This week’s poem is “Break, Break, Break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
And the stately ships go on
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809—1892)
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Poem 414. Break, Break, Break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
This poem is about loss and the way sometimes we are unable to talk about loss the way we might wish to—the words will not come to our tongues or the emotions involved are too strong to be adequately expressed. It also expresses the feeling of isolation: that no one else in the world can understand those emotions even if we were capable of putting them into words and that, generally speaking, the rest of the world is indifferent to our suffering.
Tennyson had a very strong and deep friendship with the poet Arthur Henry Hallam, who was engaged to Emilia, Tennyson’s sister. Hallam died (probably of a brain haemorrhage) at the shockingly young age of 22. Tennyson mourned his friend and prospective brother-in-law greatly and dedicated his poem In Memoriam to him. Ulysses and this poem are also tinged with the melancholy feelings Hallam’s death inspired in Tennyson.
The scene is a desolate sea shore (Tennyson was staying at Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire when he wrote it) and the narrator stands on the beach looking out at the minatory sea that breaks incessantly on the pebbles. He is evidently struggling with some great emotion and is incapable of speaking his thoughts.
He watches the children of the fisherman, the boy calling to his sister, and a young lad singing as he works on a nearby boat, and he envies their innocence and their oblivious ignorance of the feelings washing over him like the waves.
The tall ships likewise continue on their way, unconscious of his agony and his desire to feel again “the touch of a vanish’d hand” (Hallam’s, without a doubt) and to hear the voice of his lost friend.
The sea will continue, eternally breaking on the dismal strand where he watches and considers and slowly wearing away the crags that fill the distant view, but he mourns the bright days that have past, days that can never return.
I like this poem because it expresses succinctly the feelings of depression that accompany bereavement and the notion that it is impossible to convey to any other person the emotions that arise in one’s soul. It isn’t impossible but it often seems that way when we are sunk in grief.
There’s a good performance of the poem by John Gielgud on Roman Styran’s YouTube channel.