ABSTRACT
The tendency and the spirit of Tennyson’s poetry is to ennoble every subject he touches. Most of those subjects were taken from English homely life; they are drawn from the heart of England in all its ranks, from the simplicity of ‘Dora’ and ‘The Miller’s Daughter’, the sturdy independence of the ‘Northern Farmer’, the joy of a ‘May Morning’, the plaint of ‘Locksley Hall’, looking beyond the times-
For I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns:—
up to the real language of afflicted love, torn by the early death of one we knew, and who lives in everlasting memory with Lycidas and Adonais. In these poems all is serene and pure. And when the poet aimed at greater things, he chose for his epic theme the visionary realm of British chivalry; he drew in Arthur the ideal knight ‘who reverenced his conscience as his king’, surrounded him with noble comrades, fought against all that was barbarous, vicious, and vile without and within the camp, and remained unspotted by the wiles of Vivien and the frailty of Guinevere. The spirit of duty and self-sacrifice, the spirit of honour and truth, breathe throughout these pages. The poet disdains to touch the vulgar, the guilty, the false. He breathes no vain complaints, he seeks to fling abroad the winged shafts of truth, for, to use his own language-
The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above, Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.
