Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1833-1856
He tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their life,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise:
'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o'er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away,
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their lands,
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho' their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would make
Confusion worse than death, and shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
- Tennyson muses about what it would be like if the dead came back. It's not a pretty picture, folks—even leaving aside how they'd look all Walking Dead-y.
- They'd find their wives with new husbands and in general an "iron welcome." Iron is a hard metal, so getting a welcome of this type would be like getting whapped upside the head with something hard—in other words, a rude awakening.
- Basically, the living grieve over the dead, but don't really want them back. Yep, Tennyson's getting his cynicism on here.
- He, however, is different. Even though it would be crazy (it would cause "confusion worse than death"), he wants his friend back, no matter how the years have changed him.