[1] With these lines may be compared Shelley, _Dedication to the Revolt of Islam_:—
And through thine eyes, e’en in thy soul, I see A lamp of vestal fire burning eternally.
[2] Lowlihead a favourite word with Chaucer and Spenser.
“Mariana in the moated grange.”—_Measure for Measure_.
This poem as we know from the motto prefixed to it was suggested by Shakespeare (_Measure for Measure_, iii., 1, “at the moated grange resides this dejected Mariana,”) but the poet may have had in his mind the exquisite fragment of Sappho:—
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ Πληϊαδες, μέδαι δὲ νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὥρα, ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
“The moon has set and the Pleiades, and it is midnight: the hour too is going by, but I sleep alone.” It was long popularly supposed that the scene of the poem was a farm near Somersby known as Baumber’s farm, but Tennyson denied this and said it was a purely “imaginary house in the fen,” and that he “never so much as dreamed of Baumbers farm”. See _Life_, i., 28.
With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the peach[1] to the garden-wall.[2] 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;[3] She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the 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 seem’d to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed[4] 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!”