Lyric Poem · Death & Loss

In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, cruel fellowship

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Reading room

1O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

2O Priestess in the vaults of Death,

3O sweet and bitter in a breath,

4What whispers from thy lying lip?

5"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;

6A web is wov'n across the sky;

7From out waste places comes a cry,

8And murmurs from the dying sun:

9"And all the phantom, Nature, stands —

10With all the music in her tone,

11A hollow echo of my own, —

12A hollow form with empty hands."

13And shall I take a thing so blind,

14Embrace her as my natural good;

15Or crush her, like a vice of blood,

16Upon the threshold of the mind?

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“In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, cruel fellowship” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — quilloak.com/poems/in-memoriam-3-o-sorrow-cruel-fellowship

Quick facts

Poem: In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, cruel fellowship
Poet: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Length: 16 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Death & Loss, Nature, Sad

Craft notes

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Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 16 lines · 2 stanzas of 4–12 lines
Line length: Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).

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Author record: Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892
Source record: PoetryDBIn Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, cruel fellowship by alfred-lord-tennyson, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 e56e83d5ea916607…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Death & Loss Nature Sad

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