where even Chaucer is matched for rich economy of descriptive effect. In which connection it may be as well here to remark that Tennyson was a notable example of the poets who pass in the evolution of their style from a luxuriously decorative manner to this same economy as a final characteristic. And it is a characteristic that can be arrived at through evolution only, it can never as it were be jumped at in the beginning. The simplicity of ignorance is inevitably bald commonplace, but the simplicity slowly achieved out of a vast poetic experience may be _Crossing the Bar_. It may be worth while to look again at this noble lyric, set beside something of the poet’s early luxuriance. _The Lady of Shalott_ was written when he was twenty-three years old:-- A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. * * * * * All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn’d like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro’ the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. The missal-like illumination of verse such as this will be further mentioned, but for the moment I want merely to contrast it with this, written sixty years later, when the poet was over eighty:-- Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea. But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. In the diction of that there is a serene directness that has been won only out of many years of technical liberality.