Tennyson's Poem, The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls

This study will critique Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls," also known as "Bugle Song," focusing on the lyrics, music, and rhyme, and the ways these elements suggest and support the meaning of the poem. The argument of the study will be that Tennyson's use of these literary devices successfully conveys the conclusion that there is both a dying and an eternal life at work in both nature and in the life of human beings. Tennyson effectively creates a realm in which the poem unites with the speaker's emotions and thoughts and produces a consciousness of the transcendent qualities of humanity in time and nature.

The presence of the bugle, in fact, the central role of that instrument in the poem, suggests that, indeed, the poem is to be heard as a lyrical work, a song, without, of course, accompanying music in the literal sense. A "song," says J.A. Cuddon, is the designation used to denote such a poem and "distinguish it from narrative or dramatic verse of any kind" (Cuddon 372). In other words, Tennyson's poem can be called a song in that it does not tell a story or present dramatic events. Instead, it creates images and a mood which flows those images through the use of words, rhyme and music in the poetic sense. The poem merely presents a portrait of a natural setting which is punctuated by the sounds of a bugle (representing the presence of humanity, its longings and its losses) which are in turn reflected back from nature in echoes which reve

Related Essays

BIRTH CONTROL FOR TEENAGERS .... communications appears to be a significant causal factor in the incidence of teenage pregnancy (Tennyson, 1991, p. 86 .... O'Sullivan, Ann L., & Barbara S. Jacobsen. .... (2394 10 )

DECREASING TEENAGE PREGNANCY .... to be a significant causal factor in the incidence of teenage pregnancy among African Americans (Tennyson, 1991, p .... Durant, RH, Jay, S., & Seymore, C. (1990, July .... (4314 17 )

Chretien de Troyes & Western Literature .... Charrete, Yvain, and La Conte du Graal.8 All have Arthurian 7Peter S. Noble, Love .... theme to the medieval audience and to Sir Thomas Malory, to Tennyson, and to .... (4886 20 )

Whitman's "Children of Adam" The purpose of this research is to .... The courtly love that is typical of Tennyson does not seem to come at all .... and Mark Van Doren (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965) 5 Gordon S. Haight, Introduction .... (6370 25 )

THE IMPACT OF TEENAGED PREGNANCY .... Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(9), 501 516. Tennyson, MG (1991). .... Turner, Jeffrey S., & Helms, Donald B. (1991). Lifespan development. .... (4497 18 )

Impact of the Murder of Abraham Lincoln .... it cannot be made to do something." McClellan's replacement was Ulysses S. Grant, a .... of chivalric Duty and Honor transplanted from Old England and Tennyson poems .... (9137 37 )

Tennyson wanted the poem to give to the reader an irrational, or at least non-rational, intuitive sense of life and death, rather than a rational philosophical or religious system of thought. The poem certainly has its religious elements, or at least words which suggest transcendence--"splendor," "glory," "soul to soul." The poem, then, is not pessimistic, although its three stanzas each end with the words "dying, dying, dying." The speaker accepts death as the end of human life in the natural world, but confidently suggests that after death the essence of life and love remain and pass from soul to soul. The comparison between "castle walls" and "snowy summits old in story" suggests a connection between the world of humanity and the world on nature, both recipients of the "splendor" of falling light which might symbolize the beneficence of God. The "castle walls" also might represent human enterprise, especially in terms of human effort to stave off threats to its existence, especially death. "Elfland" suggests again a human-nature connection and a realm where creatures exist which are both human-like and yet fully a part of the natural world. However, whatever human beings do--build castles, blow bugles, love--in the end all is

Category: Literature - T