Tears of the widower, when he sees
Tears of the widower, when he seesA late-lost form that sleep reveals,And moves his doubtful arms, and feelsHer place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,A void where heart on heart reposed;And, where warm hands have prest and closed,Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weep the comrade of my choice,An awful thought, a life removed,The human-hearted man I loved,A spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me many yearsI do not suffer in a dream;For now so strange do these things seem,Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,And glance about the approaching sails,As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales,And not the burthen that they bring.
Words in this poem
- widower n.
- A man who has lost his wife by death, and has not married again.
- reposed a.
- Composed; calm; tranquil; at rest.
- prest a.
- Ready; prompt; prepared. [OF. prest, F. prêt, fr. L. praestus ready. Cf. Presto.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tears of the widower, when he sees is in the public domain. This text is taken from In memoriam, Project Gutenberg ebook #70950; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alfred Tennyson, Tears of the widower, when he sees, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-13.html, id L18373.
Form and metre
Tears of the widower, when he sees is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 15% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA seesA · revealsB · feelsB · theseA
- 2 ABBA newA · reposedB · closedB · tooA
- 3 ABBA choiceA · removedB · lovedB · voiceA
- 4 ABBA yearsA · dreamB · seemB · tearsA
- 5 ABBA wingA · sailsB · balesB · bringA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Tears of the widower, when he sees | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A late-lost form that sleep reveals, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| And moves his doubtful arms, and feels | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Her place is empty, fall like these; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Which weep a loss for ever new, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A void where heart on heart reposed; | 8 | ······/· |
| And, where warm hands have prest and closed, | 8 | ········ |
| Silence, till I be silent too. | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Which weep the comrade of my choice, | 8 | ···/···· |
| An awful thought, a life removed, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| The human-hearted man I loved, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| A spirit, not a breathing voice. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Come Time, and teach me many years | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I do not suffer in a dream; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For now so strange do these things seem, | 8 | ········ |
| Mine eyes have leisure for their tears; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| My fancies time to rise on wing, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And glance about the approaching sails, | 9 | ·····˘/˘· |
| As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And not the burthen that they bring. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
On this poem
"the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice."
Hallam is now only a remembrance--no longer endowed with bodily functions, and the survivor cannot quite accept what has happened.
He therefore asks Time to teach him "many years"--for years to come--the real truth, and make him feel that these strange things, over which his tears are shed, are not merely a prolonged dream; and he begs that his fancies, hovering over the approaching ship, may quite realise that it brings no ordinary freight, but actually the mortal remains of his friend.
Notes from the edition 7
Section introductions from Alfred Gatty, <i>A Key to Lord Tennyson's “In Memoriam”</i>, 4th ed. (George Bell & Sons, 1900; Project Gutenberg #36637). Line notes credited “[Tennyson]” are Tennyson's own notes; “[Hallam Tennyson]” marks a note that is wholly his son and editor's own explanatory bracket, not the poet's own words; “[Emily Tennyson]” marks the few notes signed by his wife. All three are from <i>The Works of Tennyson, Annotated by the Author</i>, ed. Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. 3 (Macmillan, 1908; Internet Archive worksoftennysona03tennuoft). Line notes credited “[Bradley]” are A. C. Bradley's, from <i>A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam</i> (Macmillan, 1910; Internet Archive commentaryontenn00braduoft). All these number sections by the final, 131-section text, not the site's own 1850 numbering: from final XL to LVIII subtract one section number, from LX on subtract two, to reach the site's; the site prints the 129-section first edition of 1850 (see the work's own blurb), so two of the final text's numbered sections have no home here and are skipped.
- Stanza 1, line 1 The stanza is frequently misunderstood.. It is taken to describe the widower's sudden and overwhelming realisa-
tion of his loss in the moment when, waking from sleep, he 'feels her place is empty,' and knows that he has only dreamed of her. But the fourth stanza shows that this is not so, and that everything described in the first stanza, the dream, the doubt, the movement, and the weeping, takes place in sleep, or, at any rate, before a full awakening. So the poet's consciousness of his loss has the strangeness and uncertainty of a dream, or of a state between sleeping and waking. The source of the difficulty lies in the second and third stanzas, which seem to express such a clear con- sciousness of the nature of his loss as would come to the widower when fully awake. [I am not sure that this inter- pretation is right. It is perhaps as probable that the usual understanding of the first lines is correct, and that there is some want of connection between the first three stanzas and the last two.] [Bradley] - Stanza 1, line 3 Cf. Aeschylus, Ag. 420 f.; Ovid, Her. X. 9 ff.; Pope, Eloisa to Abelard^ 235 ff. [Bradley]
- Stanza 3, line 1 This stanza also is sometimes, and strangely, mis- understood. He weeps the comrade of his choice, now became an awful thought, a life removed; he weeps the human-hearted man he loved, now become a Spirit. See Introduction, pp. 41, 42. [Bradley]
- Stanza 4 [Time will teach him the full reality of his loss, whereas now he scarce believes in it, and is like one who between sleep and waking can weep and has dream- fancies. ED.]
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears. [Contrast the tearless grief in iv. iii., and xx. —ED.] [Hallam Tennyson] - Stanza 4, line 1 First ed.: ' Come Time, and teach me many years ': whence ' many years ' was construed as = ' during many years.' [Bradley]
- Stanza 4, line 4 For the idea, that at this stage of grief tears fall only when the full meaning of loss is not felt, cf. IV. n, 12, XIX. 9 ff., XX. Contrast XLIX., a later stage. The idea in 'leisure' and 'time' (17) seems to be that, if he realised the truth, he would not yield to grief but would exert his will; cf. LXXXV. 37-40. [Bradley]
- Stanza 5, line 3 With the peculiar effect of these lines, due to the alliteration on b and the repetition of sharp final consonants
Cf. VII. 12. [Bradley]
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.