Lord Alfred Tennyson · England · 1850
Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more-- Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Lord Alfred Tennyson · England · 1850
Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more-- Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.
“Dark house, by which once more I stand…”
Tennyson stands outside the home of his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who has died. The speaker returns to this familiar place in the early morning, drawn by habit and grief, unable to sleep. The house represents all the moments of waiting and longing that defined their friendship—a place where his heart once raced with anticipation, where he expected to meet his friend's hand in greeting.
Why this poem matters
This poem is part of Tennyson's masterwork 'In Memoriam A. H. H.', written over seventeen years following the sudden death of his closest friend Arthur Hallam in 1833. Published in 1850, the sequence of 131 poems documents Tennyson's struggle with grief, loss, and eventual spiritual reconciliation, making it one of the most significant elegies in English literature.