In Memoriam

The name Tennyson looms large in the world of poetry. But I hadn’t read his poetry until recently, when I picked up a copy of “In Memoriam.” “In Memoriam” is a series of 131 poems (plus a prologue and epilogue) Tennyson wrote for his friend, Arthur Hallam. Hallam died suddenly at 22 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Besides being Tennyson’s close friend, Hallam was engaged to Tennyson’s sister. Tennyson was sunk with Titanic grief, which he memorialized in this series of poems.

I became acquainted with “In Memoriam” from (of all things) a move—Hellboy II: The Golden Army. One of the characters, Abraham Sapien, quotes section 50 from “In Memoriam”:

Be near me when my light is low,
      When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
      And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
      Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
      And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

“And all the wheels of Being slow”… “Time, a maniac scattering dust”… What imagery! I was hooked! I quickly Googled the lines I could remember and ordered a copy. I’ve read 92 of the poems (plus the prologue) so far. By section 2, I knew this was going on my list of favorites.

In the course of these poems, Tennyson explores such a spectrum of grief—rage, bitterness, questioning, faith and hope, fond memories, and sun-snuffing sorrow. I dare say he has a poem for anything a grieving person might feel. While the language is Victorian (thee and thou appear frequently), the experience of loss touches every age.

For the interested reader, you can find selections of “In Memoriam” at Poetry Magazine’s site. For now, I leave you with section 7 below:

Dark house, by which once more I stand
         Here in the long unlovely street,
         Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more—
         Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
         And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
         The noise of life begins again,
         And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.