In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 15

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809–1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson

To-night the winds begin to rise

And roar from yonder dropping day:

The last red leaf is whirl'd away,

The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,

The cattle huddled on the lea;

And wildly dash'd on tower and tree

The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass

Athwart a plane of molten glass,

I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud;

And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a labouring breast,

And topples round the dreary west,

A looming bastion fringed with fire.

Biography

More than any other Victorian writer, Tennyson has seemed the embodiment of his age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. In his own day he was said to be—with Queen Victoria and Gladstone—one of the three most famous living persons, a reputation no other poet writing in English has ever had. As official poetic spokesman for the reign of Victoria, he felt called upon to celebrate a quickly changing industrial and . . .

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