| DescriptionW.E.F. Britten - The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Mariana.jpg |
English: Illustration to Tennyson's " Mariana" by W. E. F. Britten. This is one of Tennyson's poems that takes a literary work, describes an emotional star in the middle of it, then ends before it's resolved. This one is based on Measure for Measure.
- With blackest moss the flower-pots
- Were thickly crusted, one and all;
- The rusted nails fell from the knots
- That held the pear to the gable wall.
- The broken sheds look'd sad and strange;
- Unlifted was the clinking latch:
- Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
- Upon the lonely moated grange.
- She only said, 'My life is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- Her tears fell with the dews at even;
- Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
- She could not look on the sweet heaven,
- Either at morn or eventide.
- After the flitting of bats,
- When thickest dark did trance the sky,
- She drew her casement-curtain by,
- And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
- She only said, 'The night is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- Upon the middle of the night,
- Waking she heard the night-fowl crow;
- The cock sung out an hour ere light;
- From the dark fen the oxen's low
- Came to her: without hope of change,
- In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
- Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
- About the lonely moated grange.
- She only said, 'The day is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- About a stone-cast from the wall
- A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
- And o'er it many, round and small,
- The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
- Hard by a poplar shook alway,
- All silver-green with gnarlèd bark:
- For leagues no other tree did mark
- The level waste, the rounding gray.
- She only said, 'My life is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- And ever when the moon was low,
- And the shrill winds were up and away,
- In the white curtain, to and fro,
- She saw the gusty shadows sway.
- But when the moon was very low,
- And wild winds bound within their cell,
- The shadow of the poplar fell
- Upon her bed, across her brow.
- She only said, 'The night is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- All day within the dreamy house,
- The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
- The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
- Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
- Or from the crevice peered about.
- Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
- Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
- Old voices called her from without.
- She only said, 'My life is dreary,
- He cometh not,' she said;
- She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- I would that I were dead!'
-
- The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
- The slow clock ticking, and the sound,
- Which to the wooing wind aloof
- The poplar made, did all confound
- Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
- When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
- Athwart the chambers, and the day
- Was sloping toward his western bower.
- Then said she, 'I am very dreary,
- He will not come,' she said;
- She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,
- O God, that I were dead!'
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