Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is certainly the most resentative, if not the greatest, Victorian poet. His poetry voices the doubt and the faith, the grief and the joy of the English people in an age of fast social changes.

Alfred was born in 1809 at Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth son of a rather learned clergyman. At an early age, Tennyson began to show a flair for poetry. In 1827, he and his elder brother published Poems by Two Brothers. In this juvenile work the influence of Byron and an attraction to oriental themes were shown. When he entered the Trinity College, Cambridge, he was drawn to a circle of brilliant young men, known as "the Apostles." He soon became an intimate friend of their leader, Arthur Henry Hallam. During his years there, Tennyson published his first signed work Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830). Crude as it might be, the elaborate texture, the splendid coloring and the dreaming melancholy were already dicting the birth of a great poet.

In 1831, Tennyson left Cambridge and went home. The  year he published Poems, which contained a variety of poems, beautiful in melody and rich in imagery. However, it received very harsh and hostile criticism. This, together with the death of his dearest friend, Hallam, threw the young poet into deep sorrow and gloom. For nearly ten years after that, Tennyson published almost nothing. Silently he nursed his bleeding heart and devoted himself to the task of perfecting his art. In 1842, his  issue of Poems came out. The book was immediately recognized as a better work and was welcomed by readers. Collected in the book are the dramatic monologue "Ulysses," the epic narrative "Morte d'Arthur," the exquisite idylls "Dora" and "The Gardener's Daughter," etc. In 1847, The Princess was published. Written in blank verse, it deals with the theme of women's rights and position. Though on the whole it is not as good as his later works, it contained some of his best lyrical pieces, such as "'Fears, Idle Tears," "Come down, O Maid," "Sweet and Low," and "The Splendor Falls."

The year 1850 was an important one in Tennyson's life, for this year, he was appointed the Poet Laureate and was finally able to marry the woman he had loved for many years. And this year also saw the publication of his greatest work In Memoriam. Presumably it is an elegy on the death of Hallam, yet less than half of its 100 pieces are directly connected with him. The poet here does not merely dwell on the personal bereavement. As a poetic diary, the poem is also an elaborate and powerful ex前一單元ssion of the poet's philosophical and religious thoughts -- his doubts about the meaning of life, the existence of the soul and the afterlife, and his faith in the power of love and the soul's instinct and immortality. Such doubts and beliefs were shared by most people in an age when the old Christian belief was challenged by new scientific discoveries, though to most readers today, the real attraction of the poem lies more in its profound feeling and artistic beauty than in the philosophical and religious reflections. The familiar trance-like experience, mellifluous rhythm and pictorial descriptions make it one of the best elegies in English literature.

The rest years of Tennyson's life was comfortable and peaceful, but he never stopped writing. In 1855, Tennyson published a monodrama Maud, a collection of short lyrics. Among the other works of his later period, "Rizpah," "Enoch Arden," "Merlin and the Gleam" and "Crossing the Bar" are worthy of note. They proved to the world the amazing poetic freshness and inspiration the old poet still served. Tennyson's poetic career is also marked out by Idylls of the King (1842-1885), his most ambitious work which took him over 30 years to complete. It is made up of 12 books of narrative poems, based on the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Arthur, like Robin Hood, is here portrayed as a hero trying to restore order and harmony out of chaos. Though he is disillusioned by the faithlessness of Queen Guinevere and the betrayal of his round table knights, Arthur still cherishes his faith in God and insists that his ideal is not a vision. Idylls of the King is not a mere reproduction of the old legend, though. It is a modern intertation of the classic myth. For one thing, the moral standards and sentiments reflected in the poem belong to the Victorians rather than to the medieval royal people. For the other, the story of the rise and fall of King Arthur is, in fact, meant to resent a cyclic history of western civilization, which, in Tennyson's mind, is going on a spiritual decline and will end in destruction.

Tennyson is a real artist. He has the natural power of linking visual pictures with musical exssions, and these two with the feelings. He has perfect control of the sound of English, and a sensitive ear, an excellent choice and taste of words. His poetry is rich in poetic images and melodious language, and noted for its lyrical beauty and metrical charm. His works are not only the products of the creative imagination of a poetic genius but also products of a long and rich English heritage. His wonderful works manifest all the qualities of England's great poets. The dreaminess of Spenser, the majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake and Coleridge, the melody of Keats and Shelley, and the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron, -- all these striking qualities are evident on successive pages of Tennyson's poetry.