Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weilala leia Wallala leilala In contrast with this apparently irregular transition, let us consider three successive sections of _In Memoriam_: 119, 120, 121. The first is a return in reverie to the early days in Cambridge when Tennyson and his dead friend were undergraduates. Arthur Hallam seems to stand before him as in life: And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, And bright the friendship of thine eye; And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh I take the pressure of thine hand. This stanza closes the first section. The next section continues in exactly the same metre. But not only are the sections separated by a double space and further cut off from each other by a new numbering; when we begin to read section 120 we seem to be in an entirely different poem. I trust I have not wasted breath: I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain Like Paul with beasts, I fought with death; We find him here right in the midst of an elementary philosophical discussion of Darwinism and the materialistic conception of the universe. Apparently we are supposed to read in this the triumph of mind over matter as particularly shown by the poet’s persistence in regarding his friend as still alive. This may also be a reminiscence of undergraduate discussions on the same subject. But we only make these connections in default of a true connection between the texts of the separate sections. This is not a case of making the lazy reader think and work along with the poet, but of the lazy poet taking advantage of his reader’s faith and industry. The next section begins: Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun And ready, thou, to die with him, Thou watchest all things ever dim And dimmer and a glory done: