"
One story of the Idylls I have already told you. Some day you
will read the others, and learn for yourselves--
"This old imperfect tale,
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul
Rather than that gray King, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's."
Tennyson led a peaceful, simple life. He made his home for the
most part in the Isle of Wight. Here he lived quietly,
surrounded by his family, but sought after by all the great
people of his day. He refused a baronetcy, but at length in 1883
accepted a peerage and became Lord Tennyson, the first baron of
his name. He was the first peer to receive the title purely
because of his literary work. And so with gathering honors and
gathering years the poet lived and worked, a splendid old man.
Then at the goodly age of eighty-four he died in the autumn of
1892.
He was buried in Westminster, not far from Chaucer, and as he was
laid among the mighty dead the choir sang Crossing the Bar, one
of his latest and most beautiful poems.
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