In Memoriam

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Title:     In Memoriam
Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson [More Titles by Tennyson]

  XXVII
  I envy not in any moods
    The captive void of noble rage,
    The linnet born within the cage,
  That never knew the summer woods:
  I envy not the beast that takes                            5
    His license in the field of time,
    Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
  To whom a conscience never wakes;
  Nor, what may count itself as blest,
    The heart that never plighted troth                     10
    But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
  Nor any want-begotten rest.
  I hold it true, whate'er befall;
    I feel it, when I sorrow most;
    'Tis better to have loved and lost                      15
  Than never to have lov'd at all.

  LXIV
  Dost thou look back on what hath been,
    As some divinely gifted man,
    Whose life in low estate began
  And on a simple village green;
  Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,                      5
    And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
    And breasts the blows of circumstance,
  And grapples with his evil star;
  Who makes by force his merit known
    And lives to clutch the golden keys,                    10
    To mould a mighty state's decrees,
  And shape the whisper of the throne;
  And moving up from high to higher,
    Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
    The pillar of a people's hope,                          15
  The centre of a world's desire;
  Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
    When all his active powers are still,
    A distant dearness in the hill,
  A secret sweetness in the stream,                         20
  The limit of his narrower fate,
    While yet beside its vocal springs
    He play'd at counsellors and kings,
  With one that was his earliest mate;
  Who ploughs with pain his native lea                      25
    And reaps the labour of his hands,
    Or in the furrow musing stands;
  "Does my old friend remember me?"
 
  LXXXIII
  Dip down upon the northern shore,
    O sweet new-year delaying long;
    Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
  Delaying long, delay no more.
  What stays thee from the clouded noons,                    5
    Thy sweetness from its proper place?
    Can trouble live with April days,
  Or sadness in the summer moons?
  Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
    The little speedwell's darling blue,                    10
    Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
  Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
  O thou, new-year, delaying long,
    Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
    That longs to burst a frozen bud                        15
  And flood a fresher throat with song.
 
  LXXXVI
  Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
    That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
    Of evening over brake and bloom
  And meadow, slowly breathing bare
  The round of space, and rapt below                         5
    Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
    And shadowing down the horned flood
  In ripples, fan my brows and blow
  The fever from my cheek, and sigh
    The full new life that feeds thy breath                 10
    Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
  Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
  From belt to belt of crimson seas
    On leagues of odour streaming far,
    To where in yonder orient star                          15
  A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."
 
  CI
  Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,
    The tender blossom flutter down,
    Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
  This maple burn itself away;
  Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,                     5
    Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
    And many a rose-carnation feed
  With summer spice the humming air;
  Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
    The brook shall babble down the plain,                  10
    At noon or when the lesser wain
  Is twisting round the polar star;
  Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
    And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
    Or into silver arrows break                             15
  The sailing moon in creek and cove;
  Till from the garden and the wild
    A fresh association blow,
    And year by year the landscape grow
  Familiar to the stranger's child;                         20
  As year by year the labourer tills
    His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
    And year by year our memory fades
  From all the circle of the hills.
 
  CXIV
  Who loves not Knowledge?  Who shall rail
    Against her beauty?  May she mix
    With men and prosper!  Who shall fix
  Her pillars?  Let her work prevail.
  But on her forehead sits a fire:                           5
    She sets her forward countenance
    And leaps into the future chance,
  Submitting all things to desire.
  Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain--
    She cannot fight the fear of death.                     10
    What is she, cut from love and faith,
  But some wild Pallas from the brain
  Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
    All barriers in her onward race
    For power.  Let her know her place;                     15
  She is the second, not the first.
  A higher hand must make her mild,
    If all be not in vain; and guide
    Her footsteps, moving side by side
  With wisdom, like the younger child:                      20
  For she is earthly of the mind,
    But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
    O friend, who earnest to thy goal
  So early, leaving me behind
  I would the great world grew like thee,                   25
    Who grewest not alone in power
    And knowledge, but by year and hour
  In reverence and in charity.
 
