Alfred Lord Tennyson is one in every of my favourite poets. I feel that “Tears, Idle Tears” is his most transferring poem about eager for a previous that we will’t recapture, and the melancholy this elicits. The poem was impressed by a go to to Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, which was deserted in 1536. (William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” was additionally impressed by this location.)
Tintern Abbey
Whereas Tennyson’s go to might have prompted the poem, students suppose he had extra in thoughts than an deserted abbey. His rejection by Rosa Baring and her household might have performed an element within the unhappiness of the poem. Her household disapproved of her relationship with the son of an alcoholic clergyman. This may increasingly clarify strains like, “kisses . . . by hopeless fancy feign’d/on lips which can be for others” and “Deep as old flame, and wild with all remorse” which have little to do with Tintern Abbey.
However no matter prompted these stunning lyrics, all of us have appeared out over a discipline, mountain, or lake, an old style, house, or neighborhood, or have merely been alone with our ideas and felt the eager for the previous which, on reflection, was fleeting and ephemeral. What was so actual then has now receded into oblivion, as will the minds which have these wealthy recollections.
Tears, idle tears, I do know not what they imply,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise within the coronary heart, and collect to the eyes,
In trying on the comfortable autumn-fields,
And pondering of the times which can be no extra.
Recent as the primary beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our pals up from the underworld,
Unhappy because the final which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love beneath the verge;
So unhappy, so contemporary, the times which can be no extra.
Ah, unhappy and unusual as in darkish summer time dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering sq.;
So unhappy, so unusual, the times which can be no extra.
Expensive as remembered kisses after dying,
And candy as these by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips which can be for others; deep as love,
Deep as old flame, and wild with all remorse;
O Dying in Life, the times which can be no extra!
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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