What is the Victorian theme in the poem “Beautiful City” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal
humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll’d again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!
In this poem, Lord Tennyson critiques Victorian society's ability to make actual progress, stating that every time they try to do so, it sort of backfires at them. While all of the mentioned themes are condensed in this short poem, the most prominent and essential one wold be Revolution due to his complain revolving completely around this topic.
