But it is now time to point to those passages in which Tennyson may be said to have, more particularly, Catholic aspects. Be they few or many, they are worth noticing, even though they prove nothing but that a Protestant poet of the highest order has such aspects, intense, striking, and lovely in no ordinary degree. {148} Every true poet is in a certain sense a divine creation, and nothing but a celestial spark could ignite a Wordsworth, a Longfellow, or an Emerson. It has ever been the delight of the ancient church and her writers to discover portions of her truth among those who are separated from her visible pale. Far from grudging them these precious fragments, she only wishes they were less scanty, and would willingly add to them till they reached the full measure of the deposit of the faith. It would be easy to make out a complete cycle of her doctrine in faith and morals from the poems of Protestant and Mohammedan authors, but it would be only by combining extracts from many who, in matters of belief, differ widely from each other. In looking through the Laureate's volumes for traces of the church's teaching, we are in a special manner struck by his treatment of the invocation of the departed. With what deep feeling does he invite the friend, who is the subject of his immortal elegy, to be near him when his light is low, when pain is at its height, when life is fading away. (_In Memoriam_, xlix.) It reminds us of good Dr. Johnson's prayer for the "attention and ministration" of his lost wife, as Boswell has given it us. Can any Catholic express more fully than the Laureate the frame of mind becoming those who desire that the departed should still be near them at their side? (_In Memoriam,_ 1.) "How pure at heart and _sound in head_, _With what divine affections bold_. Should be the man whose thoughts would hold An hour's communion with the dead. "In vain shall thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say, My spirit is at peace with all. "They haunt the silence of the breast, Imaginations calm and fair, The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest. "But when the heart is full of din, _And doubt beside the portal waits_. They can but listen at the gates. And hear the household jar within." _In Memoriam_, xciii. "If I can," says the dying May Queen in _New Year's Eve_-- "If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place; Though you'll not see me, mother, _I shall look upon your face_; Though I cannot speak a word, _I shall hearken what you say_, _And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away._" It is not, therefore, in a vague and dreamy way, but with the full force of the understanding, that Tennyson invokes the spirits in their place of rest. It is not merely as a poet, but as a Christian, that he exclaims: