Poetry for Students

210 Poetry for Students

follows a logical rhetorical structure, establishing

God’s greatness in the first three stanzas, then ex-

plaining the problem of free will, then explaining

how faith can be used to help humans deal with

things they cannot know, and finally referring to the

speaker’s personal grief over the death of his friend,

which has been the unexamined reason behind all of

these ruminations about existence. This monologue

addresses God often, indicating it means to invoke

God, to ask Him for help; but the poem can also be

read as a display of the mental process through which

grief takes a human mind in its quest for consolation.

Historical Context

Victoria and Albert

Tennyson is the poet most closely associated

with the reign of Queen Victoria, and this poem in

particular is considered representative of the Vic-

torian age. Victoria was born in 1819, and in 1837,

not yet twenty years old, she ascended to the throne

of England, beginning a reign that would last nearly

sixty-five years. She was politically active and in-

volved in the business of running the country, even

from the start.

In 1840 Victoria was married to Albert, her

first cousin. It was an arranged marriage, but Vic-

toria and Albert fell deeply in love and consulted

with each other on all matters. It was Albert who

first read Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H.and

brought it to Victoria’s attention, directly influenc-

ing Tennyson’s 1850 appointment as poet laureate.

Under Albert’s influence, while still in her early

twenties, Victoria changed from a liberal to a con-

servative political attitude, which affected the way

England was governed in both domestic and inter-

national affairs. Victoria and Albert were married

Proem

Compare

&

Contrast

• 1850s:Great Britain is the world’s political and
  economic leader.
  Today:Since the fall of the Soviet Union in
  1991, America is the single remaining super-
  power in the world.


• 1850:Most of the world is agricultural. The fol-
  lowing year, Britain becomes the first nation in
  the world to have the majority of its population
  living in cities.
  Today:Most of the world’s population is clus-
  tered into cities and their surrounding suburbs.


• 1850s:Life expectancy in Great Britain is between
  43 and 47 years. Tennyson lived almost twice this,
  though his friend Arthur Hallam, memorialized
  in this poem, lived less than half the average.
  Today:The average life expectancy for men
  in Great Britain is 75 years old; for women, it
  is 80.


• 1850s:Tea outsells coffee for the first time in
  Great Britain, due in large part to the introduc-

tion of a new custom, afternoon tea, ten years

earlier.

Today:Though an afternoon break is often con-

sidered impractical in the international business

climate, many British citizens still manage to

find time for the traditional tea break.

• 1850s:In a world with no mass media, the per-
  son holding the post of poet laureate is famous
  across Great Britain.
  Today:Poets are not as important to most citi-
  zens as musicians and movie stars; students in-
  terested in finding out about the current poet
  laureate can, however, learn background infor-
  mation within minutes from the Internet.


• 1850s:If Tennyson wants to visit America, he can
  travel from London to New York on the fastest
  clipper ship of the time, arriving in ten days.
  Today:Travelling from London to New York
  on the Concorde can be done in less than three
  and a half hours.

67082 _PFS_V19proem 205 - 236 .qxd 9/16/2003 9:54 M Page 210