Image: Alfred, Lord Tennyson – National Portrait Gallery, London
Tennyson’s “Come Not, When I Am Dead”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Come Not, When I Am Dead” features qualities of the versanelle form, using stark images as it concludes its message in just twelve short lines.
Introduction and Text of “Come Not, When I Am Dead”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s versanelle, “Come Not,When I am Dead,” features two rimed sestets each with the rime scheme, ABABCC. Each sestet features a concluding couplet with the same rime. The poem dramatizes the theme of a spurned lover who speaks harsh words to the one who has jilted him.
Come not, When I am Dead
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.
Commentary on “Come Not, When I Am Dead”
The speaker is dramatizing an unusual, acerbic message for a former lover.
First Sestet: No Visiting
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.
The speaker addresses his former lover with the intention of showing her that she is silly, so silly that after his death, the speaker does not welcome her to come to his grave and mourn his passing. He does not want her to “drop [her] foolish tears upon [his grave].”
Furthermore, the speaker does not want her “to trample round [his] fallen head.” He paints her as a graceless person grinding the dirt around his grave into “unhappy dust.” True lovers who truly mourn the loss of a lover would want to scoop up some of that dirt and save it, but not his lover; she would merely cause his grave to look untidy.
The speaker demands that she not visit his resting place but instead merely “let the wind sweep” in place of her skirts swishing around his grave. He welcomes a crying bird and imagines its plaint more appropriate than the “foolish tears” of his faithless former love. Thus, the speaker demands that she “go by.” She should just keep walking past his grave and not stop and pretend to care.
Second Sestet: Keep Walking
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.
Continuing his disdain for his fickle lover, the speaker addresses her by calling her “Child.” He speculates that if she was, in fact, the cause of his death, he “care[s] no longer.” Indicating that at one time he cared very much, he makes it clear that now he does not.
She abandoned him and caused him to be “unblest” by her love, and even if her departure has killed him, he does not welcome her pretense or acknowledgment that she once cared for him.
The speaker tells her to “[w]ed whom thou wilt.” By this remark, he is, again, trying to demonstrate his current apathy. But he adds that he is “sick of Time, / And [he] desire[s] to rest.” His protest reveals that the love he lost has taken a mighty toll on him; it has made him not care for anything in life any longer.
The speaker then commands her once again to keep away, to keep walking, not to stop at his grave, but simply “Go by, go by.” He repeats for a third time that he wants her pass by his grave and not stop to mourn him.
A Common Theme
The speaker, of course, has not died but uses the imagined occasion of his death to emphasize how destructive to his heart has been the break with the lover addressed in the poem. This ploy remains a common theme for many lost love poems, but an unusual choice for Tennyson, who is famous for his profundity.
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