The Burial Of Love - Analysis

Introduction

The poem presents a mournful opening that announces the figurative death of love, then shifts into outraged defiance promising recompense. Its tone moves from elegiac and resigned to indignant and martial, giving the piece a dramatic emotional arc in a few short stanzas. The language is vivid and ceremonious, as if narrating a burial and a vow of vengeance.

Contextual note

Written by Alfred Lord Tennyson, a leading Victorian poet, the poem reflects the era's comfort with mourning symbolism and moral passion. Tennyson often explores intense feeling and social ideals, and here that sensibility frames love as both a noble force and a victim of modern apathy.

Main theme: Loss and mourning

The central image of Love as a corpse—"His eyes in eclipse," "Pale cold his lips," "Go—carry him to his dark deathbed"—concretizes grief. The catalog of physical signs of death (mute tongue, bow unstrung) dramatizes emotional exhaustion and the cessation of desire or affection.

Main theme: Betrayal and societal apathy

The poem indicts a communal coldness—"the cold, cold heart," "hollowhearted apathy"—as the cause or accomplice of Love's burial. The speaker fears public indifference will erect an epitaph "In the withered light / Of the tearless eye," suggesting social scorn and forgetfulness amplify the wound.

Main theme: Vengeance and restoration

Rather than accepting annihilation, the speaker vows retaliation: "Till Love have his full revenge." Natural blessings are withheld from the unrepentant—no showers, sun, green grass, rivers, or birds—implying withholding of life's renewal until justice or reconciliation is achieved.

Symbols and imagery

The arrow and bow evoke Cupid and the instrumentality of love; the "last arrow is sped" signals a final, failed attempt. The funerary imagery (dark deathbed, bury) and the "tearless eye" symbolize emotional sterility. Nature's refusal to renew—no rain, sun, grass, rivers, birds—serves as a moral sanction and a promise that cosmic order will mirror human injustice until reparations occur.

Concluding insight

The poem fuses elegy and oath to argue that love's apparent demise demands moral reckoning: if affection is buried by cruelty or indifference, the world itself will be denied renewal until love's balance is restored. Its power lies in transforming personal grief into a communal, ethical drama.