Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

"In Memoriam A. H. H." by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)

Another Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “In Memoriam A.H.H.” over a period of seventeen years, from 1833 to 1850. In 133 cantos, he eulogizes his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Filled with a deep, personal grief, the poem also explores the wider theme of how to grieve in a world where the bedrock of belief is shifting. Tennyson’s poem has a resolutely more religious outlook than Arnold’s “Stanzas,” but Tennyson does capture the Victorian anxiety about the onset of doubt in line such as “Strong Son of God, immortal Love, / Whom we, that have not seen thy face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace, / Believing where we cannot prove […]” (Lines 1-4).

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold (1867)

Published in 1867 in the poetry collection New Poems, “Dover Beach” may have been written as early as 1851. One of the best-known of Arnold’s poems, it shares thematic concerns with “Stanzas from a Grande Chartreuse.” Additionally, it illustrates Arnold’s typical technique of transforming a narrative description of a real landscape into a scene of great symbolic value. Looking out on the sea from the shore of Dover on the English Channel, the poet compares the retreat of the waves to the retreat of religion, which has left the world’s “naked shingles” exposed.