These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but
they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale. The lines
to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, and worthy of a poet's
youth and of the spring. Merlin and the Gleam is the spiritual
allegory of the poet's own career:-


"Arthur had vanish'd
I knew not whither,
The king who loved me,
And cannot die."


So at last


"All but in Heaven
Hovers The Gleam,"


whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a marvellous hope
and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the latest songs,
reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim haunting memories
and dreams of infancy. No other English poet has thus rounded all
his life with music. Tennyson was in his eighty-first year, when
there "came in a moment" the crown of his work, the immortal lyric,
Crossing the Bar. It is hardly less majestic and musical in the
perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For
once at least a poem has been "poured from the golden to the silver
cup" without the spilling of a drop. The new book's appearance was