics. The divine
element of his forgiveness is almost beyond
compare, since the one he pardons has blasted his every hope, ruined his life, and weakened his house. Yet by no word or act does
he curse or judge her, but forgives as Eternal God forgives, though she has so cruelly
and deeply wronged him.
The aimlessness of   the world was the note
of   the  somber  but powerful diatribe whiih
Tennyson gave to the   world   in   his   closing
years:
" Bring the  old   dark   ages   back,    without
the faith, without the hope;
Break the State,   the  Church,   the   Throne,
and roll their ruins down the slope.
Author, atheist,   essayist,   novelist,    realist,
rhymster, play your part.
Paint the mortal shame   of   nature with the
living hues of art.
Rip your brother's   vices   open,   strip   your
own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticense, down with  Reverence,
forward, naked, let them stare.
Feed the budding rose of boyhood   with   the
drainage of your sewer;
Send,the drain  into   the   fountain   lest   the
stream should issue  pure.
Set the   maiden    fancies   wallowing   in   the
troughs of Zolaism;
Downward,   forward,     ay,   and   backward,
downward too, in the abysm."
Tennyson, in his last years, ever clung ab
solutely fast to the larger hope expressed in
these lines:
"That good should fall
At last, far off, at last; to all,
And every winter turns to spring;
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life could be destroyed
Or cast as rubbish in the void
When God has made the pile complete."
We find him here expressing the thought
that God cares for the least of all His creatures and that all are guided by Him so none
can be destroyed. There can be no aimlessness with God present and good shall fall
alike on all.
He ends his great " In Mememoriam " with
these words:
"That God, who ever lives and moves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
To this religion his poems were utterly
faithful, and this faith they kept whole and
undefiled. Yet he has not rudely trenched
upon truth and love, but with great delicacy
has expressed his emotions. He ha.s gleaned
from both history and nature what was more
lofty and amiable and has risen to the height
of noble and tender sentiments. He may be
read in the lowliest cot, yet he does not rebel
against society and life, but speaks of God and
the soul, nobly, tenderly. He uses the simplest
and purest of sentiments so that we are not
troubled when we lay him aside, but may
listen to the common expressions of  thought