The sad ballad has always given satisfaction, whether it was a Last Goodnight, or seeing your love dressed all in white, but come back only from the grave. The Victorians revelled in it. Stephen Foster's audience grieved for Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, the lost one 'who comes not again'. The big Romantics all had their more portentous versions, from Lucy ceasing to be, to Shelley's solipsistic sad heart, filled with grief 'but with delight/No more, oh nevermore'. Poe's sardonic raven enunciated 'Nevermore' as a standard formula. Tennyson's most popular poem mourned for the touch of a vanished hand.

LRB 24 March 1994 | PDF Download