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- 08/21/2022
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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 70. Henry van Dyke - on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love
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on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love
(The "Threescore years and ten of earthly labour" means ‘Even if Hallam had lived to have a 70-year-long writing career, he could hardly have…’ etc.)
The promise of Arthur Hallam's life was not broken.
Threescore years and ten of earthly labour could hardly
have accomplished anything greater than the work
which was inspired by his early death, and consecrated
to his belovèd memory. The heart of man, which can
win such victory out of its darkest defeat and reap such
harvest from the furrows of the grave, is neither sprung
from dust nor destined to return to it.
A poem like In Memoriam –
more than all flowers of the returning spring,
more than all shining wings that flutter
above the ruins of the chrysalis, more than
all sculptured tombs and monuments of the belovèd dead –
is the living evidence of an endless life.
Henry van Dyke,[i]
1889
[i] “on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love” Henry van Dyke Studies in Tennyson (New York 1920); the quoted selection comes from the essayist’s concluding lines to the analysis of In Memoriam, p. 118
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