In Memoriam A. H. H 1053lam, Tennyson’s closest friend, in 1833. Hallam was
traveling in Vienna at the time, and Tennyson com-
menced the earliest portions of the poem not long
after receiving news of his friend’s passing. Over the
course of the next 17 years, Tennyson augmented
the poem and rearranged a number of the sections
in order to better fit the speaker’s emotional pro-
gression as he moves from denial to acceptance of
human mortality. Much of the poem’s imagery is
devoted to the poet’s speculation on the major phil-
osophical and scientific questions confronting its
Victorian English readers. In an era of increasingly
bitter confrontations between scientific authorities
and religious leaders, Tennyson’s poem provided
a spiritual response that embodied his Victorian
readers’ doubts and uncertainties. The poem proved
highly inspirational and consoling to the public, and
Queen Victoria cited In Memoriam as a significant
aid in her own emotional struggle with personal
loss after the death of her husband, Prince Albert,
in 1861. Indeed, the poem has proved to be Ten-
nyson’s most critically respected and enduring work,
and it contains two of the most famous phrases in
the English language: “ ’Tis better to have loved and
lost / Than never to have loved at all” (canto 27) and
“Nature, red in tooth and claw” (canto 56).
Joseph Becker
GrIeF in In Memoriam A. H. H.
Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H. illustrates the
poet’s progress in dealing with the grief induced by
the loss of his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, in
September 1833. The poem opens with the poet’s
denial of the possibility that his friend, once so alive
and vibrant, could possibly be consigned to the cargo
hold of a ship that would bear other travelers home
safe and sound to their respective families. Initially,
the poem is filled with images of darkness: The poet
is unable to sleep; he goes by his friend’s now-dark
home in the night; and he takes to imagining the
scene of the churchyard, dominated by a vast yew
tree, where his friend is interred. While some of the
poet’s acquaintances attempt to console him with
the sentiment that death is the common lot of
the human species, the poet does not find solace in
their statements—explicitly demonstrated in stanza
6, where he states, “That loss is common would not
make / my own less bitter, rather more.” Indeed, the
poet reflects that Hallam’s loss is made more poi-
gnant by the fact that his personal grief joins with
that of others since no day goes by without someone
somewhere experiencing loss. Furthermore, he goes
through a range of emotional responses, detailed
throughout the poem but especially in the early
portions, varying from guilt over his survival and
a subdued anger at Hallam’s apparent abandon-
ment of him. The poet knows that such feelings
are ridiculous since his friend had no control over
his sudden passing, and he gradually comes to terms
with his loss as In Memoriam progresses, though
there is always a lingering sense of separation that
he will never fully overcome.
While the poet’s grief does begin to ease as time
goes by, in the middle and later portions of the
poem, the feelings of loss and separation reassert
themselves, as in stanza 38, where life is described
as a lonely course with “prospect and horizon gone.”
A sense of directionless confusion permeates the
poem’s stanzas—reflected perhaps most notably
in their uneven length despite the regularity of
the individual lines’ poetic meter. Thus, the poetic
rhythm created by the meter echoes the eternal cycle
of the natural world, whereas the uneven length of
the various stanzas represent the inevitable turmoil
induced by death’s occurrence despite its own role in
the natural course of events.
Grief imbues itself in the poet’s life again in the
images of calm and peace found in stanza 11. The
calm of this stanza describes the profound seren-
ity that punctuates the stages of grief that the poet
experiences: “Calm is the morn without a sound . . .
Calm and deep peace on this high wold . . . Calm
and still light on yon great plain . . . Calm and deep
peace in this wide air . . . Calm on the seas, and
silver sleep.” In contrast, stanza 15 symbolizes the
psychological turmoil caused by Hallam’s unex-
pected death and the poet’s inability to accept or
comprehend it. The clouds, the forest, and the fear-
ful cattle described in the stanza all reflect the poet’s
inner emotional confusion, from which he will never
completely escape even if his grief fades in intensity
over time.
Indeed, the poet learns to cope and actually
grow intellectually from the emotional and spiritual