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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 16 by ALFRED TENNYSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: WHAT WORDS ARE THESE HAVE FALLEN FROM ME?
Last Line: AND MINGLES ALL WITHOUT A PLAN?
Subject(s): HALLAM, ARTHUR HENRY (1811-1833); DEATH; MOURNING; FRIENDSHIP;

What words are these have fallen from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or Sorrow such a changeling be?

Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or storm,
But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake

That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark

That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn'd me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;

And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?



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