This Christmas will be painful for many faced with empty chairs around the dinner table. From 1849, In Memoriam captures the loss of one of Tennyson’s dear friends, including the now immortal line “’tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”. It articulates a stirring sense of resolve in the face of sadness, the speaker determined to leave the darkness of the world behind him, and instead face the light of the future. In the moment evoked by the poem, the bells ring with hope.
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