Alfred Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 / Lincoln / England)

In these fine lines, Tennyson mourns the death of his beloved friend, Arthur Hallam. These lines contain great vivid imagery and a grand style. The poem is a masterpiece of English poetry. Excellent work of Tennyson.

Tennyson employs beautiful contrast in this poem, beginning with the thrice repeated break of waves ‘On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! ’, to portray the constant breaking, suffering of a human heart in the agony of mourning. Immediately after this metaphor of suffering, describing the inability of the tongue, to describe this pain of loss.
The joy of the fisherman’s children ‘at play! ’ and ‘the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! ’, is the illustration of shades of life, as some mourn in deep sorrow, others enjoy moments of happiness. There is beauty everywhere, in the passage of ‘stately ships’, safely reaching ‘their haven under the hill; ’ but this seems to intensify the suffer of a hand never to be touched again, the voice never to be heard again.
The first line of the fourth stanza, neatly rounds the brief circle of life, repeating the ‘Break, break, break’ beginning the opening stanza, but intensifying the suffering, as ‘cold gray stones, O Sea! ’ becomes ‘At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! ’. This imagery contains a note of increasing suffering, terrible loss that does not quickly pass; the danger perhaps of dark suicidal thoughts, and the suggested ‘tender grace of a day’, when the suffering and pain of the dying loved one, ended in the mercy of death.
Tennyson displays a mastery of contrasted imagery, in this lyrical poem of heartache and bereavement. Tennyson’s pain is real, as he expresses the indifference of nature, in a cruel and unfeeling world, through personification in an address to the sea. The shock at the sudden death of his best friend, Arthur Hallam from a stroke at age 22; a fellow poet engaged to his sister Emily, teaches us the priceless value of youth and good health.