established fact must be no fact because no explanation of it is
forthcoming. Tennyson is not one of these thriftless people, and the
"In Memoriam," read aright, leads one upward "upon the great world's
altar-stairs that slope through darkness up to God".

The poem is a drama of life. It was not written at one time or one
place, but over a path of some years. Those years and places are a
symbol of the ever-changeful thoughts and moods of man who communes
much with the world concealed behind the veil of sense. It is the
vivid portraiture of the soul, its sorrows, doubts, anxieties, and
aspirations; it tells of the eclipse as well as of the dawn and
meridian of faith. In fact, it is Tennyson's own religious life which
is the life of uncounted numbers in these latter times. Before the
supreme sad experience, the sudden, and to him incomprehensible, death
of Arthur Hallam, the poet had agnostic leanings. He did then
veritably fail and "falter" before the questions of life and death
which beset him. His long years of comparative poverty, "the eternal
want of pence," his failure to attract any measure of attention, his
long-delayed marriage as far off as ever, the _res angusta domi_ which
made his family dependent upon him, all conspired to shut out the
vision of anything but an iron necessity controlling him and
everything. Such lives are infinitely pathetic, and perhaps one had
rather devote oneself to ministering to minds distressed like these
than to any other form of charitable enterprise. Such souls have been
wounded inexpressibly; they are sore to the most delicate touch, and
gentle indeed must be the hand, and soft the voice, which would comfort
stricken creatures like these. To think of such afflicted spirits is
to recall the picture of the ideal servant of Jahveh, of whom Isaiah
sings in words of unearthly beauty: "A bruised reed he shall not break
and a smoking flax he shall not quench," for only by ministrations such
as these can they be healed.

Strangely enough, as it would seem, it was the last and saddest
experience of all, the blow which almost crushed his life, which
brought the young soul back to health and strength. It was the hand of
death, inopportunely touching the fairest and noblest thing he ever
hoped to know, which helped him to see that--

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that