Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

In the two other books I've read in this Selected Poems series by Phoenix – Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Burns – I enjoyed the poems but thought the selection was a bit lacking. This was especially true of the Burns one, which omitted a number of the Scot's more famous poems. Happily, no one had blunder'd in this Tennyson selection, which includes 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and an abridged form of 'In Memoriam A. H. H.' (which gave us the phrases Ring out the old, ring in the new" show more and "'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all.", among others).

That said, it was the poems that I was less familiar with which enchanted me the most. 'Break, Break, Break' was a touching short poem about longing for days past, whilst 'Locksley Hall' was a long magisterial piece covering everything from lost love to encroaching death, the torture of memory and the progress of mankind. 'Morte d'Arthur' was a beautifully romantic and chivalric telling of the death of King Arthur and the return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, and 'Come Down, O Maid' was a sweet metaphorical poem encouraging women to stop being so distant and to choose happy love. There was also 'The Lotos-Eaters', in which Odysseus' crew grow tired of adventure and strife ("Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,/Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.") and decide that, although their home remains "far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."

But the best by far is the remarkable 'Ulysses', which again takes the Odyssey as its inspiration and delivers a stirring cry for adventure and aspiration. (Tennyson's poem put me in mind of one of my favourite poems, 'Ithaca' by C. P. Cavafy. What is it about Greek mythology that makes for such great poetry?) Just when you think you've found the poem's best line, an even finer one follows. That, in fact, could be said for the entire collection, which does justice to Tennyson's considerable talent." show less

This is probably the ultimate mid-Victorian poem, everything you need to know about British culture around the time of the Great Exhibition condensed into one novella-length (just under 3000 lines) piece of verse. Reflecting on his reaction to the sudden death of his college friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22 in 1833, Tennyson analyses the process of grieving and recovery, and examines what death means to him in the context of Christian (Anglican) religious ideas and the way they have show more been shaken up by recent scientific discoveries. Fossils, descent from apes, age of the planet, Nature "So careful of the type ... So careless of the single life", and all the rest of it. You name it, it's in there somewhere.

The sections of the poem follow a roughly chronological sequence, starting with the poet reacting to news of his friend's death and following in his imagination the progress of the ship bringing his remains back to Britain, and ending years later with the happy marriage of the poet's sister Emilia, who had been engaged to marry Arthur. Along the way he goes back and forward through different ways of dealing with grief and loss, sometimes depressed and desperate, sometimes reconciled to the idea that "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all."

And of course this is a poem full of lines that have entered the language, from "Nature red in tooth and claw" to "Ring out, wild bells". It was a huge hit in its time, and copies flew off the presses, especially after Queen Victoria announced that she had taken great consolation from it after the death of her husband in 1862. Tennyson ended up with the Laureateship and a peerage, with a standing more like that of a former prime minister than a poet.

Reading it 170 years on, of course there's a lot that feels archaic, and the endless pattern of tetrameter quatrains in ABBA rhyme-scheme can seem a bit mechanical, but there's also a lot in his insight into the way we deal with loss and death that still feels relevant and helpful: I don't suppose many people read this without thinking about the way the poet's reflections would map onto a loss in their own lives, and probably feeling better about it as a result. show less

Rest in peace Arthur 3
I was skeptical going into this at first since it’s a 19th century text and I was curious as to how much Tennyson would change from Malory and earlier works. I really enjoyed it, though. I think it’s beautifully written and I love all the imagery Tennyson uses. Malory’s Grail Quest is still my favorite version of it, but I do still *really* like Tennyson’s take on it. Writing it in past tense and hearing it through Percival instead of reading it as the quest was show more going on was a choice I really liked. The Grail Quest has always felt like the beginning of the end to me and I think Percival’s recollection really adds it that. I also loved the last line of ‘The Last Tournament’ - “And Mordred thought ‘the time is hard at hand’” hell yeah dude it’s your time to shine go kill your dad !!
Also the art in my edition is absolutely gorgeous. The only character that’s drawn different from my mental image of them is Geraint/Erec and the Bedivere and Galahad portraits are my favorite. Also Gawain looks extremely fruity in his but of course he does. show less

I've read bits of In Memoriam before, but never the whole thing.  It's very good.  I liked the bits to do with evolution ("Nature, red in tooth and claw") the most, of course (the epilogue contains some very powerful imagery, and also he mentions dragons at one point!), but my favorite bit was a little bit of business about hands.  First, in Canto LXXX we get:

His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to show more comfort me.

Tennyson's talking about how if he had died and Hallam had lived, Hallam would have handled it much better, and that morbid hypothetical should be his example.  But what a chilling image! "Dead hands to comfort me"? But later, in Canto CXIX, he manages to make this reassuring:

And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand.

Now Hallam's image is a source of comfort and pleasure for him, even if he can never let him go.  The whole book is filled with brilliant intersecting imagery like that. show less