Published 1842. Written in Lincolnshire one spring (Mem. i 190), so presumably before early 1837, when the Tennysons left Somersby, and after Sept. 1833, since it is on the death of Arthur Hallam. Probably spring 1834. Cecilia Tennyson recited it on 16 March 1839 (Blackwood’s clv (1894) 609). Cp. In Memoriam, especially for ll. 11–12; and also the lines which H.T. gave as the germ of In Memoriam: ‘Where is the voice I loved? ah where / Is that dear hand that I would press? / Lo! the broad heavens cold and bare, / The stars that know not my distress!’ For these lines (Mem. i 107), see Hark! the dogs howl! (I 608). Hallam wrote to Gladstone: ‘the loss of valuable time, and the constant breaking of the mental energies, like waves, on an immoveable obstacle, cannot but tend to oppress the moral spirit’ (28 Feb. 1829; AHH, p. 276).
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.