Raquel Jordá Bresó                                                11 – VI – 06

 

 

 

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

 

 

01 ‘Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

     Tears from the depth of some divine despair

     Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

     In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

05 And thinking of the days that are no more.

 

     ‘Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

     That brings our friends up from the underworld,

     Sad as the last which reddens over one

     That sinks with all we love below the verge;

10 So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

 

     'Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

     The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

     To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

     The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

15 So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

 

     ‘Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

     And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

     On lips that are for others; deep as love,

     Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

20 O Death in Life, the days that are no more.’

 

Tennyson, Alfred. “ Tears, idle tears.” The Princess 1847.(Network)

 

 

 

ANALYSIS

 

Title à ‘Tears, Idle Tears’ describes the sort of tears the speaker of the poem suffers;         unmotivated tears which are the cause or the consequence of the poem.

 

Lord Alfred Tennyson’s aim in this poem is to remind us these feelings of freshness and of sadness related to a past which will never come back.

 

            The speaker – who may be the writer himself – starts the first verse with the title and explains that these tears have no sense or motivation since he does not know ‘what they mean’ (L1); they appear when looking at the ‘Autumn-fields’ (L4) and are – the tears – coming up form the heart to the eyes – maybe meaning that they come form passion to reality or sense – and while remembering the past days which are no longer there.

 

            In the second stanza the author mixes up two quite different feelings: freshness and sadness.

            Fresh were the first days when the sun shined on the ‘sail’ (L6) of the boat of the lost friends, bringing them ‘up from the underworld’ (L7), whereas ‘sad’ (L8) were those days which reddened, taking everything loved ‘below the verge’ (L9).

            So this fragment could be understood as the poet’s complain of what he sees and what was there before, as he could think that this new era could not be as good and profitable as the past one seemed to be. Even more, the image of the ‘beam’ (L6) shining on the sail of the boat that brings up ‘our friends’ (L7) from the ‘other-world’ could mean that good things, good ideas were rescued, saved from another past – when they were not thought as good any time – in order to develop a new, better, enlightened society. But, however, the last two verses aim at that new progress implied the lost of what ‘we love below the verge’ (L9) in that ‘days that are no more’ (L10).

 

            But it is in the next stanza where a sad tone surrounds everything and things are presented as ‘strange’ (L11), the ears and the eyes are ‘dying’ (L13) and even darkness chases summer and the ‘pipe of half-awaken’d birds’ (L12), an image which normally symbolizes happiness and joy. So Tennyson affirms that those past days were ‘sad’ and ‘strange’ (L15).

 

            However, in the last stanza, the speaker talks about those past days as dear and sweet kisses, giving a positive but also tragic tone to the poem.

            The poet describes his feelings as if they were as ‘deep as first love and wild with all regret’ (L19), maybe meaning that they were in some way turbulent and so was the past time. Finally, he states that those days were like ‘Death in Life’ (L20).

            This past, these old days are presented through the whole poem at the end of each stanza. This repetition of ‘the days that are no more’ (L5, L10, L15, L20) is the key to understand – from my point of view – what these tears mean. Although the adjective ‘idle’ (L1) modifies the tears as unmotivated, I think that these tears come from these days that are no more; a past which was fresh, sweet but sad and strange.

This could be a criticism of what society had made to family, for example, through the Industrial Revolution (Norton), destroying those sweet days when people lived at farms and only took care of themselves whereas in the new Victorian industrialized age those happy days where left out and replaced by working hours (Norton).

            Furthermore, the comparison – in line 19 – of that past time with the depth of the first love is quite a powerful image. Maybe the writer himself is trying to tell us that at that time he strongly felt in love and now it is over.

             

            The structure used in this poem is the blank verse because any of the verses rhymes with any other. The only exception is the repetition of ‘the days that are no more’ at the end of each stanza.

            We can also say that this is a “dramatic monologue” (Landow) since the poem contains a speaker who talks in an argumentative tone, the silent listener – we readers – and we complete the dramatic scene with our imagination.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

 

            I found this poem rather strange and difficult to understand since the author mixes up very opposite feelings all along the text.

            From my point of view, Lord Alfred Tennyson could be making a critique to what history was like before the beginning of the Victorian Age. An ‘open’ critique which is not fixed in one thing in concrete but, without giving nouns, he describes how the past was like, with its positive but also negative aspects.

            So the mixture of both the writer’s personal feeling going out through the poem – as tears coming up from the heart – with his personal criticism towards the time he is living – which he looks at from eyes full of idle tears – will be my own summary image of the poem.

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tennyson, Alfred. “ Tears, idle tears.” The Princess, 1847. Literature Network. Ed. Jalic LLC. 16 – Ene - 2006  <http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/729/>

“The Victorian Age: Topics. Introduction.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. W.W. Norton and Co. 16 – Ene - 2006 <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/welcome.htm>

“The Victorian Age: Topics. Industrialism – Progress or Decline?: Overview.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. W.W. Norton and Co. 16 – Ene – 2006  <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/topic_1/welcome.htm>

Landow. George P. “Dramatic Monologue: An Introduction” The Victorian Web. Ed. George P. Landow. 16 – Ene – 2006  <http://victorianweb.org/authors/rb/dm1.html>

 

---