Tennyson wrote this poem to commemorate the death of his college friend Arthur Hallam. The poem is structured as a series of individual lyrics written over the course of 17 years as Tennyson struggled to come to terms with Hallam's death and the doubts it created in him about God and the place of man in the universe. "In Memoriam" is not only one of the great elegies, ranked with "Lycidas" and "Adonais", but an examination of man's relation to God and an expression of Tennyson's own fears and attempts at resolution. The poem ends on a note of hope and a reaffirmation of belief.

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