Tennyson!

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

This week you're invited to join us in wrestling with selections from Tennyson's In Memoriam, a work of poems written in memory of his best friend and his sister's fiance, Arthur Hallam.

When: 4/30/2013 Wednesday!  6:00pm
Where: Bi Centenniel Park- (we'll meet at 1419 S 1470 E (my house) first though)

 You can find them all here http://www.online-literature.com/donne/718/. Or just read the selections below.

 Invitation to imitate Tennyson: 

 a) In Memoriam is written in  lines of Iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme ABBA. Impose a similar stylistic constraint on your own poem. 

and/or

b) Write a poem in which the speaker of the poem is directly addressing/ wrestling with God 


Selections From In Memoriam A.H.H.

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.


1849.



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.'

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 5

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

I sometimes hold it half a sin

         To put in words the grief I feel;

         For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

         A use in   measured language lies;

         The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,

         Like coarsest clothes against the cold;

         But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 7

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Dark house, by which once more I stand

         Here in the long unlovely street,

         Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more—

         Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

         And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away

         The noise of life begins again,

         And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 11

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Calm is the morn without a sound,

         Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

         And only thro' the faded leaf

The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,

         And on these dews that drench the furze.

         And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain

         That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,

         And crowded farms and lessening towers,

To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,

         These leaves that redden to the fall;

         And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

         And waves that sway themselves in rest,

         And dead calm in that noble breast

Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

LIV
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;


That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;


That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.


Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.


So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.





LV
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?


Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;


That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,


I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,


I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.





LVI
'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.


'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,


Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,


Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—


Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?


No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.


O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.