Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Remarks on Individual Poets

Tennyson [1]

I suppose you know that I have no great consideration for Tennyson. I read him much and admired him when I was young and raw, but even then his In Memoriam style seemed to me mediocre and his attempts at thinking insufferably second-rate and dull. These lines [“An infant crying in the night ... ”] are better than others, but they are still Tennyson.

12 September 1931