The poet never rejected the actual findings of Lyell and others, but he certainly saw them as only partial answers to the mysteries of the universe and believed God still cared very much for human beings and that there was hope for such humans to attain a higher state. However, even though he was left alone, he feels “His being working in mine own, / The footsteps of his life in mine.” He is now able to have other friends. This is as a young woman who falls in love with a man outside her social class. The poet feels like the little life he has left is enduring with pain but forming a “firmer mind” while he remembers and treasures the looks and words of his departed friend.The poet compares his grief to the great rivers of the Danube, the Severn, and the Wye. It feels like “once more he seems to die.”The poet reflects on the beloved home in Somersby that he will soon be leaving. The poet wonders whether Sleep and Death are truly one—whether the spirit’s bloom will slumber in a long trance. Nature seems utterly careless of “the single life” and is capable of waste and chaos. God made man in his image even though humans do not know why. This voyage symbolizes the journey from life to death. He begins to think life is futile and frail, and he hopes for Hallam’s voice to answer him or offer redress. He wants Hallam near him when he fades away.The poet wonders if the living truly want the dead by their side.
An old Yew tree has deep bones in the earth. He wonders what the point of life is if man’s individual soul is not immortal after death. He feels his love is fuller and richer now.Divine will infuses and prevails in all things, and will come to its fruition when “we close with all we loved, / And all we flow from, soul in soul.”Although written later than advertised, the poem is written as if the poet writes on the day of his sister Cecilia’s wedding to Edmund Lushington. The poet’s emotional progression from utter despair to hopefulness fits into the structure observed by the scholars.
His faith is shaken by the realities of the rational evidence against immortality.The poet wonders if God and Nature are at strife, meaning if the evidence found in Nature denies the immortality of the soul. Hallam is a mixture of the human and the divine.The poet feels that everything in Nature and God is permeated with the memory and spirit of Hallam. However, after death he will be able to comprehend the “eternal landscape of the past” and see his five years with Hallam as the “richest field” of his life.The poet does not want to believe that all separate souls, when they die, merge with the universal godhead.
Eliot stated that it is “the most unapproachable of all [Tennyson’s] poems.” Charlotte Bronte commented that she closed it halfway through, and that “it is beautiful; it is mournful; it is monotonous.” The poem has also brought tremendous comfort to those who seek within its lines a way to assuage and eventually come out of their grief. She can do little but lull a grieving heart or embody human love.The poet loiters and lingers on. The poet sings his song and knows that a part of Hallam lives on in his song. He found joy in this idyllic retreat, and a circle would draw about him. The Muse tells him not to grieve with a “fruitless tear” but to stay a bit longer, compose himself, and depart nobly. When the Wye’s tide flows and waves are vocal, then the poet’s anguish is given utterance.The poet feels many griefs, some light and comforted by words, others deep and profound. A mother waits for her sailor son, but he drowns. The poet addresses the Son of God, He in whom men must put their faith. Canto 129 Lines 2713-2724 Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, So far, so near in woe and weal; O loved the most, when most I feel There is a lower and a higher;
In love the two are united, as are the poet’s past and present.The poet remembers a previous occasion, perhaps the trance from No. The poet reflects on the ability of men to achieve a higher state and for their race to progress. He will wrap himself in words although they can only suggest the outline of his grief.Even though death is common, it does not lessen his grief over his deceased friend. Grief, loss and renewal of faith, survival, and other themes compete with one another. He remembers the friend he lost, who is now “A Spirit, not a breathing voice.” Time passé,s and there is leisure to weep and to entertain fancies, such as his friend being on the ship whose sails he observes coming in from the horizon.
He writes that when the Wye is hushed and still, his grief is hushed and full, not brimming into tears. In his mind’s eye the poet looks on Hallam’s face and sees kinship with “the great of old.” He does not want to say exactly what he sees, but Death has made “His darkness beautiful with thee.”The poet does not use verse to express his grief even though it brings relief, leaving it to be guessed how great Hallam was. The widower will be silent, and the poet will be silent too.