In 1833 Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam,
died, and the effect of this great sorrow upon the poet was to deepen
and strengthen the character of his genius. It turned his mind in upon
itself, and set it brooding over questions which his poetry had so far
left untouched; the meaning of life and death, the uses of adversity,
the future of the race, the immortality of the soul, and the dealings of
God with mankind.
Thou madest Death: and, lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
His elegy on Hallam, _In Memoriam_, was not published till 1850. He
kept it by him all those years, adding section after section, gathering
up into it whatever reflections crystallized about its central theme. It
is his most intellectual and most individual work; a great song of
sorrow and consolation. In 1842 he published a third collection of
poems, among which were _Locksley Hall_, displaying a new strength, of
passion; _Ulysses_, suggested by a passage in Dante: pieces of a
speculative cast, like the _Two Voices_ and the _Vision of Sin_; the
song _Break, Break, Break_, which preluded _In Memoriam_; and, lastly,
some additional gropings toward the subject of the Arthurian romance,
such as _Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_, and _Morte d'
Arthur.
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