In Memoriam is an elegy (a poem written to honor the memory of someone who has died) that Tennyson composed as a series of short poems over a period of 17 years following the death of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, in 1833.  He united the short pieces into one extended poem, which he published in 1850.  Throughout his poetic career, Tennyson was concerned with the tension between the private and public voices in art—the artist’s need to find personal expression through his art, and the need to create art that moves beyond personal expression to address the public needs of the artist’s society.  In Memoriam united the private and public voices of Tennyson’s poetry by combining personal, subjective poetry recounting Tennyson’s personal grief for the loss of his friend with socially responsible poetry that addressed the anxieties of Victorian society.  In Tennyson’s elegy, his private grief and struggles with faith are analogous to the public crisis in faith faced by Victorian society as the traditions and religious beliefs of Victorian culture were challenged by the scientific discoveries and tremendous social, economic, and political changes of the nineteenth century.  In recounting Tennyson’s passage from loss of faith, sorrow and despair, to a gradual recovery of faith and hope for the future, In Memoriam offered Victorians an example of how faith could be maintained in times of crisis.  Tennyson’s spiritual evolution throughout the sections of the poem mirrors the spiritual evolution of his society.
Sections 1-3 of In Memoriam introduce Tennyson’s initial attitudes toward sorrow and loss.  In the height of his grief over the death of his friend, the speaker questions the value of sorrow.  In section one (lines 3-4), while the speaker admits that at one time he believed “That men may rise on stepping stones/ Of their dead selves to higher things” (from loss we can move upward and progress), the speaker now wonders if it is possible to “find in loss a gain to match” or “reach a hand through time to catch/ The far-off interest of tears” (lines 6-8).  Will a greater good (a “far-off interest”) come from our tears in the future?  Will sorrow eventually bring about spiritual progress to “higher things,” or do sorrow and loss make life meaningless?  In section 2, the speaker addresses an old yew tree that stands above graves in a cemetery (this is an ancient yew in the cemetery where Tennyson’s friend Hallam was buried).  The tree, like sorrow, seems eternal, everlasting, while individual lives (represented in the graves of the dead beneath the tree) pass away.  In section 3, Sorrow is personified and seems to say to the poet that “the stars blindly run” (line 5) and life is without purpose—Nature is a “hollow form with empty hands” (line 12).  The speaker asks, therefore, if he should “embrace” sorrow “as my natural good” or crush and deny it.  Thus, the opening sections of the poem ask a question that is examined throughout the remainder of elegy—can any good come of grief?
Sections 54-56 of the poem express Tennyson’s central crisis of faith that resulted from Hallam’s death and from the scientific discoveries of his age that challenged traditional Christian beliefs.  Although Charles Darwin would not publish his work On the Origin of Species Through Natural Selection until 1859, geological discoveries (particularly the study of fossils) had already implied that the Earth was millions of years old (far older than Christian theologians had suggested) and that species existed before humans, evolved, and became extinct.  The concept of biological evolution had already been proposed by scientists (but it would be Darwin who would refine the concept and argue it most convincingly, causing the great religious crisis of the later half of the Victorian Age).  In Section 54 of Tennyson’s poem, the speaker expresses the doubt and the threat to traditional beliefs in divine order created by current scientific theories about life.  The speaker initially expresses his faith in life having a benevolent, divine purpose by claiming that although “we know not anything,” we can still “trust that good shall fall/ At last—far off—at last, to all.  And every winter change to spring” (lines 13-16).  However, his sense of loss ultimately makes him question his faith—the speaker’s belief in a purpose for life seems merely a “dream,” a hopefully fantasy, while his doubt makes him feel like an abandoned and confused child: “but what am I?/ An infant crying in the night;/ An infant crying for the light,/ And with no language but a cry” (lines 17-20).  In these lines, Tennyson evokes an image that would dominate much Victorian poetry dealing with the nineteenth century’s crisis of faith: the image of mournful wailing/crying for something lost (this motif reappears in “The Passing of Arthur”).
In Section 55, the speaker examines the relationship between God, Nature, and humanity, and claims that God and Nature seem to be “at strife” (line 5).  The discovery of fossils of extinct species suggests that Nature is “so careful of the type” but “so careless of the single life” (lines 7-8); a “type” (a species) may evolve and progress, but individuals pass away.  While Judeo-Christian tradition has taught the speaker to believe in a benevolent God that values each human life as precious, callous Nature seems to have no care for the individual and brings death indiscriminately to all.  This “strife” between traditional concepts of God’s benevolent purpose and the tremendous, uncaring power of Nature implicit in biological evolution, causes the speaker to question his faith in a divine purpose in life (see lines 13-20)— “I falter where I firmly trod [his faith fails where previously he was secure]. . . .  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 [he desperately tries to hold onto his faith in God’s higher purpose].”
In Section 56, the speaker asserts that discoveries related to biological evolution (fossils found in “scarped cliff and quarried stone”) suggest that Nature ultimately cares no more for species than for the individual life.  Nature cries, “A thousand types [species] are gone;/ I care for nothing, all shall go” (lines 3-4).  Like individual lives, all species eventually pass away, including humans, the species that Judeo-Christian tradition teaches is specially created by a loving God for a “splendid purpose” (line 10).  But if humanity will also pass away, like all the preceding species that are now only fossils, what purpose is there in human life?  The speaker points out that man “trusted God was love indeed/ And love creation’s final law--/ Though Nature, red in tooth and claw/ With ravine, shrieked against his creed” [humanity believed in God’s loving purpose despite the cruelty of the natural world] (lines 14-16).  But if humanity will eventually die to “be blown about the desert dust, /Or sealed within the iron hills [as fossils],” then humanity is nothing more than a “monster, . . a dream, / A discord,” a life form without purpose.  The speaker asserts that if this is the case, life is meaningless: “O life as futile, then, as frail!/ O for thy voice to soothe and bless!” [he longs for the voice of his dead friend Hallam to comfort him in the face of his loss of faith] (lines 25-26).  But the speaker does not abandon all hope.  He concludes by asking if there is any “hope of answer” to this dilemma of faith and concludes by claiming that the answers lie hidden “Behind the veil, behind the veil” (lines 27-28).  These final lines suggest that a greater purpose in life may still exist but may be temporarily hidden from us; therefore, faith may still be possible.
