Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' : Explanation 4 / Reference to Context
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law— Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed... These lines have been taken from Lord Tennyson’s elegiac poem 'In Memoriam'. To be more specific, we must mention that this excerpt is from Lyric 56 of the said poem. The poet, after the untimely death of his intimate friend named Arthur Henry Hallam, became mentally devastated. In this regard, we need to say that he composed these lines in the remembrance of his deceased chum. Here, Tennyson oscillates like a pendulum between the Christian faith of the immortality of soul and the doubts born out of science. He utters that love is something noble and divine, which reminds us of the sacrificial and ultimate love of God. Again, in the materialistic value, death is the final word of Nature. "Creation's final law" was that God infused the eternal virtue of love in mankind. However, Nat...