The Burial of Love
The Burial of Love - meaning Summary
Love's Staged and Vengeful Death
Tennyson personifies Love as a wounded corpse whose last arrow is spent and whose mourners debate burial. The speaker first declares Love dead and demands interment, then rejects passive indifference and insists that the beloved must suffer deprivation until Love achieves revenge. The poem moves from elegy to vindictive resolve, casting emotional neglect as a fate worse than death and promising nature’s withdrawal as punishment.
Read Complete AnalysesHis eyes in eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed, Backward drooping his graceful head, Love is dead; His last arrow is sped; He hath not another dart; Go—carry him to his dark deathbed; Bury him in the cold, cold heart— Love is dead. Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn, And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles Forgotten, and thine innocent joy? Shall hollowhearted apathy, The cruellest form of perfect scorn, With languor of most hateful smiles, For ever write In the withered light Of the tearless eye, An epitaph that all may spy? No! sooner she herself shall die. For her the showers shall not fall, Nor the round sun that shineth to all; Her light shall into darkness change; For her the green grass shall not spring, Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing, Till Love have his full revenge.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.