Lord Alfred
Tennyson
Women in Waiting and
Poet in Mourning &
Doubts
Outline
• Introduction
• Waiting:
– ”Tithonus”
– “Mariana”
– “The Lady of Shalott”(group presentation; a
female artist who has to die to join society)
• Mourning & Doubts:
– “Tears, Idle Tears”
– “In Memoriam” (51, 54-57)
Introduction
Tennyson
(1809-1892)
Suffering from Fears and Doubts
• Born of a family ridden with epilepsy,
alcoholism, drugs and early deaths.
• 1832 Poems (including "Mariana“ and “Lady of
Shalott”)
• Bitter Years of Fears (1832-1850):
• negative reviews of 1832 Poems
• death of Arthur Hallam 1833
“fears that he might become a victim of epilepsy,
madness, alcohol, and drugs, as others in his
family had, or even that he might die like Hallam,…”
Work: "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur," "Tithonus,"
"Tiresias," "Break, break, break"
Upward turn
• Poems (1842) –one volume with poems
radically revised, one poems inspired by
Hallam’s death
– A few stays in a hydropathical hospital.
– More money from an insurance policy and
government pension; no worry over epilepsy
– 1850 --marrying Emily Sellwood (whom he
was engaged with since 1936).
• In Memoriam (1850) Poet Laureate
Aurora e Titone by
Francesco de Mura. Aurora
was the Roman equivalent
of Eos and often substitutes
her as Tithonus’s consort.
”Tithonus”
Tithonus
• Composed in 1833, published in 1860.
• Structure:
– I. Tinthonus “a white-hair’d shadow” consumed by
immortality (unlike the mortal beings on earth)
– II. The past recounted (“this gray shadow, once a
man”) and release pleaded (“Let me go.”
– III. Eros described (the effects of dawn)
– IV. “The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts”
I used to be changed by you and your balmy
kisses
-- V How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Tithonus: Discussion Questions
• Reading this poem as a dramatic
monologue, how do you interpret the
silence of Eros? And the one of the
speaker?
• How is the poem compared with “Ulysses,”
“Ozymandias” or “The Blessed Damozel”
in their different treatments of mortality
and human wishes?
“Mariana”
(1830)
Illustration by William Britten..
1) “…lines 9 through 12 of
Tennyson's poem were used
for the catalog description
of the painting”
2) Millais—more sexualized
(Wikipedia)
“Mariana”
(1830)
Mariana" by Sir John Everett Millais (1851).
© Tate
“Mariana”:
• Background
– The poem-- inspired by Shakespeare's play
Measure for Measure.
– The woman depicted, Mariana, was rejected
by her fiancé after her dowry was lost, and
lives a solitary life yearning for lost love.
• Structure
– 7 stanzas, 1, 4, 6 about M’s experience during
day time, while the rest is set in the evening.
“Mariana”: Discussion Q’s
• Pay attention to the image clusters; for
instance, that of decay and of sounds.
• Why can she hear the sounds of crow,
cock, oxen, and the creaking of the doors?
(“Unlifted was the clinking latch.”)
• Why is poplar mentioned twice in the
poem?
• How does the poem end? Are there clues
in the previous stanza for this ending?
“Tears, Idle Tears”
“Tears, Idle Tears”: Discussion Q’s
• Why are the tears “idle”?
• Try to find the paradoxical adjectives used
in the poem? What kind of “dead” past
does the poem describe? Why is it “sad,”
“dear,” “strange” and “Death in life”?
• How is this poem, in its views of the past,
compared with “Music, When soft voices
die” or “When the Lamp Is Shattered” by
Shelley
Tears, idle tears
Seasonal
changes
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
mortality
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Tears, idle tears
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds Mortal ears
and eyes
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Past love
Background
• “… the idea for this poem came to him
when he was at Tintern Abbey, not far
from Hallam’s burial place” (source).
• Compare “Tintern Abbey” and “Tears” in
terms of their treatments of the loss of the
joys of youth.
– That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense (“Tintern Abbey”)
'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all’
(XXVII)
IN MEMORIAM
Reception
• To the most perceptive of the Victorians (and to
modern readers) the poem was moving for its
dramatic recreation of a mind indisposed to deal
with the problems of contemporary life, and for
the sheer beauty of so many of its sections.
• To a more naive, and far larger, group of
readers it was a work of real utility, to be read
like the Bible as a manual of consolation, and it
is surely to that group that the poem owed its
almost unbelievable popularity. (source)
Discussion Points
I) Be near me when my light is low,…
-- When is company best needed?
-- What state is the speaker in? How does
he describe human beings?
“…the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.”
“men the flies of latter spring,…
Discussion Points
54) Life and God--purposeful or purposeless?
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,…
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
…
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
Struggling between
God and Nature
55) Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
…
I falter where I firmly trod,
…
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
56) Nature  Man  Answer?
'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.