[31] Break, break, break

Break, break, break,
    On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
    The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
    That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
    That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
    To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
    And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
    At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
    Will never come back to me.

	-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Another nice poem by Tennyson, in which the moods, images and rhythms blend
perfectly. Note the heavy, melancholy feel of 'break, break, break',
contrasted with the lighter 'that he sings in his boat on the bay', and in
general the way the various moods of the sea are evoked, from dancing,
rippling waves and gentle swells, to the mealncholy, insistent breaking upon
a cold and lonely shore.

Criticism:

  Great ages are fortunate which find the one voice that can turn to music
  their otherwise mute beliefs and endeavors, their joy and pain. Such was
  Chaucer for his time; such were Shakespeare and Spenser for theirs, Pope for
  his, and preeminently Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for the time of Victoria. Our
  present disparagement of Tennyson is only our impatience with everything
  Victorian; for his poetry peculiarly expresses the ideas and the enthusiasms
  of the vast reading middle class of his day. He reasons like the middle-
  -class liberal who keeps to the Christian faith and forms, at least in the
  via media or middle course, with a mind open to the new difficulties rising
  from the new science, and the prevailing evolutionary enthusiasm for
  progress and some good time coming.
  [..]
  His poetry sings the virtues and enthusiasms of his day, domestic and
  social, the patriotism, the humanitarian impulses, the utilitarian
  prosperity, the fascination of death, the sombre religion or scepticism, and
  the New Empire. At the same time he is nourishing and refining his age with
  the beauty which it had lost, and which he shapes for its needs out of many
  a corner of "the antique world." If he seems at times to be an aristocrat,
  he is such with the middle-class conservatism and faith in the old English
  order. He has as much of the body and fibre of English life in him as
  Dickens--perhaps more--not its lusty humors so much as its peculiar and
  irresistible charm mellowed by time.
  [..]
  He was first of all a careful, patient workman, and no man ever toiled
  harder or more soberly to perfect himself in his craft. He kept it up all
  his long life, revising and editing early poems, reading, observing,
  travelling, scrutinizing the work of his many masters, inventing short
  snatches and cadences which he saved for later use. With his minute care he
  joined extraordinary range and variety--of metre, subject and material, and
  final effect.
  [..]
  Like that otber great Alexandrian, Theocritus, Tennyson was essentially an
  idyllist, a fashioner of small and highly finished pictures. Hundreds of
  them are strewn from end to end of his work, from his Lady of Shalott, one
  of the most idyllic, through his classical poems, his pageants of the Palace
  of Art, and The Dream of Fair Women, his poems of English life, his
  Princess, Maud, In Memoriam. Of this he seems to have been aware in his very
  fondness for the word, "idyll"--"a small, sweet idyll," "English Idylls,"
  and Idylls of the King.
  [..]
  But he has far greater gifts than fine minute craftsmanship. One is the
  poet's supreme gift of making the language sing a new song, verse set to its
  own indigenous tune, the gift of Burns, or Byron, and the Elizabethans. And
  though it is usually peculiar to the youthful poet, it never wholly left
  Tennyson from "Break, break, break" to Crossing the Bar.

      -- Excerpts from Charles Grosvenor Osgood, 'The Voice of England',
      read the whole essay at
      <http://www.britishliterature.com/era/victoria-tennyson.html>

m.

From: Amit Chakrabarti <amitc@>

I understand that this is a "snapshot" type poem rather than a "story"
type poem. The only part of this that I can't understand is the
following (very famous) lines:
             But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
             And the sound of a voice that is still!
The lines are nice, but how do they relate to the rest of the poem? They
seem somewhat "inserted".
-------------------------------------------------------------
Amit Chakrabarti:
E-mail: amitc@
URL:    http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~amitc

From: Martin Julian DeMello <martindemello@>

Also spracht Amit Chakrabarti...
> I understand that this is a "snapshot" type poem rather than a "story"
> type poem. The only part of this that I can't understand is the
> following (very famous) lines:
>              But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
>              And the sound of a voice that is still!
> The lines are nice, but how do they relate to the rest of the poem? They
> seem somewhat "inserted".

actually, i felt so too, and was gong to say so but desisted. what they do
is provide context for the rest - break etc and i would that my heart could
utter, and then the last verse, both make sense in the context of that line.
my crib was that it seemed stylistically out of place, but (a) they're among
my favourite lines and (b) who am i to question tennyson's poetry :)

aamof, when i first read this poem, years ago, i thought that tennyson had
come up with a stud couple of lines and impatiently inserted them into
whatever poem he was working on at the moment :)

n.

From: Mukund Rangamani <rmukund@>

Well the poem seems to indicate the poet in a melancholy mood. 
He is missing something that was a source of comfort - the 
gaiety of the fisherman's boy seem to make his pain more acute.
I would summarise the poem as pointing to the ephemeral nature of life
as
opposed to the unending saga of the the waves breaking against the 
shore.

Comments ?

