The poem of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Flower” is a kind of fable that the poet tells. It is like a story that happened to the author and he tells it to the readers because he wants all people to know it, because it was a cruel story for a man. A story that made all people not believe in him and his “flower”. Because this poem is about a flower that all people have to see but nobody likes it, only the owner of it. He is like a harvester because “he cast to earth a seed” (line 2) and then “Up there came a flower” (line 3). But, I think, this is a false story that perhaps was based on a real story but with some changes. It can be applied, to real life, on a story of a man that shows a person to a group of people or to the society because he thinks this person has a talent and all people have to know it, but people do not believe in the man and in his talent. Therefore, they are abandoned, by the society and one day that man becomes very famous, but the people do not want to admit that he was right because of their pride.

<<From 1832 to 1842, it is clear that Tennyson was refining his ironic techniques . Having the presentation of ironic theme , Tennyson now turned to experiments with ironic rhetoric. The general agency of this imprisoning rhetoric seems to be what can crudely be termed " ambiguity ," and the means of achieving it are various: often the ironic formula of saying as little and meaning as much as possible is applied; often structural parallels are allowed to develop and reinforce meanings that are not explicitly stated.>> (Alfred Tennyson, 1995)

It occurs in the poem too, but differently, “the people said, a weed” (line 4) and “and now again the people call it but a weed” (lines 23-24). It demonstrates that people do not like the flower. This fable is an irony because at the beginning people say the flower is “a weed” (line 4), but then they say “splendid is the flower” (line 16).

It is a moral poem because the poet tries to show all people a flower but nobody want to see it. But at the end they have to see it all days in all the towns because it has grown very quickly in all places. <<It is an important technique, the removal of moral or ethical context poem after poem presents a situation which seems to demand a judgment or a series of judgments and which either make secure judgment impossible or makes contradictory judgments necessary. The greatest poems of this volume are those which inevitably project a moral or social dilemma without suggesting the means for solving that dilemma; they work equally hard to bring forth and to render doubtful our judgments and our decisive responses. They not only present but engender an ironic position. He is even willing to allow his characters to escape in order to build walls around the reader. >> (Alfred Tennyson; a literary life) .

Some people stole the seed “stole the seed by night” (line 12) and in this attempt to do something wrong to this man and the flower, they forgot plants reproduce itself with seeds, and the action of transporting the seed from one place to another “sow'd it far and wide by every town and tower” (lines 13-14), it becomes an action of reproduction. Because this seed extends to all places and then, new flowers grown in all places. Now, people are angry about it “And now again the people call it but a weed” (lines 23-24). Maybe they like these flowers, but they are angry because of the fact that the plant which they hated “the people said, a weed” (line 4) now is in all places, and they dislike it. And it is shown in “cursed me and my flower” (line 8), the poet himself knows that all people do not like his flower nor him. <<Alfred Lord Tennyson belongs to the period of the long reign of Victoria of England, between 1837 and 1901. The end of the XIX century sees an optimist and selfconfident man that dominates the World and Nature with a technical and scientific knowledge .>>(La Inglaterra Victoriana)

It is a contrast with the expansion of the flower because it demonstrates that people do not know about how a flower can be expanded.And in: << Europeans, Americans and Japanese, the most industrialized regions, rush to the conquest of new towns and territories where they can get raw material and sell their products, at the same time that they began to play to win the universal supremacy. This is a time of uncertainty of social stability. So the quality of life, in general, is at a high level, but the improvements do not catch up with all people nor is it made equally.>> (La Inglaterra Victoriana)

It can be shown in the poem when people oppose the flower too.

The author uses a metaphor in the sentence “Once in a golden hour...” (line 1), it is in the beginning of a story, maybe because he says it is a fable. But an hour can not be golden, so the poet gives to an abstract thing (an hour) a characteristic of a concrete thing (to be golden), and this is a metaphor. And the rhythm of the poem is: (a, b; a, b) in “h our ” (line 1) and “fl ower ” (line 3); and “s eed ” (line 2) and “w eed ” (line 4).

This is a poem where Tennyson uses nature to tell something to the readers, he uses a “flower”. I think because a flower, as all living beings, has the same functions: to be born (the process is different but similar, at the same time), to live (it is the same process because we need to eat, in different forms), to grow and to reproduce (plants use a “seed” (line 2), people need two people to reproduce and normally plants need two plants to reproduce too, but there are some plants that one is enough to reproduce itself) and to die (we both fade with time).

THE FLOWER

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  •  Canales, Esteban. “La Inglaterra Victoriana”. Ediciones Akal.

•  Ormond, Leonée. “Alfred Tennyson; a literary life”. General Editor: Richard Dutton.

•  Sinfield, Alan. “Alfred Tennyson”. 1986.

•  http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net/flower.htm