Poetry
In Memoriam A. H. H.
Alfred Tennyson · 1850
Opening lines
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;
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A young poet learns of the sudden death, in Vienna, of his dearest friend, who was engaged to his sister. In short poems, he speaks to the old yew of a graveyard whose roots enclasp the dead and returns at dawn to the front of the London house where his friend lived. Three Christmases mark the passing of the years, the last far from the house of his childhood. Faced with an indifferent nature, which lets whole species vanish, he doubts God and the survival of the soul, and seeks what remains of a lost love.
Context
The pieces were written from 1833 to 1850 and gathered into one hundred and thirty-one sections, framed by a prologue dated 1849 and an epilogue; two sections were added after the first edition. All follow the same stanza of four tetrameters rhymed abba, which has since carried the name of the poem. The book was published by Edward Moxon in 1850 without the author's name, in the very year he was appointed poet laureate. He had read Lyell's Principles of Geology, and the poem seeks to reconcile faith with what science said about the extinction of species. After the death of Prince Albert, in 1861, Queen Victoria found comfort in it.
Who it is for
Nearly three thousand lines of verse; translated into French verse as early as 1898, then in bilingual editions in 1938 and 2008.
Prizes and reception
An immediate bestseller; two of its lines on lost love have passed into proverb in the English language.
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