Read Ebook: A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' by Gatty Alfred

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Ebook has 806 lines and 25900 words, and 17 pages

He knows the "lesser grief" that can be told, also the "deeper anguish which cannot be spoken:" his spirits are thus variably affected.

In his lighter mood, he laments as servants mourn for a good master who has died:

"It will be hard, they say, to find Another service such as this."

But he is also visited by a sense of deeper deprivation, such as children feel when they lose a father, and

"see the vacant chair, and think, How good! how kind! and he is gone."

This Poem opens as if Hallam's grave was in the churchyard, where grasses waved; but it was not so, he was buried inside Clevedon church.

The Poet imagines the reproofs, with which passers-by will visit him for his unrestrained grief. He would "make weakness weak:" would parade his pain to court sympathy, and gain credit for constancy; and another says, that a display of private sorrow is quite inappropriate at times, when great political changes impend, and Science every month is evolving some new secret.

He replies, that his song is but like that of the linnet--joyous indeed when her brood first flies, but sad when the nest has been rifled of her young.

For "four sweet years," from flowery spring to snowy winter, they had lived in closest friendship;

"But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope,"

"the Shadow fear'd of man," grim Death, "broke our fair companionship."

Hallam died on the 15th September, 1833, and the survivor, eagerly pursuing, can find him no more, but

"thinks, that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me."

His own spirit becomes darkened by gloomy apprehensions of superimpending calamity.

Feeling his extreme loneliness, yet "breaking into songs by fits" , he wanders sometimes to where the cloaked Shadow is sitting--Death,

"Who keeps the keys of all the creeds"--

inasmuch as only when we die shall we know the whole truth; and "falling lame" on his way, that is, stumbling in his vain enquiries as to whence he came and whither he is going, he can only grasp one feeling, which is, that all is miserably changed since they were in company--friends enjoying life together, travelling in foreign lands, and indulging in scholarly communion on classic subjects.

But, after all, was their happiness perfect? No, the very sun, the "fount of Day," has spots on its surface--"wandering isles of night." If all had been wholly good and fair, this earth would have remained the Paradise it has never looked, "since Adam left his garden," as appears in the earlier editions; but now the line runs,

"Since our first sun arose and set."

Does "the haze of grief" then magnify the past, as things look larger in a fog? Or does his present lowness of spirits set the past in relief, as projections are more apparent when you are beneath them? Or is the past from being far off always in glory, as distance lends enchantment to the view; and so the world becomes orbed

"into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein?"

We are told that, if we were placed in the moon, we should see the Earth as--"the perfect star"--having a shining surface, and being thirteen times larger than the moon itself.

All he knows is, that whilst with Hallam, there was Life. They went side by side, and upheld the daily burden.

He himself moved light as a carrier bird in air, and delighted in the weight he bore because Love shared it; and since he transferred half of every pain to his dear companion, he himself was never weary in either heart or limb.

Dismal and dreary as life has become, he nevertheless wishes to live, if only to prove the stedfastness of his affection. And he asks that if the all-seeing Eye, which already perceives the future rottenness of the living tree, and the far off ruin of the now standing tower, can detect any coming indifference in him--any failure of Love--then may the "Shadow waiting with the keys" "shroud me from my proper scorn;" may Death hide me from my own self-contempt!

The morn breaks over Indian seas, because they are to the east of us.

He neither envies the cage-born bird "that never knew the summer woods," and is content without liberty; nor the beast that lives uncontrolled by conscience; nor the heart that never loved; "nor any want-begotten rest," that is, repose arising from defective sensibility.

On the contrary,

"I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."

The Poem seems to halt here, and begin afresh with a description of Christmastide.

Christmas Eve at Somersby, and possibly at the end of the year 1833. If so, throughout the year he had been at ease, until the blow came--he had "slept and woke with pain," and then he almost wished he might never more hear the Christmas bells.

But a calmer spirit seems to come over him: as he listens to the Christmas peals rung at four neighbouring churches, and the sound soothes him with tender associations:

"But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controll'd me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule."

Yule is Christmas, a jubilee which brings glad tidings of great joy to all people.

Having such "compelling cause to grieve" over the decease of Hallam,

"as daily vexes household peace"--

for death is ever invading some home--how can they venture to keep Christmas Eve as usual? He is absent, who when amongst them was so eminently social. But it must be done. "Use and wont," "old sisters of a day gone by," still demand what has been customary. "They too will die," and new habits succeed.

To the fourteenth chapter of Walter Scott's "Pirate," there is the following motto from "Old Play," which meant Scott's own invention:

"We'll keep our customs. What is law itself But old establish'd custom? What religion Save the good use and wont that carries them To worship how and where their fathers worshipp'd? All things resolve to custom. We'll keep ours."

The Christian festival proceeds, and there is the family gathering, with such games as are common at this season; but sadness weighs on all, for they entertain "an awful sense of one mute shadow"--Hallam's wraith--being present and watching them.

They sit in silence, then break into singing

"A merry song we sang with him Last year."

This seems to identify the time to be Christmas, 1833, as Hallam died on 15th September, 1833, but was not buried until January, 1834.

They comfort themselves with the conviction that the dead retain "their mortal sympathy," and still feel with those they have left behind. The soul, a "keen seraphic flame," pierces

"From orb to orb, from veil to veil,"

and so traverses the universe.

Was the anniversary of our Saviour's birth ever hailed in terms more sublime and beautiful!

"Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born."

The mind of the poet has now taken a more strictly religious view of the situation; and he would like to learn the secrets of the grave from the experience of Lazarus.

Did Lazarus in death yearn to hear his sister Mary weeping for him? If she asked him, when restored to life, where he was during his four days of entombment;

"There lives no record of reply,"

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