I quoted, yesterday, the Ivyberry passage from Tennyson's 1880 poem, De Profundis. Today I'd like to say something about what it means, which I will do beneath the image of (21st century) London at Christmas.
Ivy berries (the phrase is not typically written as one word outside poetry) are symbolic of an ability to thrive even in difficult conditions.
In the context of this poem, ivy berries appear right after a reference to grapes. Tennyson is writing from out of the depths of his own experience as, at this time, a man of 71.
"Out of the depths," of course, is the literal English language meaning of the title.
Anyway: young folk, strike out into the world! It is your own responsibility to choose between a life of leisure, drinking the fruit of the grape, and a more rigorous challenging life, symbolically drinking of the Ivyberry. Whatever you do, you will help express the fullness of God who is the fountain of which we are all but droplets.
Soon thereafter, the poet is speaking of God's greatest creation as "not matter, nor the finite-infinite, But this main-miracle, that thou art thou."
Tennyson enjoys playing with such contraries. He had already told us that he is speaking "Of this divisible-indivisible world/ Among the numerable-innumerable/ Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space/ In finite-infinite Time—our mortal veil."
Tennyson is playing a bit with metaphysics here, with Kantian antinomies in his mind. But in an infinite world, can a God who is both three and one, and a Christ both God and man, be intolerably irregular? If we are stuck with the divisible/indivisible nature of this mixed up world anyway, who would worry overly much about whether the chain of causes and effects has an infinite number of links or had a beginning?
Accept paradox, young person, and delight in the fact that God made you with the mission to be who you are, "thou art thou."
And a Merry Christmas to thee, wherever thou art.
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