A Survey of Lord Tennyson's Poetry Quiz

Answer: Poems by Two Brothers

Tennyson published "Poems by Two Brothers" in 1827 with his older brother Charles. Alfred contributed over half the poems in the volume.

"Poems, Chiefly Lyrical", was published in 1830 and contained experimental elements (irregular meter, words not used for their literal meanings but for their sound, etc.). This second publication included "Marian" and "Claribel".

Answer: Cambridge

The Chancellor's Gold Medal is a prestigious annual award presented at Cambridge University for poetry. Oxford University offers the Newdigate prize for poetry.

The poem begins, "I Stood upon the mountain which o'erlooks / The narrow seas..." Tennyson was twenty at the time.

Lord Tennyson was made poet laureate of the UK in 1850 after William Wordsworth died. The position was first offered to Samuel Rogers, but he turned it down.

Answer: In Memoriam

Hallam and Tennyson were college friends. They both entered the Chancellor's Prize Poem Competition that Tennyson won and were together members of a debating club called the Cambridge Apostles. Hallam fell in-love with Tennyson's sister Emily. He died unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage while on vacation in Vienna in 1833, and his sudden death left Tennyson reeling.

The full name of the lengthy poem, which is divided into parts, is "In Memoriam A.H.H." "In Memoriam" was published in 1850 and is typically considered to be Tennyson's masterpiece.

"Crossing the Bar" was a poem Tennyson wrote in 1888 after suffering a serious illness at sea.

Answer: Kraken

"The Kraken" was published in Tennyson's 1830 collection "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical". It's a sort-of Petrarchan sonnet, except that it has 15 lines, with an ABABCDDCEFEAAFE rhyme scheme. He may have been influenced by John Milton in writing it, as Milton wrote in "Paradise Lost" something similar: "There Leviathan / Hugest of living creatures, on the deep / Stretch'd like a promontory..."

Answer: Mariana

The poem was published in 1830 and later adapted by Elizabeth Gaskell for her own use. The setting of the poem is "the lonely moated grange" where Mariana laments her own social isolation:

"She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!'"

Answer: The Lady of Shalott

"The Lady of Shalott" is based on the medieval ballad "La Damigella di Scalot". The poem inspired three paintings by the English painter John William Waterhouse. The poem begins:

"On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;

The yellow-leaved waterlily
The green-sheathed daffodilly
Tremble in the water chilly
Round about Shalott."

Answer: Locksley Hall

The poem opens when the narrator stops at Locksley Hall, where he spent his childhood. It then moves to an interior monologue in which the narrator struggles with feeling surrounding his childhood. His childhood sweetheart, the reader learns, rejected him because of her parents' disapproval. "Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?" the narrator asks himself. "No - she never loved me truly; love is love for evermore."

Answer: Ulysses

In this poem, Ulysses has returned from his adventures to reunite with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. However, he can't seem to overcome his yearning to explore:

"I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees..."

Answer: Princess Ida

Tennyson's poem, "The Princess", inspired Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera "Princess Ida". The poem tells the tale of a brave princess who swears off men and opens a university that only women may attend. The prince to whom the princess was betrothed as a child gains admission to the university disguised as a female student.

When he's discovered, he flees, but he later fights a battle out of love for her. He is wounded and nursed back to health and, at long last, the princess returns his love.

Answer: The Lotos-Eaters

The sailors ask themselves,

"Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?"

The poem was inspired by Greek mythology as well as by Tennyson's trip to the Pyrenees mountains of Spain with his friend Arthur Henry Hallam.

Answer: tears

Written in 1847, "Tears, Idle Tears" was published as part of Tennyson's collection "The Princess". The poem is written in blank verse and continues:

"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more."

Answer: Nature

These lines come from "In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII", in which Tennyson struggles with his faith after his friend dies. He wants to continue holding onto his faith in God, but Nature seems so callous when it comes to death: "of fifty seeds / She often brings but one to bear." His faith is shaken by Nature's destruction, but he still faintly clings to it:

"I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope."

Answer: die

"Ring Out, Wild Bells" is part of "In Memoriam". Tennyson's friend Arthur, who was supposed to become his brother-in-law, was only twenty-two when he died. The poem continues with a series of contrasts:

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind."

Answer: Idylls of the King

"Idylls of the King" consists of a cycle of twelve narrative poems that were published between 1859 and 1885. They recount the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his betrayal by Guinevere, and his kingdom's rise and fall. It tells, too, of his death and the final "moanings of the King":

"I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die."

Answer: Light Brigade

"The Charge of the Light Brigade", one of Tennyson's most famous poems, was written in 1854. It recounts the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.

The poem continues:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."