Love, Pride and Forgetfulness
Ere yet my heart was sweet Love’s tomb, Love laboured honey busily. I was the hive and Love the bee, My heart the honey-comb. One very dark and chilly night Pride came beneath and held a light. The cruel vapours went through all, Sweet Love was withered in his cell; Pride took Love’s sweets, and by a spell, Did change them into gall; And Memory tho’ fed by Pride Did wax so thin on gall, Awhile she scarcely lived at all, What marvel that she died?
Love, Pride and Forgetfulness - meaning Summary
Love Corrupted by Pride
Tennyson personifies love, pride, and memory to show how pride can destroy affection. Love is pictured as a bee making honey in the speaker’s heart, but Pride intrudes and spoils the sweetness, turning it into gall. As a result, Memory, nourished by that sweetness, weakens and eventually dies. The poem stages emotional decay as a moral and psychological process where vanity corrupts tenderness and erases recollection.
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