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 vanish'd 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.
The work is an intense expression of grief and the difficulty of moving past a tragedy. Tennyson wrote another, much longer poem about Hallam’s death called “In Memoriam, A.H.H.” It takes up some of the same threads of thought as this one, but this brief lyric is a concentrated form of a sorrow, a sorrow the speaker can’t restrain. It bursts from his lips with the word “break.”How the Poem Works
The poem begins in an unexpected way, with the repeated words, “Break, break, break,” followed by an apostrophe addressed to the ocean. This opening accomplishes several things. The repeated words, with their harsh consonants, mimic the crashing of waves on rocks. Second, the repeated word “break” breaks the expected meter of the poem with three accented syllables. The poem begins suddenly, unexpectedly—like Hallam’s death. The poem doesn’t settle into its regular meter—iambic trimeter with some tetrameter—until the second line. Finally, the word “break” refers not just to the sea but to the speaker’s own heart, introducing the poem’s central theme.The poem’s energy derives from its internal tensions, centered around grief. These tensions take the form of a pair of key contrasts. The first exists between the poet and the sea: The sea is in a state of constant movement with the waves repeatedly smashing against the rocks, while the speaker is in a static state, almost paralyzed with grief. The speaker of the poem struggles to grieve properly, to even articulate what’s inside him: “would that tongue could utter/ The thoughts that arise in me.”
Tearle noted that this contrast of sea/speaker and motion/immobility is highlighted by the rhyming of “Sea/Me.” That critical rhyme appears again in the final stanza, highlighting Tennyson’s difficulty in moving forward. Tearle wrote: “The fact that Tennyson repeats the Sea/me rhyme (and the ‘Break, break, break’ command) in the final stanza reinforces his sense of paralysis: He’s still where he was at the start of the poem.”
The poem’s second central contrast, which relates to the first, exists between outward, ordinary everyday life and the poet’s interior, sorrowful state as he remembers the past. The poet notices others going about their daily lives—children playing, fishermen working, ships sailing—as though nothing has changed. But for the one who has experienced tragedy, nothing feels the same anymore; the very sunlight has a new twinge to it.
The poet observes the people around him and the world moving forward in its course, but his mind remains locked on “the touch of a vanish’d hand,” “the sound of a voice that is still,” and “the tender grace of a day that is dead.” Thus, within the third stanza we see a juxtaposition between the inexorable present and the inaccessible past.
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
The satisfaction and catharsis involved in reading “Break, Break, Break” derives from its ability to articulate these aspects of grief that are so hard to put words to: the difficulty moving on from the past, the difficulty attending to the seemingly trivial matters of daily life going forward, and the difficulty of expressing what the heart is undergoing.I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
Indeed, the sorrow of grief is simply the flip-side of the joy of love and friendship. Pain proves love. They’re inseparable, and the cost is worth the reward.
It’s fitting to read these works together; “In Memoriam” seems to reflect a more measured response to tragedy that finds its way to a kind of acceptance, while “Break, Break, Break” erupts from the tempest of emotions that immediately following a deep loss. Both poems can be cathartic for those of us who have experienced grief because they put words to the wordless movements of the heart. We find our own experience reflected in them. Such is the power of a timeless and universal piece of art.
