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Tithonus
Appearing on Kindle for the first time as a stand-alone poem, "Tithonus" was written by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), originally written in 1833 as "Tithon" and completed in 1859. It first appeared in the February edition of the Cornhill Magazine in 1860. Faced with old age, Tithonus, weary of his immortality, yearns for death. The poem is a dramatic monologue with Tithonus addressing his consort Eos, the goddess of the dawn.
- GenresPoetry
Unknown Binding
First published February 1, 1860
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About the author
Alfred Tennyson
2,144 books1,443 followersWorks, including
In Memoriam
in 1850 and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854, of Alfred Tennyson, first baron, known as lord, appointed British poet laureate in 1850, reflect Victorian sentiments and aesthetics.
Elizabeth Tennyson, wife, bore Alfred Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, to George Tennyson, clergyman; he inevitably wrote his books. In 1816, parents sent Tennyson was sent to grammar school of Louth.
Alfred Tennyson disliked school so intensely that from 1820, home educated him. At the age of 18 years in 1827, Alfred joined his two brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with Charles Tennyson, his brother, published Poems by Two Brothers , his book, in the same year.
Alfred Tennyson published Poems Chiefly Lyrical , his second book, in 1830. In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam, best friend of Tennyson, engaged to wed his sister, died, and thus inspired some best Ulysses and the Passing of Arthur .
Following William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson in 1850 married Emily Sellwood Tenyson, his childhood friend. She bore Hallam Tennyson in 1852 and Lionel Tennyson in 1854, two years later.
Alfred Tennyson continued throughout his life and in the 1870s also to write a number of plays.
In 1884, the queen raised Alfred Tennyson, a great favorite of Albert, prince, thereafter to the peerage of Aldworth. She granted such a high rank for solely literary distinction to this only Englishman.
Alfred Tennyson died at the age of 83 years, and people buried his body in abbey of Westminster.
Elizabeth Tennyson, wife, bore Alfred Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, to George Tennyson, clergyman; he inevitably wrote his books. In 1816, parents sent Tennyson was sent to grammar school of Louth.
Alfred Tennyson disliked school so intensely that from 1820, home educated him. At the age of 18 years in 1827, Alfred joined his two brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with Charles Tennyson, his brother, published Poems by Two Brothers , his book, in the same year.
Alfred Tennyson published Poems Chiefly Lyrical , his second book, in 1830. In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam, best friend of Tennyson, engaged to wed his sister, died, and thus inspired some best Ulysses and the Passing of Arthur .
Following William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson in 1850 married Emily Sellwood Tenyson, his childhood friend. She bore Hallam Tennyson in 1852 and Lionel Tennyson in 1854, two years later.
Alfred Tennyson continued throughout his life and in the 1870s also to write a number of plays.
In 1884, the queen raised Alfred Tennyson, a great favorite of Albert, prince, thereafter to the peerage of Aldworth. She granted such a high rank for solely literary distinction to this only Englishman.
Alfred Tennyson died at the age of 83 years, and people buried his body in abbey of Westminster.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 20, 2020
'The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan. '
The narrative is based on the conventional parable of the love of Goddess Aurora (Eos) for Tithonus. Tithonus, a gorgeous youth, was carried off by Aurora (traditionally represented as veiled, drawn in a rose-coloured chariot by white horses), the goddess of the dawn. Tithonus begged her for the endowment of immortality, which she got granted. However, he forgot to solicit for the vitality of youth to remain with him. Consequently, he grew older and decrepit, till he begged Aurora to liberate him. As he could not die, the goddess converted him into a grasshopper.
The poem begins with the accepted sequence of life - birth, growth, and death. Nevertheless, Tithonus cannot become a component of this cycle owing to his received boon. He now considers immortality to be a spiteful castigation. Aurora asked for Tithonus immortality and not for timeless adolescence as a consequence of which Tithonus is withering away. Just a silhouette of him languishes in the arms of Aurora.
He craves to get back to his world and asks his beloved to take back her endowment. He realises the ineffectuality of such contemplation as he knows that even gods cannot unknot this twisted condition of his.
