WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Episode 5

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

In this episode of The Poetry Fix, we continue our journey through "In Memoriam A. H. H."

Welcome to the Poetry Fix. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading parts 3 through 6 of Tennyson's In Memorium A.H. Parts 3 and 4 pick up as Tennyson personifies the sorrow of loss and grapples with it, unsure of what to do with his emotions. Parts 5 and 6 are a commentary on the experience of writing the poem itself, as Tennyson wonders when he's whether it is even right to express his sorrow in words. With all that said, let's dive in. In memoriam. O sorrow, cruel fellowship. O priestess, in the vaults of death.

O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? The stars, she whispers, blindly run. A web is woven across the sky. From outwaste places comes a cry, and murmurs from the dying sun. And all the phantom nature stands, with all the music in her tone,

a hollow echo of my own, a hollow form with empty hands. And shall I take a thing so blind, embrace her as my natural good, or crush her, like a vice of blood, upon the threshold of the mind? To sleep I give my powers away.

My will is bondsman, to the dark. I sit within a helmless bark, and with my heart I muse and say, O heart, how fares it with thee now, that thou shouldst fail from thy desire, who scarcely darest to inquire what is it makes me beat so low, something it is which thou hast lost, some pleasure from thine early years. Break thou deep face of chilling tears, that grief hath shaken into frost. Such clouds of nameless trouble cross all night, the darkened eyes. With mourning wakes the will, and cries, Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.

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, or, like coarsest clothes against the cold. But that large grief which these unfold is given an outline, and no more. One writes that other friends remain, that loss is common to the race, and common is the commonplace, and vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make my own less bitter, rather more, too common.

Never morning war to evening But some heart did break O father, wheresoe'er thou be Who pledges now thy gallant son A shot, ere half thy drought be done Hath stilled the life that beat from thee O mother, praying God will save thy sailor While thy head is bowed,

His heavy-shotted hammock shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave. Ye know no more than I, Who wrought at that last hour to please him well, whom mused on all I had to tell and something written, something thought, expecting still his advent home, and ever met him on his way with wishes, thinking here to-day, or here to-morrow will he come. O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, that sittest ranging golden hair, and glad to find thyself so fair, poor child, that waitest for thy love. For now her father's chimney glows in expectation of a guest,

and thinking this will please him best, she takes a riband or a rose, for he will see them on tonight, and with the thought her color burns, and having left the glass she turns once more to set a ringlet right, and even when she turned, the curse had fallen, and her future lord was drowned in passing through the ford, or killed and falling from his horse. Oh, what to her shall be the end, and what to me remains of good? To her, perpetual maidenhood. And unto me, no second friend. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. We've been reading a poem that meditates on death from the perspective of the living. But what might a poem look like from the perspective of the dead? Join me next week to find...