Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 43 by ALFRED TENNYSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: IF SLEEP AND DEATH BE TRULY ONE
Last Line: REWAKEN WITH THE DAWNING SOUL.
Subject(s): LOVE; MOURNING; BEREAVEMENT;
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Thro' all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the color of the flower:

So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;

And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.



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