In memoriam PDF

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Summary of In memoriam by Baron Alfred Tennyson...

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Summary and analysis of “In memoriam”, a poem by Baron Alfred Tennyson

Prologue The poet addresses the Son of God, He in whom men must put their faith. God made man in his image even though humans do not know why. The poet asks God to help make his will, and he hopes his own knowledge and faith will grow. Men often mock God when they do not fear anything, and they are “fools and slight.” He asks for forgiveness for his tremendous grief for his departed friend who, he now trusts, lives in God. He asks that these youthful and wandering cries be forgiven, and he asks to be given wisdom. I The poet once thought that men could rise on stepping stones “Of their dead selves to higher things,” but now it is hard to contemplate the reality of loss and find any gain within it. II An old Yew tree has deep bones in the earth. The seasons change, and the clock ticks away the hours of men. The tree never changes, though, and when the poet gazes on the “sullen” tree, he admires its “stubborn hardihood” and seems to meld his own self with the tree. III Sorrow whispers terrible things in the poet’s ears, and he wonders if he should not embrace her as natural or crush her as she enters the threshold of his mind. IV During sleep the poet gives his powers away. His heart muses on the memory of his loss, and these thoughts flit before his closed eyes at night. When he wakes, his will warns him not to be “the fool of loss.” V The poet believes that sometimes it is pointless to use mere words to express grief, because they can only half reveal the Soul. However, for a tortured heart words are a mechanical

exercise that can numb the dull pain. He will wrap himself in words although they can only suggest the outline of his grief. VI Even though death is common, it does not lessen his grief over his deceased friend. A father waits for his son to come home, but he is shot and dies. A mother waits for her sailor son, but he drowns. A young woman waits for her lover, but she learns he has drowned or has died falling from his horse. She will have no end, and the poet will have no good. VII The poet waits by the house where he used to live, but he is not here anymore. Life begins far off and day begins. VIII A happy lover rings the doorbell of his beloved’s home, but she is not there. This is what the poet feels when he goes to the places where he and his friend used to meet; now “all is dark where thou art not.” IX A fair ship sails from the Italian shore with Arthur’s remains. The poet asks the ship to sail over quickly. He hopes the light will be bright and the heavens sleepy before the prow and the winds calm. This sleep is like the sleep of his dear friend, dearer than his own brothers, and whom he will not see again until “all my widow’d race be run.” X The poet thinks of a ship, hearing its bell and seeing it cabin windows and the sailor at the wheel. This ship brings home sailors to their wives and men from far away. A fancy strikes, and the poet wonders if the ship might bring Arthur home, too. XI Nature is calm; the morning is silent, peace reigns, gossamers twinkle, light is still. This mirrors the poet’s “calmer grief” and “calm despair.”

XII A dove flies up to Heaven to bring a sad story, her wings pulsing energetically. The poet feels that, similarly, he cannot stay on earth. He wants to be a “weight of nerves without a mind” and hasten his spirit away over oceans, across the skies, and linger. He will sit and wonder, “Is this the end?” Then he will return to his body and learn that he has been gone an hour. XIII Tears drop from the eyes of a widower when he feels the empty space beside him in bed. The widower will be silent, and the poet will be silent too. He remembers the friend he lost, who is now “A Spirit, not a breathing voice.” Time passé,s and there is leisure to weep and to entertain fancies, such as his friend being on the ship whose sails he observes coming in from the horizon. XIV If someone came to the poet and told him that his friend was newly arrived at the port, that he was embarking with the other passengers, that he would place his hand in the poet’s and ask how things were at home, that the poet would tell him all about his own life, that there would be no intimation of death or change, he would “not feel it to be strange.” XV Nature is in tumult –the winds rise, the forests cracks, the waters curl, the sunbeam “strikes the world.” The poet feels the same unrest in his woe. XVI The poet wonders at the words he utters; he wonders, can “calm despair and wild unrest” be “tenants of a single breast?” He wonders if the shock he felt at Arthur’s death has confused him, as a ship striking a craggy cliff in the middle of the night and blindly sinking. He wonders if the shock has made him a “delirious man” who combines both the past and the future and the false and the true. XVII

