 "The Two Voices" was published following a ten-year span (1832-1842) in which Tennyson did not publish anything, coinciding with what some call "one of the deafening silences of Victorian literary history" 

The poem is written in Iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme consisting of tercets (three lines of matching end rhyme).It is 205 stanzas long (615 lines).It was praised for its depth and style.