’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to…

These are the last two lines of canto XXVII of In Memoriam A.H.H. In the three stanzas before, Tennyson lists what he does not envy, even in his grief: the caged linnet that never knew the summer woods, the beast untroubled by conscience, the heart that never pledged its love but “stagnates in the weeds of sloth”. Then comes the conclusion he holds true “whate’er befall”, and feels most “when I sorrow most”.

The poem mourns Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s closest friend from Cambridge, who died suddenly in Vienna in 1833, aged twenty-two; he was engaged to the poet’s sister Emily. Over seventeen years Tennyson wrote more than a hundred short lyrics about his loss, his doubts and his slow return to hope, all in the same four-line stanza.

In Memoriam was published in 1850, the year Tennyson became Poet Laureate; Queen Victoria found comfort in it after Prince Albert’s death. The line has become a proverb of consolation for any loss, not only in love.

In Memoriam A.H.H., canto XXVII, 1850

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