In Memoriam A. H. H. is masterful in its structure and style. To fully appreciate and interpret the work, readers must be familiar with the biographical context in which it was written. The piece is a deeply personal expression of grief. When Tennyson was a young man, Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's best friend as well as his sister's fiancé, died suddenly at the age of twenty-two. Tennyson was devastated by the loss of his friend, who had encouraged him in his poetic endeavors.

Without his friend's support, Tennyson plunged into a period of doubt about his own calling and the meaning of life and the universe. His study of science further eroded his religious faith, which left him struggling for comfort and purpose. In this turbulent emotional state, Tennyson began composing a series of lyrics that processed his grief and reflected not only on death and the afterlife but also on the broader issues of science, philosophy, and religion.

The structure of In Memoriam is different from that of most elegies. Although it mourns and praises the death of an important person, it does so in a collection of separate lyrics. These lyrics are best understood individually but gain greater impact when considered in the light of the entire work. Tennyson composed the individual parts over a period of seventeen years, but narratively they cover a time span of three years following Hallam's death. This is evident from the repeated passing of seasons in the poem, especially the three Christmases (sections 28, 78, and 104). Tennyson arranged the sections in the order he chose; they do not necessarily appear in the work in the order in which he wrote them.

Overall, the trajectory of the verses is one that leads from deep despair to gentle hope, but this transition is not linear. Some of the most despondent and doubt-filled sections occur well into the work, such as in sections 54, 55, and 56. In section 54, after describing the cycle of life that could be explained either by Lyell's naturalism or Calvinism ("That not a moth . . . is shriveled in a fruitless fire, or but subserves another's gain"), he moans out a plaintive lament:

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.

In section 56, he contemplates the concept (consistent with uniformitarianism) that man is as finite as primeval dragons and will similarly fade to dust. This leaves him despondent indeed, and he writes, "O life as futile, then, as frail!"

Tennyson appended a prologue to his work in 1849. It shines out as a declaration of traditional Christian faith, addressing "Strong Son of God, immortal Love" in the first line and renouncing "our little systems" as "but broken lights of thee." He asks forgiveness for sins of pride and grief and asks for more faith and wisdom from God. That he begins the poem this way suggests that he hopes the reader will arrive at the same conclusion he did; still, he acknowledges the necessity and the power of the journey toward faith, as represented in the varying thoughts and moods of the poem.

Tennyson's style is notable. He consistently uses, throughout the entire poem, a four-line stanza structure in iambic tetrameter with an an ABBA rhyme scheme. This form mirrors the first two quatrains of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet (though not in pentameter), but as a stand-alone stanza, it had not been used extensively. Because Tennyson used it so compellingly throughout this extended poem, it is now known...