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poems<-Tennyson<-poetry<-chapter 7<-contents<-position

      In In Memoriam, Tennyson extended his profound grief for Hallam to deeper philosophical and religious exploration on life and death, good and evil, God, nature and human existence in the universe and concluded in the solution of universal love. These poems have represented the poet's struggle with the new developments in astronomy, biology, and geology that were diminishing man's stature on the scale of evolutionary time; although Darwin’s Origin of Species did not appear until 1859, notions of evolution were already in circulation, articulated in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) and Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). Besides, the beauty and harmony brought by the regular rhymes and cadenced diction made the collection the summit of Tennyson’s poetic career and also strengthened his greatness in the ninetieth century British poetry.
     The Idylls of the King took Tennyson more than half a century to write. In 1859, the first four books of The Idylls of the King came out and the poet kept on working at the epic until all the 12 books were published in 1888. No doubt Tennyson considered the work as his “magnum opus”.
      The plot of the book is based on Malory’s La Morte D’Arthur and retold the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, among which the liaison between Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot was vividly portrayed. Superficially, King Arthur was killed in the battle against Modred. But the poem has convinced the readers that he was actually died of treachery and unfaithfulness, which Tennyson considered as against the moral code of the Victorians: Sir Galahad the purest-hearted and Sir Percival the next in purity are the knights who finally find the Holy Grail whereas the unfaithfulness of Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot and the treachery of Sir Modred account for the decline and dissolution of Arthur’s kingdom and his Round Table.
        Nevertheless, it must be admitted that in some of the “Idylls”, such as “The Coming of Arthur”, “Sir Lancelot and Elaine”, “Guinevere” and “The Holy Grail”, there are a number of passages of dignified blank verse that narrate with consummate skill romantic tales of passionate love and lofty ideals, even though the persons and settings are placed far from the social reality of Victorian Age.
      Thus, although what Tennyson wrote was a middle-age romance, what he reflected was the mid-ninetieth century British society. However, on one hand, The Idylls of the King was praised for its splendid musical lyrics, on the other hand, with the over-exquisite elaboration of form, it failed in characterization.
        Tennyson was best at short lyrics. The best and most famous one must be “Crossing the Bar”, which was written on his own death at the age of 81.
Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
    Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the
                   boundless deep
    Turns again home.

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