The poet notes that the ship carrying Arthur came quickly and was “much wept for.” The ship brings the “precious relics” of his friend, whom he will not see again until he departs the earth as well. XVIII It is some comfort to stand at Arthur’s grave. The poet feels like the little life he has left is enduring with pain but forming a “firmer mind” while he remembers and treasures the looks and words of his departed friend. XIX The poet compares his grief to the great rivers of the Danube, the Severn, and the Wye. He writes that when the Wye is hushed and still, his grief is hushed and full, not brimming into tears. When the Wye’s tide flows and waves are vocal, then the poet’s anguish is given utterance. XX The poet feels many griefs, some light and comforted by words, others deep and profound. XXI The poet sings at the grave of his friend. One man speaks harshly, saying his song is too weak and melancholy. Another says to let the poet be since he loves to “make parade of pain.” A third wonders if this mournful song is irrelevant given political and social turmoil in the world. All the poet knows is that “I do but sing because I must.” XXII The poet and his departed friend traversed the familiar path for four sweet years, cheery and full of song. At the fifth year, when the path slanted, the Shadow whom men fear waited. The “fair companionship” was broken, and the friend was taken away; the poet cannot see or follow. He knows that somewhere the Shadow waits for him, too. XXIII The poet in his sorrow sometimes dwells on sorrow and the Shadow of death. He remembers his time with his friend when “Thought leapt out to wed with Thought / Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech” and “all we met was fair and good.”

XXIV The poet wonders if the “day of my delight,” or his past with his friend, was as pure and perfect as he thought, especially as day is always tinged with the night. He wondered if it was truly a Paradise, or if the “haze of grief” has made the past seem greater than it was. Perhaps the past is always more glorious because it is far away. XXV The poet knows about life and its burdens, but he loved the weight he carried because it was assisted by Love. He could never become weary when Love would cut his burden in half and give that half to his friend to carry. XXVI The poet winds along the path and tries to show that no amount of time can “canker Love.” XXVII The poet does not envy captives without rage, or birds born in cages, or beasts without conscience. Even when he feels sorrow, he knows it is “better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” XXVIII It is Christmas time, and the bells ring out in the hamlets. This year the poet slept and then awoke with pain and almost wished that he would never wake up again. The bells of Yule now bring “sorrow touch’d with joy.” XXIX It seems strange that with so much despair in the household they keep the rituals of Christmas Eve. The welcome guest will not arrive and bring joy and jest. XXX A rainy cloud takes possession of the earth on Christmas Eve, and while they undertake the old pastimes they feel the weight of the Shadow. They listen to the winds, and their voices fall silent. Last year they sang merrily and impetuously. Now they start to sing again, their words ringing

out that even though the dead are gone they do not change in the minds and hearts of the living, and that they hope the morning will rise and “Draw forth the cheerful day from the night.” XXXI Lazarus rises from the dead after four days, and even though his sister asks where he was, there is no reply. Neighbors celebrate that man raised by Christ, but he does not reveal what happened between his death and resurrection. XXXII After Lazarus rises from the dead, Mary anointed and washed Christ’s feet. Her love is emblematic of perfect, “higher love.” XXXIII The poet counsels a brother not to scoff at his sister’s simple faith, which is “as pure as thine.” XXXIV The poet believes that the soul will continue living after death, that it is immortal. The poet also thinks it best to simply sink into death and darkness and cease being. XXXV A voice from the grave might say that there is no living after death, no hope in the dust. The poet might try to hold off this thought, but then he listens to the moaning of the sea and the streams and thinks about the dust of the land and how the vastness of the ages seems to war against Love. XXXVI Wisdom and truth have to be attained through the limited powers of the human mind. They are filtered through the Gospel, which can allow man to be influential. XXXVII Urania, known as the muse of astronomy or heavenly poetry, tells Melpomene, the goddess of elegiac poetry, that she is neither welcome nor effective here. Melpomene responds in shame

