How does Tennyson portray loss in sections VII and LXXVIII of In Memoriam?

In Section 78, the speaker describes one Christmas and how the normal festive spirit ruled and the normal games were played to amuse everybody. He begins to debate whether the sense of crippling loss that he feels at the death of Hallam can actually fade away, however, the final stanza clearly indicates that although that loss may take a different form and change slightly, it is still very much present:

O last regret, regret can die!

No--mixt with all this mystic frame,

Her deep relations are the same,

But with long use her tears are dry.

Regret, here personified as a female figure, still has the same "deep relations," even though regret and loss might not be expressed in exactly the same way. This is rather a chilling portrayal of the way that grief never actually fades away completely.

Section 7 describes how Tennyson, driven by his grief, finds himself standing outside Hallam's house early in the morning, tortured by his sense of loss. He talks of how he used to knock on the door so eagerly waiting to be greeted by his friend, but that now his hand is one that can be "clasp'd no more." The sense of loss is characterised perfectly in the final stanza, where the speaker clearly expresses his frustration and feelings of sadness that life continues even after the death of his friend:

He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Note the use of alliteration with the "b" sound in the final line, emphasising the adjectives "bald" and "blank" and the verb "breaks," highlighting the speaker's horror at the way that life is continuing and how "ghastly" this prospect is. Loss is something that drives him to see life as terrible, and he shuns "the noise of life."

How does Tennyson convey despair and hope in sections L(50) and CXV(115) of In Memoriam A. H. H?

Section 50 is clearly one that focuses on the massive despair in Tennyson's heart. To the speaker, "Time" is imagined as being "a manic scattering dust" and "Life" is "a Fury slinging flame." He is clearly somebody who is suffering great emotional distress because of his feelings of loss and grief over the loss of his friend. This despair is evident, too, in section 115, where the speaker talks about his "regret" that is firmly lodged in his breast.

However, both sections also equally talk about a sense of hope that pervades the despair. In section 115, for example, the fading of winter and the coming of spring heralds a similar passing from grief into a state of hope:

in my breast

Spring wakens too, and my regret

Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

The hope is evident through the eventual "budding" of the speaker's "regret" and is something that is able to flower and become a source of beauty. Hope is also evident in section 50 with the repeated refrain of "Be near me." Even though the speaker is clearly going through a very difficult time, he is able to take hope from the presence of the figure he is addressing, be that God or the spirit of his dead friend. In both sections, the despair is shown to have the potential to be transformed into hope.

How does Tennyson depict loss in In Memoriam?

This famous poetic work, as its title makes clear, is all about grief and loss. More specifically, it is about the grief and loss of Tennyson for his friend, Alfred Hallam. It is this loss that permeates the entire poem as the speaker tries somehow to come to terms with his grief and the fact that he will never see his friend again, at least not this side of eternity.

In Section 7, for example, the speaker is reduced to describing himself as a "guilty thing" that creeps around in the early morning, tortured by the fact that he will never be able to see his friend again:

A hand that can be clasp'd no more--

Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

In Section 54, the speaker goes even further, after trying to state his hope in his faith, that there will be some afterlife, he clearly recognises his own position of doubt about this question, stating that his friend's death makes him nothing more than an "infant crying in the night" with "no language but a cry." Throughout the poem, the powerful sense of loss and grief permeates.