A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 12

Lx.x.xI.

If, whilst Hallam was with him, it could be said that love had its full complement and satisfaction, and could not range beyond; still he torments himself with "this haunting whisper,"

"More years had made me love thee more."

My attachment would have expanded with the enlargement of his powers.

"But Death returns an answer sweet: My sudden frost was sudden gain"--

The change in death instantly exalted its victim;

"And gave all ripeness to the grain, It might have drawn from after-heat."

A sudden frost will ripen grain or fruit, but will not impart the flavour to fruit which the sun gives.

In Hallam's sudden transition, what might have been drawn from subsequent experience was at once fully accomplished.

Lx.x.xII.

A fine burst of Faith in the future. He does not reproach Death for any corruption by it "on form or face." No decay of the flesh can shake his trust in the survival of the soul. "Eternal process" is ever "moving on;"

the Spirit walks through a succession of states of being; and the body dropt here is but a case, the "ruin'd chrysalis of one" state left behind.[56]

Nor does he find fault with Death for taking "virtue out of earth:" he knows that it will be transplanted elsewhere to greater profit.

What he is angry with Death for is, their separation--

"He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak."

This Poem expresses a comforting belief in progress and advancement hereafter.

Lx.x.xIII.

"The northern sh.o.r.e" must simply mean our northern region.

He reproaches the New Year for "delaying long." Its advent would cheer him, bringing the light and sweetness of Spring--for

"Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons?"

He would have the New Year bring all its customary flowers--

"Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire"--

a sight of these would set free the sorrow in his blood,

"And flood a fresher throat with song."

Lx.x.xIV.

This Poem is a very charming conception of what their lives might have domestically been, if Hallam had been spared. The picture is almost too beautiful: detailing more than life ever allows--and there came the crus.h.i.+ng sorrow.

Engaged in marriage to the Poet's sister,[57] death intervened--

"that remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange flower, Despair of Hope, and earth of thee."

It is remarkable how the imagination of the Poet glows over the tender scenes of home affection, and the great results which he presumes were arrested by the removal of his friend, who he had hoped would have attained "to reverence and the silver hair" in company with himself--and then, in their full old age,

"He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the s.h.i.+ning hand, And take us as a single soul."

The mere thought of this forbidden consummation of their friends.h.i.+p shocks him; it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and stops

"The low beginnings of content."[58]

Lx.x.xV.

The first stanza merely repeats the sentiment expressed in Poem xxvii., that the deepest grief has only more fully convinced him, that to have loved and lost is better than never to have loved.

It is _the friend to whom the epithalamium is addressed_--E. L.

Lus.h.i.+ngton--"true in word and tried in deed," who asks how he is affected--if his faith be still firm, and he has still room in his heart for love? He answers, that all was well with him, until that fatal "message" came, that

"G.o.d's finger touch'd him, and he slept."

He then recounts what he thinks may have occurred to Hallam, when translated through various stages of spiritual being; and he repeats his sorrowful regrets for his loss. But "I woo your love," he seems to say to his future brother-in-law, for he holds it wrong

"to mourn for any over much:"

still, so deep is his attachment to Hallam, that he calls himself

"the divided half of such A friends.h.i.+p as had master'd Time;"

their intimacy would be eternal; and he imagines some sort of intercourse still carried on betwixt them, which he describes in language that has much of the spirit and character of Dante.

He then seems to turn again to his living friend, and says,

"If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you."

But he is not wholly disconsolate--

"My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone,[59]

But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another living breast."

The concluding stanza offers the primrose of autumn to the surviving friend, whilst that of spring must be reserved for the friend whom he has lost.

Lx.x.xVI.