In Memoriam A.H.H- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tennyson’s long poem is an intriguing account of his long grief for his departed friend. In the poem, Tennyson expresses his sadness about his friend’s death and at the same time addresses several concerns at the time about humanity, religion and the world of his time. The poem presents conflicts between religion and nature, of which Tennyson resolves to reconcile himself to reality at end of the poem.
Tennyson’s grief exposes the turmoil that he goes through in understanding the nature and religion and the reason for grief in life. This period was also characterized by many questions on science and the nature of God which informs another area of Tennyson’s conflicts. Tennyson wonders why God would give one life only for nature to take it away. These questions on life and death, as well as other questions on science and biology, versus the belief in religion shape the conflict throughout the poem. Mourning for the demise of his friend, he grapples with why God would make life and death and says:
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot/
Is on the skull which thou hast made" (Tennyson 339)
This conflict is resolved when the speaker overcomes his grief and accepts that God, through nature, made man to die and all happens fall perfectly within His divine plan for man. “One God, one law, one element,/And one far-off divine event,/ To which the whole creation moves” (341).The conflict that the speaker experiences in the poem is resolved through acceptance of the reality of life and the recognition of the supremacy of God and unwavering faith in religion.
Works Cited
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. London, Edinburgh, and New Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. 19-32.
