4. BREATHING BARE. Making the horizon bare of clouds.
7. HORNED FLOOD. Between two promontaries.
9. SIGH. "Impart as by a breath or sigh."
11. DOUBT AND DEATH. These have up to this time haunted him.
13. FROM BELT, ETC. Tennyson explains: "The west wind rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star."
16. WHISPER "PEACE." Stopford Brooke says of this poem: "Each verse is linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, swelling as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything be more impassioned and yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of youth and the nobleness of manhood's sacred joy."
"In the garden, looking round on tree and shrub and flower and brook--all the friends of many years--a fresh pang comes with the sight of each. All these will be unwatched, unloved, uncared for; till, perhaps, they find a home in a stranger's heart, growing dear to him and his, while the memory fades of those who love them now."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.
10. THE BROOK. The brook at Somersby flowed past the bottom of the parsonage grounds. It is constantly mentioned in Tennyson's poems. Hallam Tennyson says that the charm and beauty of the brook haunted his father through life.
11. LESSER WAIN. Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear; a small constellation containing the pole star. Wain means "wagon," another name for the constellation.
14. HERN AND CRAKE. Heron and corn-crake.
21. LABOURER. He does not move away, but stays always there.
"The world now is all for the spread of knowledge: and I should be the last to demur. But knowledge has an ardent impetuosity, which in its present immature condition may be fraught with many perils. Knowledge by itself, so far from being of necessity heavenly, may even become devilish in its selfish violence. Everything depends upon its being held in due subordination to those higher elements in our nature which go to make wisdom. Would that the ideal aim of our education were to produce such as he was, in whom every increase in intellectual ability was accompanied by the growth of some finer grace of the spirit."--_Arthur W. Robinson_.
4. HER PILLARS. "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars."--_Proverbs_ 9: 1.