WHISPERS: In memories.... way of the soul

“Way of the Soul”

Today, 15^th Sept, is the day, when Alfred Tennyson’s very close friend Arthur Hallam died in Vienna (at the age of 22) in year 1833. Arthur Hallam was also engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister Emily at that time. This affected both of them greatly and Tennyson was too upset to attend Hallam’s funeral and he never forgot his closest friend. The poem, part of which is posted in the last part of the post, “In Memoriam A H H” begins at Hallam’s funeral as starting point and Tennyson’s another sister Cecilia’s marriage as its end. Though, as Tennyson himself wrote about this poem, “It is rather the cry of the whole of human race than mine. In the poem, altogether private grief swells out into thought of, and hope for, the whole world.”

But before you get to read some parts of that amazing poem, I am sharing few of my latest Haiku and my longer verse “In Memories”

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Lady With Rose by Greta Freist c. 1937
Photo from my wanderings in Museums of Vienna

With words, I have buried love
Deep in my soul
Pain flowers forth

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I serve my past
Memories on table
For the last supper

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I write with my blood
Spirits of my verse
Cleanse me

In Memories
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Sweetness
Fills my soul
Like the soft breeze
That caressed her

The sunshine
Walks a bridge across forever
I flow along the river,
As it flows along with me -eternally

The path is long
From night to dawn
Walk along with me a little bit more,
A little bit long

Sunrise
Fills my soul
Like the sunset that empties
- into the sea of living

Memories
Flow within
A muddy river that empties
-perpetually in the sea

O life, O beautiful life
Be the sea - Pure and calm
Receiving, cleansing, holding
All that memories, that ‘now’ gave

This ‘now’ gives
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ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

This has been submitted to Poetry Picnic Week 4 and at Jingle Poetry which I am hosting this week, click on to add your own verse and read some great poetry from talented people from across the globe

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Coming back to Alfred Tennyson’s poem “IN MEMORIAM A H H” Originally the Poem was titled “Way of the Soul” and somehow I like it more hence started this post with the Original title of one of the most powerful poetry I have found.

The poem was also a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who found it a source of solace after the death of Prince Albert in 1861: "Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort." In 1862, Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem.

Lord Tennyson and family

From “In Memoriam A H H”
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I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel:
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.

But for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic excercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’will wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given outline and no more.
______________________
Alfred Tennyson @ 1849

Text Source and Image source for “In Memoriam A H H” Part : Wikipedia click to read more about it.

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Hope you have liked this post and I look forward to your comments....

ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

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