of negation, are apt to blame him because, in fact, he did not
finally agree with their opinions. If a man is necessarily a
weakling or a hypocrite because, after trying all things, he is not
an atheist or a materialist, then the reproach of insincerity or of
feebleness of mind must rest upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that,
almost in boyhood, he had already faced the ideas which, to one of
his character, almost meant despair: he had not kept his eyes
closed. To his extremely self-satisfied accusers we might answer, in
lines from this earliest volume (The Mystic):-


"Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn;
Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction."


He would behold


"One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time,
One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
Awful with most invariable eyes."


His mystic of these boyish years -


"Often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart