may be drawn between the death of Maud's brother, and the apparently justified killing of soldiers in war. Interpretation The interpretation of "Maud" is complicated by the compromised position and the emotional instability of the narrator. This is expressed through a variety of poetic meters and forms as well as a proto-cinematic cycling of imagery. The puzzle of the outside sphere of "Maud", for example, the point of view of Maud herself, remains unresolved. The poem is a distorted view of a single reality, and the variation in meter can be seen to reflect the manic-depressive emotional tone of the speaker. While the poem was Tennyson's own favourite (he was known very willingly to have recited the poem in its entirety on social occasions), it was met with much criticism in contemporary circles. In "Maud", Tennyson returns to the poetry of sensation, and dwells on a consciousness constituted of fragments of feeling. He deliberately denies an autonomous voice, and the ending is deeply ironic. The complex of feeling is ephemeral, and the culmination of these feelings ends in the unsatisfactory conclusion of the Crimean War. Tennyson is expressing the feelings of an age where identity, intellect and modernity were contentious issues. He does not offer a clear, linear answer. The chivalric style of the love-poem is combined with a contemporary cynicism, and so the Victorian tendency to look to remote cultures (here, medievalism) is insufficient. The interweaving of death and life images gives expression to the greater concern for the afterlife, and the movement of the human race into a different age from past monuments. See also Michael William Balfe, who set "Come into the garden, Maud" to music Marie Lloyd, who sang "Come into the garden, Maud" References Bibliography Balfe, Michael William. Come into the Garden, Maud: A Cavatina. London: Boosey & Sons, 1857. Bennett, James R. "The Historical Abuse of Literature: Tennyson's 'Maud: A Monodrama' and the Crimean War". English Studies 62 (1981): 34–45 Bennett, James R. "Maud, Part II: Maud's Battle-Song". Victorian Poetry 18 (1980): 35–49. Bristow, Joseph. “Nation, Class, and Gender: Tennyson’s ‘Maud’ and War". Genders 9 (1990): 93–111. Dransfield, Scott. “The Morbid Meters of Maud". Victorian Poetry 46.3 (2008). 279–297. Inglesfield, Robert. "Tennyson's 'Come into the Garden, Maud' and the Song of Solomon". Victorian Poetry 37.1 (1999): 121–123. Jalili, Duraid. "Lamenting Maud's Worth Becoming Maud" Crrritic!. Ed. John Schad and Oliver Tearle. Brighton: Sussex Academic