Note.—­This selection is an extract from “A Disquisition on Government.”  Mr. Calhoun expected to revise his manuscript before it was printed, but death interrupted his plans.

XCVII.  ENOCH ARDEN AT THE WINDOW. (347)

Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892, was born in Somerby, Lincolnshire, England; his father was a clergyman noted for his energy and physical stature.  Alfred, with his two older brothers, graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge.  His first volume of poems appeared in 1830; it made little impression, and was severely treated by the critics.  On the publication of his third series, in 1842, his poetic genius began to receive general recognition.  On the death of Wordsworth he was made poet laureate, and he was then regarded as the foremost living poet of England.  “In Memoriam,” written in memory of his friend Arthur Hallam, appeared in 1850; the “Idyls of the King,” in 1858; and “Enoch Arden,” a touching story in verse, from which the following selection is taken, was published in 1864.  In 1883 he accepted a peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth, Sussex, and of Freshwater, Isle of Wight. ###

But Enoch yearned to see her face again;
“If I might look on her sweet face again
And know that she is happy.”  So the thought
Haunted and harassed him, and drove him forth,
At evening when the dull November day
Was growing duller twilight, to the hill. 
There he sat down gazing on all below;
There did a thousand memories roll upon him,
Unspeakable for sadness.  By and by
The ruddy square of comfortable light,
Far-blazing from the rear of Philip’s house,
Allured him, as the beacon blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he mildly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary life.

For Philip’s dwelling fronted on the street,
The latest house to landward; but behind,
With one small gate that opened on the waste,
Flourished a little garden, square and walled: 
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yew tree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it: 
But Enoch shunned the middle walk, and stole
Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence
That which he better might have shunned, if griefs
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw.

For cups and silver on the burnished board
Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth: 
And on the right hand of the hearth he saw
Philip, the slighted suitor of old times,
Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees;
And o’er her second father stooped a girl,
A later but a loftier Annie Lee,
Fair-haired and tall, and from her lifted hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring
To tempt the babe, who reared his creasy arms,
Caught at and ever missed it, and they laughed: 
And on the left hand of the hearth he saw
The mother glancing often toward her babe,
But turning now and then to speak with him,
Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong,
And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled.