All
the great elemental forces are found in his poems: he is the laureate
of love and sorrow, of grief and aspiration. Throughout his verse runs
the great natural law that the man who is not pure in heart can never
see the glory of the poet's vision.
The purity of his own life was reflected in his verse, just as the mad
license and the furious self-indulgence of Byron are mirrored in _Don
Juan_, _Manfred_ and _Cain_. Even to extreme old age Tennyson
preserved that high poetic faculty which he manifested in early youth.
One of his latest poems, _Crossing the Bar_, is also one of the finest
in the language, breathing the old man's assurance of a life beyond
the grave and a reunion with the dear friend of his youth, whom he
mourned and immortalized in _In Memoriam_.
Alfred Tennyson had one of the finest lives in the roll of English
authors. He was born in 1809 and lived to 1892. He spent his early
years in one of the most beautiful parts of Lincolnshire. He enjoyed
the personal training of his father, a very accomplished clergyman,
and much of his boyhood and youth was spent in the open air. In this
way he absorbed that knowledge of birds and animals, trees and flowers
and all the aspects of nature which is reflected in his verse. As a
youth he experimented in many styles of verse, and when only eighteen
he issued, with his brother Charles, _Poems by Two Brothers_.
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