Fair ship, that from the Italian shoreSailest the placid ocean-plainsWith my lost Arthur’s loved remains,Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er. So draw him home to those that mournIn vain; a favourable speedRuffle thy mirror’d mast, and leadThro’ prosperous floods his holy urn. All night no ruder air perplexThy sliding keel, till Phosphor, brightAs […]

A happy lover who has comeTo look on her that loves him well,Who ‘lights and rings the gateway bell,And learns her gone and far from home; He saddens, all the magic lightDies off at once from bower and hall,And all the place is dark, and allThe chambers emptied of delight: So find I every pleasant […]

Dark house, by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street,Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo 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 creepAt earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far […]

One writes, that `Other friends remain,’That `Loss is common to the race’—And common is the commonplace,And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not makeMy own less bitter, rather more:Too common! Never morning woreTo evening, but some heart did break. O father, wheresoe’er thou be,Who pledgest now thy gallant son;A shot, […]

I sometimes hold it half a sinTo put in words the grief I feel;For words, like Nature, half revealAnd half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain,A use in measured language lies;The sad mechanic exercise,Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,Like coarsest clothes against the […]

To Sleep I give my powers away;⁠My will is bondsman to the dark;⁠I sit within a helmless bark,And with my heart I muse and say: O heart, how fares it with thee now,⁠That thou should’st fail from thy desire,⁠Who scarcely darest to inquire,‘What is it makes me beat so low?’ Something it is which thou hast […]

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,O Priestess in the vaults of Death,O sweet and bitter in a breath,What whispers from thy lying lip? ‘The stars,’ she whispers, `blindly run;A web is wov’n across the sky;From out waste places comes a cry,And murmurs from the dying sun: ‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands—With all the music in her […]

Old Yew, which graspest at the stonesThat name the under-lying dead,Thy fibres net the dreamless head,Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again,And bring the firstling to the flock;And in the dusk of thee, the clockBeats out the little lives of men. O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,Who […]

I held it truth, with him who sings⁠To one clear harp in divers tones,⁠That men may rise on stepping-stonesOf their dead selves to higher things. But who shall so forecast the years⁠And find in loss a gain to match?⁠Or reach a hand thro’ time to catchThe far-off interest of tears? Let Love clasp Grief lest […]

Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam died aged 22 in 1833. In 1850 Tennyson published “In Memoriam AHH” which contained poems written over the intervening years, now brought together in one long work. My daughter Eleanor died almost three years ago. I intend to make a pilgrimage through Tennyson’s work, hoping to understand more about the poem […]