In Memoriam

In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a stroke in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more. Written over a period of 17 years, it can be seen as reflective of Victorian society at the time, and the poem discusses many of the issues that were beginning to be questioned. It is the work in which Tennyson reaches his highest musical peaks and his poetic experience comes full circle. It is generally regarded as one of the great poetic works of the British 19th century.

The poem was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who found it a source of solace after the death of Prince Albert in 1861: "Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort." In 1862, Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem.

Science and Evolution

Many modern critics view the poem as being prescient about evolution, given that the poem was published in 1850, while Charles Darwin first published The Origin of Species in 1859. However, the science writer Stephen Jay Gould argues that Tennyson was instead describing catastrophist biological theory - a directed history of species, but without evolution. Additionally, Tennyson supports the gradual geologic change proposed by Charles Lyell.

In Memoriam is the source of the famous saying appropriated by evolutionists:

"Nature, red in tooth and claw."

Quotation

  Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
  Believing where we cannot prove; 

  Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
   Thou madest Life in man and brute; 
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot 
  Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

  Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
   Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
   He thinks he was not made to die; 
  And thou hast made him: thou art just.

  Thou seemest human and divine, 
   The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
   Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
  Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

  Our little systems have their day; 
   They have their day and cease to be: 
   They are but broken lights of thee, 
  And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

  We have but faith: we cannot know; 
   For knowledge is of things we see; 
   And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
  A beam in darkness: let it grow.

  Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
   But more of reverence in us dwell; 
   That mind and soul, according well, 
  May make one music as before,

  But vaster. We are fools and slight; 
   We mock thee when we do not fear: 
   But help thy foolish ones to bear; 
  Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

  Forgive what seem’d my sin in me; 
   What seem’d my worth since I began; 
   For merit lives from man to man, 
  And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 

  Forgive my grief for one removed, 
   Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
   I trust he lives in thee, and there 
  I find him worthier to be loved. 

  Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
   Confusions of a wasted youth; 
   Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
  And in thy wisdom make me wise.

  I.

  I held it truth, with him who sings 
   To one clear harp in divers tones, 
   That men may rise on stepping-stones 
  Of their dead selves to higher things.

  But who shall so forecast the years 
   And find in loss a gain to match? 
   Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch 
  The far-off interest of tears? 

  Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d, 
   Let darkness keep her raven gloss: 
   Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, 
  To dance with death, to beat the ground,

  Than that the victor Hours should scorn 
   The long result of love, and boast, 
   ‘Behold the man that loved and lost, 
  But all he was is overworn.’ 

  XXXIII.   O thou that after toil and storm 
   Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air, 
   Whose faith has centre everywhere, 
  Nor cares to fix itself to form, 

  Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
   Her early Heaven, her happy views; 
   Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse 
  A life that leads melodious days. 

  Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine, 
   Her hands are quicker unto good: 
   Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
  To which she links a truth divine! 

  See thou, that countest reason ripe 
   In holding by the law within, 
   Thou fail not in a world of sin, 
  And ev’n for want of such a type. 

  L.

  Be near me when my light is low, 
   When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick 
   And tingle; and the heart is sick, 
  And all the wheels of Being slow. 
 
  Be near me when the sensuous frame 
   Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust; 
   And Time, a maniac scattering dust, 
  And Life, a Fury slinging flame. 

  Be near me when my faith is dry, 
   And men the flies of latter spring, 
   That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 
  And weave their petty cells and die. 

  Be near me when I fade away, 
   To point the term of human strife, 
   And on the low dark verge of life 
  The twilight of eternal day.

Sources

• Gould, Stephen Jay. "The Tooth and Claw Centennial." Dinosaur in a Haystack. Ed. Stephen Jay Gould. New York: Harmony Books, 1995. 63-75.