If asked to quote in support of this statement I will not quote more than the titles of some of the chief poems to which I appeal. Not always the greatest poems perhaps do I here refer to, but those which most clearly uphold the contention of the Poet's special service to humanity during the period of revolution in thought through which mankind has been passing. Let me instance, therefore, first and most obviously, "In Memoriam"; and thereafter poems such as "De Profundis," "The Two Voices," "The Ancient Sage," "Ulysses," "Vastness," "By an Evolutionist," "Demeter and Persephone," "Akbar's Dream," "God and the Universe," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "The Higher Pantheism," "The Voice and the Peak," "Wages," and "Morte d'Arthur." If I do not add to this list the great poem "To Virgil," who in his day likewise assimilated knowledge of diverse kinds and in the light of spiritual vision glorified all he touched, it is only because the atmosphere of the Ancient poet is so like that of the Modern one that it is not by any single poem that their sympathy and kinship has to be displayed, but rather by the similarity of their whole attitude to the Universe. By the term "Poet of Science" I understand one who assimilates the known truths of Science and Philosophy, through the pores, so to speak, without effort and with intuitive accuracy, one who bears them lightly and raises them above the region of bare fact into the realm of poetry. Such a poet is one who transfuses fact with beauty, he is ready to accept the discoveries of his age, no matter how prosaic and lamentable they seem, and is able to perceive and display the essential beauty and divinity which runs through them all and threads them all together. That is the service which a great poet can perform for Science in his day and generation. The qualities beyond this--exhibited for the most part perhaps in other poems--which enable him to live for all time, are qualities above any that I have the right or the power to estimate. To be overwhelmed and mastered by the material and the mechanical, even to the extent of being blind to the existence of every other aspect, is common and human enough. But to recognize to the full the reign of law in Nature, the sequence of cause and effect, the strength of the chain-armour of necessity which men of science weave, and yet to discern in it the living garment of God--that is poetic and divine. TENNYSON AS A STUDENT AND POET OF NATURE[72] By SIR NORMAN LOCKYER, F.R.S. When Tennyson passed from life, not only did England lose one of her noblest sons, but the world a poet who, beyond all others who have ever lived, combined the gift of expression with an unceasing interest in the causes of things and in the working out of Nature's laws.