THE OAK

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson is a manifestation of how we had lived our lives. It describes
life using the four seasons – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Though there was a shift of autumn
and winter, it just made sense as applied within the poem.

Spring – the becoming of a person, symbolizing youth and the early days of human. It described youth to
be living in gold – that this child he pertains to spent his childhood years glorious and happy. Just like
what normal kids would. Summer – the growth of the child into a young adult. But there was a fast pace
of writing as within a verse, summer was already followed by Autumn - adulthood. This pictures how
time flies so fast when we age. It’s like, yesterday we were just kids running around playgrounds and
wandering free, then life passes by us and shapes us into adults. The author described Autumn as
“soberer-hued, gold again”, which indicates that life is like a Ferris wheel – sometimes you go down, feel
dreadful; that’s how the way life goes and we cannot deny encountering problems along the way as we
age. But despite such gloomy days within life, we remain “gold again”. We go upwards towards the top
of the Ferris wheel, seeing the view of what we had gone through.

And lastly – Winter. The author described it in a way that would describe the features of a man as he
ages – “All his leaves, fall’n at length”. It describes both the literal aging and the beauty of youth. Yet on
the third verse implicates the glory of man, that even all the gold in him has been stripped away by time,
he remains standing through it all. And because of that, the last verse “naked strength” depicts a man’s
courage through all the ups and downs life had given him. It shows how a man can never be beaten by
time as he has the inner strength and beauty in him – like an oak tree.