The days of his youth, when he first set his eyes upon the shimmering exquisiteness of Aurora seems to be so way away for Tithonus. He gets a foretaste of it when the clouds part, to divulge the sinister world he left behind. Tithonus beseeches Aurora to let him return to earth, where like other contented men, he would also expire and be buried. He asks her not to hold him perpetually as they do not make a pleasurable picture.
The tone of the poem is elegiac. Tithonus has grown old, "a whitehair'd shadow roaming like a dream." He does no longer possess his prior grandeur; he is a mere shade of his former self, while Aurora still prolongs to be youthful and attractive. Emotively, he exclaims that he is "immortal age beside immortal youth."
The poem teaches us the fact that man should not wish to "vary from the kindly race of men", nor seek to, "pass beyond the goal of ordinance".
The poet does not rail sardonically at human life, nor does he revile it as hollow -- rather he is sentient of the good and splendour in life of 'the kindly race of man,' and all the pleasures that lie open to him in this world. But he wants that the restraints of human life should be accepted, for any yearning to circumvent them is liable to result in divine reprimand as in the case of Tithonus.
Tithonus is a decidedly wrought work of art -- one of the most beautiful poems Tennyson ever wrote.
Sound and image combine to enforce sense: to represent age and the sorrows of age, natural law and the beneficence of it.
The heavy, regular beat of,
'Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,' underlines the compassionate security that the natural rhythm of survival brings to the common man. Aesthetic word-pictures, vibrant and explicit, abound in the poem. For example, there are two pictures representing the rise of dawn and the measured brightening of the eastern horizon. The poet speaks of Aurora's unadulterated brows, bare shoulders and bosom, her crimson cheeks, her shady eyes and her kisses, 'balmier than halfopening buds of April. 'His eye for colour is seen in lines like the following:
'And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire'
Thus, the poem is neither an expression of a death-wish, nor a denunciation of life, nor is it a poem of escape. It is a dominant plea for the recognition of life with all its magnificence and grandeur, plus all its restraints. Death is not to be eschewed as evil, but to be welcomed as the means through which life refurbishes itself.
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan. '
The narrative is based on the conventional parable of the love of Goddess Aurora (Eos) for Tithonus. Tithonus, a gorgeous youth, was carried off by Aurora (traditionally represented as veiled, drawn in a rose-coloured chariot by white horses), the goddess of the dawn. Tithonus begged her for the endowment of immortality, which she got granted. However, he forgot to solicit for the vitality of youth to remain with him. Consequently, he grew older and decrepit, till he begged Aurora to liberate him. As he could not die, the goddess converted him into a grasshopper.
The poem begins with the accepted sequence of life - birth, growth, and death. Nevertheless, Tithonus cannot become a component of this cycle owing to his received boon. He now considers immortality to be a spiteful castigation. Aurora asked for Tithonus immortality and not for timeless adolescence as a consequence of which Tithonus is withering away. Just a silhouette of him languishes in the arms of Aurora.
He craves to get back to his world and asks his beloved to take back her endowment. He realises the ineffectuality of such contemplation as he knows that even gods cannot unknot this twisted condition of his.
The days of his youth, when he first set his eyes upon the shimmering exquisiteness of Aurora seems to be so way away for Tithonus. He gets a foretaste of it when the clouds part, to divulge the sinister world he left behind. Tithonus beseeches Aurora to let him return to earth, where like other contented men, he would also expire and be buried. He asks her not to hold him perpetually as they do not make a pleasurable picture.
The tone of the poem is elegiac. Tithonus has grown old, "a whitehair'd shadow roaming like a dream." He does no longer possess his prior grandeur; he is a mere shade of his former self, while Aurora still prolongs to be youthful and attractive. Emotively, he exclaims that he is "immortal age beside immortal youth."
The poem teaches us the fact that man should not wish to "vary from the kindly race of men", nor seek to, "pass beyond the goal of ordinance".
