ABSTRACT
Published 1842. Written in Lincolnshire one spring (Mem. i 190), so presumably before early 1837, when the Tennysons left Somersby, and after Sept. 1833, since it is on the death of Arthur Hallam. Probably spring 1834. Cecilia Tennyson recited it on 16 March 1839 (Blackwood’s clv (1894) 609). Cp. In Memoriam, especially for ll. 11–12; and also the lines which H.T. gave as the germ of In Memoriam: ‘Where is the voice I loved? ah where / Is that dear hand that I would press? / Lo! the broad heavens cold and bare, / The stars that know not my distress!’ For these lines (Mem. i 107), see Hark! the dogs howl! (I 608). Hallam wrote to Gladstone: ‘the loss of valuable time, and the constant breaking of the mental energies, like waves, on an immoveable obstacle, cannot but tend to oppress the moral spirit’ (28 Feb. 1829; AHH,p. 276).
