Nature's Unity with Death

James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California

Note 15 to Chapter 5 of the author's Tennyson's Major Poems, which Yale University Press published in 1975. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

Ben W. Fuson gives this same argument: "with sudden shock the reader scows the hitherto half-obscured chasm between the vibrant peace of Nature and the ultimate immobility of death." For a conterargument, see R. A. Foakes, p. 125: "the imagery counterbalances the overt statement of mood, and the effect of the lyric is one of hope rather than despair."

Last modified: 28 March 2001