Prologue
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
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.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
XXVII
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
LVI
‘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.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
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-
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
This poem is written for Tennyson's best friend-Arthur Henry Hallam- as a requiem.It has a variety of subjects:
ReplyDelete*Profound spiritual experiences
*Nostalgic reminiscence
*Philosophical speculation
*The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this.
In memoriam actually consists of 133 stanzas including the epilogue and prologue.I would like the write the canto which is not written here.I hope you remember it from the lesson.You know it was a bit lively discussion =)
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 canto is referring to the loss of a friend but it can be applied to any kind of love: romantic,familial,friendly...You know, many of us regarded it as romantic but this poem is written for Hallam,Tennyson's friend.There is a sense of surrender here.Poet excepts what happened to him.
What I get from this canto is that we have to take a chance on losing so that we can have a chance on winning whatever our heart desires.The price we pay for not trying is never really living.
**** I also would like to add some quotations of Alfred Lord Tennyson for those who were not able to note them down.You know our teacher emphasized it.
"Nature, red in tooth and claw"
"Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all''
"Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers"
hanım öncel
ReplyDeletegenerally people who lost their beloved, friend,a person from his/her family he/she starts not to see the real he behaves as if this death dind exist but in the poem we see that poet knows that his friend will not come back and he died the thing ı lıke most is
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
ı llıke ıt because ıf you undertand meaning of this you will not be so much sorry when you lose someone.
Gökhan ÖZKAN
ReplyDeleteO kadar cok sevdim ki çeviresim geldi :) :
Ne geldiyse başıma gerçek bildim,
Hissettim en acı çektiğim anda,
Daha makbul
Sevip de ayrılmak
Sevgisiz kalmaktansa..
Nur Gedik
ReplyDelete'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'
poet questions here whether man who prays and trust in God will eventually be reduced to dust or preserved like fossils in a rock in spite of the nature brutality.We can see the brutality in the lines 'red in tooth and claw' If nature is purposeless,heartless,merciless how can he believe in Creation's final law but as a faithful believer how can he not?
Actually I want to say that this poem is really remarkable.Whenever you look at its parts you find something different in it every time you can get lots of comments,views in your mind.The poem is not as sorrowful as you think.You may find something hopeful in it you can find poet's transformation through grief and despair towards cheerful mindedness.For instance he thinks his friend will survive in a higher form.thats the consolation for Tennyson.You can also feel the effects of social process in victorian period and the features of Victorian Poetry.This is the last stanza :
ReplyDelete'O life is futile,then, as frail
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer,or redress?
Behind the veil behind the veil.'
In this stanza;
Tennyson declares that life is futile and he says he longs for misses for his friend's voice to soothe him and also soften the effect of nature brutality.Nonetheless we don't know whether there is any hope for the answer.There are some unknown things in the dark.'behind the veil'
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
ReplyDeleteI feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
as my frien, Tülay said he wrote this poem for his death friend and also these lines are for him, of course. ın the first line he accepts the God's rules and obey it. but it is hard to accept this truth for everyone when I read this line, I remember my mother reaction when my grandmother die. She said my mother is in another world and she is happy in there. We must obey God's rules. But she slihtly protest God's law by saying 'it is too early to got her from me, my God.' And the poet do same thing in second line.
As you see, this poem gives me pain but the feelings which the poem sensed are the same for most of the people.
But last two lines are very good and I think for consoling himself, he can find the best way.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn this poem, poet talks about his friend's death. and the sorrow he feels for him as well.
ReplyDeletehe says that ' tis better to have loved and lost/ than never to have loved at all.
in that qoutation, he talks about the woe he feels when he has lost his friend.
he is not with him anymore and his unexistence makes like a shipwrecked.
in that poem he talks about his sorrow and hard times he has spent when his friend is away from him.
he remembers the past times they have spent together. and feels pain.
this painfully feeled woe prompts him to write about their friendship and the woe felt after his death.
Tennyson struggles with victorian's growing awareness about the science.
and he talks about nature contradictly as well.
for example he says cold fires to stars.
MELEK ÖZER
ReplyDeleteWhen I read this poem, I saw a man who really suffered from his friend's dead. His feelings are so strong that he slightly protests God's rules from time to time.
"I hold it true, whatever be fall
I feel it when I sorrow most."
I think from these lines we can understand that Tennyson lost his friend, but he did not want to accept this fact. He can do that only when he feels the sarrow. We can infer that his feelings are much stronger than his knowledge about the death.
Finally, he accepts the fact of his friend's death and says that even if I lost my friend, I had a good friend once upon a time. This is much better than never to felt these feelings about someone.
"Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
SEDEF KONUK
ReplyDeleteso 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.
ın these lines: the poet is like a child. tennyson feels that he can do nothing about his spiritual state. he has no language to defend his faith. he is also like a child because he wants to believe what he has been taught. he does not want to question some issues.. thereofre we see that the poet has gone from believing in God because he cannot know the truth.
