And you will ‘best to has loved and you may lost than simply never to keeps adored within all’ is one of people proverbs and therefore of course features an enthusiastic author we are able to point to

‘Better to enjoys treasured and you will lost than to not ever provides cherished whatsoever.’ It has become a beneficial proverb, and you can proverbs try, always, authorless.

In reality, that’s not really true. Whether or not ‘an excellent stitch over time conserves nine’ or ‘if you would like sup to the Demon, you’ll best provides a lengthy spoon’ are attributed to that every respected from experts, ‘Anon.’, a number of other proverbial pearls off knowledge have a very clear and you may recognisable writer. ‘Procrastination is the burglar from time’ we owe so you can Edward Younger, the brand new 18th-millennium composer of the latest much time meditative poem Nights Thoughts. And you may ‘Like conquers all’ appeared in the brand new work of one’s Roman poet, Virgil.

In this situation, possibly surprisingly, we just need to go back to the fresh new mid-19th 100 years discover their origins. For it price are published by the most famous English poet of your own Victorian time, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92).

Certainly one of Tennyson’s very challenging poems, and one of his extremely distinguished, try an extended elegy he blogged towards death of good buddy he realized regarding their beginner months in the Cambridge. Within the Memoriam A. H. H. try divided into 133 cantos – less lyric poems – and therefore, collectively, compensate you to long elegy having Tennyson’s buddy Arthur Henry Hallam, just who passed away out of the blue from a brain haemorrhage in 1833, old merely angelreturn twenty two.

And it’s really from inside the Canto XXVII out of In Memoriam that people come across the text ‘’tis far better features appreciated and shed than not to possess appreciated at all’:

Tennyson, themselves only in his early twenties when Hallam passed away, was inconsolable: his suffering having his close friend motivated plenty of poems Tennyson authored, especially in the brand new 1830s, nevertheless the really ambitious ones was a student in Memoriam, he labored on having sixteen age between 1833 and you will 1849. It actually was typed inside the 1850, the entire year Tennyson turned into Uk Poet Laureate after the loss of Wordsworth.

All elegy are a balance off personal sadness and you can public mourning, along with Memoriam reveals new complex interrelationship between the two much more obviously than simply extremely elegies. On the poem, we see Tennyson examining some individual thoughts – a visit to Hallam’s youngsters house, or something like that their pal immediately after said to him – right after which doing work outward from it to provide particular widely relevant information about death, despair, and you can like.

Sure, like. Getting it’s obvious that Tennyson liked Hallam dearly – if just as a buddy, or since the some thing a lot more, could have been the topic of conjecture since. But like is obviously a significant motif from Inside Memoriam.

I jealousy maybe not in almost any feelings The latest attentive gap away from noble outrage, The linnet born during the crate, You to definitely never realized summer time woods:

We jealousy not the fresh beast that takes Their permit regarding the world of date, Unfetter’d by the feeling of offense, To help you just who a beneficial conscience never wakes;

Nor, what could possibly get amount in itself since the blest, One’s heart that never ever plighted troth But stagnates from the weeds off sloth; Nor one want-begotten people.

I hold it real, whate’er befall; Personally i think they, once i sorrow really: ‘Tis best to has actually treasured and you can destroyed Than to not ever have treasured whatsoever.

However, particularly a lot of proverbs, there is a good counterpoint so you’re able to for example a sentiment: ‘everything never had, you don’t miss’. The latest analogy always provided was blindness: the newest argument happens that someone who’s got never known just what it is to possess vision don’t skip the current out-of sight, at the very least outside of the method i always know ‘missing’ some thing. Not everyone could possibly unequivocally take on new understanding off an effective proverb however ‘’tis far better have seen and you may missing their sight than never ever to possess viewed from the all’. Such as for instance a statement carry out maybe getting dubious.