In Memoriam

My selections from the poem show the speaker's (we can say Tennyson's) whole grieving process. Trace this through the selected sections. Note especially the Christmases and the two "Dark House" sections (7 and 119). TRY to relate sound to sense in doing this.

Start – 19: Here, the speaker starts off sort of addressing God and/or Jesus. “We” means not just him, but all of mankind. Here he is talking about the meaning of life, as man “thinks he is not made to die” It seems the speaker believes in God, but has less faith in religion, saying “Our little systems have their day;//They have their day and cease to be;//They are but broken lights of thee” The speaker seems to still trust in this higher power though, and asks it to forgive him his grief.
As we continue, the speaker talking about ways in which others deal with death, such as in Stanza 1, where he says “That men may rise on stepping stones//Of their dead selves to higher things.” Essentially taking what work we see from our predecessors and use it to help us learn. Then he asks though “But who shall so forecast the years//And find in loss a gain to match?” Meaning with all the great losses through the years, does what we gain from them really even out in comparison? The speaker feels that it doesn’t. The speaker is looking for ways to cope with his loss.
He envies the yew tree, Stanza 2, which never changes in its resting place amongst death.
Stanza 3, he considers accepting sorrow as it is, or “crushing” it, which to me means ignoring or denying it.
Stanza 4, he again talks of denying his sorrow, “’Thou shalt not be the fool of loss!’”
Stanza 5, he admits to “sometimes hold it half a sin//To put in words the grief [he] feels” He doesn’t even want to talk about it.
Stanza 6, “One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’//That ‘Loss is common to the race’” and while the speaker finds this true, he finds it no comfort. There are other friends, but those are not his lost friend.
The speaker actually visits his friend’s old house, “Dark house” in Stanza 7. He awoke early to visit it and think about the man he will never clasp his hand again. He notices that “He is not here; but far away//The noise of life begins again” Life keeps going on.
Stanza 8, he compares missing his friend to a man missing his lover. He resolves however to continue with a poem “since it pleased a vanished eye”
Stanza 9 is about the sailing of his friend’s body back to England. Something I really like here is how he called Hallam “my Arthur” showing a great loyalty as Tennyson is a man who obviously enjoyed the Arthurian legends. What’s curious is what role does he feel he takes to his Arthur?
Stanza 10, keeps on about the boat and how it brings many things to the country, including “a vanished life”.
Stanza 11, keeps talking about calm and peace, but again references the ship carrying his dead friend. Even the speaker’s own calm, “If any calm, a calm despair” Which makes it seem consolable at least.
Stanza 12, again mentions the ship, this time the speaker takes the form of a dove metaphorically and searches out the ship where his friend lies. He asks “Is this the end?” he must be ready to see the burial and try to mend his heart. Not to say the mending will happen quickly.
Stanza 13, he obviously very much wanted this ship to come so the burial could finally happen. This time as he waits he compares his lose again with a man having lost not just a lover, but a wife. We can clearly see, this Hallam was like a brother to him.
Stanza 14, he doesn’t believe his friend will return to him alive, but he admits that if his friend walked off the boat fully alive and just as he’d last seen him, “[He] should not feel it to be strange.” This shows us that he is still deep down holding out some hope.
Stanza 15, here I wonder if he isn’t suggesting that nature itself is mourning now.
Stanza 19 compares his keeping his feelings inside of himself to the dammed Wye river. When it becomes vocal, he allows himself to as well.
I think part of the reason he kept wanting the ship to come related to him thinking that once the burial happened, that he could really get over his mourning or truly start to mourn instead of simply miss his friend badly.

28 – 30: Here the speaker has reached his first Christmas without his friend. The songs do not cheer him, “Swell out and fail, as is a door,//Were shut between me and the sound.” The bells make him want “no more to wake” almost. He hates that they’re still keeping Christmas even as in mourning. He has no urge to please the spirits of Christmas as “They too will die.” It sounds like the whole family is faking it through this Christmas, “We gamboled, making a vain pretense//Of gladness, with an awful sense//Of one mute Shadow watching all.” This is the first time it seems he mourns with others.

50 – 56: The speaker seems to be accepting that his friend is gone, hoping the dead man can be with him in spirit when he needs him, “Be near me when my light is low,//When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick” Again, he revisits the concept that nothing was created in vain, “That not a worm is cloven in vain” and everything has some reason to exist. The speaker does not see his reason however. He questions his faith, but considers whether it’s God or Nature who is doing him wrong. “Are God and nature so at strife,//That Nature lends such evil dreams?” He purposes that man was made by Nature and not of God so life actually has no purpose, “O life as futile, then, as frail!”

70: He seems scared of forgetting his friend. “I cannot see the features right” but he also realizes that his vision is hindered by the depression he’s feeling. “When on the gloom I strive to paint//The face I know” But when he looks within himself, he can see his friend clearly.

78 – 83: Another Christmas time, they play their games and the speaker feels that they do all still feel “the quiet sense of something lost.” This time, no one cried or showed pain any longer. It seems like they might all be dealing better, realizing they have mourned long already, “with long use her tears are dry.” The speaker does not blame Death for his friend’s passing, as such things are natural. “Nor blame I Death, because he bare//The use of virtue out of earth”. Then the following Spring, he talks about the flowers and the new year “Delaying long, delay no more” The speaker thinks that his sadness cannot follow him into the spring months. “Can trouble live with April days?//Or sadness in the summer moons?”

95: In this summery time, the speaker was struck to read old letters from his dead friend. He still felt a same connection to the man, “And all at once it seemed at last//The living soul was flashed on mine.” This seemed to actually fill him with joy. It was to him as though his friend was still there with him.

104 – 108: We start this section with another Christmas. It seems like he is in a different place from the past holidays mentioned. The family lapses on their holiday customs, “tonight ungathered let us leave//This laurel, let this holly stand” Though it isn’t said to be out of mourning, but that the family seems to have fallen out of practice. With the ringing bells at the New Year, the speaker hopes to be able to set let his mourning go, “Ring out, wild bells, and let him go.” When his friend’s birthday comes, the celebrate it instead of using the day to mourn, “With festal cheer,//With books and music, surely we//Will drink to him, whate’er he be.” It seems the speaker is starting to step back out into the world now. “I will not shut me from my kind”

119 – 120: Again we visit the house of his lost friend. It isn’t quite the same dreary visit, this time he hears “a chirp of birds” and sees “Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn//A light blue lane of early dawn” as though the world is awakening again and not just moving past. He leaves it, giving his friend a blessing as he goes. He comments on science and Darwin’s theory of evolution, but it seems our speaker as gotten himself back to his faith, “Let him, the wiser man who springs//hereafter, up from childhood shape//His action like the greater ape,//But I was born to other things.”

126 – Epilogue: He is obviously much more secure in his thinking and is past the pained depression of his mourning. The speaker talks of his love for his friend and how this love makes him more secure and happy. He feels that though his friend is gone, with his love for him, the man will never truly leave him, “I prosper, circled with thy voice;//I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.” In the end, we come back to the marriage of the speaker’s sister, his dead friend’s wife. The speaker expresses no ill will toward the couple and even wonders about the children their union will bring. “For all we thought and loved and did,//And hoped, and suffered, is but seed//Of what in them is flower and fruit”