New Year, New Future -- Reflections from Tennyson

Hello everyone –

With the start of the (Gregorian calendar’s) New Year 2020, many of us will be making resolutions to improve our lives (and the lives of others), all the while wondering what the future might hold for us. I don’t have a Stargate or a crystal ball to tell you what lies ahead on the road of life, but I can hold up for you the Mirror of Poetry, which has served as a wellspring of inspiration for humanity since prehistoric times.

Here are some reflections about the future from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), my favorite English poet of the Victorian Era. Tennyson, who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for most of Queen Victoria’s long reign (1837-1901), penned some of the most memorable verses in the English language, and many of his quotations have become proverbial. Gathered here are some of my favorite passages from Tennyson’s greatest poems, dealing with the future of the human race as he foresaw it during the 19^th century.

From “Locksley Hall” (Excerpt)

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly Earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

From “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After” (Excerpts)

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue,

I have seen her far away -- for is not Earth as yet so young? --

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed,

Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert tilled,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,

Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

*                                           *                                             *

What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;

Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,

All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.

Many an Aeon molded Earth before her highest, man, was born,

Many an Aeon too may pass when Earth is manless and forlorn,

Earth so huge, and yet so bounded -- pools of salt, and plots of land --

Shallow skin of green and azure -- chains of mountain, grains of sand!

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,

Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;

Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

*                                           *                                             *

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right -- for man can half-control his doom --

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

Addendum: Here is another poem by Tennyson, which I dedicate to Dr. Wayne Banwart (1948-2019), a longtime friend, mentor, and role model, who passed away on December 13^th. Requiescat in pace.

“Crossing the Bar” (Complete)

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 though 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 crossed the bar.

“Post tenebras, lux.” (Latin) = “After darkness, there is light.”

-- Official Motto of Canton Geneva, Switzerland

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”

-- Nelson Mandela (1918-2013): Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Until next time –

Rob