LXVII. In fancy, at night, I see the tablet over Arthur's grave in the dark church.

LXVIII. In my dreams he is not dead. See note at bottom of page 148. 1. Sleep, Death's twin-brother. See note on Adonais, vii. 7, page 139. LXIX. A dream.

LXX. Out of the shadowiness of dreams Arthur's fair face appears and drives all phantoms away.

LXXI. Recollections of one pleasant episode in our lives.

LXXII. Anniversary of Arthur's death. A stormy, dreary day in autumn again. Compare with xcix.

LXXIII. Fame. He lived not to achieve it—and why should he? Compare with Lycidas, 78.

LXXIV. A simile. His family likeness to the good and great.

LXXV. His deeds while here were potential, but certainly, somewhere, he is now making his power active. Compare this and the next two flights with Shakespeare, Sonnet 17:·

"Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The eye to come would say, 'This poet lies;

Such heav'nly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song."

LXXVI. Fame at its best is transient.

LXXVII. These verses may be but short-lived, yet what of that? I sing for love, and not for fame.

LXXVIII. The second Christmas. Compare with xxviii., xxix., above. 4. Grief is not so poignant as it was a year ago.

LXXIX. The closeness of our friendship.

Here begins a series of verses in which the poet musingly reviews the loving relationship which existed between him and Arthur.

LXXX. Suppose he had lived and I had died.

LXXXI. My love for him has been made mature through his death.

LXXXII. I murmur only because our intercourse has been terminated. All else is well.

LXXXIII. The tardy spring of the new year. It whispers hope.

3. See Lycidas, 142–151; also note 16, page 34.

LXXXIV. Visions of what might have been.

3. See vi. 7, and the note to the same.

LXXXV. After all, another friendship is not impossible.

25. clasping brother-hands. This poem is probably addressed to Tennyson's brother-in-law (husband of Arthur's betrothed), and if so, must have been written at least seven years after Hallam's death. LXXXVI. The coming of Spring brings hallowed influences, and whispers "Peace!"

LXXXVII. Reminiscences of college life.

2. high-built organs. Compare with Milton, Il Penseroso, 161:

"There let the pealing organ blow

To the full-voiced quire below," etc.

LXXXVIII. The contrast of fierce and secret joy in the song of the nightingale. See Keats's Ode to a Nightingale.

3. See Locksley Hall :·

"Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might." LXXXIX. Memoirs of country delights.

6. Tuscan poets. Dante, Petrarch.

XC. A change of circumstances may make return of the dead to life undesirable to some, but never would his return be unwelcome to me. XCI. Both spring and summer bring glad remembrances of him, and seem to bid him come back.

XCII. And yet even should he return in visible spirit-form, I could hardly believe it.

XCIII. Oh, that our spirits might at least have some sort of communion. 2. Compare with this from Aylmer's Field :

-

"Star to star vibrates light: may soul to soul

Strike through a finer element of her own

So from afar touch as at once?"

XCIV. Only the pure in heart can hold communion with the dead.

XCV. Another reminiscence called up by reading his letters one night while tenting in the fields.

7. defying change. See Shakespeare, Sonnet 123: —

"No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,

Thy registers and thee, I both defy."

5. from me and night. Compare with Gray's Elegy, 4.

XCVI. Doubt and faith.

6. Sinai's peaks of old. See Exodus xxxii. 1-4.

XCVII. The love of faith.

XCVIII. Vienna, the city of his death.

XCIX. The second anniversary of his death. See lxxii., above.

C. Every object I see recalls memories of him. "Once more he seems to die."

CI. On leaving the home of childhood. Tennyson left his ancestral home about the year 1835, and this division of the poem was probably written at that time.

3. lesser wain. The constellation Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, is frequently called "Charles's wain" (probably from ceorles wain, the countryman's wagon). Tennyson doubtless refers here to the constellation Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear.

CII. The remembrances which make the old home so dear are of two kinds.

2. Two spirits, etc. See Shakespeare, Sonnet 144:

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still."

CIII. The last night in my childhood's home, and what I dreamed.
"The vision presents the thought that, his memory going with us, the
spirit of all that is wise and good and graceful sails with us in the
life-voyage." - Robertson.

CIV. The approach of Christmas. Strange Christmas bells.

CV. The third Christmas eve. In a new house, and among strange associations. Compare with xxviii. and lxxviii.

CVI. The bells of the New Year.

CVII. Celebration of Arthur's birthday.

However bitter the winter weather, let us keep the day with festal cheer.

CVIII. The wisdom which sorrow brings.

CIX. Arthur's distinctive characteristics.

CX. His influence over his associates.

CXI. A true gentleman he was in heart and life:
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

A man's a man for a' that." — Burns.

CXII. The growth of his intellectual power.

CXIII. What he would have been had he lived.

CXIV. Wisdom is heavenly, Knowledge is of earth. His was a character in which to knowledge was added reverence and charity, — and these three thus blended are Wisdom.

CXV. The coming of spring. Compare with xxxviii.

CXVI. Hopes aroused by Nature's re-awakening.

CXVII. The sorrow of separation will only enhance the delight of meeting.

3. All the courses of the suns. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 59: "Five hundred courses of the sun."

CXVIII. The evolution of man from the lower forms of nature is but an indication that his upward progress will continue.

1. dying Nature's earth and lime. Compare with

"Before the little ducts began

To feed the bones with lime." Two Voices, 326.

CXIX. Another visit to the house which was Arthur's home. Compare with vii.

CXX. Man is not "a greater ape." He is born for higher things.

1. Like Paul with beasts. See I Corinthians xv. 32. This poem was written before the enunciation of the doctrine of evolution by Darwin, probably soon after the publication of The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), which had produced much discussion on this and kindred themes.

CXXI. The evening and the morning star. As Hesper, the evening star, changes in time to Phosphor, the morning star, so my grief has changed from despair to hope. See ix., above.

CXXII. Did Arthur know of my despair and wretchedness? Then let him be with me now in my feeling of blessedness,

1. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 64:

"When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main," etc.

CXXIII. The great changes which have taken place on earth, yet no change can make me think our separation final.

CXXIV. An answer to the sceptic's doubts.

Do we ask, Where is God?

We feel Him, know Him, in our inmost hearts.

5. See liv. 5.

CXXV. In all these sorrowing verses, Hope and Love have been present; for it was he that "breathed the spirit of the song."

2. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 72:

"Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart -
Oh, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That
you for love speak well of me untrue."

CXXVI. The majesty of Love.

CXXVII. All is well. All is moving on towards God.

2. fool-fury of the Seine. The French revolution. We infer from the expression "thrice again" that he has in mind three revolutions. If so, this poem must have been written about the time of the popular uprising in 1848 and the dethronement of Louis Philippe.

CXXVIII. Love conquers doubt.

CXXIX. The ennobling power of the friendship which I have for him. 2. Sweet human hand, etc. Compare with,