Break, break, break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Commentary
Another nice poem by Tennyson, in which the moods, images and rhythms blend perfectly. Note the heavy, melancholy feel of ‘break, break, break’, contrasted with the lighter ‘that he sings in his boat on the bay’, and in general the way the various moods of the sea are evoked, from dancing, rippling waves and gentle swells, to the mealncholy, insistent breaking upon a cold and lonely shore.
Criticism
Great ages are fortunate which find the one voice that can turn to music
their otherwise mute beliefs and endeavors, their joy and pain. Such was
Chaucer for his time; such were Shakespeare and Spenser for theirs, Pope for
his, and preeminently Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for the time of Victoria. Our
present disparagement of Tennyson is only our impatience with everything
Victorian; for his poetry peculiarly expresses the ideas and the enthusiasms
of the vast reading middle class of his day. He reasons like the middle-
-class liberal who keeps to the Christian faith and forms, at least in the
via media or middle course, with a mind open to the new difficulties rising
from the new science, and the prevailing evolutionary enthusiasm for
progress and some good time coming.
[..]
His poetry sings the virtues and enthusiasms of his day, domestic and
social, the patriotism, the humanitarian impulses, the utilitarian
prosperity, the fascination of death, the sombre religion or scepticism, and
the New Empire. At the same time he is nourishing and refining his age with
the beauty which it had lost, and which he shapes for its needs out of many
a corner of "the antique world." If he seems at times to be an aristocrat,
he is such with the middle-class conservatism and faith in the old English
order. He has as much of the body and fibre of English life in him as
Dickens--perhaps more--not its lusty humors so much as its peculiar and
irresistible charm mellowed by time.
[..]
He was first of all a careful, patient workman, and no man ever toiled
harder or more soberly to perfect himself in his craft. He kept it up all
his long life, revising and editing early poems, reading, observing,
travelling, scrutinizing the work of his many masters, inventing short
snatches and cadences which he saved for later use. With his minute care he
joined extraordinary range and variety--of metre, subject and material, and
final effect.
[..]
Like that otber great Alexandrian, Theocritus, Tennyson was essentially an
idyllist, a fashioner of small and highly finished pictures. Hundreds of
them are strewn from end to end of his work, from his Lady of Shalott, one
of the most idyllic, through his classical poems, his pageants of the Palace
of Art, and The Dream of Fair Women, his poems of English life, his
Princess, Maud, In Memoriam. Of this he seems to have been aware in his very
fondness for the word, "idyll"--"a small, sweet idyll," "English Idylls,"
and Idylls of the King.
[..]
But he has far greater gifts than fine minute craftsmanship. One is the
poet's supreme gift of making the language sing a new song, verse set to its
own indigenous tune, the gift of Burns, or Byron, and the Elizabethans. And
though it is usually peculiar to the youthful poet, it never wholly left
Tennyson from "Break, break, break" to Crossing the Bar.
– Excerpts from Charles Grosvenor Osgood, ‘The Voice of England’,
read the whole essay at
<http://www.britishliterature.com/era/victoria-tennyson.html>
— Martin
Show 20 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin DeMello · 12 March 1999
Also spracht Amit Chakrabarti…
actually, i felt so too, and was gong to say so but desisted. what they do is provide context for the rest - break etc and i would that my heart could utter, and then the last verse, both make sense in the context of that line. my crib was that it seemed stylistically out of place, but (a) they’re among my favourite lines and (b) who am i to question tennyson’s poetry :)
aamof, when i first read this poem, years ago, i thought that tennyson had come up with a stud couple of lines and impatiently inserted them into whatever poem he was working on at the moment :)
n.
Amit Chakrabarti · 12 March 1999
I understand that this is a “snapshot” type poem rather than a “story” type poem. The only part of this that I can’t understand is the following (very famous) lines:
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! The lines are nice, but how do they relate to the rest of the poem? They seem somewhat “inserted”.
