Regarding In Memoriam A. H. H. by Tennyson: What are the Victorian elements in this poem?

In Memoriam A. H. H. by Tennyson is a
vast work that reveals characteristics of Victorian poetic theory in myriad ways. A
small sampling here that will give guidance as to Tennyson's implementation of Victorian
poetics in In Memoriam is drawn from the early sections from I to
LXIII. To start with, two of the major characteristics of Victorian poetry that are
apparent within In Memoriam are the themes of love and nature,
shared with the preceding Romantic period but given a different
slant.

Love isn't necessarily idealized and "romanticized"
in the Victorian period; it may be shown with fangs and claws as in Browning's
"Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess," while nature is revealed as having a dark
side, not romanticized and inspirational. In keeping with this dark side, emblematic
nature is used, especially by Tennyson, to symbolize emotions; melancholy and Medieval
Gothic allusions take precedence over heroism and Classical
allusions.

Since the Victorian period was face-to-face with
new and unsettling science on all sides, Victorian poetry adds the new dimension of
psychological studies of poets and poetic personas and narrators. Partly as a reaction
to this science and partly as a reaction to the unwelcome rise in immoral and criminal
behavior accompanying the rush of urban immigration, Queen Victoria emphasized a
stringent return to Christian morality.

In keeping with
Queen Victoria's appeal, In Memoriam opens with a Christian appeal
instead of an appeal to the Classic Muse of poetry:

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Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom
we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone,
embrace,

The Christian appeal
continues and is seen again later, as in:

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Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What
seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And
not from man, O Lord, to
thee.

Later, Sections III and
LVI have Medieval Gothic allusions and tones that are in contrast to Classical Greek
allusions.

O
Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O
sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying
lip?

Section V highlights the
use of emblematic nature as a symbol for emotions:

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In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me
o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the
cold:

Section LX illustrates
the prominence of melancholy, while Section LXIII shows nature, love, and melancholy
combined, with the addition of psychological study:

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Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven,
And
love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In
its assumptions up to heaven;

And I am so much more than
these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them
sympathy,
And I would set their pains at ease.

So
mayst thou watch me where I weep,..
.