Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time? They too will die.
XXX.
With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; A rainy cloud possess’d the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall We gambol’d, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech: We heard them sweep the winter land; And in a circle hand-in-hand Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, tho’ every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year: impetuously we sang:
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept Upon us: surely rest is meet: ‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’ And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range; Once more we sang: ‘They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change;
‘Rapt from the fickle and the frail With gather’d power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil.’
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.
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Genius Annotation2 contributors
These three sections of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” are sometimes excerpted as a short sequence unto themselves. Together they trace, in miniature, the arc of the longer poem: from pain and grief to redemption and hope. They’re also a Christmas classic, famous for the lines:
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
Read the full text of “In Memoriam,” as well as a summary of the full poem, here.
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