In Memoriam A.H.H. is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849.
It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly
of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. Because it was written over a period of 17
years, its meditation on the search for hope after great loss touches upon many of the
most important and deeply felt concerns of Victorian society. It contains some of Tennyson's
most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse.
It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.
The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea
of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and emotions as he grieves over the
death of a close friend. He views the cruelty of nature and mortality in light of materialist
science and faith. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might
not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.
Form The poem is not arranged exactly in the order
in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the
last things written. The earliest material is thought to be that which begins "Fair ship,
that from the Italian shore | Saileth the placid ocean-plains" and imagines the return
of Hallam's body from Italy. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant
to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is
marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem
ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.
"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas
are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of
the work, the meter creates a tonal effect which often divides readers – is it the
natural sound of mourning and grief, or merely monotonous? The poem is divided into 133 cantos,
and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different
subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation,
Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts
to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.
Quotation The most frequently quoted lines in the poem
are perhaps 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. This stanza is to be found in Canto 27. The
last two lines are usually taken as offering a meditation on the dissolution of a romantic
relationship. However, the lines originally referred to the death of the poet's beloved
friend. Another much-quoted phrase from the poem is "nature, red in tooth and claw," found
in Canto 56, referring to humanity: Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed Also, the following are found in Canto 54
So runs my dream, but what am I? An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light And with no language but a cry.
Nature, red in tooth and claw In writing the poem, Tennyson was influenced
by the ideas of evolution presented in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which had
been published in 1844, and had caused a storm of controversy about the theological implications
of impersonal nature functioning without direct divine intervention. The fundamentalist idea
of unquestioning belief in revealed truth taken from a literal interpretation of the
Bible was already in conflict with the findings of science, and Tennyson expressed the difficulties
evolution raised for faith in "the truths that never can be proved".
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;
That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.
This poem was published before Charles Darwin made his theory public in 1859. However, the
phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" in canto 56 quickly was adopted by others as
a phrase that evokes the process of natural selection. It was and is used by both those
opposed to and in favour of the theory of evolution.
However, at the end of the poem, Tennyson emerges with his Christian faith reaffirmed,
progressing from doubt and despair to faith and hope, a dominant theme also seen in his
poem "Ulysses". If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
I hear a voice 'believe no more' And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep; A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.' No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise; Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying knows his father near; Queen Victoria and In Memoriam
The poem was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who after the death of Prince Albert wrote
that she was "soothed & pleased" by it. In 1862 Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson
because she was so impressed by the poem, and when she met him again in 1883 she told
him what a comfort it had been. Other themes
The British literary scholar Christopher Ricks relates the following lines to Tennyson's
childhood home at Somersby Rectory in Somersby, Lincolnshire, particularly the poet's departure
after the death of his father.
Further reading A.C. Bradley, A Commentary on Tennyson's in
Memoriam. London, Macmillan and Co. 1901. References
External links Quotations related to In Memoriam A.H.H. at
Wikiquote Works related to In Memoriam A. H. H. at Wikisource