  CXV
  Now fades the last long streak of snow,
    Now burgeons every maze of quick
    About the flowering squares, and thick
  By ashen roots the violets blow,
  Now rings the woodland loud and long,                      5
    The distance takes a lovelier hue,
    And drown'd in yonder living blue
  The lark becomes a sightless song.
  Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
    The flocks are whiter down the vale,                    10
    And milkier every milky sail
  On winding stream or distant sea;
  Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
    In yonder greening gleam, and fly
    The happy birds, that change their sky                  15
  To build and brood, that live their lives
  From land to land; and in my breast
    Spring wakens too; and my regret
    Becomes an April violet,
  And buds and blossoms like the rest.                      20
 
  CXVIII
  Contemplate all this work of Time,
    The giant labouring in his youth;
    Nor dream of human love and truth,
  As dying Nature's earth and lime;
  But trust that those we call the dead                      5
    Are breathers of an ampler day
    For ever nobler ends.  They say,
  The solid earth whereon we tread
  In tracts of fluent heat began,
    And grew to seeming-random forms,                       10
    The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
  Till at the last arose the man;
  Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
    The herald of a higher race,
    And of himself in higher place,                         15
  If so he type this work of time
  Within himself, from more to more;
    Or, crown'd with attributes of woe
    Like glories, move his course, and show
  That life is not as idle ore,                             20
  But iron dug from central gloom,
    And heated hot with burning fears,
    And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
  And batter'd with the shocks of doom
  To shape and use.  Arise and fly                          25
    The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
    Move upward, working out the beast
  And let the ape and tiger die.
 
  CXXIII
  There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
    O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
    There where the long street roars hath been
  The stillness of the central sea.
  The hills are shadows, and they flow                       5
    From form to form, and nothing stands;
    They melt like mist, the solid lands,
  Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
  But in my spirit will I dwell,
    And dream my dream, and hold it true;                   10
    For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
  I cannot think the thine farewell.

------
NOTES:

IN MEMORIAM

The poem, _In Memoriam_, in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, was published in 1850, at first anonymously, but the authorship was not long in doubt.

Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the historian, was born in 1811. He entered Eton in 1822, and remained there until 1827, when he went to Cambridge. There he met Alfred Tennyson, and the two young men formed a friendship for one another, broken only by Hallam's early death. In 1832, he graduated from Cambridge, became engaged to Emily Tennyson, the sister of Alfred, and entered on the study of law. In 1833, he had a severe illness and after his recovery was taken by his father for a tour on the Continent, in the hope of restoring his health. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells the story of his death: "A severe bout of influenza weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and to recover his strength, one of his usual attacks apparently returned upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it; so that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a short rest. Mr. Hallam sat down to write his letters, and it was only by slow and imperceptible degrees that a certain anxiety, in consequence of Arthur's stillness and silence, dawned upon his mind; he drew near to ascertain why he had not moved nor spoken, and found that all was over." The body was brought back to England and buried in Clevedon Church, on the banks of the Severn.

The effect upon Tennyson of the death of Arthur Hallam was overwhelming. For a time it "blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and comfort to his sister." Under the influence of this great sorrow he wrote _The Two Voices_, _Ulysses_, "_Break, Break, Break_," and began that exquisite series of lyric poems, afterwards joined together in the _In Memoriam_. His friendship for Hallam remained throughout life with him as one of his most precious possessions.

The poems in the text are selected from the _In Memoriam_, and have a more or less close connection with each other. It is better, however, to regard each poem as a separate poem, without any attempt to place it in its relation to the _In Memoriam_ as a whole.

The best annotated edition of _In Memoriam_ is that by A. C. Bradley (Macmillan). Other useful editions are edited by Wallace (Macmillan), and by Robinson (Cambridge Press). Elizabeth B. Chapman's _Companion to In Memoriam_ (Macmillan), contains the best analysis of the poem.

XXVII

"The very memory of such an affection as he had cherished for Hallam is an inspiration. Keen and acute as the sense of loss may be, it purifies rather than destroys the influence of a hallowed love--its effect is to idealize and sanctify. This general truth is enforced by several illustrations."--_Henry E. Shepherd_.

