Poet Laureate  Alfred, Lord Tennyson died September 6, 1862. 

From his early days, Tennyson had been fascinated by the figure of King Arthur and Hallam’s death gave him further impetus to work on the collection of blank verse poems he called ‘idylls’, with Arthur Hallam as the underlying inspiration for the legendary king, and he went on publishing collections of these until in 1885 he had built up twelve books on the Arthurian legends, beginning with ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ending with ‘The Passing of Arthur’. They recount King Arthur’s establishment of the Round Table but there is a recognition from the beginning that no human endeavour (by implication, not even the British Empire) is permanent. As Arthur dies, he recognises that ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new, /And God fulfils himself in many ways,/Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’

As Poet Laureate, Tennyson composed poems to commemorate the major public events of his times, including the Crimean War, for which he wrote in 1854 ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, with its famous line ‘someone had blundered’, suggesting his doubts, not about the courage of the ordinary soldiers, but about the competence of their officers. In 1855 he published Maud: A Monodrama, a dramatic monologue in which the hero, having killed his sweetheart’s brother, finds expiation by setting off to battle in the Crimea. When it was suggested that he was glorifying war, he pointed out that this was a dramatic monologue and that the thoughts were those of the unstable protagonist. 
Life and Works – The Tennyson Society

Tennyson as a Young Man and ‘Mariana’ / Tennyson in 1856 and ‘April Love’ / Tennyson in 1864 and ‘I am Sick of the Shadows’ / Tennyson in 1888 and ‘The Beguiling of Merlin’ 
From the series Death Centenary of Lord Alfred Tennyson
Issued by Royal Mail in 1992
Designer:
Irene Von Trekow