The nineteenth-century poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) is probably the best-known poet of the Victorian era. His work was read by Queen Victoria, and he was the longest-serving Poet Laureate in the United Kingdom, holding the post from 1850 until his death in 1892. Tennyson’s work is very quotable, and […]
Tag: Tennyson
Who Said ‘Better to Have Loved and Lost than Never to Have Loved at All’?
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning and origin of a well-known proverb ‘Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ It’s become a proverb, and proverbs are, usually, authorless.
A Short Analysis of Tennyson’s ‘Dark House, by Which Once More I Stand’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Dark House, by Which Once More I Stand’ is one canto (the seventh) from a much longer work of poetry, In Memoriam A. H. H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92). The poem shows Tennyson revisiting the home of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, whose […]
The Invention of Free Verse: Tennyson’s ‘Semele’
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses an early Tennyson poem Who invented ‘free verse’? Walt Whitman (1819-92) often gets the credit, although his decision to write in free verse – unrhymed poetry without a regular metre or rhythm – may have been influenced by […]
‘Now fades the last long streak of snow’: A Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
‘Now fades the last long streak of snow’: this canto, Canto CXV from Alfred, Lord Tennyson‘s long elegy In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850) – written in memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam – offers a bittersweet take on the arrival of spring. What grows in the speaker’s breast […]