"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean." The previous sentence is a line
from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "Tears, idle tears." Just from reading the first
sentence in this poem, you get an understanding that the speaker is weeping. Something
doleful and saddening has happened in the speaker's life. However, he claims he does not
know what his tears mean. After reading this poem, I got the feeling that the speaker had
lost a loved one. There are many intimations that lead me to this conclusion.
In the first stanza, from the line, "Tears from the depth of some divine despair," I
know that the speaker is feeling great sorrow of something that is a "divine despair." The
first thing I think of is death. "Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the
happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more." The speaker is feeling
the emptiness of the days to come. He feels he is no longer happy without his love. He
thinks of the days, the way he is accustomed to feeling, that will be different now.
"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail." The speaker's emotions are new to
him, he has not experienced them yet, therefore he is unsure about how to deal with
them. "That brings our friends up from the underworld." When someone dies, old friends
usually turn up, to mourn for the death. Memories are thought of because of the death.
This line is saying that the underworld, death, is bringing friends closer to him. "So sad,
so fresh, the days that are no more." He is perplexed and unsure of what to feel.
"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns, The earliest pipe of
half-awakened birds, To dying ear, when unto dying eyes." I am unsure of what this
sequence of lines means. I believe it has something to do with him not being able to hear
...