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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 64 by ALFRED TENNYSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: DOST THOU LOOK BACK ON WHAT HATH BEEN
Last Line: DOES MY OLD FRIEND REMEMBER ME?'
Subject(s): HALLAM, ARTHUR HENRY (1811-1833); DEATH; MOURNING; FRIENDSHIP;
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,

The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play'd at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;

Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labor of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands:
'Does my old friend remember me?'



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