A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 2

"These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs; a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck."

VII.

He persists in indulging his melancholy, and so creeps, "like a guilty thing," at early morning to the door of the house in London where Hallam had lived--Wimpole Street--but this only serves to remind him that

"He is not here; but far away."

The revival of busy movement on a wet morning in "the long unlovely street,"[8] is vividly described--

"The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day."

VIII.

He next compares himself to the disappointed lover who "alights" from his horse, calls at the home of his mistress,

"And learns her gone and far from home."

So, as the disappointed lover, to whom the whole place has at once become a desert, wanders into the garden, and culls a rain-beaten flower, which she had fostered; even thus will he cherish and plant "this poor flower of poesy" on Hallam's tomb,[9] because his friend when alive had been pleased with his poetic power.

IX.

This poem commences an address to the ship that brings Hallam's body from Vienna to England--

"My lost Arthur's loved remains."

No words can be more touching than his appeal to the vessel,[10] for care and tenderness in transporting its precious freight. He bids it come quickly; "spread thy full wings," hoist every sail; "ruffle thy mirror'd mast;" for the faster the ship is driven through the water, the more will the reflected mast be "ruffled" on its agitated surface. May no rude wind "perplex thy sliding keel," until Phosphor the morning star, Venus shines; and during the night may the lights[11] above and the winds around be gentle as the sleep of him--

"My Arthur, whom I shall not see, Till all my widow'd race be run--"

until my life, bereaved of its first affection, be over.

In Poem xvii., 5, the same line occurs--"Till all my widow'd race be run," and it agrees with St. Paul's declaration, 2 Tim., iv., 7, "I have finished my course." The words _race_ and _course_ are synonymous, and refer to the foot-races of the ancients. "More than my brothers are to me," is repeated in P. lxxix., 1.

X.

Very beautifully is the picture continued of the ship's pa.s.sage, and he appeals to it for safely conducting

"Thy dark freight, a vanish'd life."

The placid scene, which he had imagined as attending the vessel, harmonizes with the home-bred fancy, that it is sweeter

"To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains;"

that is, to be buried in the open churchyard;

"Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of G.o.d."[12]

that is, in the chancel of the church, near the altar rails; than if, together with the ship, "the roaring wells" of the sea

"Should gulf him fathom deep in brine; And hands so often clasp'd in mine, Should toss with tangle[13] and with sh.e.l.ls."

XI.

This Poem would describe a calm and quiet day in October--late autumn.

No doubt, the scenery described _does not refer to Clevedon, but to some Lincolnshire wold, from which the whole range from marsh to the sea was visible_.

The stillness of the spot is just broken by the sound of the horse chestnut falling[14] through the dead leaves, and these are reddening to their own fall. No time of the year is more quiet, not even is the insect abroad: the waves just swell and fall noiselessly, and this reminds him of

"The dead calm in that n.o.ble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep."

XII.

An ecstacy follows: in which the soul of the Poet seems to mount, like a dove rising into the heavens with a message of woe tied under her wings; and so the disembodied soul leaves its "mortal ark"--"our earthly house of this tabernacle"--(2 Cor. v., 1) and flees away

"O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large"

(the sea line constantly expanding and always being circular), until the ship comes in sight, when it lingers "on the marge," the edge of the sea, weeping with the piteous cry--

"Is this the end of all my care?

Is this the end? Is this the end?"

Then it flies in sport about the prow of the vessel, and after this seems to

"return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away."

XIII.

The tears shed by the widower, when he wakes from a dream of his deceased wife, and "moves his doubtful arms" to find her place empty; are like the tears he himself is weeping over "a loss for ever new," a terrible void where there had been social intercourse, and a "silence" that will never be broken. For he is lamenting

"the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice."

Hallam is now only a remembrance--no longer endowed with bodily functions, and the survivor cannot quite accept what has happened.

He therefore asks Time to teach him "many years"--for years to come--the real truth, and make him feel that these strange things, over which his tears are shed, are not merely a prolonged dream; and he begs that his fancies, hovering over the approaching ship, may quite realise that it brings no ordinary freight, but actually the mortal remains of his friend.

XIV.

The difficulty in apprehending his complete loss is further shown by his address to the ship, saying, that if it had arrived in port, and he saw the pa.s.sengers step across the plank to sh.o.r.e; and amongst them came Hallam himself, and they renewed all their former friendship; and Hallam, unchanged in every respect, heard his tale of sorrow with surprise: