and loss as he has to watch life continue whilst he remains clinging on to the past, and wanting time to stop.

In section 24 the speaker debates why it is that his memories of the time he spent with Hallam when alive seem so perfect to him now. He asks himself whether this could really have been the case, and the final stanza summarises his conclusions:

Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?

Past memories, he argues, will always be attractive by virtue of the distance that separates the actual reality from our present. However, he realises that humans are so often ignorant of the true value of reality as it happens, and that humans only realise how perfect such memories can be in retrospect.

Tennyson's In Memoriam is a series of more than 130 lyric poems that deal with the poet's stages of grief following the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The poems are only loosely connected, yet they follow a story in a way, the tale of a person's grief that moves from despair and confusion to acceptance and hope.

In section 49 (listed as XLIX in most texts), the speaker muses on the “random influences” that surround him. These may come from nature or art or “the schools” (i.e., philosophy), but they merely glance off of his psyche like light bounces off “dappled pools.” These pools are like the depths of the speaker's soul. They are dark and murky, and the light will not reach into them, nor will the influences of nature, art, or philosophy penetrate the depths of the speaker's soul.

The surface of this pool or soul is “sullen.” It is quiet and withdrawn, gloomy and out of temper. Thought and fancy and song touch the surface and make it “crisp.” They freshen it for a moment, these light influences, trying to reach the grieving speaker in some way. Yet notice that they only touch the surface of the pool/soul. They do not reach its depths either. The depths are still dark and dismal, unable to be penetrated.

In the third stanza, the speaker tells his hearer to look but “go thy way.” There is no reaching him at this point. What happens on the surface of his soul is merely “shadow play.” It is close to an illusion. This suggests that the speaker may be putting on an act for the sake of others, responding to the influences that come from them, but only on the surface.

Deep down, he is still filled with a sorrow that drowns out everything else and fills his life with tears. Yet even the fact that art, nature, philosophy, song, and other influences are touching the surface of the speaker's soul is hopeful. They may not be going deep yet, but at least he is aware of them. His grief is not totally overwhelming him any longer. He is beginning to learn to cope if only on the surface.

Section 54 of "In Memoriam" is a section where Tennyson displays some of his deepest doubts about the meaning of life and mankind's place in the universe. The entire poem was written to process Tennyson's grief over the loss of his good friend, Arthur Hallam, who died at age 22, probably of a stroke. This section was probably written about a year after Hallam's death. Various sections display greater or lesser degrees of religious faith. In this section, although the poet references God, he seems to be struggling with the idea that a God who is good could allow bad things to happen.

Thus, in the first stanza, he says that "we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill." The statement in itself is obviously contradictory; Tennyson's skepticism is emphasized by starting the section with "O, yet." The "yet" implies that despite what our experience tells us, despite what seems to be the case, we "trust." In other words, the trust we have seems like mere blind faith.

The second and third stanzas continue to elaborate on the perspective of one who has faith: God is the one who "makes the pile complete," that is, He decides when "one life shall be destroyed." Even among inconsequential creatures like worms and moths, death has a higher purpose, for they contribute to the food chain. If God created Nature to deal purposefully with the brainless creatures, then mankind, the crown jewel of His creation, must also not die "in vain."

Lines 13 - 16 grasp at that faith while at the same time acknowledging "we know not anything." We can only trust, based on what we see in nature, that good comes at last, just as "every winter change[s] to spring." At this point in the poem, it seems as if the poet has resigned himself to the orthodox approach of trusting that God has a good purpose for everything.

However, the last stanza throws it all away, with the speaker admitting that he is not truly able to believe what he has just argued for. The speaker calls the previous explanation of how good can come from ill a "dream." He then proclaims the depths of his inadequacy to deal with such questions:

"... but what am I?
An infant crying in the night; 
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry."

The poet confesses that he is completely helpless in the face of such overwhelming questions about life and death. He feels the "night" of doubt darkening his soul, although he has been seeking the light of understanding. He does not even have words to express his anguish--an ironic statement since he has eloquently expressed himself in this section and in the rest of "In Memoriam." But all the eloquence he can muster feels to him like a mere "cry" as he is unable to truly grasp hold of faith and leave his doubts behind.

In Section 67, the speaker finds that the moonlight that falls upon him at night when he is in bed makes him think of Arthur Hallam, the close friend whose death inspired this collection of poems, and summons a kind of "mystic glory" that the speaker identifies as being part of Hallam. As the moonlight fades, the speaker is left alone with his grief and sadness, as nature pulls a veil between the speaker and this "mystic glory" of Hallam that he is able to sense at night:

And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast...

If the night with its moonlight brings a sense of connection between the speaker and Hallam's memory, the morning brings a barrier that turns his memory into nothing more than "a ghost" as the speaker struggles to carry on with his life and cope with his grief.

In Section 107, nature is still shown to have an important influence on the speaker, but the difference is in this section that the speaker does not allow nature to shape his own feelings and actions. This section describes Hallam's birthday, which is "a bitter day" that is characterised by winter weather that could so easily represent a pathetic fallacy describing the internal grief of the speaker:

Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Make daggers at the sharpen'd eaves...

However, whereas nature and the weather in Section 67 is shown to exert such an influence on the speaker and his connection with Hallam, in this section the speaker deliberately makes a conscious effort to ignore such weather conditions and determines to "keep the day," celebrating Hallam's life and making merry.

Dedicated to his deceased friend of five years, Arthur Henry Hallman Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam" loosely follows the pattern of a pastoralelegy. Thematic of this elegy is Tennyson's examination of the trials that all humans must suffer in life, trials that challenge people's theological beliefs and the overriding existential question of man's purpose on earth. Written in abab stanzas of iambic tetrameter, the tonal quality of "In Momoriam" has been characterized both as one of mourning, but has also been critized for being rather monotonous in its rhyme and conflict of faith with doubt. Certainly, Cantos 54,55, and 56 exemplify this conflct.

In Canto LIV [54], Tennyson writes that Christians trust that all souls will be gathered together into one soul, yet the speaker is doubtful:

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

In Canto LV [55], Tennyson's speaker attributes this desire for the survival of every soul after death to Love--"God within the soul." But, he raises the question,

Are God and Nature than at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So often Nature is careless of species--...finding that of fifty seeds/She often brings but one to bear--but trusting as a Christian, he "faintly trust(s) the larger hope."

Then, in Canto LVI [56] the poem's speaker continues the idea of the carelessness of Nature,

..."A thousand types are gone; 
I care for nothing, all shall go.

An often-quoted passage is that of this canto:

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

With this passage, Tennyson brings into question the controversy between ideas of evolution published in 1844 in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and "the truths that can never be proved" that Christians "faintly trust" because they are "the larger hope."

Further, the speaker asks if man is no more than the animals, another species on his way to extinction, then he is merely a beast in shape and a momentary vision since he has no eternal life: "A monster then, a dream,/A discord." If this be true, then life is hopeless, futile:

What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

The poet wonders if there is any answer to this existential question on the life of the soul; he is left with his doubts at this point, but in the end, Tennyson's speaker concludes,  

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.