February 11 – 17, 2010
Books B2
The Epoch Times
The Antidote—Classic Poetry for Modern Life
Verse VII from Alfred Tennyson’s
‘In Memoriam’
Verse VII from ‘In Memoriam’
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasped no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
By Christopher Nield
The brooding image of the “dark
house” dominates Tennyson’s short,
powerful poem—one that teeters
between stark, uncomfortable realism and full-blown nightmare.
Clearly we are seeing the house after
midnight, yet we are also viewing it
through the darkness of despair. It
is also dark because it is vacant. As
if we had picked up a Sherlock Holmes mystery, we are forced to ask
why Tennyson has come to “stand”
outside of this empty house.
When Tennyson says “behold me”
in the second stanza, he is begging
us to make the effort to really see
what he is describing: to begin to
make sense of the surrealistic details of the house, the street and his
telltale heart. It is a cry to be understood. Indeed, when we are in the
grip of profound sadness, we need
to have our vulnerability recognized
and accepted.
Unable to “sleep” he has come
“once more” to this house, staring
at its “doors,” silent and shut. A story
has come to an end. The image of
the “long unlovely street” evokes his
exhaustion—life as a journey unrelieved by grace.
What has happened? He remembers his heart once beating in anticipation of someone’s presence.
(The use of the past tense chills us
with its implication that Tennyson’s
heart is now still. Is he a ghost?) He
is tormented by the absence of an
effusive greeting—a hand “that can
be clasped no more”—reminding
us that the firm handshake of good
friends goes very deep, though such
feelings are rarely spoken aloud.
We realize he is in mourning.
As part of the sequence “In Memoriam,” the poem was in fact provoked by the death of Tennyson’s
close friend Arthur Hallam at the
age of 22. His old excitement reminds us of our own friendships in
liza voronin/the epoch times
our early twenties—full of utopian
ideas and the brilliant illusion that
the world is poised to be remade.
But his dreams have come crashing
down. The punning phrase “earliest
morning” dissolves hope into its opposite: the first light of day becomes
the first moment of desolation.
The final stanza begins with the
sheer inescapable agony at the heart
of Tennyson’s life: “He is not here.”
Curiously, this line echoes St. Matthew describing the risen Christ:
“He is not here. He has been brought
back to life as he said. Come, see
the place where he is lying.” Does
death make a mockery of this, or
does it confirm the Gospel promise
of resurrection?
Everything in the final stanza
evokes a mind sliding into chaos.
The mention of the “drizzling rain”
comes as a surprise—it’s as if, only
now, Tennyson becomes aware of
this misty shroud. We see him hollow-eyed and soaked through to the
skin. The universe mourns with
him.
The “noise of life” describes the
rebirth of the surrounding town or
city as it springs into motion. We
hear this din in the battering “b”
sounds in the unforgettable concluding line—and we feel Tennyson’s
head throbbing from the onslaught.
The street is “bald” because it is
shorn of sentiment, fantasy, whim.
Bringing blankness, the dawn robs
him of poetry itself. At this point,
the words disappear into the white
page—and the moment we have
shared with him lapses back into
the unknown past.
Throughout “In Memoriam,”
Tennyson balances intense feeling,
verging on mania, with the delicate
precision of poetic form. Rhythm,
rhyme, and meter subtly affirm
order and meaning even while
darkness seems to triumph. Elsewhere, Tennyson speaks of the “sad
mechanic exercise” of writing “In
Memoriam,” yet out of this emerges
one of the most moving poems in
the English language.
Alfred Tennyson (1809­–1892) was
Poet Laureate during much of Queen
Victoria’s reign. His most famous
poems include “The Charge of the Light
Brigade,” and “Crossing the Bar.”