In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 82

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

I wage not any feud with Death

For changes wrought on form and face;

No lower life that earth's embrace

May breed with him, can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on,

From state to state the spirit walks;

And these are but the shatter'd stalks,

Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare

The use of virtue out of earth:

I know transplanted human worth

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners in my heart;

He put our lives so far apart

We cannot hear each other speak.

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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