See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And ev'n for want of such a type. Has it crushed out his pure sense of poetic beauty? Here in No. 84 we have a poem which, for what I can only call absolute beauty, is simply perfect. Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows, and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death Ill brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odor streaming far To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.' And finally we are able to see from his own words that he is not ignorantly resisting the influences of science, but that he knows science, reveres it and understands its precise place and function. What he terms in the following poem (113 of _In Memoriam_) _Knowledge_ and _Wisdom_ are what we have been speaking of as Science and Poetry. Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail. * * * * * Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first. A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child: For she is earthly of the mind, But Wisdom heavenly of the Soul. O friend, who camest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind, I would the great world grew like thee Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity. If then, regarding Tennyson as fairly a representative victim of Science, we find him still preaching the poet's gospel of beauty, as comprehending the evangel of faith, hope and charity, only preaching it in those newer and finer forms with which science itself has endowed him; if we find his poetry just so much stronger and richer and riper by as much as he has been trained and beaten and disciplined with the stern questions which scientific speculation has put--questions which you will find presented in their most sombre terribleness in Tennyson's _Two Voices_; if finally we find him steadily regarding science as _knowledge_ which only the true poet can vivify into _wisdom_:--then I say, life is too short to waste any of it in listening to those who, in the face of this history, still prophesy that Science is to destroy Poetry.