Here lies the whole secret of the ode’s comparative poverty. Tennyson is by position, if not by profession, “a civic muse,” and the civic muse is never heroic or great. It is more apt, like Turveydrop, to be “a model of deportment,” especially when it follows the advice of Mrs. Chick and “makes an effort.” This, for instance, is eminently civic: “Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? Here, in streaming London’s central roar. Let the sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones for evermore. “Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.” We hope that Wellington was not “the last great Englishman.” If so, English greatness must indeed be “low.” But the thought is irresistible: Is not the undertaker’s hand again visible in all this? How different is it from the sad, simple, manly beauty of the lament of a poet, whose name scarcely stands in the list of English authors, for one of those soldiers who gloriously failed! Here is how Wolfe sings of the burial of Sir John Moore: “Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried. “We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the glimmering moonbeam’s fitful light And the camp-fires dimly burning.” Again, is this a worthy echo of “a people’s voice”? “And thro’ the centuries let a people’s voice In full acclaim, A people’s voice, The proof and echo of all human fame, A people’s voice, when they rejoice At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commander’s claim With honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name.” What wearisome and forced repetition, what commonplace allusions! This is not Tennyson. The very verse is burdened with its vulgar prose, and halts and stumbles in clumsy confusion meant for art. And here is his description in the same poem of the battle of Waterloo: “Dash’d on every rocky square Their surging chargers foam’d themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew; Thro’ the long-tormented air Heaven flash’d a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there, What long-enduring hearts could do In that world’s earthquake, Waterloo!” The best expression in it, the last, is borrowed from Byron’s wonderful description of the same battle: “Stop! for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust! _An Earthquake’s spoil_ is sepulchred below!” Again in Byron these two lines tell the whole story, as does that other, “The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!”