Publishes _Queen Mary_, 1875; the drama successfully performed by Henry Irving, 1876.
Seeks better health by a tour on the Continent with his son Hallam, 1880.
Publishes _Ballads and Other Poems_, 1880.
His drama _The Cup_ successfully performed, 1881.
His drama _The Promise of May_ proves a failure, 1882.
Raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, 1884.
Publishes _Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. This volume contains _Balin and Balan_, thus completing his _Idylls of the King_.
Publishes _Demeter and Other Poems_, 1889.
Dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
The _Death of Oenone_ is published, 1892.
"Since the days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang into life with the appointment of Southey, to whom succeeded Wordsworth, a poet of worth and genius, whose name certainly assisted in resuscitating the ancient dignity of the appointment. Alfred Tennyson derives less honor from the title than he confers upon it; to him we owe a debt of gratitude that he has redeemed the laurels with his poetry, noble, pure, and undefiled as ever poet sung."--_Walter Hamilton_.
"Tennyson is many sided; he has a great variety of subjects. He has treated of the classical and the romantic life of the world; he has been keenly alive to the beauties of nature; and he has tried to sympathize with the social problems that confront mankind. In this respect he is a representative poet of the age, for this very diversity of natural gifts has made him popular with all classes. Perhaps he has not been perfectly cosmopolitan, and sometimes the theme in his poetry has received a slight treatment compared to what might have been given it by deeper thinking and more philosophical poets, but he has caught the spirit of the age and has expressed its thought, if not always forcibly, at least more beautifully than any other poet,"--_Charles Read Nutter_.