od came into my life."

_Maud_, his most dramatic poem, was issued in 1855. As early as 1859
he published the first part of _The Idylls of the King_, but it was
not until 1872 that the complete sequence of the _Idylls_ was given
to the public. These Arthurian legends are cast by Tennyson in his
most musical blank verse, and he has given to them a tinge of
mysticism that seems to lift them above the everyday world into a
realm of pure romance and chivalry.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF TENNYSON'S ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF
"CROSSING THE BAR" COPYRIGHT BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY]

_Enoch Arden_, a domestic idyll, written in 1864, made a great hit. It
was followed by several plays--_Queen Mary_, _Harold_, _Becket_ and
others--all finely written, but none appealing to the great public. Up
to his last years Tennyson remained the real laureate of his people,
his words always tinged with the fire of inspiration. Only three years
before his death he wrote _Crossing the Bar_, a poem which met with
instant response from the English-speaking world because of its signs
of courage in the face of death and its proofs of steadfast faith in
the life beyond the grave.

No adequate estimate of Tennyson's work can be made in the small space
allotted to this article. All that can be done is to mention a few of
his best works and to quote a few of his stirring lines. If the reader
will study these poems he will be pretty sure to read more of
Tennyson. To my mind, _Locksley Hall_ is Tennyson's finest poem, as
true to-day as when it was written seventy years ago. The long,
rolling, trochaic verse, like the billows on the coast that it
pictures, suits the thought. The poem is the passionate lament of a
returned soldier from India over the mercenary marriage of the cousin
whom he loved. Here are a few of the lines that will never die:

Many a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool!
Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Hono