Thy voice is on the rolling air

‘Thy voice is on the rolling air’

Alfred Garth Jones

1901

Wood engraving

5¼ x 3¼ inches

Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, facing p. 138

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Another pantheistic image in which Tennyson imagines he is in communion with Hallam, who is now ‘mix’d with God and Nature’, a belief that echoes Wordsworth’s sentiments in his lament for ‘Lucy.’ Jones figures the scene as an English paradise using Art Nouveau lines to suggest the continuation of life. The landscape is animated by wind, water, and a rising sun: a new day has begun, symbolizing in the fabric of the world the poet’s greater hopefulness as he emerges from his grief.