A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 18

Spring is described, with its sprouting hedges and blowing violets. The whole landscape changes in colour, with the warmer weather;

"And drown'd in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song."[81]

Who has not heard the lark, after it has become invisible in the heavens?

The migratory "birds that change their sky"[82] return and build their nests;

"and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest."

He is cheered by the opening season.

CXVI.

Is it regret for buried time--grief for the friend whom he has lost--which makes him feel so tender and susceptible of the influences of Spring? Not wholly so: for "life re-orient out of dust," the revival of vegetation, raises his spirits, and "heartens," strengthens his trust in that Power which made the earth beautiful.

Nor is it altogether "regret" that he feels; for the face and the voice of his friend come back; and the voice speaks of me and mine--his sister as well as himself--and he is conscious of

"Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be"--

reunion hereafter.

CXVII.

"O days and hours"--he declares their work to be the acc.u.mulation of joy they will bring to that future meeting, from which at present they are detaining him.

"Delight a hundredfold" will accrue from this postponement--the contribution of every grain of sand through the hourgla.s.s, of "every span of shade" across the sundial, of every click in the watch, and each day's sun.

CXVIII.

A friend observes that this Poem is a remarkable exposition of the nebular hypothesis, as sanctioned by geologists.

Look at "this work of Time," its slow growth and effect; and don't believe that "human love and truth" dissolve and pa.s.s away, as being no more than "dying Nature's earth and lime," insensible and finite.

Rather trust that

"the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever n.o.bler ends."

If this solid earth came from elements dissolved by "fluent heat," and man was the last result; then he, who is now enduring fears and sorrows and the battering "shocks of doom," typifies "this work of time" on natural objects; for he must be, as they have been, in process of being moulded for a higher state. He is moving upward, "working out the beast," and letting "the ape and tiger die," while in his present probationary condition.

CXIX.

The work of resignation in the mourner's heart is here acknowledged. In Poem vii. he represents himself as standing, "like a guilty thing," at the door of the London house where they used to meet, and he was then all sad and comfortless.

But now he revisits the spot, at the same early hour, and his feelings have changed and have become reconciled and hopeful. He smells "the meadow in the street," the waggon loads of hay and clover coming in from the country.

Wimpole Street is here again described, with morning breaking over the housetops:

"I see Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn A light blue lane of early dawn."

It was at No. 67 in this street that Mr. Hallam lived, and wrote his great historical works; and his son Arthur used to say, "We are always to be found at sixes and sevens."

All is now welcome:

"I think of early days and thee, And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, And bright the friendship of thine eye; And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh I take the pressure of thine hand."

CXX.

He exults in the victory of a higher faith. We are not "magnetic mockeries"--simply material "brain"--"casts in clay"--to perish as soon as the galvanic battery ceases to act,

"not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death."

Let Science prove the contrary, even that we only exist for this life, and I won't stay here. And Science herself would then be valueless, since she had only taught us our nothingness.

Let "the wiser man" of the future

"up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape, But I was born to other things."

This is spoken ironically, and is a strong protest against materialism, but _not against evolution_.[83] Nevertheless, the gorilla is not our grandfather!

CXXI.

"Sad Hesper," the evening star, only rises to "follow the buried sun;"

but, in the "dim and dimmer" light of late afternoon, it watches the conclusion of man's daily labours. The teams are loosened from the waggons, "the boat is drawn upon the sh.o.r.e," the house door is closed, "and life is darken'd in the brain" of the sleeper.

Phosphor, the morning star, sees the renewal of life; the bird with its early song, the rising sun, the market boat again floating and voices calling to it from the sh.o.r.e, the village blacksmith with his clinking hammer, and the team again harnessed and at work.

Hesper and Phosphor are simply the one planet Venus, which according to its position with the sun, becomes the morning or evening star.

So the Poet sings,

"Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name For what is one, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past, Thy place is changed; thou art the same."

Hallam has only been removed: he is not altered into something else--"not lost, but gone before." No--_the writer is rather referring to himself_: and as his own "present" and "past" are so different; the latter, with a bright prospect, may be likened to the morning star, Phosphor; whilst the former, full of gloom and sorrow, is represented by Hesper, the star of evening, and precursor of black night.

CXXII.

He seems to recall some former occasion, when in wild enquiry he had dared to question the great secrets of life and death--now and hereafter.

This may not refer to any special time, but to the general uneasiness of his feelings before submission had been attained;[84] and he now says,

"If thou wert with me, and the grave Divide us not, be with me now."