In Memoriam A.H.H.
In Memoriam A.H.H.,a poem by Tennyson , written between 1833 and 1850 and published anonymously in the latter year. The poem was written in memory of A. H. Hallam , the son of H. Hallam , a young man of great promise and an intimate friend of Tennyson, who died at Vienna aged 22. It is written in stanzas of four octosyllabic lines rhyming a b b a, and is divided into 132 sections of varying length.
It is not so much a single elegy as a series of poems written over a considerable period, inspired by the changing moods of the author's regret for his lost friend, and expressing his own anxieties about change, evolution, and immortality, the last a subject which continued to perturb him deeply. The epilogue is a marriage song on the occasion of the wedding of the poet's sister Cecilia to Edward Lushington; Hallam had himself been engaged to his sister Emily. A critical and popular success ( G. H. Lewes referred to...
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