that she is not worthy to speak of such mysteries and is only an earthly muse. She can do little but lull a grieving heart or embody human love. XXXVIII The poet loiters and lingers on. In song he finds a “doubtful gleam of solace.” XXXIX The poet reflects on the yew tree again in its dark grasping of the stones. Sorrow darkens the graves of men and kindles the gloom of the tree. XL The poet compares the passing of Hallam to a young maiden leaving her mother and father and entering “other realms of love.” He addresses Hallam, saying he is sure that he has a life that has borne immortal fruit “In those great offices that suit / The full-grown energies of heaven.” The poet thinks about their separation. His life is traversing the paths he knows, while Hallam’s is in “undiscover’d lands.” XLI The poet wishes he could break the bonds tying him to the sublunary life and “leap the grades of life and light.” He seems to be in a Dantean middle ground between heaven and hell. XLII The poet knows that Hallam has gone ahead and “outstript me in the race.” He wonders what delight is equal to the deep spiritual delight of desiring and learning a truth from someone who also loves that truth and knows it. XLIII The poet wonders whether Sleep and Death are truly one—whether the spirit’s bloom will slumber in a long trance. This would mean that nothing is ever actually lost to man, and love will continue on “pure and whole” after death just as in life and the time when Hallam loved him. XLIV

The poet wonders how the “happy dead” fare, and whether the dead remember their time on earth. Although the days have gone, perhaps “A little flash, a mystic tint” illuminates their consciousness. XLV When a baby is born he is not aware of his self, but as he grows he understands “I” and “me.” He gains a separate, distinct mind and individual consciousness. Life would be completely pointless if man lost all connection to this earthly life and had to start his quest for identity anew after death. Surely man retains some of his identity and soul after death. XLVI The poet and Hallam venture down the “lower track,” and the poet looks back at the time that is now growing shadowed. However, after death he will be able to comprehend the “eternal landscape of the past” and see his five years with Hallam as the “richest field” of his life. XLVII The poet does not want to believe that all separate souls, when they die, merge with the universal godhead. This idea is “vague” and “unsweet.” He hopes that after death one’s identity and personality are not totally obliterated, and that he can sit with Hallam at “endless feast,” each talking about “the other’s good.” XLVIII The poet declaims any attempt to solve these religious difficulties, as his comments come from Sorrow. She does not “part and prove,” and no one should try to “draw / The deepest measure from the chords.” XLIX The influences of art, philosophy, and nature are like flimsy and transparent rays of light breaking on pools of water. A traveler can look and contemplate, but he should continue along his way and not blame mental perturbations like that for his sorrow. L

The poet asks Hallam to be near him when his faith droops, his heart is sick, and his blood “creeps.” He is racked with the harshness of time and life, and he feels his faith is dry. He wants Hallam near him when he fades away. LI The poet wonders if the living truly want the dead by their side. What if he wants to hide his “baseness” or “inner vileness”? LII The poet says he cannot love Hallam as he ought because humans cannot sustain perfect love, as of Christ, without having the physical presence of the loved one. However, the spirit of this love can endure, counseling the poet to be content in the faith that the perfect, ideal love will survive human weakness and time. LIII Even though a now sober and mature father was once a foolish rake, it is not good to let youth think they can do as they desire and will turn out fine regardless. It is necessary to “Hold thou the good: define it well.” LIV Men trust that good will win out over ill, that “nothing walks with aimless feet” and everything has a purpose. Men think that the vagaries of nature mean something. However, this trust is hard to maintain, for men know nothing. The poet is like an infant who can only believe in what he sees. His faith is shaken by the realities of the rational evidence against immortality. LV The poet wonders if God and Nature are at strife, meaning if the evidence found in Nature denies the immortality of the soul. Nature seems utterly careless of “the single life” and is capable of waste and chaos. The poet stretches his feeble hands out and tries to muster his faith. LVI

The poet does not think Nature is careful at all. He notes that species have gone extinct. She cares for nothing. Man, who is “her last work, who seem’d so fair” and who trusted God, is at odds against Nature, “red in tooth and claw.” She cares nothing for his creed and his battling for the good and the just. He begins to think life is futile and frail, and he hopes for Hallam’s voice to answer him or offer redress. LVII The poet seems to be talking to his sister, gently telling her to get up and come away from the grave. They sing too wildly, and her cheeks are pale. LVIII The poet says goodbye to the sad words that echo as if in a sepulchral hall. The words fall idly like drops of water. The Muse tells him not to grieve with a “fruitless tear” but to stay a bit longer, compose himself, and depart nobly. A glimmer of hope has arrived. LIX The poet wants Sorrow to live with him as a wife. This is an unavoidable situation, but sometimes Sorrow will be lovely and sometimes the poet will be able to put his passionate grief aside and “have leave at times to play.” LX Hallam has passed on to a sphere where he is far removed from the poet. This is as a young woman who falls in love with a man outside her social class. She is envious of his peers and resentful of her own place. She wonders how he could love a “thing so low.” LXI The poet thinks about Hallam in the afterlife, surrounded by a circle of saints, looking down at him. It will be dim and the poet will grow darker, but Hallam should remember how deeply the poet loved him. LXII

