Nothing Will Die
Nothing Will Die - context Summary
Published in in Memoriam
This short lyric, published in 1850 as part of In Memoriam A.H.H., frames relentless natural cycles as evidence against final death. Tennyson repeats elemental images—stream, wind, cloud, heart—to insist that while forms change, nothing truly perishes. The poem reflects the collection’s preoccupation with immortality and transformation, offering consolation through the idea that change is eternal even when particular seasons or lives end.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen will the stream be aweary of flowing Under my eye? When will the wind be aweary of blowing Over the sky? When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting? When will the heart be aweary of beating? And nature die? Never, oh! never, nothing will die? The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die. Nothing will die; All things will change Through eternity. ’Tis the world’s winter; Autumn and summer Are gone long ago; Earth is dry to the centre, But spring, a new comer, A spring rich and strange, Shall make the winds blow Round and round, Through and through, Here and there, Till the air And the ground Shall be filled with life anew. The world was never made; It will change, but it will not fade. So let the wind range; For even and morn Ever will be Through eternity. Nothing was born; Nothing will die; All things will change.
Reprinted without any important alteration among the Juvenilia in 1871 and onward. No change made except that “through” is spelt “thro’,” and in the last line “and” is substituted for “all”.
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