Alfred Tennyson

In 1929 he joined a undergraduate discussion group that was called the Apostles. He became very close to Hallam who was also in Apostles. Tennyson was the center of the group, but after only a few meetings he had dropped out. He still kept in contact with the group. All of the love and acceptance that he got from his friends brought new warmth to his personality. When he was supposed to be studying, he would be poetry now. His friend Hallam also wrote poetry, Tennyson and him wanted to have their work published together. Their friendship became even closer when Hallam married Tennyson's younger sister Emily.
             Tennyson soon had to leave Cambridge because of his fathers death. His father Dr. Tennyson left debts to the family, but they had good income and a large allowance from his father. Tennyson's grandfather was going to keep Tennyson and his two older brothers at Cambridge, but they was only learning a little and would never be able to support themselves. Tennyson's aunt gave him an annual gift of 163 pounds from which then on he lived in a modest manner. All his life he would say that he wanted poetry to be his career. In 1832 his third volume of poetry, but the title page was dated a year later. The poems from 1832 were a great step forward for Tennyson. In the poems he writes his feelings of being cut off from his contemporaries by the demand of his art.
             Tennyson's rhyme scheme in "In Memoriam" is abba, but there are other rhyme schemes. Some of his poems are written in the tetrameter quatrain abab. "The Place of Art" is written in alternated rhyme stanza whose lines are pentameter, tetrameter, pentameter, trimeter. "A Dream of a Fair Woman" the rhyming lines are of "five of five, and five of three accents respectively." (Kissane). "A Sprit Hunts the Years Last Hours" is a example of the way Tennyson designs long stanzas. The rhyme scheme for that poem is aabccbba. The changes in his line length often gave his rhythms kind of a "syhcopateon.