ABSTRACT
In the mass of Tennyson's work the delicate and rich craftsmanship of these lyrics is of slight comparative importance. Tennyson's early 'Palace of Art' describes his rejection of a limited romanticism and a corresponding will to raise the inert mass of communal evil to his own, poetic, level; rather as Prospero draws the evils of society into the charmed circle of his magic island. In Tennyson the complexities of the immediate are justly handled, and the vast future always remembered in terms of which man as at present constituted remains a 'raw' recruit. Through the legendary hero Tennyson projects his sense of Britain's imperial responsibility, the oncoming of great tumult and the passing of an old order. Christ came out from the Play –Children, love one another! –In bitter earnest out he came to mash the skull of his brother.
