Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1117-1128
In those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answer'd: "Wherefore grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave."
- Now, Tennyson is leaving his friend's gravesite. If you're interested in all of the cemetery-like imagery here—and you should be—head on over to "Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay."
- His Muse seems to comfort him a bit by telling him that something "nobler" will come out of all this, so stop crying all over the place.
- And since the muses were inspirational spirits for art, scholarship, and music, we can assume that this means In Memoriam itself will be the "nobler leave" the Muse refers to.
- See, previously the speaker has conceived of his poem as just pieces. He "break[s] into song by fits" (486) or creates "short swallow flights" of song (951).
- Now, he starts to see how this all might be linking up into a greater whole.