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In the subjective aspect of this work we find many of our own 
difficulties reflected, difficulties of humanity at large, the pro- 
blems that have exercised the largest minds in modern times, 
such as this one: 
“ Are God and nature then at strife 
That nature lends such evil dreams.” 
He answers this questioning by a larger yet instinctive hope. 
His soul has become sick with sorrow, but in the moment of 
uttermost darkness, full of distemper and despair, he breaks 
forth into one of the noblest confessions of faith— 
‘‘ That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
When God hath made the pile complete.” 
With instinctive faith the poet draws the veil aside and scans 
the beatific vision, and there he sees the final unity of the 
creature with the Creator, when Arthur Hallam becomes 
‘‘That friend of mine who walks with God,” 
and forty years after, with undiminished faith, he exclaimed, 
‘“‘ Peace, let it be! for Iloved him, and love him for ever; 
The dead are not dead but alive.” 
That such a poem should have presented difficulties is not to 
be wondered at; indeed it was to be expected; for, without 
absolute freedom, poetry of the highest kind would be impossible : 
he does not speak to us as a doctrinaire of any kind, but as 
«man; and as the production of a man, and not a specialist, 
the poem has its abiding value. The death that gave back 
again to the mind of his friend its elemental freedom, seems to 
have lifted his own above its earthly moorings and tendencies. 
He battles on single-handed, beating his music out to an accom- 
paniment in which no sophistries of any kind can find a place. 
In thus giving voice to his own doubts and sorrows, he has 
lifted a cloud of nameless trouble from many a weary heart and 
darkened life; and the work stands out to the eyes of the 
imagination a spiritual Camelot, 
“Built 
To music, therefore never built at all, 
And therefore built for ever.” 
A complete view of Tennyson as the poet of Modern Thought 
cannot be had without a consideration of at least a part of his 
more recent work, and especially of the volume published when 
the poet was over seventy years of age. 
In the “ Ancient Sage” the two voices again play their part; 
and again the shadow of doubt gives place to the light of faith; 
but it is more than that, for it indicates the settled calm 
