*In Memoriam a.H.H.

In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a stroke in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more. Written over a period of 17 years, it can be seen as reflective of Victorian society at the time, and the poem dicusses many of the issues that were beginning to be questioned. It is the work in which Tennyson reaches his highest musical peaks and his poetic experience comes full circle. It is generally regarded as one of the great poetic works of the British 19th century.

“The Lady of Shalott”

The poem (of which Tennyson wrote two versions: one in 1833, of twenty verses, the other in 1842 of nineteen verses) is based loosely upon a story from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur concerning Elaine of Astolat, a maiden who falls in love with Lancelot, but dies of grief when he cannot return her love. Tennyson returned to the story in “Lancelot and Elaine” (in his 1859 Idylls of the King). However the original story of Elaine is quite different from that of the Lady, who is never named and who is, it seems, not quite human. It begins:

On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro’ the field the road runs by         To many-tower’d Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below,         The island of Shalott.

“The Lotus-Eaters”

A long poem that begins:

‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land, ‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’ In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

“Mariana”

"Mariana of the Moated Grange" first appears in Shakespeare's dark comedy Measure for Measure and is the inspiration for the poem. In Shakespeare's work, Mariana waits in a grange for her lover, who has deserted her. At the end of Shakespeare's work, Mariana is re-united with her lover. However, there is no happy ending in Tennyson's work.

Mariana follows a common theme in much of Tennyson's work: that of despondent isolation. The subject of Mariana is a woman who continuously laments her lack of connection with society. The isolation defines her existence, and her longing for a connection leaves her wishing for death at the end of every stanza. In order to properly portray her horrible plight, Tennyson uses strong imagery to express a parallel between the woman's dilapidated environment and her inner mental/social state. Tennyson's greatest strength may possibly be his ability to create scenery and use this scenery to embody a human's emotional state.

Different stanzas in the poem reflect on either day, night, or her life as a whole. The end result is obvious, that in her current state, hours, days, weeks, months all blend into nothing. They merely create a dull smear of despondency that is her life.

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!’ Upon the middle of the night,    Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light:    From the dark fen the oxen’s low Came to her: without hope of change,    In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,    Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange.    She only said, ‘The day is dreary,      He cometh not,’ she said;    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,      I would that I were dead!’ About a stone-cast from the wall    A sluice with blacken’d waters slept, And o’er it many, round and small,    The cluster’d marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,     All silver-green with gnarled bark:    For leagues no other tree did mark The level waste, the rounding gray.    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,      He cometh not,’ she said;    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,      I would that I were dead!’ And ever when the moon was low,    And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro,    She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low,    And wild winds bound within their cell,    The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow.    She only said, ‘The night is dreary,       He cometh not,’ she said;    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,       I would that I were dead!’

All day within the dreamy house,    The doors upon their hinges creak’d; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse    Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d, Or from the crevice peer’d about.    Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,    Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without.     She only said, ‘My life is dreary,        He cometh not,’ she said;    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,       I would that I were dead!’

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,     The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof    The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour    When the thick-moted sunbeam lay    Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower.    Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,       He will not come,’ she said;    She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,      Oh God, that I were dead!’