UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGOGICA NACIONAL

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH II – GROUP II

Enrique Hoyos Olier
ESSAY ON POETRY
Natalia Muñoz

TEARS, IDLE TEARS – Alfred Lord Tennyson

In TEARS, IDLE TEARS, the author expresses the melancholy for the past.

For the analysis of the form, the poem is written in blank verse. It has four

five-line stanzas as iambic pentameter except for the first line in the first

stanza. For example,

1. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

In terms of structure, the poem is a self-reflection about the past. The speaker

talks to himself as a way of introspection. First, he thinks about the past

looking at an image that could be the autumn, and then the tears start. In this

case, the autumn refers to something that is gone and just leaves memories.
It is in the first stanza when the speaker introduces the past as the reason for

his tears. The tears come from the depth when he contemplates the autumn

and thinks about “the days that are no more”. He is in a place that gives to him

some memories and the tears represent the melancholy that he has for the past.

The second stanza talks about the lost friendships. It starts talking about the

freshness of a “beam glittering on a sail / that brings our friends up from the

underworld”. It means that the recent melancholy brings the memories of old

friends that won’t be back anymore, these memories are fresh. Nevertheless,

the speaker talks about the sadness that is the consequence of that loss. Both

words “fresh” and “sad” represent the cause and the consequence of his

melancholy.

In the third stanza, the speaker talks about death, but that means the death of

“the days that are no more”. He describes it using the words “sad” and

“strange”. For instance, when a day starts and a person knows that the events

of that day as “The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds” are going to be done

just once. They are going to happen for the first time but strangely they are not

going to happen again never more and that is how the days die. It is at the

same time strange like a paradox, but it is also sad.

Finally, in the last stanza the speaker continues talking about death as the days

that happened and are gone. There are some elements in this stanza as for

example the “kisses after death” that mean the comforts that a person creates

when the melancholy for the past appears. Also, the speaker reiterates of the

depth that he talks in the first stanza, but in this case, he makes an image of

the tears as depth as love. That love can be also the consequence of the tears,

the love and the regret for the past. When the speaker talks about “Death in

Life” he refers of that each day that is gone is a day in which people are

slowly dying.

In conclusion, it is evident that the speaker talks about melancholy for the past

and the days that are gone. The poem has at the end of each stanza the phrase

“the days that are no more”, so that the author is all the time reiterating of the

past and the melancholy of the things that are not going to happen anymore.