Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. "Tithonus" doesn't mean a whole lot without the knowledge that the speaker is a mythological character who was loved by a goddess and was granted immortality, but not immortal youth. Since the gods could not take back their gifts, he was doomed to slowly suffer the extremes of decay as he grew ever older and older. (Summary by Leonard Wilson)