He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. 
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

* * * * *

But, first, a hush of peace—­a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;
Mute music soothes my breast—­unuttered harmony,
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: 
Its wings are almost free—­its home, its harbour found,
Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.

    Oh! dreadful is the check—­intense the agony—­
    When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
    When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
    The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

This is the description—­always unmistakable—­of the supreme mystic experience, the joy of the outward flight, the pain of the return, and it could only have been written by one who in some measure had knowledge of it.  This, together with the exquisite little poem The Visionary, which describes a similar experience, and The Philosopher, stand apart as expressions of spiritual vision, and are among the most perfect mystic poems in English.

Her realisation of the meaning of common things, her knowledge that they hold the secret of the universe, and her crystallisation of this in verse, place her with Blake and Wordsworth.

    What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? 
    More glory and more grief than I can tell: 
    The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
    Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

And finally, the sense of continuous life—­one central, all-sustaining Life—­of the oneness of God and man, has never been more nobly expressed than in what is her best-known poem, the last lines she ever wrote:—­

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity! 
Life—­that in me has rest,
As I—­undying Life—­have power in Thee!

* * * * *

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

Tennyson differs widely from the other poets whom we are considering in this connection.  He was not born with the mystical temperament, but, on the contrary, he had a long and bitter struggle with his own doubts and questionings before he wrested from them peace.  There is nothing of mystic calm or strength in the lines—­