Today’s poem is chosen and introduced by our Head of Sixth Form, Ms Banks.

Perhaps it is the grey sky and the rain pounding against my window – you must remember of course that the Poem of the Day is chosen the Day Before – but I was drawn to some bleak, bleak lines by Tennyson. If you’re looking for something cheerful, I strongly recommend that you give this one a miss. Tennyson (1809-1892) was the quintessential Victorian poet; he was poet laureate for 42 years (a record) and Queen Victoria was a big fan.

I have chosen a section from his vast work and accepted masterpiece, ‘In Memoriam’, a series of 131 poems which he wrote over the 17 years following the sudden death of his close friend, Arthur Hallam, in 1833. Everyone knows at least a few lines – it is here that you find “‘Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all” and “nature red in tooth and claw.”

Things are very bad in Section 50 and the light indeed is low. Here we find the dark places of despair and depression, of physical agony, of loss of faith; we feel the sense of life’s utter futility and man’s insignificance. And sometimes this is what we want to read – there is a recognition and acknowledgement here of pain and suffering and moments of hopelessness, and that these are part of life.

But there is faith here too – we sense in the insistent, childlike, prayer-like repetition of “Be near me” the speaker’s confidence that someone is listening. Is he praying to the very God whose existence he doubts, or to his dead friend, or both? It is striking that he does not ask for solutions or for the pain to go away; there is acceptance and stoicism alongside the human need for love and understanding. Perhaps that’s a useful thought right now.