ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892)

In Memoriam A. H. H.

This poem expresses Tennyson’s grief for his friend Arthur Hallam. Overwhelmed by doubts about his own life and
the meanings of the universe, the poet confirms his faith in a variety of feelings and reflexions that develops from
despair to some sort of hope. When Arthur Hallam died at the age of twenty-two, probably of stroke, Tennyson felt
that his life had been shattered. The verses deal the poet’s attempt to accept his loss and to assert his belief in life
and in afterlife.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII

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 know not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou are just.

Thou seemst 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 days;

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 seemed my sin in me,

What seemed 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.

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The wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And failing with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
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O living will that halt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow through our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years
To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,

The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.

Mariana
“Mariana in the moated grange.”
Measure for measure
WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, 'The night is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'