Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (books by this author) was born 200 years ago today in Lincolnshire, England (1809). He's one of the most popular English-language poets ever. It was Tennyson who first penned "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all" and the phrase "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die." He also wrote, "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure."

Tennyson's famous lyric poems include "Break, break, break," "Tears, idle tears" and "Crossing the Bar."

One of Tennyson's most anthologized pieces is "The Lady of Shalott," a melodramatic Victorian ballad drawing on myths and legends associated with King Arthur. The poem enjoyed a pop culture resurgence after it was recited at length in the 1985 Anne of Green Gables television movie.

Many consider Tennyson's masterpiece to be "In Memoriam A.H.H." He started writing the elegy in 1833 after his friend Arthur Hallam had a cerebral hemorrhage and died suddenly. Tennyson was grief-stricken, melancholy by nature, and on the verge of suicide. Hallam was Tennyson's closest friend: The two met as undergraduates at Cambridge at a meeting of a literary club on campus, "The Apostles." They had traveled together through out Europe, and some scholars speculate that their relationship was more than platonic. Eventually, Hallam had become engaged to his Tennyson's sister.

In his great grief, Tennyson wrote a poem, "In Memoriam A.H.H.," in which he questioned the tenets of faith, morality, and immortality. He wrote: "Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation's final law – / Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed." And, "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.

It wasn't until 1850 that he published the poem, 17 years after Hallam's death. The year 1850 marked a watershed for Tennyson in many ways. That year, he was appointed poet laureate of England, succeeding William Wordsworth. Tennyson would keep the position for 42 years, till his death in 1892, the longest by far that anyone ever held that post.

And that year, 1850, he married Emily Sellwood, whom he had known since his childhood. He later said, "The peace of God came into my life when I wedded her." He and Emily named their first son Hallam Tennyson after his friend Arthur Hallam, for whom he'd written the great poem.

To celebrate the bicentenary of Tennyson's birth this year, there are a number of planned events, including guided walks in the villages he grew up in, poetry readings, an art exhibition, "Tennyson Transformed," a Country Dance at Alford with music of Tennyson's era, and the Tennyson Society's Conference at the University of Lincoln.