Sadness and Loss in Three Victorian Poems by Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and Matthew Arnold

Without previous knowledge of Victorian literature or generalizations concerning the time, it is difficult to pinpoint specific themes and motifs. However, there is a sense of sadness in the loss or decline of a relationship that is a common thread throughout the three Victorian poems, Lord Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears," Christina Rossetti's "An Apple Gathering," and Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." There is a great emphasis on the past and a concern for the future, but unlike much of the Romantic literature, there is less focus on the loss of innocence and experience of the individual, but rather, that general values of faith and love have become endangered.

The first striking point about the three Victorian poems studied was the beautiful and almost mystical setting of each. Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears" opens looking "on the happy autumn-fields" (4) with imagery adjectives such as "glittering" (6) and "glimmering" (14) used throughout the poem. Ironically the freshness of the scene and mystic of "dark summer dawns" (11) are followed by the stating by the speaker that such days are no more, "So sad, so strange." Rosetti's "An apple Gathering" does not go into direct details of the setting of the poem but it can be assumed that it is harvest season while all is blooming for the speaker plucks pink blossoms. There is mention of sweet voices, "shadows cool" (15) and "rosiest apples on the earth" and yet love is not present, leaving the speaker alone in chills "while the dews; Fell fast" (28). There is a great disconnect between the beauty of the imagery in these poems and the fate of the subject at hand, love. The external environment of the speakers first appear to be scenes of pure and beautiful nature but only come to contradict the dark sadness that is expressed in the sorrow of the speaker's words and feelings. This is especially true in Arnold's "Dover Beach" in which the first stanza begins with a scene of a calm sea at night in which "The tide is full, the moon lies fair" (2). Arnold sets a very still and peaceful atmosphere that leads into a description of the sight of England's cliffs, "Glimmering and vast" (5). The emphasis on light continues with the mention of light gleams seen from the French coast and the land being described as "moon-blanched" (7). However, when Arnold beckons his love to the window, all that he can hear is an "eternal note of sadness" (14). The following stanzas describe the world in bleak terms and it is stated that all that seems "So various, so beautiful, so new" (32) is all false for it "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light;" (33), in essence having none of the qualities that make are associated with the value of life. This clearly shows the culmination of the bleakness that Arnold sees in the state of the world and the pain that he feels towards the lost of faith that is leaving the world "as on a darkling plain" (35). Unlike the tranquil and mystical scene of the sea, there seems to be no peace or truth in this world where all is stark and described to be "swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight" (36).

The external environment of each of the poems remains aesthetically pleasing only before the feelings of the speakers are revealed. All that is seen to be beautiful is ephemeral and contrived for the images disguise what is real, the feelings and emotions. This repeated motif lends to a sort of despair and longing. The outlook of life is not as bright as the images before the speakers and there is a sense of melancholy and general conclusion of pessimism towards the future. All three poems speak well of the past, with the love that once was in "An Apple-Gathering," the "days that are no more" in "Tears, Idle Tears," and the "The Sea of Faith …Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore" in "Dover Beach" but express sadness in the changes that have occurred. In each poem, the speaker is greatly affected by what no longer is. However, unlike the Romantics who believed that the feelings of the past can never again be obtained, Victorians such as Arnold believe that there is hope, and that truth and love can save the world yet.

It can be deduced from the Victorian poems read that love is something that greatly concerned authors of the period, for it is highlighted in all three poems. Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears" is a poem of romantic love in which it is the memory of love that invokes "Tears from the depth of some divine despair" (2). The speaker of the poem contemplates on "the days that are no more" (20), a repeated line that emphasizes that his love is no more. All that remains is in the memories of kisses of those now dead and the imagined kisses of those that are now "for others" (18), suggesting a change in loyalty. Similarly, Rosetti's "An Apple Gathering" focuses on the betrayal of false love. The harvest of apples in the poem is used as a metaphor for the fidelity of love with an allusion to the sin of Eden. The speaker "plucked pink blossoms" from her apple tree "And wore them all that evening" in her hair, and yet she found no apples, leaving her to be mocked by neighbors and questioning the truth of her love, if its value "less worth; Than apples with their green leaves piled above" (18). Reminiscing of the past when "with me you stooped to talk" (21), the speaker comes to realize that the love has gone away and in proclaiming "We shall not walk again!" (24), it is clear that the love is forever gone, disloyal and ephemeral as in "Tears, Idle Tears." While Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" contains a lover, it does not address the issue of romantic love but of a decline in faith in a world that "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light," (33). Faith has fallen away to the forces of the night, as the roar is "Retreating, to the breath; Of the night wind" (26), leaving the "naked shingles of the world" (28). The shingles, or the beaches covered with pebbles, depicts Arnold's view of the state of the world as bleak and vulnerable. In the last stanza of the poem, Arnold makes a sudden plea, "Ah, love let us be true; To one another!" again using an exclamation to change direction of the poem. This hope lies in truth in love which is the closest thing to a solution or optimism that the poem mentions. Like the previous two Victorian poems, "Dover Beach" expresses a sadness in the loss of love but goes on to emphasize the importance of love for each other as the only hope for remedying the situation. The three poems take a unique viewpoint on love and end in differing conclusions but all demonstrate the value and magnitude of love in using it as a primary focus of their works.

It can be contended that Victorian poems such as Lord Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears," Christina Rossetti's "An Apple Gathering," and Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" are nostalgic but there is less of this feeling than really an issue of loss. While all the poems look to the past as better times than the future, there is not really a sense of need to go back, but rather for change and improvement. Where Romantic poetry mourned the fleeting past but felt there was no possible way to recreate what once was, Victorian poetry suggests, according to the three studied poems, that love is pivotal to life as it is ideally and that it is the solution to the problems addressed in each work. Despite all that is false and short-lived, love that is true remains to be what is most important to a fulfilled life.