‘The Lord of Tears’ ‘the stormy voice of France,’ as Tennyson finely designates the great Poet of Freedom, never denounced wrong and tyranny with more powerful invective than in this fine poem, which in its full expression of Sin and Sorrow, may be called ‘The Drama of Humanity.’

Yet there is no actual life or movement, the scenes are visions only, supposed to pass before the mind of the Pope as he sleeps in his chamber in the Vatican, and they are flung as pictures on the mystic background of night and dreams, each vision representing a separate and distinct phase of human life.

First the kings of Earth pass before him in their purple splendour; then the Prelates in their sacerdotal pomp and pride, and after them the great stream of humanity sweeps by; the poor, the sinful, and the sorrowing; the sheep without a shepherd hunted by the wolves; the tempted and the outcast; the victims of want and misery driven to crime by despair; and with fierce and scathing anathemas, the Pontiff in his dream denounces the sin robed in purple that receives the homage of the crowd, and contrasts it with the sin born of want and hunger that is expiated on the scaffold.

The language is bold and beautiful. Every line shows a terrible impatience of wrong, with an infinite disdain for the vain pomp of life; for the whited sepulchres filled with all uncleanness, and for all that is false, mean and shallow in our Social System.