Practical Criticism: Tennyson’s ‘Break, break, break’


In this close reading, undergraduate Claire Wilkinson looks at the nostalgia and mourning that exist on and below the surface of this haunting poem.


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. (1834)

'Break, break, break' is a short poem with an overridingly sad and nostalgic tone.  The poem presents a sea-side image, complete with a wild sea, playing children, fishermen and sailing boats, but Tennyson manipulates these elements to reveal a poem about death and loss.  How does Tennyson create this feeling?  If we look at the language used in the piece, we immediately detect the negative feeling which persists in the poem.  Line two of the opening stanza uses the following adjectives to describe the rocks onto which the sea breaks: 'cold' and 'gray'.  The use of these words defines the tone of the piece - imagine how different it would sound had Tennyson described the rocks as 'warm' and 'white'!  Indeed, the words used seem unwelcoming to the reader, lending the opening 'Break, break, break' a persistent and crashing air.  The sea, it seems, will 'break' upon the rocks relentlessly, as we are reminded by the repetition of the phrase at the opening of the fourth stanza.

The themes of memory and nostalgia feature heavily in the poem, and there is a distinct feeling that Tennyson is indeed evoking the memory of someone he has lost.  The use of the long vowel sound 'O' within the poem has varying effects.  In the first and fourth stanzas, the 'O' sounds as if it is in exasperation at the sea.  The effect of the 'Break, break, break' (repetitive, cyclic) joins with the 'O' to create an air of despair; the narrator calls out to the sea, but is met only with the familiar response of it crashing onto the rocks.  Aurally, the two 'O' sounds in the second stanza are like sighs, 'O, well for the fisherman's boy'.  The narrator cannot access the innocence or naivety enjoyed by the people he watches.  It should be noted that that Tennyson uses images of youth in this stanza, adding to the nostalgic tone of the piece: 'boy', 'play' and 'lad'.

The negative and nostalgic imagery all contributes to the developing theme of death and loss within the poem, however Tennyson also refers to this directly.  The metaphor in stanza three alludes to death:

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;

The image of the ships 'go[ing] on' is interesting; the date of the poem (1834) informs us that it was written the year after Tennyson's friend Hallam died abroad.  The image of a ship, which would have both taken Hallam away and brought him home again, dead, was clearly poignant for Tennyson; it is not a difficult leap, from there, to imagine the ship as a metaphor for a life, now gone to its rest (or 'haven') out of sight - even, perhaps, underground, buried in earth.  The second part of stanza three is also interesting to consider in this light:

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Is the vanished hand Hallam's?  It seems very likely that this is Tennyson's intention.  The opening stanzas make no such reference to the poet's deceased friend, but merely prepare the reader for the mention in stanza three.  Tennyson's technique of referring to 'a hand' and 'a voice' to represent a person is called synecdoche; a part is taken to represent the whole.  It is also possible, of course, that Tennyson was thinking of the regular nautical meaning of 'hand': a sailor in a crew (see OED, 'hand', n., 8b). In this reading, which continues the nautical metaphor of the ship-as-life, the poem seems to cry out for a particular man, whose identity ('voice'?) has already faded away; such a reading seems rather more likely when we consider that 'touch' (as a verb) could mean 'of a ship, or those on board: To arrive and make a short stay in passing at a port or place on the way', or (as a noun) 'the act of touching at a port' (see OED, 'touch', n., 1f, and v., 11). Thus, the mention of Hallam (if, indeed, we are correct in our presumption) is kept vague and inexplicit, and we must consider the poem's content for ourselves; and yet it seems clear that Tennyson urges the reader to try to recover an identity for the 'vanished hand', both in his nautical metaphor and in his use of synecdoche.

To finish, I'd like to look at the concluding lines:

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

The last line is very final - the word 'will' is modally definite, and the narrator is sure in his conviction.  Considering this next to lines 3 and 4 of stanza one, we can see a progression in the poem:

And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

Compare the 'would' of the first stanza to the 'will' of the fourth.  The 'would' suggests that the narrator might be able to utter the thoughts he wishes to express, whereas the 'will' implies that the preceding statement is final; 'the tender grace of a day that is dead' will not come back to the narrator. The suggestiveness of the middle stanzas is here concluded and cancelled, and the poem enacts its own, sad finality.



Further Thinking

(i) Are there any elements of the poem that you think are underestimated here? (If you have an answer to this question, or another thought about the poem you'd like to share, you can leave a comment below.)

(ii) Is there more to be said about the fact that this poem starts with a denial that the 'tongue' can express 'thoughts', and then gets going? Does it fully escape the initial problem of expression?


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