Perhaps Mr. Tennyson will grow more solemn, like the sun, as his day goes on. In the meantime we have the noble 'Two Voices,' and, among other grand intimations of a teaching power, certain stanzas to J.K. (I think the initials are) on the death of his brother,[86] which very deeply affected me.
Take away the last stanzas, which should be applied more definitely to the _body_, or cut away altogether as a lie against eternal verity, and the poem stands as one of the finest of monodies. The nature of human grief never surely was more tenderly intimated or touched--it brought tears to my eyes. Do read it. He is not a Christian poet, up to this time, but let us listen and hear his next songs. He is one of God's singers, whether he knows it or does not know it.
I am thinking, lifting up my pen, what I can write to you which is likely to be interesting to you. After all I come to chaos and silence, and even old night--it is growing so dark. I live in London, to be sure, and except for the glory of it I might live in a desert, so profound is my solitude and so complete my isolation from things and persons without. I lie all day, and day after day, on the sofa, and my windows do not even look into the street. To abuse myself with a vain deceit of rural life I have had ivy planted in a box, and it has flourished and spread over one window, and strikes against the glass with a little stroke from the thicker leaves when the wind blows at all briskly. _Then_ I think of forests and groves; it is my triumph when the leaves strike the window pane, and this is not a sound like a lament. Books and thoughts and dreams (almost too consciously _dreamed_, however, for me--the illusion of them has almost passed) and domestic tenderness can and ought to leave nobody lamenting. Also God's wisdom, deeply steeped in His love, _is_ as far as we can stretch out our hands.
[Footnote 86: The lines 'To J.S.,' which begin:
'The wind that beats the mountain blows More softly round the open wold.'
_To Mr. Westwood_ 50 Wimpole Street: December 26, 1843.
Dear Mr. Westwood,--You think me, perhaps, and not without apparent reason, ungrateful and insensible to your letter, but indeed I am neither one nor the other, and I am writing now to try and prove it to you. I was much touched by some tones of kindness in the letter, and it was welcome altogether, and I did not need the 'owl' which came after to waken me, because I was wide awake enough from the first moment; and now I see that you have been telling your beads, while I seemed to be telling nothing, in that dread silence of mine. May all true saints of poetry be propitious to the wearer of the 'Rosary.'