Tennyson, Lord

Tennyson, Lord (1809-1892), was one of the most important English poets of the 1800’s. He succeeded William Wordsworth as poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 1850. Tennyson earned his position in literature because of the remarkable range of his talents and his dedication throughout his long career to perfecting his art. Tennyson stands both as a great national poet and as one of the supreme craftsmen in the English language.

His life.

Alfred Tennyson was born on Aug. 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father was rector (clergyman in charge) of the parish there. Tennyson entered Cambridge University in 1828, but he never received a degree. At Cambridge, he joined “The Apostles,” a society of undergraduates that included several men who later became intellectual leaders of the age. Tennyson’s most intimate friend in this circle was Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam’s sudden death in 1833 was a crucial event in the poet’s life. Tennyson wrote his great elegy (poem mourning a death) In Memoriam (1850) in memory of Hallam.

Tennyson was the most popular British poet of the Victorian era, but he avoided public life. He married in 1850 and lived quietly in his country homes at Farringford on the Isle of Wight and Aldworth in Surrey. Tennyson’s long list of works showed his consistent inspiration and creative vitality, beginning with Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and extending to The Death of Oenone and Other Poems (1892), published after his death more than 60 years later. He was awarded the title of Baron Tennyson in 1883. His full title was Baron of Aldworth and Farringford. He died on Oct. 6, 1892.

His poems.

Tennyson’s influential place in the intellectual life of his age comes largely from his concern with the vital issues confronting Victorian England. He reveals his sense of political responsibility in such patriotic verses as “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” (1852) and his famous “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), which was inspired by an incident in the Crimean War (see Balaklava, Battle of). Maud (1855), a narrative in the form of separate lyrics, describes the withering effect of the materialistic spirit of his day on a sensitive young lover.

Tennyson’s accurate and concrete descriptions of nature reflect his informed interest in science. The stars, for example, suggest to the unhappy speaker in Maud:

A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man.

Tennyson’s masterpiece, In Memoriam, consists of 133 individual poems composed between his friend Arthur Hallam’s death in 1833 and their publication in 1850. The work ranks with John Milton’s Lycidas (1638) and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Adonais (1821) as one of the greatest examples of the elegy in English poetry. In Memoriam is personal and specific in its focus on Tennyson’s struggles as artist and thinker. The poem frequently offers general consolation to a troubled age:

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.

Perhaps no English poet had a more acute ear for fine shades of poetic expression or a greater range of verse style than Tennyson. His exquisite lyrics perfectly express emotions and experiences shared by all people. Among the most moving of these are many of the sections from In Memoriam, as well as “Break, Break, Break” (1842) and “Tears, Idle Tears” (1847). Following the author’s wishes, “Crossing the Bar” (1889), the noble address to death, always ends collections of his poems.

Tennyson’s most characteristic form of poetry was the idyl, a poem about country life developed by the ancient Greeks. These poems often take the form of dramatic reveries (daydreams) spoken by mythical figures. They tell a story, but depend primarily on the creation of mood through the power of richly described settings, as in “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832). Many of these stories indirectly urge Victorians to act heroically. The speakers commonly fall into two groups: the lovelorn maidens of “Mariana” (1830), “The Lady of Shalott” (first version 1832, second version 1842), and “Oenone” (1832); and the aged heroes and prophets of “Ulysses” (1842), “Tithonus” (1860), “Tiresias” (1885), and “Merlin and the Gleam” (1889).

Tennyson’s lifelong fascination with King Arthur and his knights led to his most ambitious work, Idylls of the King. It is a series of 12 narrative poems published with constant revisions between 1842 and 1885. The work has an allegorical (symbolic) side, suggested by the many implied comparisons between Arthur and Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, who had died in 1861. The work also ends with an allegorical epilogue (closing) to the queen with its invitation to:

accept this old imperfect tale New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul, Ideal manhood closed in real man …

Nevertheless, the poem is most likely to move a modern audience as the story of King Arthur’s vision of the perfect state. This vision was tragically betrayed by the inability of the king’s followers to live up to his heroic ideals.

See also Galahad, Sir; “Lady of Shalott, The; Poetry.