The How And The Why - Analysis

Introduction and overall tone

The poem reads as a persistent, questioning monologue framed by wonder and mild existential frustration. Its tone mixes childlike curiosity with philosophical unease, moving between playful repetition and sober puzzlement. Mood shifts from observational lyric—cataloguing birds, trees, and everyday objects—to deeper metaphysical puzzling about life, self, and eternity.

Relevant context

Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Victorian poet, often balanced scientific curiosity and religious doubt; the era's debates about faith, progress, and emerging science inform the poem's recurrent questioning. The poem's plain diction and folk images reflect Tennyson's habit of making complex thought accessible.

Main theme: Existential questioning

The dominant theme is the search for origins and meaning: repeated refrains ask “how” and “why”, seeking explanations for birth, death, identity, and time (“In time there is no present, / In eternity no future”). The speaker alternates between asserting uncertainty (“I cannot tell”) and demanding answers, which dramatizes human discomfort with mystery.

Main theme: The limits of human knowledge

The poem emphasizes the insufficiency of human categories to capture reality. Binary oppositions—“deep is not high, and high is not deep,” “whether we wake, or whether we sleep”—show that language and logic fail to resolve profound questions. The recurring plea “Who will riddle me…” underscores hope for an answer beyond current faculties.

Main theme: Interconnected natural imagery

Nature participates in the questioning: bulrushes, wheatears, a little bird and a great bird all voice why and how. These images suggest that wonder is universal, not merely human, and that the natural world both mirrors and intensifies the speaker’s bewilderment.

Symbols and vivid images

Repeated images function symbolically: the contrast of rock and cloud suggests permanence versus change; the oak’s groan and willow’s sigh evoke different responses to life’s burdens; birds calling “why” and “how” become metaphors for unanswered questions. The church and chimneypot juxtaposition—sacred and domestic—raises the puzzle of meaning in both public faith and private life.

Conclusion and significance

The poem stages an earnest, musical interrogation of existence that refuses tidy answers. Through simple images, refrains, and antitheses, Tennyson captures the persistent human need to know origins, purpose, and selfhood while acknowledging the enduring opacity of those questions.