Tennyson and his Catholic Aspects [pp. 145-154]

Tennyson in his Catholic Aspects.
reaches to the fact that prayer is the
truest religion - that it is the link
which unites man more closely to
his Creator than any outward acts,
any meditations, any professed creed,
and is the spring and current of religious life.
"Evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kelt himt a living soul."
Ewoch A rden, p. 44.
"Thrice blest whose lives are faitlfud prayers,
Whose loves in higher lose endure:
What souls possess themselves so pure?
Or is there blessedness like theirs?"
I1 I3-,aoriamn, xxxii.
Thus again, in the Morte da4rtuztr, which was a forecast of The
Idylls of the Kinzg, we are reminded
of the efficacy of prayer in language
worthy of being put into a Catholic's
lips:
"Pray for my soul. Afore things are wrought by
firayer
Th.an this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy
voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats,
ThaIt nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for thlemselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every i.y
Bound by goZ!d chaines about te feet of God."
In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a reference to the cooperation of human
will with divine grace, which equals
the precision of a Catholic theologian:
"Full seldom does a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch
Of blood and custom whiolly out of him,
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh."
Idylls of the Ktin,, p. 93.
In the same poem we find lines of
a distinctly Catholic tone on the repentant queen's entering a convent,
and on a knight who had long been
the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:
So let me, ifyou do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like you;
Fast with your fasts, not feasting with yourfeasts;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys,
But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be prayed for; lie before-your shrines;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in his eyes
Who ransomed us, and haler, too, than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the king."
Idylls of the King, p. 260.
The hermitage is thus described:
"There lived a knight
Not far from Camelot, now for forty years
A hermit, who hadf rayed, labored, and frayed,
And ever laboring had scooped himself
In the white rock a chapel and a hall
On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave,
And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry."
Idylls of the King, p. i63.
Among Tennyson's earlier poems,
the picture of Isabel, "the perfect
wife," with her "hate of gossip parlance, and of sway," her
"locks not wide dispread,
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The sutmmer caln of golden charity;"
and
"Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"
Poems, pp. 7, 8,
is worthy of a Catholic matron. The
description of St. Stephen, in Thze Two
Voices, has all the depth and pathos of
the poet's happiest mood; and, though
neither it, nor some other passages
which have been quoted, contain
anything distinctively Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity,
it is strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are
drawing attention:
"I cannot hide that some have striven,
A chiteving caln, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with heaven;
Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dreamn;
Butt heard, bv secret transport led,
E'en in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forbore, and did not tire;
Like Steplhen, an unquenched fire,
He heeded not reviling tones,
Nor sold his heart to idle moans,
Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones;
But looking upward, full of grace,
He prayed, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face."
Poems, p. 299.
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