If Hallam is dismayed by the poet’s “downward cast” eye, then the poet hopes that Hallam will think of his love for him as an old tale, or a “fading legend of the past.” Someday they will be rejoined and will be like two people of equal mind who have wed. LXIII If the poet can look to lesser forms like horses and dogs and feel pity and reverence for them, without incurring the wrath of heaven, then surely Hallam should be able to look down on the poet from his larger and deeper celestial orbit. LXIV The poet wonders if Hallam looks down at his past life on earth. Hallam began his life in a “simple village green” and forcefully made “his merit known.” Even though he ascended to great heights, surely he must pause and look on the past in its sweetness, feeling grateful for his childhood and the friends of his youth. LXV The poet sings his song and knows that a part of Hallam lives on in his song. He hopes that maybe “a part of mine may live in thee / And move thee on to noble ends.” LXVI Addressing this poem to another friend, the poet concedes that such a friend thinks his heart too gloomy. However, his grief allows him to act kindly towards others—jesting with friends, playing with children. He still feels the “night of loss” in his “inner day” but can find pleasure in others. LXVII At night when immersed in sleep, the poet can picture the moonlight falling across Hallam’s grave. The marble headstone, having the beloved name and showing the years on earth, looms before him. LXVIII In the first dream, the poet feels that Death comes upon him and regulates his breathing like Death’s companion, Sleep, is wont to do. He then dreams of walking with Hallam when their friendship was new, When all our path was fresh with dew.” He observes a mote of sadness in

Hallam’s eye. When he wakes, he realizes he was projecting his own sadness over Hallam’s death into the dream. LXIX The poet dreams that Spring will never come again and “Nature’s ancient power was lost.” Like Christ, in the dream the poet puts on a crown of thorns and wanders through a town filled with hostile people who jeer and mock him. An angel speaks to him in a voice he cannot understand, but the angel smiles at the crown. LXX In the gloom of half-sleep the poet tries to remember Hallam’s face but finds it difficult. Only after he sinks fully into that unconscious state does the vision emerge. LXXI Sleep, which is the relative of trance and madness and death, brings memories of an 1830 trip undertaken by the poet and Hallam to the Pyrenees. The poet remembers their walks and conversations of “men and minds, the dust of change.” LXXII It is the first anniversary of Hallam’s death. On this day living flowers falter and die, the daisy shuttering its petals. The day is “as wan, as chill, as wild as snow” and seems “mark’d with some hideous crime.” The poet hopes the hours of the day will progress quickly: “Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day.” LXXIII There are many worlds and many things to do within them. The poet thought he needed Hallam here, but perhaps Hallam has a higher purpose elsewhere. LXXIV In his mind’s eye the poet looks on Hallam’s face and sees kinship with “the great of old.” He does not want to say exactly what he sees, but Death has made “His darkness beautiful with thee.”

LXXV The poet does not use verse to express his grief even though it brings relief, leaving it to be guessed how great Hallam was. There is no need to cry out; now “silence will guard thy fame.” Wherever Hallam is now, though, he is without doubt doing something that is “wrought with tumult of acclaim.” LXXVI Using one’s wings of fancy, imagine all of heaven is “sharpen’d to a needle’s end” and all of time can be glimpsed. Then even the songs of the greatest and most venerated poets are useless and will wither. What then does that say about the poems of the last fifty years? LXXVII There seems little hope for “modern rhyme” when one looks at the vast expanse of time. These poems can serve small purposes, like binding books or lining boxes, but they are ultimately forgotten. However, the poet says he will not stop composing them because they give vent to his sorrow: “My darken’d ways / Shall ring with music all the same; / To breathe my loss is more than fame.” LXXVIII It is the second Christmas after Hallam’s death. There is a quiet sense ...