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Characteristics of Tennyson’s poetry:-

Characteristics of Tennyson’s poetry:-
·      If we attempt to sum up quality of Tennyson, as shown in these works, the task is difficult one; but three things stands out more or less plainly.
·      First, Tennyson is essentially the artist. No other in his age studied the art of poetry so contently or with such singleness of purpose; and Swinburne rivals him in melody and the perfect finish of his verse.
·      Second, like all the great writers of age, he is empathetically a teacher, often a Leader. In the preceding age as the French Revolution, law lessens was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in literature.
·      Third, Tennyson’s theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of order – of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect man. ‘In Memoriam’, ‘Idylls of the King’, ‘The Princess’,- here are three widely different poems; yet the theme of each, so far as poetry is kind of spiritual philosophy and weighs its words before it utters them, is the orderly development of law in the natural and in the spiritual world.
 
 

v     Tennyson’s Works:-
                    Tennyson is the central poet of the nineteenth century. Tennyson’s works it may be well to record two things, by way of suggestions first, Tennyson’s poetry is not so much to be studies as to be read and appreciated and second, we should by all means begin to get acquainted with Tennyson in the days of poetry, is to be eternally young, and like Adam in Paradise, to find every morning a new world, fresh, wonder, inspiring, as if just from the hands of God.
“In Memoriam (1850)”
“The princess – a serio-comic blank verse (1847)”
“Ulysses (1842)”
“Tears, idle tears (1847)”
“Chiefly Lyrical (1864)”
“Maud (1864)”
“Arthurian Idylls of the king (1859)”
                             Robert Browning his fellow worker. The differences in the two men are world-wide. Tennyson was man, hating noise and publicity, loving to be alone with nature like Wordsworth. Browning was sociable, delighting in applause, in bustle of big world. At his death in 1892, was mourned as “the voice of England.” Of the poems of 1842, we have already mentioned those best worth reading. The Princess, A Medley (1847), a long poem of over three thousand lines of blank verse, is Tennyson’s answer to the question of woman’s rights and woman’s sphere, which was then, as in our own day, strongly agitating the public mind.
                                In this poem a baby finally solves the problem which philosophers have pondered ever since men began to think connectedly about human society. A few exquisite songs, like“Tears, Idles, Tears”, “”Bugle song”, and “Sweet and Low” from the most delightful part of this poem, which in general is hardly up to the standard of the poet’s later work. The poem “The Princess” tells the story of a heroic princess who forswears the world of men and founds a women’s university where men are forbidden to enter. The Prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess’s hand. They lose and are wounded, but the women nurse, the man back to health. Eventually the princess returns the prince’s love. Several later including Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera princess Ida.
                   Perhaps the most loved of all Tennyson’s works is “In Memoriam”, which on account of both its theme and its exquisite worship, is “One of the few immortal names that were not born to die.” The immediate occasion of this remarkable poem was Tennyson’s profound personal grief at the death of his friend Hallam. As he wrote lyric after, inspired by this sad subject, the poet’s grief became less personal and the greater grief of humanity mourning for its dead and questioning its immortality took possession of him. Gradually the poem became an expression, first of universal doubt, and then of universal faith- a faith which rests ultimately not an reason or human love is the theme of the poem, which is made up of over on hundred different lyrics.
                 “In Memoriam”, he insists that we must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science. Hewrite; “strong, son of God, immortal love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and alone, embrace,
Believing where we can not prove,”
The poem begins as a tribute to and invocation of the strong son of God; since man, never having seen God’s face, has no proof of his existence, he can only reach god through faith.
At the end of the poem, he concludes that God’s eternal plan include purposive biological development. Thus, he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does not mean the end of the old faith and the poem also reflects Tennyson’s straddle with the Victorian growing awareness of another sort of past; the vast expanse of geological time and evolutionary history.
“Crossing the Bar”
              In ‘Crossing the Bar’, Tennyson is speaking about his own impending death. Within the poem. The image of the see is used to represent the “barrier” between life and death. The construction of this metaphor centers on the image of ‘Crossing the bars; a “bar” is physically a bar of sand in shallow water. The “bar” which Tennyson must cross, however, can only be crossed in one direction. This is made explicit in a couple of ways by the poet.
“Ulysses”
‘Ulysses’ is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet, Tennyson. The character of Ulysses in Greek Odysseus has been explored widely in literature. The adventures of Odysseus were first recorded in Homer’s Iliad and, Odyssey. His Ulysses and the Lotus-Eater’s draw upon actual incidents in Homer’s Odyssey.
“Tears, Idle Tears (1849)”
                  This poem was about the passion of the past, the abiding in the transient. “Tears, Idle Tears”, to analyze, his experience, and in the full light of the disparity and even apparent contradiction of the various elements, bring them into a new unity, he secures not only richness and depth but dramatic power as well.
         Tennyson’s various work treat issues of political and historical concern, as well as scientific matters classical mythology and deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Tennyson is both of a poet of penetrating introspection and a poet of the people; he plums the depth of his own consciousness while also giving voice to the national consciousness of Victorian society.




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