Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1769-1780
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I—my harp would prelude woe—
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
- Now he's talking to a bird, like a sad Victorian Dr. Doolittle.
- He pleads with the bird to teach him how to sing about his feelings, because he's having a hard time sorting out the extremes of sadness and joy he's feeling.
- Tennyson can't make his figurative instrument play these chords correctly to capture his complex feelings.