O sorrow, cruel fellowship!
O sorrow, cruel fellowship!O Priestess in the vaults of Death!O sweet and bitter in a breath,What whispers from thy lying lip?
‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;A web is wov’n across the sky;From out waste places comes a cry,And murmurs from the dying sun:
‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands--With all her music in her tone,A hollow echo of my own,--A hollow form with empty hands.’
And shall I take a thing so blind,Embrace her as my natural good;Or crush her, like a vice of blood,Upon the threshold of the mind?
Words in this poem
- priestess n.
- A woman who officiated in sacred rites among pagans. Abp.
- blindly adv.
- Without sight, discernment, or understanding; without thought, investigation, knowledge, or purpose of one's own.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
O sorrow, cruel fellowship! 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, O sorrow, cruel fellowship!, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-3.html, id L18363.
Form and metre
O sorrow, cruel fellowship! is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. Rhymes that have moved apart since the poem was written: is / this, moods / woods, been / green, loved / proved.
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 fellowshipA · deathB · breathB · lipA
- 2 ABBA runA · skyB · cryB · sunA
- 3 ABBA standsA · toneB · ownB · handsA
- 4 ABBA blindA · goodB · bloodB · mindA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O sorrow, cruel fellowship! | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| O Priestess in the vaults of Death! | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| O sweet and bitter in a breath, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| What whispers from thy lying lip? | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| ‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| A web is wov’n across the sky; | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| From out waste places comes a cry, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And murmurs from the dying sun: | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| ‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands-- | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| With all her music in her tone, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A hollow echo of my own,-- | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| A hollow form with empty hands.’ | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And shall I take a thing so blind, | 8 | ········ |
| Embrace her as my natural good; | 8 | ˘/···/˘· |
| Or crush her, like a vice of blood, | 8 | ········ |
| Upon the threshold of the mind? | 8 | ···/···· |
On this poem
"Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?"
reject, and turn away from the impostures of a sorrowing imagination?
Notes from the edition 11
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 First realization of blind sorrow. [Tennyson]
- Stanza 1, line 1 'fellowship': so in Demeter, 'a. far-off friendship,' for 'friend.' [Bradley]
- Stanza 2 A web is woi?n across the sky. [Cf. cxxii. i.— ED.]
From out waste places comes a cry. And murmurs from the dying sun. Expresses the feeling that sad things in Nature affect him who mourns. [Tennyson] - Stanza 2, line 1 Cf. ' Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky,' Essay on Man, I. 252. [Bradley]
- Stanza 2, line 2 This line may be taken with 5: * the stars, instead of moving in ordered courses, run blindly across the sky, weaving a tangled web ': or it may be taken (more probably)
by itself to signify that the meaning of things is dark to us, *the eternal Heavens' being hidden by woven clouds. Cf. cxxn. 4, LXXII. 8. [Bradley] - Stanza 2, line 3 'waste places' of the universe, not merely of the earth. The idea seems to be that of the pain in the world. [Bradley]
- Stanza 2, line 4 ' dying ': probably an inference from the nebular hypo- thesis, so often referred to by Tennyson. Cf. cxvm. 4. [Bradley]
- Stanza 3, line 2 ' the music ': first ed.: * her music.' [Bradley]
- Stanza 3, line 3 'my': everyone naturally takes this to refer to the poet, whereas the quotation-marks compel us to refer it to Sorrow. But doubtless their insertion was an error in punc- tuation, as is suggested by Mr. Beeching and Mr. Ferrall. [Bradley]
- Stanza 3, line 3 'hollow': Tennyson is very fond of this word; e.g. ' Hollow smile and frozen sneer,' The Poefs Mind. Cf. LXX. 4, LXXIII. 13, and Virgil's 'cava sub imagine formae,' A en. vi. 293. [Bradley]
- Stanza 4, line 2 'natural good': so she seemed at first (section I.); but this sorrow seems rather born of diseased blood. With 'vice of blood' cf. Liv. 4; also Othello, I. iii. 123, 'I do con- fess the vices of my blood' (G. A. C.). [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.