In Memoriam

 

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.

In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1850. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, aged 22. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest poems of the 19th century.

The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and emotions as he grieves over the death of a close friend. He views the cruelty of nature and mortality in light of materialist science and faith. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.

Publication history

The poem was written by Tennyson over a period of 17 years (1833-1850). It was first published anonymously and was titled 'IN MEMORIAM A. H. H., where A. H. H. is an abbreviation for Tennyson's late friend Arthur Henry Hallam and Roman numbers refers to 1833, the year of Hallam's death.

The poem consists of 2,916 lines. The poem begins with a prologue followed by 131 sections with Roman numerals as a heading. The poem ends with an epilogue. Thus, the total number of sections is 133.

Section  'O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me' was added in the fourth edition published in 1851. 'Old warder of these buried bones' was added in 1871. The epilogue is a marriage song on the wedding of Tennyson's sister Cecilia and Edmund Law Lushington.

^Form

The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. The earliest material is thought to be that which begins "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore / Saileth the placid ocean-plains" and imagines the return of Hallam's body from Italy. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.

"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect that often divides readers – while some consider it to be the natural sound of mourning and grief, others consider it monotonous. The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.

The poem was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who after the death of Prince Albert wrote that she was "soothed & pleased" by it. In 1862 Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem, and when she met him again in 1883 she told him what a comfort it had been.