ABSTRACT
In Memoriam was a difficult act to follow. Securely enthroned now as Laureate, finally settled into a long-postponed marriage, blessed with children, and installed comfortably at Farringford, Tennyson undoubtedly felt twinges of unrest and unease. The charged, nomadic life he had led since matriculating at Cambridge had come to an end; he had become a country squire and a national symbol. Although these accomplishments salved two persistent desires deeply hooked in the flesh of his past-those for financial security and poetic fametheir attainment must have made him feel a bit crazy. It is little wonder, then, that the speaker of his next major poem spouts madness. In Memoriam ends with fulfillment-or at least the promise of fulfillment. It rounds off, completes something as inchoate and intangible as desperate grief. The elegy takes possession of a kind of wholeness that art can, but life never does, sustain. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Maud begins with the words "I hate the dreadful hollow" (l.i.l ), a phrase that doubles as a reference to an imagined physical landscape and a summary declaration regarding Tennyson's and his age's feeling of emptiness.