From: "Srikant P." <srikant_p@>

Regarding the controversy over the lines
'But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!'
in Poem #31, "Break, break, break", by Tennyson, I
believe these lines are taken (I'm not sure though)
from 'In Memoriam', dedicated to Tennyson's recently
deceased friend/enemy Hallam, and are therefore not to
be construed as 'inserted'

regards,
Srikant

From: Natalie "Núñez" <nuneznh@>

Alfred, Lord Tennyson is definately a remarkable
writer, in that he's able to write about everything,
and still keep his writing style without really
drifting off to that of other styles.  "Break, Break,
Break" is genious, and very sad at the same time. 
Could this be about his past loved ones who are now
deceased?  

-----
"Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?"

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail

From: "Rob F." <nanbfrie@>

my comments are these
a. how wonderful that these words can stilol evoke such a rich response from
its readers.
how marvelous.
how masculine.
ergo. i feel in the text a true strong guy's voice.
as a woman i'm touched and love to share the words, but definitely feel
separate.
thank for the offer to feel my mind's been tickled/
-nancy bengis friedman

From: Seagybaby@

Yes, the touch of the hand etc is a reference to the speaker's melancholy: he 
remembers someone who has died and grieves.

From: "Suchitra Kumar" <suchi_7@>

Real pleased to find one of my favourite poems here.

This is a beautifully constructed poem. I first read it in school sometime.
I used to sing out poems in order to learn them by-heart for (ugh) exams,
and found that this one sounded particularly nice, surpassing other poems
that were more lively, and traditionally considered more beautiful.

I believe the poem expresses a *constrained sorrow* at the loss of friends
and time. The lines referring to the ever-breaking sea, the fisherman's boy,
the stately ships, etc. all show the permanence of the world around and how
it remains unaffected by the poet's personal grief.

These are just the setting for the poem. The real emotion of the poem is in
the lines

"But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"

and in

"But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

The last two lines are wonderfully expressive, and are my favourite ones.

- Suchitra

From: Tollmag2@

how could anyone think that these lines were inserted? This is a poem of 
intense grief.... and the lines "But O for the touch of a vanished hand,/And 
the sound of a voice that is still!" refer to the source of his grief..... 
the recent death of his childhood friend...... Tennyson is expressing a loss 
so deep it puts a lump in my throat......

From: sandi_ordinario@

Hi Amit!

To share with you what I know about Tennyson's Break, Break, Break

I read somewhere in some obscure literary criticism of the poem that the fisherman's boy is really Alfred who is portrayed in the poem as playing with his sister at the bay. The sailor lad is his friend who is nameless. I am not sure if he eventually married Alfred's sister but the cryptic line:

But O for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still.

Could be refering to either his sister or his brother-in-law who probably died young. This is what I remember. I hope it fills in some gaps.

Cheers,
sandi

From: "Charlotte Crawley" <c.crawley1@>

I think the lines u r referring to are about Tennyson's university
friend Arthur Hallam, who he adored and wrote In Memoriam for after his
tragic and early death. In "In Memoriam" the image of touching hands is
repeatwed frequently and almost becomes a motif for Tennyson's grief for
his friend. He is always wanting to be able to touch his hands once more
and it is similar in this poem, he longs to be able to touch Hallam
again because he knows he never will.

Charlotte

From: "dan man" <dan_man@>

The way I see it, which may very well be looking far far too deep into this, 
is that the entire poem is about the death of his friend.

The stately ships would be his friend who passed on, his spirit if you will.

The haven under the hill is heaven, or whereever the deceased wind up.

This poem is about his grief over the loss of his friend.

Thanks for clearing up those lines, sandi, they were always the ones that 
made me second guess myself.
Have a good one guys.

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From: "dan man" <dan_man@>

The way I see it, which may very well be looking far far too deep into this, 
is that the entire poem is about the death of his friend.

The stately ships would be his friend who passed on, his spirit if you will.

The haven under the hill is heaven, or whereever the deceased wind up.

This poem is about his grief over the loss of his friend.

Thanks for clearing up those lines, sandi, they were always the ones that 
made me second guess myself.
Have a good one guys.

From: "helen davison" <hellibobs@>

From: Helen Davison

I think Tennyson intended these two lines to stand out and perhaps seem
out of place because the speaker's grief does not fit into the world he
is living in.Everything is going on as usual, despite his grief and it
seems as though it doesn't belong. The lines reflect this idea. Also,
although i do agree that the lines seem inserted, they represent the
speaker's consciousness perfectly, in that he cannot forget this person.
Life is going on around him, life that has nothing to do with him or his
dead friend, but it still reminds him of that person. No matter what the
speaker sees, he thinks of his loss, and this sudden thought of his
friend is reflected in the sudden change of focus in the two lines you
mentioned.

From: "Bodill" <ibodill@>

 `But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!'



these lines Could symbolize the withdrawal Tennyson felt after the death
of close friend Hallam.

The way he describes everything else in the poem is accurate.

These few lines represent feelings of loss and isolation.

They portray his significance in relation to the world.

If we believe the lines to be `inserted' we are acknowledging how
separate he has become from the general society.


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