Poetry Of Alfred Lord Tennyson example essay topic

The Victorian age was the age of industrialization, social reforms, and conflict. The Industrial Revolution changed the face and personality of England. Within one hundred years the Industrial Revolution produced factory towns, cheap newspapers, railroads and steamships, and machines for mass production. Between 1800 and 1900 the population nearly quadrupled from ten and a half million to thirty-seven million. What the Industrial Revolution did was to create a whole new environment to which human beings had to accommodate themselves. A lot of people were not ready for this changes, it created emptiness in their hearts, which caused melancholy towards life.

Educated people promote the spread of literacy as a panacea for the troubles of the day. The poetry of the era reflected the complexity in England. Alfred Tennyson, the most representative, and well known poet of Victorian England, reflected moral and intellectual values of that time period in the most precise way. Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 in a family of a priest; he was educated at home by his father, then in 1927 Alfred entered Cambridge University. Through his life Alfred had experienced a lot of losses: he could not marry the lady he loved, his first son born dead, he lost his father at the age of twenty two. All these made his lyrics sorrowful and thoughtful.

He lived a long life and gave the world a lot of gorgeous poetry. 1950 was a significant year for Alfred his major work "In Memoriam" (to the memory of Arthur Hallam) was published. It made him famous and wealthy: Queen Victoria appointed him poet laureate of England. He started to write "In Memoriam" in 1833 and it was published in 1850. Also he finally married Emily Sellwood, with whom he was engaged in 1839. "In Memoriam" is a work of all his life, the main themes that he broaches are sorrow, sin and the justification of God's ways to men.

The main event of his life: his love to Emily Sellwood is reflected in a fragment of "In Memoriam", "Section 27; I envy not in any moods". At the first stanza he says that he does not envy persons of noble birth, because he had a reason - he could not afford to marry Emily. Alfred uses simile, he compares himself to a bird that lives in a cage and is unable to have freedom. "The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods".

In the second stanza he continues: he does not envy those, who has "no sense of crime". It means that he had morals and he was proud of that. It was actual at the Victorian age when a lot people experienced a lack of morals. He uses personification - he personifies the beast, and a metaphor -the field of time. "I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time". The third stanza shows a priest who had never felt love because of his celibacy: "The heart that never plighted troth" The last stanza gives reader an answer.

Alfred speaks about himself: "I hold it true, what " er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow must"; He loved Emily since 1836 when he was twenty five, her parents did not allow Alfred marry her. The final lines express his attitude to the love and romantic feelings in general, which he discover throw his own suffering: " 'Tis better to have love and lost Than never to have love at all". When he wrote this poem he had not been married with Emily yet. Therefore he was pined of impossibility to marry her. "All things must die" is a very characteristically for Tennyson: an eternal melancholy that runs through his creative work was very common for Victorians. This is a pessimistic poem, Tennyson is discusses inconstancy of the world, and he provides images of mutability in nature: "The Stream will cease to flow; The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet The heart will cease to beat" It means that nothing is permanent and everything will stop some time.

Then he is talking specifically about human's death: "We are call'd - we must go. Laid low, very low, In the dark we must lie". It represents his attitude towards the life - people are mortal, nothing will change it. Further the images are become gloomier. It starts from description of a beautiful May morning: "One after another the white clouds are fleeting" it comes to images of death in nature; Tennyson leads to death of human, and it reaches climax: death of the world. "The old earth Had a birth, As all men know, Long ago.

And the old earth must die". This poem touches a deep question: What is the meaning of life, if everything will be gone? Alfred does not answer it in the poem; it just reflects his thoughts about death. Tennyson uses personifications: "Death waits at the door" to deliver his imagery to the reader. This first part of the poem is written in a dactyl - a single stressed syllable followed by two unstressed, and the second part is written in iamb. The answer for the question delivered in "All things must die" could be found in his later poem "Circumstance", it is more optimistic, unlike "All things must die" the main theme of it is infinity of life in a case that life and death are all cycles of rebirth.

At the same time it illustrates peculiarity of life. "Two children in two neighbor villages Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas; Two strangers met at festival; Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall". Alfred creates a vivid image of fleetingness in life: young children playing and strangers meeting on festival adjoin with imagery of death: "Two graves grass-green beside a gray church tower Wash'd with still rains and daisy-blossomed"; And the last sentence concludes: "So runs the round of life from hour to hour". The life stays the same and the death of individual does not affect it. The theme of changes in life was very actual at Victorian age because a lot of people were unable to adapt to the new conditions of industrialization, and the idea that basically nothing changes inspired optimism.

Alfred Tennyson loved nature he grown up in a rural part of England, and it was a place where he starts writing poetry. At the poem "A Farewell" he uses nature imagery to transmit his thoughts about eternity and time. Tennyson creates a metaphor comparing a rivulet to a flowing of time: "Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver No more by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever". The imagery that he uses is "out of time" such as sigh of alder and shivering aspen, intelligible to anyone at any time: "But here will sigh thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever". Regardless of technical progress the moral values stay the same and Alfred expresses them through the nature that is clear and understandable to anyone. Therefore it is clearly shown that poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson absorbed the moral values and philosophical thoughts that were common for the generation of the Victorian age.

Sorrowful and philosophical attitude towards life, with a religious believe in eternal life: cycles of rebirth in nature, and of course true feelings that affects everyone. As a result it made him popular at his time period and very important for later critics.