stories, and high ideals have exerted a wider influence than any other
of Tennyson's poems.

Later Poetry.--Tennyson continued to write poetry until almost the
time of his death; but with the exception of his short swan song,
_Crossing the Bar_, he did not surpass his earlier efforts. His
_Locksley Hall Sixty Year After_ (1886) voices the disappointments of
the Victorian age and presents vigorous social philosophy. Some of his
later verse, like _The Northern Farmer_ and _The Children's Hospital_,
are in closer touch with life than many of his earlier poems.

He wrote also several historical dramas, the best of which is _Becket_
(1884); but his genius was essentially lyrical, not dramatic.
_Crossing the Bar_, written in his eighty-first year, is not only the
finest product of his later years, but also one of the very best of
Victorian lyrics.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MS. OF CROSSING THE BAR.]

General Characteristics.--Tennyson is a poetic interpreter of the
thought of the Victorian age. Huxley called him "the first poet since
Lucretius who understood the drift of science." In these four lines
from _The Princess_, Tennyson gives the evolutionary history of the
world, from nebula to man:--

"This world was once a fluid haze of light.
Till toward the center set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets: then the monster, then the man."

Tennyson's poetry of nature is based on almost scientific observation
of natural phenomena. Unlike Wordsworth, Tennyson does not regard
nature as a manifestation of the divine spirit of love. He sees her
more from the new scientific point of view, as "red in tooth and claw
with rapine." The hero of _Maud_ says:--

"For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the
shrike.
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and
prey."

The constant warfare implied in the evolutionary theory of the
survival of the fittest did not keep Tennyson from also presenting
nature in her gentler aspects. In _Maud_, the lover sings--

"...whenever a March-wind sighs,
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,"

and he tells how "the soul of the rose" passed into his blood, and how
the sympathetic passion-flower dropped "a splendid tear." As beautiful
as is much of Tennyson's nature poetry, he has not Wordsworth's power
to i