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    In Memoriam A. H. H.
    In Memoriam A. H. H.
    In Memoriam A. H. H.
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    In Memoriam A. H. H.

    By Alfred Lord Tennyson

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    Composed by Alfred Tennyson as a requiem for his college friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1833, "In Memoriam A. H. H." is a poem written over a seventeen year period and completed in 1849. Widely considered as one of the greatest poems of the Victorian era it is a richly lyrical work which meditates on the search for hope in the wake of a great loss. The length of this work and the period of time in which Tennyson took to complete it speaks volumes as to the personal impact of the loss of such a close friend. Central to this work is an examination of death and spirituality as part of the grieving process. Tennyson’s psyche can be seen transforming through the course of this work. What begins as a spirit filled with doubt and despair transforms into one of faith and hope by the end of the work. "In Memoriam A. H. H." is a powerful examination of death and loss, one in which the author exposes a very personal process of how he dealt with the loss of one of his closest friends.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2015
    ISBN9781420950861
    Author

    Alfred Lord Tennyson

    Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was a British poet. Born into a middle-class family in Somersby, England, Tennyson began writing poems with his brothers as a teenager. In 1827, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, joining a secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles and publishing his first book of poems, a collection of juvenile verse written by Tennyson and his brother Charles. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal in 1829 for his poem “Timbuktu” and, in 1830, published Poems Chiefly Lyrical, his debut individual collection. Following the death of his father in 1831, Tennyson withdrew from Cambridge to care for his family. His second volume of poems, The Lady of Shalott (1833), was a critical and commercial failure that put his career on hold for the next decade. That same year, Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam died from a stroke while on holiday in Vienna, an event that shook the young poet and formed the inspiration for his masterpiece, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850). The poem, a long sequence of elegiac lyrics exploring themes of loss and mourning, helped secure Tennyson the position of Poet Laureate, to which he was appointed in 1850 following the death of William Wordsworth. Tennyson would hold the position until the end of his life, making his the longest tenure in British history. With most of his best work behind him, Tennyson continued to write and publish poems, many of which adhered to the requirements of his position by focusing on political and historical themes relevant to the British royal family and peerage. An important bridge between Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson remains one of Britain’s most popular and influential poets.

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      Book preview

      In Memoriam A. H. H. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

      cover.jpg

      IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.

      BY LORD ALFRED TENNYSON

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5085-4

      eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5086-1

      This edition copyright © 2015

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      In Memoriam

      Proglogue

      Strong Son of God, immortal Love,

      Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

      By faith, and faith alone, embrace,

      Believing where we cannot prove;

      Thine are these orbs of light and shade;

      Thou madest Life in man and brute;

      Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

      Is on the skull which thou hast made.

      Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

      Thou madest man, he knows not why,

      He thinks he was not made to die;

      And thou hast made him: thou art just.

      Thou seemest human and divine,

      The highest, holiest manhood, thou.

      Our wills are ours, we know not how,

      Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

      Our little systems have their day;

      They have their day and cease to be:

      They are but broken lights of thee,

      And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

      We have but faith: we cannot know;

      For knowledge is of things we see;

      And yet we trust it comes from thee,

      A beam in darkness: let it grow.

      Let knowledge grow from more to more,

      But more of reverence in us dwell;

      That mind and soul, according well,

      May make one music as before,

      But vaster. We are fools and slight;

      We mock thee when we do not fear:

      But help thy foolish ones to bear;

      Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

      Forgive what seem'd my sin in me,

      What seem'd my worth since I began;

      For merit lives from man to man,

      And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

      Forgive my grief for one removed,

      Thy creature, whom I found so fair.

      I trust he lives in thee, and there

      I find him worthier to be loved.

      Forgive these wild and wandering cries,

      Confusions of a wasted youth;

      Forgive them where they fail in truth,

      And in thy wisdom make me wise.

      IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.

      Obiit MDCCCXXXIII

      I

      I held it truth, with him who sings

      To one clear harp in divers tones,

      That men may rise on stepping-stones

      Of their dead selves to higher things.

      But who shall so forecast the years

      And find in loss a gain to match?

      Or reach a hand thro' time to catch

      The far-off interest of tears?

      Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,

      Let darkness keep her raven gloss:

      Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,

      To dance with death, to beat the ground,

      Than that the victor Hours should scorn

      The long result of love, and boast,

      'Behold the man that loved and lost,

      But all he was is overworn.'

      This truth came borne with bier and pall,

      I felt it, when I sorrow'd most,

      'Tis better to have loved and lost,

      Than never to have loved at all.

      II

      Old Yew, which graspest at the stones

      That name the under-lying dead,

      Thy fibres net the dreamless head,

      Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

      The seasons bring the flower again,

      And bring the firstling to the flock;

      And in the dusk of thee, the clock

      Beats out the little lives of men.

      O not for thee the glow, the bloom,

      Who changest not in any gale,

      Nor branding summer suns avail

      To touch thy thousand years of gloom:

      And gazing on thee, sullen tree,

      Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,

      I seem to fail from out my blood

      And grow incorporate into thee.

      III

      O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

      O Priestess in the vaults of Death,

      O sweet and bitter in a breath,

      What whispers from thy lying lip?

      The stars, she whispers, "blindly run;

      A web is wov'n across the sky;

      From out waste places comes a cry,

      And murmurs from the dying sun:

      "And all the phantom, Nature, stands—

      With all the music in her tone,

      A hollow echo of my own,—

      A hollow form with empty hands."

      And shall I take a thing so blind,

      Embrace her as my natural good;

      Or crush her, like a vice of blood,

      Upon the threshold of the mind?

      IV

      To Sleep I give my powers away;

      My will is bondsman to the dark;

      I sit within a helmless bark,

      And with my heart I muse and say:

      O heart, how fares it with thee now,

      That thou should fail from thy desire,

      Who scarcely darest to inquire,

      What is it makes me beat so low?

      Something it is which thou hast lost,

      Some pleasure from thine early years.

      Break thou deep vase of chilling tears,

      That grief hath shaken into frost!

      Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

      All night below the darkened eyes;

      With morning wakes the will, and cries,

      Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.

      V

      I sometimes hold it half a sin

      To put in words the grief I feel;

      For words, like Nature, half reveal

      And half conceal the Soul within.

      But for the unquiet heart and brain

      A use in measured language lies;

      The sad mechanic exercise

      Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

      In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,

      Like coarsest clothes against the cold:

      But that large grief which these enfold

      Is given in outline and no more.

      VI

      One writes, that 'Other friends remain,'

      That 'Loss is common to the race'—

      And common is the commonplace,

      And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

      That loss is common would not make

      My own less bitter, rather more:

      Too common! Never morning wore

      To evening, but some heart did break.

      O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

      Who pledgest now thy gallant son;

      A shot, ere half thy draught be done,

      Hath still'd the life that

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