The poet does not rail sardonically at human life, nor does he revile it as hollow -- rather he is sentient of the good and splendour in life of 'the kindly race of man,' and all the pleasures that lie open to him in this world. But he wants that the restraints of human life should be accepted, for any yearning to circumvent them is liable to result in divine reprimand as in the case of Tithonus.
Tithonus is a decidedly wrought work of art -- one of the most beautiful poems Tennyson ever wrote.
Sound and image combine to enforce sense: to represent age and the sorrows of age, natural law and the beneficence of it.
The heavy, regular beat of,
'Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,' underlines the compassionate security that the natural rhythm of survival brings to the common man. Aesthetic word-pictures, vibrant and explicit, abound in the poem. For example, there are two pictures representing the rise of dawn and the measured brightening of the eastern horizon. The poet speaks of Aurora's unadulterated brows, bare shoulders and bosom, her crimson cheeks, her shady eyes and her kisses, 'balmier than halfopening buds of April. 'His eye for colour is seen in lines like the following:
'And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire'
Thus, the poem is neither an expression of a death-wish, nor a denunciation of life, nor is it a poem of escape. It is a dominant plea for the recognition of life with all its magnificence and grandeur, plus all its restraints. Death is not to be eschewed as evil, but to be welcomed as the means through which life refurbishes itself.
May 27, 2024
"The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes:"
Tithonus is the mythical love story between a human and Greek goddess. Tithonus is a Troy prince who fell in love with Eos the goddess of the dawn. He asks the goddess for immortality when he is in her world, and later realizes that he did not ask for eternal youth as he grows old. He can not fulfill the expectations of the goddess and asks to be sent back to Earth.
"The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."
The theme of the poem is to target the wish of humans for immortality without realizing that eternal life would not come with eternal youth and beauty.He says that humans have unlimited desire yet they do not realize their outcomes.
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes:"
Tithonus is the mythical love story between a human and Greek goddess. Tithonus is a Troy prince who fell in love with Eos the goddess of the dawn. He asks the goddess for immortality when he is in her world, and later realizes that he did not ask for eternal youth as he grows old. He can not fulfill the expectations of the goddess and asks to be sent back to Earth.
"The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."
The theme of the poem is to target the wish of humans for immortality without realizing that eternal life would not come with eternal youth and beauty.He says that humans have unlimited desire yet they do not realize their outcomes.
November 6, 2016
Poetry is far from my area of expertise. I love to read a good poem, but I read poetry so rarely that I can hardly call myself an expert. With Tennyson, I find I have a bit of a mixed relationship with his work. Some I really enjoy, whereas others I don’t care much for. Thus, I’m going to refrain from writing a full review about the individual pieces. Just know, some are better than others, and my ratings of the individual poems work to reflect that.
October 20, 2020
সৃষ্টিকর্তা যে একটা গন্ডি দিয়ে দিয়েছেন সেটা সব দিক ভেবেই। এতেই মঙ্গল। এর বাইরে যা কিছুই করা হোক না কেন সব কিছুতেই হিতে বিপরীত হবে। টিথোনাসও তেমন। লোভে পাপ পাবে মৃত্যু বলে একটা কথা আছে। কিন্তু এখানে পাপে চিরঞ্জীব :3
মৃত্যুর জন্য মানুষ এতোটা আকুতি মিনতি করে কোন সিসুয়েশনে পড়লে তা ভাবনার অতীত। সর্বোপরি কবিতাটা চরম।
মৃত্যুর জন্য মানুষ এতোটা আকুতি মিনতি করে কোন সিসুয়েশনে পড়লে তা ভাবনার অতীত। সর্বোপরি কবিতাটা চরম।
September 30, 2022
"The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn."
Tithonus, (of Greek mythology) is gifted his request of immortality from his lover, Eos. She has not granted him youth, however, and as time passes Tithonus begins to age until he calls himself withered, a white haired shadow. He laments his undying age, begs Eos to take back her gift, and looks on mankind with jealousy in their ability to return to the earth.
