Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1713-1728
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."
- Tennyson seems to be frolicking through nature here, in the "showers" and "ambrosial air" among the "gloom[s]."
- Check it out: using an adjective here as a noun is a particular rhetorical device called anthimeria. It basically makes the sentence more colorful and lively.
- These showers are healing for our speaker; they get rid of his fever and fuel his imagination in the third stanza.
- After that last canto, where he was struggling to work things out, he's now feeling the cleansing power of spring and experiencing the peace that it has brought.