Jiyan Taher :
ReplyDeleteHere the speaker staying between trust and doubt. firstly he says that no life is created aimless “That nothing walks with aimless feet;” and he created us having a purpose in mind. Also he says that there is a purpose behind our death and by saying “that not a worm is cloven in vain;” he means another creators will eat our death body. He also says “Behold, we know not anything;” which means we don’t know everything, then we should trust good things will come. by saying “No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have/The likest God within the soul?” he means that death is not the end of life and God is present in people’s soul. Then he says “I falter where I firmly trod/And falling with my weight of cares/Upon the great world’s alter- stairs/That slope thro’ darkness up to God, “means he has hesitation now because in his mind there is doubt. He searches way but he can’t find the way to reach the God. At the end he says that he will get the answer when he dies “What hope of answer, or redress? /Behind the veil, behind the veil.”
FATMA KAYA
ReplyDeleteWho 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-
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
The poet questions whether Man, who prays and trusts in God’s love in spite of the evidence of Nature’s brutality (“Nature, red in tooth and claw”), will eventually be reduced to dust or end up preserved like fossils in rock or sealed within the iron hills. The thought of this evokes a notion of the human condition as terrific. Speaker feels that life is vain and longs for his departed friend’s voice to soothe him and appease the effect of Nature’s numbness.
"Who trusted God was love indeed
ReplyDeleteAnd love Creation’s final law-
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed-
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?"
In these lines We see that he questions the idea of God. He wants to know that whether Man, who prays and trusts in God’s love in spite of the evidence of Nature’s brutality will eventually be reduced to dust or end up preserved like fossils.He shows the harsh side of the nature and connects it with the God.
The poet writed this poem for his death friens. At the beginning of the poem, he accepts his friend's death and believes that god creates everything in the universe for a purpose.He thinks there is an order in the universe. When the god distroys something, there is an aim to do so.However towards the end of the poem, he confuses he can't find exact answers to his questions and starts to doubt about the justice of the god to his own creatures.
ReplyDeleteTennyson is one of the best known poets of the Victorian era, and indeed his stylistic features and subjects epitomise the period. In Memoriam is one of his major works, and in this elegy he mourns the death of his best friend Arthur Hallam.
ReplyDeleteAt the top of this slope' that he is climbing, he finds God, and faintly trusts the larger hope.' Although he has not lost faith yet, he will clearly not be happy without further explanation.
Later, towards the end of the poem, Tennyson begins to accept the possibility of man's extinction because he sees that our potential for eternal life means that man's extinction from earth is not so important. When God is ready to create our spiritual lives, physical, biological life will not be important anyway.
Are God and Nature then at strife?
ReplyDeleteThat Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
In the Romantic Period nature was elevated. People turned their face tothe naturefor wisdom. But in the Victorian Period, with the institutionalized world, the nature also lost its effect on the people. Now, the people saw nature with its evil doings and with its strife, battle. When a Romantic looked at nature he saw purity, inspiration and harmony. Charles Darwin also saw battle and strife when he looked at nature in the Victorian Period.
Öznur Öztürk
ReplyDeleteTo understand this poem we should know both the Victorian poetry and life of the poet.During 1800s a pessimistic tıne appeared.Because of industrial revolution people were still hopeless.People's ideas were in contradictory.As for Lord Alfred Tennyson; he was a religious person in fact, but after his closest friend died, he started to question God's existence.He was shocked and gave up writing poetry for about ten years.
Ilıke this part a baby crying in the night
ReplyDeletea baby crying for the night
He sees himself as a baby who has nothing to the except crying. He has sorrow in his heart and whatever he can will not maje her friend to come to the world again so he is waiting and crying for Gods helping him.
In Memoriam, meaning "in the memory of" in Latin, is an elegy written by Alfred Tennyson for his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam who passed away in an early age. Tennyson generally depicts his sorrow through the poem. We can see that he started to question his beliefs about God.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
Especially in this stanza we can see it. Tennyson says he can endure what he has to, because it comes from God. And there's also his sincere feelings about his friend cited here, though it could mean any kind of love: romantic, friendly, religious....
P.S: This was Queen Victoria's favourite poem since she also lost her husband unexpectedly and found consolation through Tennyson's lines.
this poem reminds me loyalty. because the authot did not forget his friend and wrote his first poem after a ten year break for his friend. loyalty is a unfamiliar virtue for the people of today
ReplyDeleteGULNOZA
ReplyDeleteHere the speaker states that he feels no jealousy for the man who is captured and does not know what it means to feel true rage, or for the bird that is born with in a cage and has never spent time outside in the “summer woods.” Likewise, he feels no envy for beasts that have no sense of the passage of time and no conscience to check their behavior. He also does not envy those who have never felt pain (“the heart that never plighted troth”) or those who complacently enjoy a leisure that they do not rightfully deserve. Even when he is in the greatest pain, he still realizes that “ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”