The sections listed above depict the speaker’s spiritual evolution from loss of faith and despair to hope and a renewed faith by tracing the speaker’s experience of personal grief over the three Christmas holidays following the death of his friend.  In Section 28, recounting the first Christmas holiday, the speaker feels despair over the loss of Hallam, tinged with nostalgia for a happy past.  The speaker claims that when the bells of his village church woke him on this Christmas day he “woke with pain, / I almost wished no more to wake, / And that my hold on life would break/ Before I heard those bells again” (lines 13-16).  But while he feels despair, the sound of the Christmas bells bring back joyous memories from past Christmases.  The bells, therefore, bring order to his “troubled spirit” : “They bring me sorrow touched with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule” (lines 19-20).
Section 78 recounts the second Christmas following Hallam’s death.  The speaker notes that on this holiday his grief has a calmer expression.  Family and friends participate in the traditional Christmas games again, this time without a “single tear” or “mark of pain.”  The speaker is initially distressed by this apparent lack of feeling.  Wondering if sorrow can “wane” and “grief be changed to less,” the speaker regrets that “regret can die,” feeling as if he has betrayed his friend in letting his grief lessen (lines 13-16).  But in the final lines, the speaker realizes that his grief has not lessened, but has grown calmer with time: “Her [sorrow’s] deep relations are the same, / But with long use her tears are dry” (lines 19-20).
Sections 104-106 recount the third Christmas following Hallam’s death.  At this holiday, the speaker experiences a renewal of hope expressed through his reaction to the Christmas bells.  The speaker’s family are celebrating Christmas this year in a new home.  And while the new location makes the speaker feel like a stranger and seems to violate the family’s old Christian traditions, the speaker seems ready to let go of old forms and traditions that no longer have meaning and make way for new life.  He addresses the Christmas bells in Section 106: “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” (lines 5-9).  The speaker seems willing at last to let go of his grief and make way for a new understanding: “Ring in the valiant man and free,/ The larger heart, the kindlier hand;/ Ring out the darkness of the land,/ Ring in the Christ that is to be” (lines 29-32).  In these lines Tennyson transforms the troubling concept of evolution that caused such a crisis in Victorian faith into a form of spiritual evolution.  All things change, but out of change can come progress.  The speaker argues that our understanding of the Christian religion may change, but it can evolve into a new and better understanding, “the Christ that is to be.”
In the final sections of the poem, the speaker asserts his faith in his new concept of spiritual evolution—painful change can bring about spiritual progress.  In Section 118, the speaker argues that sorrow and loss strengthen us and allow us to grow spiritually, like iron that is “battered with the shocks of doom/ To shape and use” (lines 24-25).  Sorrows may batter us, but they also temper and “shape” us for a specific purpose.  Therefore, sorrow does not make life meaningless but brings new meaning through prompting spiritual evolution.  The speaker therefore asserts we should “Move upward, working out the beast,/ And let the ape and tiger die” (lines 27-28).  Instead of being frightened and losing faith in the face of sorrow and change, we should evolve and progress spiritually, leaving our baser natures behind.
In Sections 127-131, the speaker addresses his dead friend Hallam and realizes that through death his friend has evolved to higher life.  He has not lost his friend, but his friend has become part of a larger truth that the speaker doesn’t yet fully understand:  “Far off thou art, but ever nigh;/ I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice;/ I shall not lose thee tho’ I die” (Section 130, lines 13-16).  Although separated from his friend by death, the speaker’s continuing spiritual connection with his friend will allow him to “prosper,” to evolve spiritually.
The poem’s Epilogue is set at the marriage of Tennyson’s sister (she was originally engaged to Hallam, but he died before they could marry).  The sister’s marriage demonstrates that grief can be overcome and can lead to new life.  The speaker imagines a future child born of this marriage and sees this child as being one step closer to “the crowning race,” a human race that has spiritually evolved (it is “no longer half-akin to brute” (line 133)) and has achieved an understanding of the meaning of life.  Nature will be “like an open book” to this new form of humanity, and the questions of faith that currently trouble humans will become clear.  In the final two stanzas, the speaker depicts his friend Hallam as a “noble type” or example of this new race that is to come.  His friend appeared on Earth “ere the times were ripe” [before the world was ready for this newly evolved human], and consequently, his friend left the world, but still lives— “lives in God,/ That God, which ever lives and loves,/ One God, one law, one element,/ And one far-off divine event,/ To which the whole creation moves” (lines 140-145).  Thus, the speaker reaffirms his faith that the whole of creation has a divine purpose of progress to something greater, and the speaker sees his friend as an example of the progress that is to come for humanity.  The friend who “lives with God” is a forerunner of the spiritual perfection, that “one far-off divine event,” toward which all creation is evolving.  In this way, Tennyson uses the renewal of faith he experienced through the personal loss of his friend to promote a general renewal of faith for his society.  His own spiritual evolution as the speaker of In Memoriam exemplifies how threatening and painful loss can bring about spiritual growth.