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Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H.
5
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel:
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given outline and no more.
The 131 sections, prologue, and epilogue that make up In Memoriam A.H.H.
were written between 1833 and 1850 in honor of Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833).
Tennyson was Poet Laureate of England from 1850 until 1892.
The poem in its entirety can be found, for
example, in:
Tennyson, Alfred. Tennyson's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Juvenilia and Early Responses, Criticism.
Robert W. Hill Jr., ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971.
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