Tamerlane

“Tamerlane” is a dramatic monologue that recounts a lifetime of experiences; however, the poem itself takes place within one single scene as the title character, Tamerlane, an anglicization of the Turkic ruler Timur Lenk, speaks to a priest while awaiting his impending death. The speaker establishes the scene in the opening line: “Kind solace in a dying hour!” (Line 1). Here, he is looking for understanding and compassion after a lifetime of pride and sin. The monologue begins with the speaker telling the priest that he feels ashamed of the “searing glory” he sought for so long (Line 17); in spite of his accolades, he misses the early simplicity of his youth. Its purity makes the stretch of time that followed feel empty. The speaker refers to that emptiness as a “knell” (Line 26), creating a correlation between his lost youth and his own end of life.

The speaker turns inward and recounts how he came to be the person speaking to the priest now. He wasn’t born into power, but he took it for himself through strategy and determination. This, in his opinion, puts him in a long line of rulers with a “proud spirit” (Line 33), linking them not by bloodline but by their “kingly mind[s]” (Line 32). The speaker came from rural mountain origins, but even his dreams of power and ambition came to him through the natural world. One phrase used to describe this sensation—“nestled in my very hair” (Line 40)—is echoed at the end of the poem:

How was it that Ambition crept,

        Unseen, amid the revels there,

    Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

        In the tangles of Love’s very hair? (Lines 240-243).

The speaker goes on to say that everything around him became a premonition of warfare; cloud formations seemed like “The pageantry of monarchy” (Line 47), while thunder echoed the sounds “Of human battle” (Line 50). Rather than being morose images of death and loss, the young and hopeful speaker saw these things as inspiring and exciting. Despite the speaker’s current feelings of loss and regret, he recounts this chapter of his life with intensity and vibrancy; this suggests that even now, he’s drawn to the passion and romanticism of war.

After establishing the speaker and his place in the world, the poem comes to the heart of the title character’s confession. The speaker was once in love, and looks back on this time with nostalgia and wonder. Contrary to the decisive language with which the speaker described his military ambitions, his descriptions of his past love are filled with uncertainty:

I have no words—alas!—to tell

The loveliness of loving well!

Nor would I now attempt to trace

The more than beauty of a face

Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind (Lines 75-80).

There is a degree of youthful fear still remaining in the speaker as he remembers the person he once was. He compares his love to an act of religious devotion, with “her young heart the shrine” (Line 89) to which the speaker offered himself—an image that again is echoed at the closing of the poem. The speaker’s uncertainty continues as he implores the priest to help him understand the choices that he made: “Why did I leave it, and, adrift, / Trust to the fire within, for light?” (Lines 94-95).

From this point, the speaker begins his descent away from the fulfilment of young love to the ambition of a bigger life. At first, he struggled to reconcile the two seemingly discordant needs. Briefly, he attempted to bring them together by trying to interest his lover in his dreams, and he managed to convince himself, out of arrogance and need, that they were of one mind:

The flush on her bright cheek, to me

        Seem’d to become a queenly throne

    Too well that I should let it be

        Light in the wilderness alone (Lines 151-54).

Ultimately, however, the speaker was forced to choose between his two loves. He tries to justify this to the priest, showing him the world power that he has built. This is conveyed in a series of questions, rather than statements, highlighting the speaker’s need for encouragement and validation that his life’s work was not a complete loss. This gives humanity and nuance to a historical conqueror known for his ruthlessness and brutality.

After a long and proud career fulfilling his dreams, and with nothing left to conquer, the speaker turns homeward. He compares his life cycle to the light of the sun and the moon, with the sun representing youth and the cold moonlight representing his later years. This suggests that even healthy and uninsured, the speaker knew he was coming toward the end of his life; there is nothing left for him to learn or accomplish.

When he reaches what was once his home, the speaker learns of his lover’s death: “A voice came from the threshold stone” (Line 217), referring to a gravestone or marker. This moment becomes the speaker’s breaking point, the loss creating a sense of unspeakable agony that transcends hell. While the feeling is instigated by news of the lover’s death and her loss from the world, the loss is also bigger than that; the speaker mourns the entire life he gave up, the path he did not take, and the choices he did not make.

As the monologue returns to its initial setting, the speaker addresses the priest directly: “Father, I firmly do believe” (Line 222). Facing death has taught the speaker clarity and perspective, and he starts to see his boundless ambitions as the work of some malevolent force. “Eblis” (Line 228) here refers to a fallen angel in Persian and Arabic lore who mirrors the Christian Lucifer; the word also has the literal meaning “despair.” The speaker suggests this devil must have waylaid him from his childhood worship for his lover and for the idea of love.

The closing stanza repeats the religious imagery found earlier in the poem: “With incense of burnt offerings / From the most unpolluted things” (Lines 234-35). “Ambition” is intentionally capitalized here (Line 240), as is “Love” in the final line (Line 243). This hints at the personification of these two opposing forces, suggesting that ambition has a will of its own. Contrary to other instances of personification in the poem, ambition is presented as a male figure, and a trickster. At the very end of his life, the speaker has finally recognized power as a false idol and has turned his back on it—too late to make a different choice, but not too late to learn.