2. NOBLE RAGE. Fierce love of freedom.

6. HIS LICENSE. "Lives without law, because untroubled by the promptings of a higher nature."

6. FIELD OF TIME. The term of his natural life.

12. WANT-BEGOTTEN REST. Hallam, Lord Tennyson interprets: "Rest--the result of some deficiency or narrowness."

16. NEVER TO HAVE LOVED. Life is enriched by the mere act of having loved.

LXIV

"Still brooding on all the possible relations of his old friend to the life and the love that he has left, the poet now compares him to some genius of lowly birth, who should leave his obscure home to rise to the highest office of state, and should sometimes in the midst of his greatness, remember, as in a dream, the dear scenes of old, and it may be, the humble villager who was his chosen playmate."--Elizabeth R. Chapman.

1. DOST THOU, ETC. This section was composed by Tennyson when he was walking up and down the Strand and Fleet Street in London.

5. INVIDIOUS BAR. Obstacle to success. Invidious is used in the sense of "offensive."

7. CIRCUMSTANCE. Adverse circumstances.

9. BY FORCE. Strength of character and will.

10. GOLDEN KEYS. Keys of office of state.

11. MOULD. As a minister of the Crown.

14. CROWNING SLOPE. A felicitous phrase. If it were a precipice it could not be climbed.

15. PILLAR. That on which they build, and which supports them.

21. NARROWER. When he was still in his "low estate."

28. REMEMBER ME. Bradley notes that "the pathetic effect is increased by the fact that in the two preceding stanzas we are not told that his old friend does remember him."

LXXXIII

"With the dawning of the New Year, fresh hope quickens in the poet's breast. He would fain hasten its laggard footsteps, longing for the flowers of spring and for the glory of summer. Can trouble live in the spring--the season of life and love and music? Let the spring come, and he will sing 'for Arthur a sweeter, richer requiem.'"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

1. NORTHERN SHORE. Robertson explains: "The north being the last to be included in the widening circle of lengthening daylight as it readies further and further down from the equator."

2. NEW-YEAR. The natural, not the calendar year. The re-awakening of life in nature.

5. CLOUDED NOONS. From the noons, which are still clouded.

6. PROPER. Own.

9. SPIRE. Flowering spikes.

10. SPEEDWELL. "The Germander Speedwell is a slender, wiry plant, whose stem sometimes creeps along the surface of the ground before it grows upwards. The flowers have four small petals of the brightest blue, and within the flower at the foot of the petals is a small white circle, with a little white eye looking up. Two stamens with crimson heads rise from this white circle, and in the very centre of the flower there is a tiny green seed-vessel, with a spike coming out of the top."--_C. B. Smith_.

12. LABURNUMS.

"And all the gold from each laburnum chain
Drops to the grass." --_To Mary Boyle_.

 

LXXXVI

"I can open my being also to the reviving influences of Nature--as on a certain evening, balmy and glorious after the rain, when the breeze seemed as if it might breathe new life, and waft me across the seas away from the land of doubt and death to some far off sphere of more than earthly peace,"--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

1. SWEET AFTER SHOWERS, ETC. This poem was written at Barmouth.

1. AMBROSIAL. Ambrosia was the food of the immortal gods. The wind was from the west and was "divinely reviving."

4. BREATHING BARE. Making the horizon bare of clouds.

5. RAPT. Violent motion is not implied.

6. DEWY-TASSEL'D. From the showers.

7. HORNED FLOOD. Between two promontaries.

9. SIGH. "Impart as by a breath or sigh."

10. NEW LIFE. Due to the new friendship.

11. DOUBT AND DEATH. These have up to this time haunted him.

13. FROM BELT, ETC. Tennyson explains: "The west wind rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star."

16. WHISPER "PEACE." Stopford Brooke says of this poem: "Each verse is linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, swelling as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything be more impassioned and yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of youth and the nobleness of manhood's sacred joy."

CI

"In the garden, looking round on tree and shrub and flower and brook--all the friends of many years--a fresh pang comes with the sight of each. All these will be unwatched, unloved, uncared for; till, perhaps, they find a home in a stranger's heart, growing dear to him and his, while the memory fades of those who love them now."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

10. THE BROOK. The brook at Somersby flowed past the bottom of the parsonage grounds. It is constantly mentioned in Tennyson's poems. Hallam Tennyson says that the charm and beauty of the brook haunted his father through life.

