Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s versanelle, “Come Not, When I am Dead,” features two rimed sestets each with the rime scheme, ABABCC. Each sestet features a concluding couplet with the same rime. The poem dramatizes the theme of a spurned lover who speaks harsh words to the one who has jilted him.
First Sestet: “Come not, when I am dead”
The speaker addresses his former lover with the intention of showing her that she is silly, so silly that after his death, the speaker does not welcome her to come to his grave and mourn his passing. He does not want her to “drop [her] foolish tears upon [his grave].”
Furthermore, the speaker does not want her “to trample round [his] fallen head.” He paints her as a graceless person grinding the dirt around his grave into “unhappy dust.” True lovers who truly mourn the loss of a lover would want to scoop up some of that dirt and save it, but not his lover; she would merely cause his grave to look untidy.
He demands that she not visit his resting place but instead merely “let the wind sweep” in place of her skirts swishing around his grave. And because she would not cry for him, he demands she not appear but let the “plover cry.” He welcomes a crying bird and imagines its plaint more appropriate than the “foolish tears” of his faithless former love.
Thus, he demands that she “go by.” She should just keep walking past his grave and not stop and pretend to care.
Second Sestet: “Child, if it were thine error or thy crime”
Continuing his disdain for his fickle lover, the speaker addresses her by calling her “Child.” He speculates that if she was, in fact, the cause of his death, he “care[s] no longer.” Indicating that at one time he cared very much, he makes it clear that now he does not. She abandoned him and caused him to be “unblest” by her love, and even if her departure has killed him, he does not welcome her pretense or acknowledgment that she once cared for him.
He tells her to “[w]ed whom thou wilt.” By this remark, he is, again, trying to demonstrate his current apathy. But he adds that he is “sick of Time, / And [he] desire[s] to rest.” His protest reveals that the love he lost has taken a mighty toll on him; it has made him not care for anything in life any longer.
He then commands her once again to keep away, to keep walking, not to stop at his grave, but simply “Go by, go by.” He repeats for a third time that he wants her pass by his grave and not stop to mourn him.
Commentary
The speaker, of course, has not died but uses the imagined occasion of his death to emphasize how destructive to his heart has been the break with the lover addressed in the poem. This ploy remains a common theme for many lost love poems, but an unusual choice for Tennyson, who is famous for his profundity.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
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