And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, And at his ear he heard a whisper 'Rome,'
And in his heart he cried 'The call of God!'
And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face By waste and field and town of alien tongue, Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.
Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch'd his goal, The Christian city."Akbar's Dream may be taken, more or less, to represent the poet's own theology of a race seeking after God, if perchance they may find Him, and the closing Hymn was a favourite with Tennyson. He said, "It is a magnificent metre":-"HYMN.
I.
Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise.
Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes.
Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee, Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.
II.
Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!"In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the altar of Scott, versifying the tale of Il Bizarro, which the dying Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. The Churchwarden and the Curate is not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression of shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of Poets and Critics may be taken as the poet's last word on the old futile quarrel:-"This thing, that thing is the rage, Helter-skelter runs the age;Minds on this round earth of ours Vary like the leaves and flowers, Fashion'd after certain laws;Sing thou low or loud or sweet, All at all points thou canst not meet, Some will pass and some will pause.