Question

give me a break summary​

Answer 1

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

The speaker addresses the ocean directly, telling the waves to "break, break, break" onto the stony shore.

After telling the sea to keep doing its thing, the speaker regrets that he can't express his thoughts.

He doesn't come out and say, "I can't utter/ the thoughts," he says that his "tongue" can't "utter" them. This makes him seem kind of passive – he's not speaking, his "tongue" is doing it.

He's not really thinking, either – the thoughts "arise in" him almost spontaneously, without effort.

Lines 5-8

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

The speaker thinks it's all well and good that the fisherman's kid is "shout[ing]" and "play[ing]" with his sister.

Repeating the same sentence structure, the speaker says it's great for the sailor who is "sing[ing]" in his boat.

The repetition makes it sound like maybe the speaker doesn't really think it's all well and good for these people to be cheerful. Is he jealous, perhaps, of their happiness? Or of their ability to communicate it, since he admitted back in Stanza 1 that his "tongue" can't "utter/ the thoughts that arise"?

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

The fancy, "stately ships" pass by the speaker and head to their "haven," or protected port.

The port is "under the hill," so there must be a big hill overlooking it.

The speaker isn't distracted by the ships, though. Sure, he notices them, but his mind is elsewhere.

He's just wishing he could "touch" the "vanish'd hand" and hear "the voice that is still." This is the first explanation of why the speaker is so sad. He's grieving for someone he loved who is now dead.

He doesn't come out and describe the dead friend, though – he just lists a series of missing things: the "hand" and the "voice." The lost friend is described as a series of absent parts.

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

The speaker repeats the first line again, telling the waves to "break, break, break" again.

But it's repetition with a difference: in the first stanza, he tells the waves to break "on thy cold gray stones," and in the last stanza, he tells the waves to break "at the foot of thy crags."

It's not exactly the same – time has gone by, and even the breaking of the waves has changed slightly. Maybe it's the tide coming in.

The waves have changed slightly, and we see that time is passing, despite the tragedy that the speaker has suffered. Mournfully he says that the happy old days when his friend was alive will never return.

Answer 2

Explanation:

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★ Alfred, Lord Tennyson composed "Break, Break, Break" in 1835, two years after the death of his close friend and fellow poet, Arthur Hallam. Because the poem's speaker laments the death of a close acquaintance, most readers read "Break, Break, Break" as an elegy to Hallam, though the poem stands on its own as a more general meditation on mortality and loss. Published in 1842, the poem is often read alongside Tennyson's "In Memoriam A. H. H.," a longer work that is more explicit in its commemoration of Hallam and the impact he had on Tennyson's life.

→“Break, Break, Break” Summary

★The speaker addresses the waves of the sea, telling them to crash against the rocky shore again and again. Watching this happen, the speaker yearns for the ability to express troubling thoughts that won't go away.

★Looking out onto the water, the speaker watches a fisherman's son yelling out while playing with his sister, as well as a young sailor who sings while sailing through the cove.

★There are also impressive boats sailing through the bay, and the speaker envisions them passing into ideal, somewhat heavenly destinations. But watching these ships doesn't distract the speaker from the memory of touching the hand of an acquaintance who no longer exists, whose voice has gone silent forever.

Again, the speaker calls out to the waves as they smash against cliffs along the shoreline again and again, feeling that the easy happiness of previous days will never return..