But the true god-gift grows.  Sweet, sweet, still sweet
    As great Apollo’s lyre, or Pan’s plain reed,
  His music flowed, but slowly he out-beat
    His song to finer issues.  Fingers fleet,
  That trifled with the pipe-stops, shook grand sound
    From the great organ’s golden mouths anon. 
  A mellow-measured might, a beauty bound
        (As Venus with her zone)
  By that which shaped from chaos Earth, Air, Sky,
  The unhampering restraint of Harmony.

  Hysteric ecstasy, new fierce, now faint,
    But ever fever-sick, shook not his lyre
  With epileptic fervours.  Sensual taint
    Of satyr heat, or bacchanal desire,
  Polluted not the passion of his song;
    No corybantic clangor clamoured through
  Its manly harmonies, as sane as strong;
        So that the captious few
  Found sickliness in pure Elysian balm,
  And coldness in such high Olympian calm.

[Illustration:  “CROSSING THE BAR.” 
  “TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL, AND AFTER THAT THE DARK”
  “AND MAY THERE BE NO SADNESS OF FAREWELL, WHEN I EMBARK.”—­TENNYSON.]

  Impassioned purity, high minister
    Of spirit’s joys, was his, reserved, restrained. 
  His song was like the sword Excalibur
    Of his symbolic knight; trenchant, unstained. 
  It shook the world of wordly baseness, smote
    The Christless heathendom of huckstering days. 
  There is no harshness in that mellow note,
        No blot upon those bays;
  For loyal love and knightly valour rang
  Through rich immortal music when he sang.

  ARTHUR, his friend, the Modern Gentleman,
    ARTHUR, the hero, his ideal Knight,
  Inspired his strains.  From fount to flood they ran
    A flawless course of melody and light. 
  A Christian chivalry shone in his song
    From Locksley Hall to shadowy Lyonnesse,
  Whence there stand forth two figures, stately, strong,
        Symbols of spirit’s stress;
  The blameless King, saintship with scarce a blot,
  And song’s most noble sinner, LANCELOT.

  Lover of England, lord of English hearts,
    Master of English speech, painter supreme
  Of English landscape!  Patriot passion starts
    A-flame, pricked by the words that glow and gleam
  In those imperial paeans, which might arm
    Pale cowards for the fray.  Touched by his hand
  The simple sweetness, and the homely charm
        Of our green garden-land
  Take on a witchery as of Arden’s glade,
  Or verdant Vallombrosa’s leafy shade.

  The fragrant fruitfulness of wood and wold,
    Of flowery upland, and of orchard-lawn,
  Lit by the lingering evening’s softened gold,
    Or flushed with rose-hued radiance of the dawn;
  Bird-music beautiful; the robin’s trill,
    Or the rook’s drowsy clangour; flats that run
  From sky to sky, dusk woods that drape the hill,
        Still lakes that draw the sun;
  All, all are mirror’d in his verse, and there
  Familiar beauties shine most strangely fair.