Christmas…and Tennyson

Merry Christmas and much love from “Down and Out.”  Let’s be honest.  The holidays aren’t ALL jolly (sorry to be a Scrooge), and whenever I think of poetry at this time of the year, I think of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam, A.H.H.” (1850).  Tennyson’s poem mourns the loss of a dear friend, and I like how he uses the holidays as a marker for the passage of time.  To read the entire (long—but gorgeous) poem on The Literature Network, click here.  I’ll leave you with just one Tennyson “In Memoriam” quote, from section 104:     

To-night ungather’d let us leave / This laurel, let this holly stand: / We live within the stranger’s land, / And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. / Our father’s dust is left alone / And silent under other snows: / There in due time the woodbine blows, / The violet comes, but we are gone.