The effect of the burial service read in such a
place and on such an occasion can be understood without comment or de- scription. The musical feature of the ceremony was the singing of Tennyson's verses, called, though not by him, we think, " Crossing the Bar," and a beautiful new poem, his last, set as anthems. In the latter verses, " The Silent Voices," the poet tells " the silent voices of the dead" heard in dreams to call him back not " Toward the lowland ways behind me And the sunlight that is gone," but rather forward to the heights beyond, " on and always on." The poem is not one of his greatest, but, if we mistake not, the two lines we have quoted will pass into the language. We have dwelt elsewhere on the demeanour of the vast throng that filled the Abbey, and its significance, and will only say here that the ceremony, in spite of the effect of gloom produced by our habit of wearing black, seemed to take on something of that serenity and completeness that marked the life of the poet.
