A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 5

"From orb to orb, from veil to veil,"

and so traverses the universe.

Was the anniversary of our Saviour's birth ever hailed in terms more sublime and beautiful!

"Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born."

x.x.xI.

The mind of the poet has now taken a more strictly religious view of the situation; and he would like to learn the secrets of the grave from the experience of Lazarus.

Did Lazarus in death yearn to hear his sister Mary weeping for him? If she asked him, when restored to life, where he was during his four days of entombment;

"There lives no record of reply,"

which, if given, might have "added praise to praise"--that is, might have sealed and confirmed the promise that "blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."

As it was, the neighbours met and offered congratulations, and their cry was,

"Behold a man raised up by Christ!

The rest remaineth unreveal'd; He told it not; or something seal'd The lips of that Evangelist."

It is only St. John who records the miracle.

x.x.xII.

At a subsequent visit to Simon's house in Bethany, where both Lazarus and Mary were present, Mary's eyes, looking alternately at her brother who had been restored to life, and at our Lord who had revived him, are "homes of silent prayer;" and one strong affection overpowers every other sentiment, when her "ardent gaze" turns from the face of Lazarus, "and rests upon the Life"--Christ, the author and giver of life. _Vita vera, vita ipsa._

Her whole spirit is then so "borne down by gladness," that

"She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears."[24]

No lives are so blessed as those which consist of "faithful prayers:" no attachments so enduring as those which are based on the higher love of G.o.d.

But are there any souls so pure as to have reached this higher range of feeling; or, if there be, what blessedness can equal theirs?

x.x.xIII.

This Poem is abstruse, and requires thought and care for the interpretation of the Poet's meaning.

It seems to be an address of warning and reproof to a moral pantheist, who fancies that he has attained a higher and purer air, by withholding his faith from all "form," and recognising Deity in everything--his faith having "centre everywhere."

This sceptic is warned from disturbing the pious woman, who is happy in her prayers to a personal G.o.d; for they bring an "early heaven" on her life. Her faith is fixed on "form;" and to flesh and blood she has linked a truth divine, by seeing G.o.d incarnate in the person of Christ.

The pantheist must take care for himself, that, whilst satisfied

"In holding by the law within,"

the guidance of his own reason, he does not after all fail in a sinful world, "for want of such a type," as the life of Christ on earth affords.

"A life that leads melodious days," is like that of Vopiscus, in his Tiburtine villa, as described by his friend, Statius, I., iii., 20.

--_ceu veritus turbare Vopisci Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos._

x.x.xIV.

His own dim consciousness should teach him thus much, that Life will never be extinguished. Else all here is but dust and ashes. The earth, "this round of green," and sun, "this...o...b..of flame," are but "fantastic beauty"--such as a wild Poet might invent, who has neither conscience nor aim.

Even G.o.d can be nothing to the writer, if all around him is doomed to perish; and he will not himself wait in patience, but rather "sink to peace;" and, like the birds that are charmed by the serpent[25] into its mouth, he will "drop head-foremost in the jaws of vacant darkness," and so cease to exist.

x.x.xV.

And yet, if a trustworthy voice from the grave should testify, that there is no life beyond this world; even then he would endeavour to keep alive so sweet a thing as Love, during the brief span of mortal existence.

But still there would come

"The moanings of the homeless sea,"

and the sound of streams disintegrating and was.h.i.+ng down the rocks to form future land surfaces--"aeonian hills," the formations of whole aeons being thus dissolved--and Love itself would languish under

"The sound of that forgetful sh.o.r.e,"

those new lands in which all things are obliterated and forgotten--knowing that its own death was impending.

But the case is idly put. If such extinguis.h.i.+ng Death were from the first seen as it is when it comes, Love would either not exist; or else would be a mere fellows.h.i.+p of coa.r.s.e appet.i.tes, like those of the Satyr, who crushes the grape for drunken revelry, and basks and battens in the woods.

x.x.xVI.

Although, even in manhood, the great truths of Religion only

"darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame"--

since at best we only see as through a gla.s.s darkly: we nevertheless bless His name, who "made them current coin," so as to be generally intelligible. This was done by the teaching of Parables.

For Divine Wisdom, having to deal with mortal powers, conveyed sacred truth through "lowly doors," by embodying it in earthly similitudes; because "closest words" will not explain Divine things, owing to the imperfection of human language; "and so the Word had breath," "G.o.d was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. iii., 16, and 1 John, 14), and by good works wrought the best of all creeds, which the labourer in the field, the mason, the grave-digger,

"And those wild eyes that watch the wave In roarings round the coral reef,"

even the savage of the Pacific Islands, can see and understand, being conveyed to him through both the miracles and parables of the Gospel.

x.x.xVII.