11. LESSER WAIN. Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear; a small constellation containing the pole star. Wain means "wagon," another name for the constellation.

14. HERN AND CRAKE. Heron and corn-crake.

21. LABOURER. He does not move away, but stays always there.

22. GLEBE. Soil.

CXIV

"The world now is all for the spread of knowledge: and I should be the last to demur. But knowledge has an ardent impetuosity, which in its present immature condition may be fraught with many perils. Knowledge by itself, so far from being of necessity heavenly, may even become devilish in its selfish violence. Everything depends upon its being held in due subordination to those higher elements in our nature which go to make wisdom. Would that the ideal aim of our education were to produce such as he was, in whom every increase in intellectual ability was accompanied by the growth of some finer grace of the spirit."--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

4. HER PILLARS. "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars."--_Proverbs_ 9: 1.

5. A FIRE. The fire of inspiration.

6. SETS. Hard, like a flint.

6. FORWARD. Bold, without reverence.

7. CHANCE. Of success.

8. TO DESIRE. Governed by passion, without restraint or self-control.

10. FEAR OF DEATH. Knowledge does not know what is beyond the grave and therefore fears death.

11. CUT FROM LOVE, ETC. Wallace says: "Knowledge, in its own nature, can have no love, for love is not of the intellect, and knowledge is all of the intellect: so, too, she can have no faith, for faith in its nature is a confession of ignorance, since she believes what she cannot know."

12. PALLAS. Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom among the Greeks, was fabled to have sprung, fully grown and fully armed, from the brain of Zeus. Wild Pallas means "false wisdom."

17. A HIGHER HAND. Wisdom.

23. THY GOAL. The goal of wisdom.

28. REVERENCE, ETC. In faith and love.

CXV

"Another spring has come, and all its lovely sights and sounds wake answering chords in the poet's breast. The life within him stirs and quickens in responsive harmony with the world without. But his regret, too, blossoms like a flower,"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

2. BURGEONS. Buds.

2. MAZE OF QUICK. Quick-set tangle.

3. SQUARES. Fields.

8. SIGHTLESS. Invisible.

14. GREENING. Shining out on the sea.

CXVIII

"Do not believe that man's soul is like mere matter, or has been produced, like lower forms in the earlier ages of the earth, only to perish. Believe that he is destined both to advance to something higher on the earth, and also to develop in some higher place elsewhere, if he repeats the process of evolution by subduing the lower within him to the uses of the higher, whether in peaceful growth or through painful struggle."--_A. C. Bradley_.

2. HIS YOUTH. "Limited time, however old or long, must be always young, compared with the hoary age of eternity."

4. EARTH AND LIME. Flesh and bone.

10. SEEMING-RANDOM. But in reality shaped and guided.

11. CYCLIC STORMS. "Periodic cataclysms," or "storms lasting for whole ages."

16. TYPE. Exemplify.

18. ATTRIBUTES OF WOE. Trial and suffering are the crown of man in this world.

20. IDLE. Useless.

22. HEATED HOT. A reference to the tempering of steel.

26. REELING FAUN. Human beings with horns, a tail, and goats' feet. They were more than half-brutish in their nature.

28. THE APE AND THE TIGER. A reference to the theory of evolution, although Darwin's _Origin of Species_ did not appear until 1859.

CXXIII

"Again the mysterious play of mighty cosmic forces arrests his thought. Everything in the material universe is changing, transient; all is in a state of flux, of motion, of perpetual disintegration or re-integration. But there is one thing fixed and abiding--that which we call spirit--and amid all uncertainty, one truth is certain--that to a loving human soul a parting which shall be eternal is unthinkable."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

4. STILLNESS. Hallam Tennyson remarks that balloonists say that even in a storm the middle sea is noiseless. It is the ship that is the cause of the howling of the wind and the lashing of the storm.

4. CENTRAL SEA. Far from land.

8. LIKE CLOUDS, ETC. A reference to geological changes.

[The end]
Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem: In Memoriam

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