Mukund Rangamani · 13 March 1999
Well the poem seems to indicate the poet in a melancholy mood. He is missing something that was a source of comfort - the gaiety of the fisherman’s boy seem to make his pain more acute. I would summarise the poem as pointing to the ephemeral nature of life as
opposed to the unending saga of the the waves breaking against the shore.
Comments ?
Natalie Núñez · 9 November 2000
Alfred, Lord Tennyson is definately a remarkable writer, in that he’s able to write about everything, and still keep his writing style without really drifting off to that of other styles. “Break, Break, Break” is genious, and very sad at the same time. Could this be about his past loved ones who are now deceased?
Rob F · 8 December 2000
my comments are these
a. how wonderful that these words can stilol evoke such a rich response from its readers.
how marvelous.
how masculine.
ergo. i feel in the text a true strong guy’s voice. as a woman i’m touched and love to share the words, but definitely feel separate.
thank for the offer to feel my mind’s been tickled/ -nancy bengis friedman
Seagybaby · 20 January 2001
Yes, the touch of the hand etc is a reference to the speaker’s melancholy: he remembers someone who has died and grieves.
Suchitra Kumar · 3 May 2001
Real pleased to find one of my favourite poems here.
This is a beautifully constructed poem. I first read it in school sometime. I used to sing out poems in order to learn them by-heart for (ugh) exams, and found that this one sounded particularly nice, surpassing other poems that were more lively, and traditionally considered more beautiful.
I believe the poem expresses a constrained sorrow at the loss of friends and time. The lines referring to the ever-breaking sea, the fisherman’s boy, the stately ships, etc. all show the permanence of the world around and how it remains unaffected by the poet’s personal grief.
These are just the setting for the poem. The real emotion of the poem is in the lines
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!”
and in
“But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
The last two lines are wonderfully expressive, and are my favourite ones.
- Suchitra
Tollmag2 · 11 March 2002
how could anyone think that these lines were inserted? This is a poem of intense grief…. and the lines “But O for the touch of a vanished hand,/And the sound of a voice that is still!” refer to the source of his grief….. the recent death of his childhood friend…… Tennyson is expressing a loss so deep it puts a lump in my throat……
sandi_ordinario · 21 April 2003
Hi Amit!
To share with you what I know about Tennyson’s Break, Break, Break
I read somewhere in some obscure literary criticism of the poem that the fisherman’s boy is really Alfred who is portrayed in the poem as playing with his sister at the bay. The sailor lad is his friend who is nameless. I am not sure if he eventually married Alfred’s sister but the cryptic line:
But O for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still.
Could be refering to either his sister or his brother-in-law who probably died young. This is what I remember. I hope it fills in some gaps.
Cheers,
sandi
Charlotte Crawley · 29 April 2003
I think the lines u r referring to are about Tennyson’s university friend Arthur Hallam, who he adored and wrote In Memoriam for after his tragic and early death. In “In Memoriam” the image of touching hands is repeatwed frequently and almost becomes a motif for Tennyson’s grief for his friend. He is always wanting to be able to touch his hands once more and it is similar in this poem, he longs to be able to touch Hallam again because he knows he never will.
Charlotte
Dan Man · 16 October 2003
The way I see it, which may very well be looking far far too deep into this, is that the entire poem is about the death of his friend.
The stately ships would be his friend who passed on, his spirit if you will.
The haven under the hill is heaven, or whereever the deceased wind up.
This poem is about his grief over the loss of his friend.
Thanks for clearing up those lines, sandi, they were always the ones that made me second guess myself.
Have a good one guys.
Helen Davison · 2 May 2004
I think Tennyson intended these two lines to stand out and perhaps seem out of place because the speaker’s grief does not fit into the world he is living in.Everything is going on as usual, despite his grief and it seems as though it doesn’t belong. The lines reflect this idea. Also, although i do agree that the lines seem inserted, they represent the speaker’s consciousness perfectly, in that he cannot forget this person. Life is going on around him, life that has nothing to do with him or his dead friend, but it still reminds him of that person. No matter what the speaker sees, he thinks of his loss, and this sudden thought of his friend is reflected in the sudden change of focus in the two lines you mentioned.