Tennyson's works are often defined by a measure of grief, which is apparent in this dramatic dialogue. Tennyson wrote at one time that 'Tithonus' was a pendant for his work 'Ulysses', and I find the themes of aged grief, death, and views on mortality have as much in common in the two works, as not. Tithonus has been granted age eternal and desires nothing more than to embrace death, while Ulysses watches himself age, feeling the approach of his twilight years & rages against them. Mutual concepts laid out by Tennyson, both well worth the read & rumination.
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn."
Tithonus, (of Greek mythology) is gifted his request of immortality from his lover, Eos. She has not granted him youth, however, and as time passes Tithonus begins to age until he calls himself withered, a white haired shadow. He laments his undying age, begs Eos to take back her gift, and looks on mankind with jealousy in their ability to return to the earth.
Tennyson's works are often defined by a measure of grief, which is apparent in this dramatic dialogue. Tennyson wrote at one time that 'Tithonus' was a pendant for his work 'Ulysses', and I find the themes of aged grief, death, and views on mortality have as much in common in the two works, as not. Tithonus has been granted age eternal and desires nothing more than to embrace death, while Ulysses watches himself age, feeling the approach of his twilight years & rages against them. Mutual concepts laid out by Tennyson, both well worth the read & rumination.
March 22, 2018
It is a horrible poem about a man given eternal life but not eternal youth, and so he laments and begs that the gift of the gods be taken from him.
November 17, 2025
Lord Alfred Tennyson was one of the most famous poets of the Victorian period. He wrote many stories and poems that have become immortal and continue to live with us today. He was very interested in mythology, especially Greek mythology. We can see his use of various mythological elements in his writings. He often reflected on life, human limitations, and immortality. He believed that the key difference between humans and gods is death. This idea influenced him to write one of his famous dramatic monologues, “Tithonus.”
In the poem Tithonus, the main theme is “The Curse of Immortality.” In the poem, we see that Tithonus was a young and handsome prince of Troy. He was very proud of his beauty. His charm made Eos (Aurora), the Greek goddess of dawn, fall in love with him. Her beauty also made Tithonus fall in love with her. They were very happy together.
But Tithonus’s pride led to his downfall. Believing himself special among all mortals, he asked Eos for a unique gift — immortality. Since Eos loved him deeply, she instantly accepted his request and asked Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, to make Tithonus immortal. Zeus granted it.
But they made a terrible mistake: Eos forgot to ask for eternal youth along with immortality. Because of this, Tithonus became immortal, but he continued to age. He grew older and weaker with time, while Eos remained forever young and beautiful. This created his painful curse — a life that could never end, even when his body had withered away.
In the poem Tithonus, the main theme is “The Curse of Immortality.” In the poem, we see that Tithonus was a young and handsome prince of Troy. He was very proud of his beauty. His charm made Eos (Aurora), the Greek goddess of dawn, fall in love with him. Her beauty also made Tithonus fall in love with her. They were very happy together.
But Tithonus’s pride led to his downfall. Believing himself special among all mortals, he asked Eos for a unique gift — immortality. Since Eos loved him deeply, she instantly accepted his request and asked Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, to make Tithonus immortal. Zeus granted it.
But they made a terrible mistake: Eos forgot to ask for eternal youth along with immortality. Because of this, Tithonus became immortal, but he continued to age. He grew older and weaker with time, while Eos remained forever young and beautiful. This created his painful curse — a life that could never end, even when his body had withered away.
November 22, 2023
The Henna Artist brought me here!
It's about a guy who requested for immortality after he gets into a relationship with the goddess Eos. He was granted the wish, but since he's not being specific, he only gets the immortality but not the eternal youth. He ends up having to watch his lover staying young while he's aging without being able to die.
The poem is quite long and the writing is also hard to understand, that's why I read a depth analysis on it afterwards.
It's about a guy who requested for immortality after he gets into a relationship with the goddess Eos. He was granted the wish, but since he's not being specific, he only gets the immortality but not the eternal youth. He ends up having to watch his lover staying young while he's aging without being able to die.
The poem is quite long and the writing is also hard to understand, that's why I read a depth analysis on it afterwards.
June 17, 2025
Poor Tithonus:(
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews