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of the Victor: reveals the result of experience: determines to 
recognise the facts of the universe as they are; and in this 
sense of acalm Victor it differs from ‘‘ In Memoriam.’’ 
Here we have a running dialogue between a poet who catches 
the transient gleam of beauty as it passes, and who cannot 
believe in any deep or permanent creative life, and a sage who 
tries to persuade him that a deeper insight shows mortal things 
to be mere symbols of eternal and immortal realities. The poet 
pleads the disparity of human knowledge. This the sage recog- 
nises fully: consequently doubt must be; for nothing worthy 
can be proven or disproven; and the concluding advice of the 
sage is— 
‘Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt 
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith.” 
Such words are almost the last spoken on this great subject, 
by the poet of Modern Thought, who has lived many days. 
He stands nearest to us, for he has written with the fullest 
knowledge of the discoveries of recent science, and of the pro- 
blems which occupy the minds of the living generation. His 
words contain the highest teaching: he is far more condensed 
than Browning or Swinburne, and his forms of expression are 
without equal for purity. His subjects are varied as his methods, 
while his thought penetrates deeper than his refined diction. 
The work of Tennyson has been to inscribe in immortal verse 
the spirit of his own age, and that in a far larger sense than any 
of his contemporaries, therefore he may justly be accepted as its 
truest representative poet, and, consequently, its noblest leader. 
He has loved truth and followed right, and he has kept himself 
unspotted from the world. As Browning said in his last 
Epilogue, written just before he passed onward, so we may say 
of Tennyson, he was 
“‘ One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake.”’ 