Bodill · 7 May 2005
“But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!”
these lines Could symbolize the withdrawal Tennyson felt after the death of close friend Hallam.
The way he describes everything else in the poem is accurate.
These few lines represent feelings of loss and isolation.
They portray his significance in relation to the world.
If we believe the lines to be “inserted” we are acknowledging how separate he has become from the general society.
P.K.Srivastava · 14 July 2006
I felt very sad after reading this poem,during my childhood days,and now I can see emotions pouring from the grieving poet.But the World goes on as usual nothing happens to this world.The actions of the sea and the fishermans boy and his sister are as usual as if nothing has happened to them.This is the irony!But it is very hard to comprehand. Pradeep
Zahid Iqbal · 25 July 2006
This poem has got a melancholic touch and an air of nostalgia about it. The greates benefit such poetry serves in my opinion is the refinement of emotions. It also tends to purify you spiritually. Such benefits can be had only when one can relate his or her feelings to the mood of the poem. I am not sure about how other people feel about it But I love such poetry. Other examples include poems by Emily Bronte like SELF-INTERROGATION and Youth and Age by S. T Coleridge etc.
Richard Collins · 9 October 2006
Perusing through the excellent comments here, and thought I’d add some of my own.
I was reading the poem, and I realised that the title could be describing the breaking of his heart at the death of his friend, or a contrast with the waves that break, only to reform, whereas his friend is lost irreparably. Also, the cold gray stones could be interpreted as gravestones, as well as the cliff walls.
The boy and girl playing, and the sailor lad show Tennyson’s resentment of their innocence and happiness.
Just also like to point out that the Vikings, as well as cremating their dead, also buried them in their longships, which could be related to the ships going ‘to their haven under the hill’.
Just my thoughts…
Richard Collins
Kerri Robinson · 17 April 2007
I found the one stanza about the stately ships and the feeling of loss in an ordinary fiction book on 1 Jan 2007 - they affected me so much that I wrote them in my journal. I knew they were from Tennyson, never looked up from which poem they were taken. When my dear husband died on 28 March I included them in his memorial. He was in the Royal Australian Navy, then became a soldier and a farmer. They just seemed to fit so well. Many of our friends agree.
Barker · 5 August 2007
Just read your comments on Break, Break, Break. Apparently you have 0 understanding that this poem was written after the death of a loved one. He is overwhelmed by the realization that life goes on; the world doesn’t stop even though one’s own personal world has been shattered. . And finally, he realizes that his world will never be the same again. It is not a “nice” poem. It is the poem of someone grieving a tremendous loss.
Trevor Harvey · 14 October 2007
I believe this poem was written at, (or at least, about), Clevedon, near Bristol. I knew it well in my late teens, as I lived in Bristol then. A blustery little seaside town which still has its old pier, on the northern shore of the West of England, Clevedon looks out northwards onto the Bristol Channel, where big ships did indeed pass along that choppy stretch a further 13 miles to the port of Bristol, as they had since the days when the port was made rich by the slave trade. Had he been able to look out on a clear day, the coastline of South Wales would have been visible in the distance. The sand all along that stretch is muddy grey too, like the crags, the cold grey stones. I memorised this poem many years ago, and see the “out of place” lines as revealing the dissonance between the poet’s lived experience of his observations, looking down at the sea and the local people who got their living from it, and his inner reverie and recollection of lost love. Tennyson quite likelyy reached the town by steam train, as it was then on the Great Western Railway route that joined the seaside towns of northern Somerset. The spelling of grey is authentic to UK, and thus, Tennyson’s, English; to change the vowel is not. – T. P. Harvey
Michael Degan · 8 January 2008
To understand this poem you must know that Tennyson’s good friend died just before he wrote it. The poem is about how he feels as he walks along the sea. He is jealous of the happy people he sees and he is angry and grieving.
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