TENNYSON’S WORKS

Hokitika Guardian, 23 July 1926, Page 1

TENNYSON’S WORKS

A AI.A N AVIiO PRACTISED liIS TEACHINGS.

Aii address on. Tennyson and liis works was given by tlio Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt at the weekly meeting of the Palmerston North Citizens’ Lunch Club. Mr J. L. C. Merton occupied the chair. In bis address the speaker said that the genius of Tennyson shone in every path he took. He was undoubtedly one of the outstanding teachers of the nintoenth centurjvhis works being full of illuminating instruction. He never wrote for gain or praise, but sought instead to educate the community into poetic appreciation. He held that tlio proper life was the altruistic,, trom which the greatest joys sprang, and that only one of real worth could lie a gentleman—that term defamed hy charlatans and general use. As lie told Lady Vere de Yere, “kind hearts were more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood.” Tennyson loved truth and honour, and his poems fully exemplified this. Besides being a- great teacher of truth. Tennyson exalted integrity, and made beauty the basis of his behaviour, maintaining that as right was right it should be followed in scorn of consequence. He reegnised that behind the history of our nation’s life there were stores of heroism. Tn regard to courage, he held that a hero was not impeded by environment, and himself was courageous to expose the errors of his

Mr Pratt stressed that the poet Tennyson was a great teacher of purity, and that the secret of his power lay in the purity of his own life. The cliasteness of Queen Victoria’s life evoked his great admiration, an appreciation of the good she did her race. Tennyson’s greatest work was “The Idylls of a Tving,” which was an age-lasting allegory of life which breathed an enduring spirit. Ho held woman in the highest regard with an almost virginal purity. The speaker concluded by dealing with Tennyson’s treatise on the relative position of man and woman, in which the poet held that there was no real conflict between the sexes, whose aim was a common one.