"
The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and joyous
to the shores of the AEgean than to ours. All Tennyson's own is
Demeter's awe of those "imperial disimpassioned eyes" of her
daughter, come from the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many
guests. The hymn, happy in its ending, has no thought of the grey
heads of the Fates, and their answer to the goddess concerning "fate
beyond the Fates," and the breaking of the bonds of Hades. The
ballad of Owd Roa is one of the most spirited of the essays in
dialect to which Tennyson had of late years inclined. Vastness
merely expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson's conviction that,
without immortality, life is a series of worthless contrasts. An
opposite opinion may be entertained, but a man has a right to express
his own, which, coming from so great a mind, is not undeserving of
attention; or, at least, is hardly deserving of reproof. The poet's
idea is also stated thus in The Ring, in terms which perhaps do not
fall below the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into "the utterly
unpoetical":-
"The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man,
But cannot wholly free itself from Man,
Are calling to each other thro' a dawn
Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil
Is rending, and the Voices of the day
Are heard across the Voices of the dark.
No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man,
But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules -
And utter knowledge is but utter love -
AEonian Evolution, swift or slow,
Thro' all the Spheres--an ever opening height,
An ever lessening earth.
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