Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess'd the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture's breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show'd a token of distress?
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No—mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
Notes
NOTES
Form:
abba
1.
First published anonymously in the volume with this title in
1850, though the 131 sections or separate poems that compose it were
written and rewritten from 1833 to the time of publication. Two of the
131 sections were added in later editions: LIX in 1851, and XXXIX in
1872. The poem is in memory of Tennyson's friend Arthur Henry Hallam,
son of the eminent historian. Hallam was engaged to marry Tennyson's
sister Emily, when he died suddenly of a stroke in Vienna on September
15, 1833, at the age of twenty-two. Although written without any plan
at first, the parts of the poem were finally arranged in a pattern to cover
the period of about three years following Hallam's death. Tennyson himself
insisted that it is "a poem, not a biography .... The different moods of sorrow
as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts,
and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of
Love. `I' is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the
human race speaking through him."
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIIII: he died in 1833.
warder: the Yew tree of lyric II.
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Comments
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sound sweet
Who show'd a token of distress?
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
this is the fruit of life . sometimes distress is more valuable than joy as is portrayed in this one -
Tennyson is one of my favorites. So glad you 'featured' him.
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