In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh sections the first mood of grief carries the mind to the ship that brings home for burial at Clevedon the body of the dead; and in the twelfth section there rises out of the same dwelling upon the dead form borne over the sea the cry, "Is this the end? Is this the end?"

Then begins the gradual transition to the answer to the question. First there is expression of the natural instinct of immortality. If the ship touched land, the passengers came to shore:

"And if along with these should come The man I held as half-divine; Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home;

I should not feel it to be strange."

Upon this first light suggestion that it is hard for us to conceive extinction of a noble soul, follows a natural image corresponding to the first admission of a thought allied to faith. There was a night of

storm:

"The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world."

The arrival of the ship is in the seventeenth section, the burial at Clevedon in the eighteenth and nineteenth. Then follow notes of mourning love, and recollection of the years from 1829 to 1833:

"The path by which we twain did go,

Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,

From flower to flower, from snow to snow."

These sections develope the human sense of the abiding of love, and the relation of love to the higher life of man:

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

Thus we are led to the first chiming of the Christmas bells across the poem. It is Christmas, 1833, little more than three months after the bereavement:

“This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish'd no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule,

For they controll'd me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,
The merry, merry bells of yule."

Transition is now through the sacred associations with the birth of Christ, that touch sorrow with joy, still upward to thought "of comfort clasped in truth revealed."

The grief was fresh; it was a sad Christmas Eve in the home; but the songs of the mourners rose in spiritual life until they attained the truths to which the poem is advancing:

"Our voices took a higher range;

Once more we sang: They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change;

Rapt from the fickle and the frail

With gather'd power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil.'

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."

The next thoughts are of the raising of Lazarus and of the faith in Him who

wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought;

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef."

The poet touches humbly on the mysteries of God:

"But brooding on the dear one dead,

And all he said of things divine,

(And dear to me as sacred wine

To dying lips is all he said),

I murmur'd, as I came along,

Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd;
And loiter'd in the master's field,
And darken'd sanctities with song."

With the mood now reached is associated progress of the year to "the herald melodies of spring," and the blossoming of the churchyard yew. The thought next to be developed is the abiding of love not only in those living here, but in those also who have been removed by death to a new field of labour:

"And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Re-waken with the dawning soul."

In sections 45, 46 and 47, faith in the continued individual life of the soul is urged. The lost friend does not blend with the universe as a drop fallen into the ocean, but is still the same, retaining the old memories, the old love. This is realised in the yearning expressed by the fiftieth section, "Be near me," and the question that follows:

"Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread?"

With its answer:

"I wrong the grave with fears untrue:

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death. The dead shall look me thro' and thro'."

In the fifty-fourth section there is a glance for ward, in the trust

"That good shall fall

At last-far off-at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring."

In succeeding sections the sense of personal immortality and of fellowship between the living and the dead rises in strength of battle against every doubt, until (in the 72nd) the poem reaches the first anniversary of Arthur Hallam's death; the date, therefore, is the 15th of September, 1834; and presently we reach the second Christmas-Christmas, 1834. With the New Year (in the 83rd section) begins a fresh advance of thought that associates the succession of years with renewal of hope, with calmer thought of the dead, with strength born of the old love for new friendships and for strenuous day labour, with a larger sense of the "serene result of all." They whom death has for a time divided hold communion still:

"My old affection of the tomb,

A part of stillness, yearns to speak: Arise, and get thee forth and seek A friendship for the years to come. I watch thee from the quiet shore; Thy spirit up to mine can reach; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more.'

And I, 'Can clouds of nature stain The starry clearness of the free? How is it? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain?'

And lightly does the whisper fall,

'Tis hard for thee to fathom this; I triumph in conclusive bliss, And that serene result of all.'"

The battle against Doubt and Death is rising now into the full Victory not of Knowledge, but of Faith. The 87th section suggests the succession of life by a visit to Arthur Hallam's rooms at college, where another name is on the door, with recollection of the old days there of high discourse in which he took his part.

The next section associates again a natural image with the prevalent feeling in that part of the poem to which it belongs. Its thought is of the song of the nightingale, whose passion, in the midmost heart of grief, contains a secret joy:

"And I-my harp would prelude woe-
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go."

After softened recollection of the days of old at Somersby in the 89th section, the next shows what is not meant by that succession of life in the generations of men which is to be associated with the poet's crowning expression of "the glory of the sum of things." The 91st blends something of this future glory with the image of the dead:

"Come: not in watches of the night,

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light."

And from this point the poem rises still, while welcoming free conflict with honest doubt, the fearless striving after truth that gives strength to the soul. The 99th section brings the year 1835 to the second anniversary of the death of Arthur Hallam, the 15th of September. Through autumnal thoughts of change of earthly associations, including a change of home, we pass to the third and last Christmas included in the poem. And now the Christmas thought is of the world as God, through Christ, shall make it when the fulness of His time is come.

"Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;

Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood.

Long sleeps the summer in the seed; Run out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good."

The next section (106th) associates the ringing in of the New Year (1836) with the ringing out of all the ills yet to be conquered, and the ringing in of that new "cycle rich in good:"

"Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be."

Then follows, in the 107th section, a cheerful celebration of Arthur Hallam's birthday, the 1st of February; and calm faith in the future of humanity is blended with a thought implying the main duty of life in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the work involved in Wordsworth's question

"What one is,

Why may not millions be?"

We dare cherish the far ideal when we know that there is no way to the attainment of it but by labour of each of us, man, woman, and child, to live our own lives faithfully and truly. It is only by the growth of many into what is now the life of few, that the succession of the generations can at last lead to "the closing cycle rich in good." Therefore, the full expression of hope for the future of humanity is framed by Mr. Tennyson as aspiration for the time when all may be what Arthur Hallam was. ledge is below Wisdom:

"Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first.

A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With Wisdom, like the younger child:

For she is earthly of the mind,

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. O friend, who camest to thy goal So early loving me behind,

Know

I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity."

The poem closes fitly at the season of springextending thus over an imagined period from the winter of 1833 to the spring of 1836-and its last thoughts are of hope, with assured Faith through Love; with God felt, in full conviction of man's immortality; with certainty that all is moving Godward, and with the peace of God that passeth understanding.

But there is added to the poem, and it forms an essential part of it, a song written for a sister's marriage some nine years after the death of Arthur Hallam. The blessing on the marriage leads to prayer for the birth from it of new life that shall be "A closer link

Betwixt us and the crowning race

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look

On knowledge; under whose command Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand Is Nature like an open book;

No longer half-akin to brute,

For all we thought and loved and did, And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit;

Whereof the man, that with me trod

This planet, was a noble type Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."

It is a divine event "far off;" but still the forward movement may be felt. Among the days in which we live, our Illustrations of English Religion end as in the midst of the history of an unfinished war. Unsubdued passions of men no longer require that we should build a churc of stone, as Durham Cathedral was built, in some defensible position, adorned for God's service and also strengthened to meet attack of men who may come against it with the lance and bow. It is now war only of mind against mind, where it was once also of body against body; but there is still much of the old temper which in spiritual battle-though it be for the best cause-turns victory itself into defeat ;

NOT THIS THE END, not yet the end of strife.
While Zeal that works for the good seed's increase

Adds bitter ferment to the bread of life,

Not yet has Righteousness the kiss of Peace.

High aims, true words, true deeds abounding still, Our corn is good; the fault is in the leaven: That must be love, if we would have God's will Be done on earth as it is done in heaven.