English Poem

Analysis of Song: Tears, Idle Tears

The poem, “Song: tears, Idle Tears” was part of a longer poem, and it was written as a song, as the title clearly states. Alfred lord Tennyson was British and was born in 1809 and he died in 1892.

Th title of the poem is the same as the fist few words of the poem and this suggests that it is a continuation from the title, perhaps like a narrative.

“Tears, idle ears, I know not what they mean”, this probably means that his tears have been flowing for so long tat he doesn’t even remember why he is crying. The repetition on tears emphasizes that he was crying a lot. “tears from the depth of some divine despair…”, despair was considered a sin, so ‘divine despair’ is an oxymoron as divine is something good and despair is not. This probably shows that Lord Tennyson; a) Didn’t believe in religion and its teachings or b) he considered despair as something great. He may have used the word divine to show the d=greatness of his despair.

“Rise in the heart and gathers to the eyes,” here, enjambment from the previous line helps in continuing the rhyme scheme as well as the narrative story. He describes his tears as rising in the ‘heart’, which tells us that his tears were genuine and thy were not fake as they came from his heart. He flashes back to the memories of ‘Autumn-Fields’ and laments on them, “thinking of the days that are no more.”.

“Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail..that brings our friends up from the underworld.” This creates imagery of a ‘sail’ first coming into view. This perhaps means that he is hoping his ‘friends’ come back from the dead. These two lines are a contrast as he says that the first beam was fresh, but the people from the underworld will not be fresh as they are buried underground. “Sad as the last which reddens over one…below the verge.” This creates reversed image of the first two lines of the stanza 2, as in the first two lines, it shows how they emerge while in this one it shows how it...