Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1513-1528
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
- Tennyson doesn't have a beef with Death for the changes that dying causes in a body's "form and face." Sure, it's kind of gross, but the speaker isn't shaken in his faith because of this gory process.
- It's an "eternal process" that just happens. One thing changes into another. Something new comes from the chrysalis of something else. It's like when a caterpillar changes to a beautiful butterfly.
- He's not even mad at Death because Arthur could have accomplished greater things on earth; he trusts instead that he'll accomplish these things "otherwhere," which is a nice, mystical-sounding name for the afterlife.
- The only thing he's really peeved with Death about is that now he and Arthur are so far apart that they cannot communicate at all.
- Notice all the imagery here that relates to things changing: "changes," "eternal process," "chrysalis," and "transplant[ing]." Change seems to be comforting to Tennyson because it suggests that something continues instead of just stopping.