Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson. 18091892699. Mariana
WITH blackest moss the flower-plots | |
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: | 5 |
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; | 10 |
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, | 15 |
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. | 20 |
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, | 25 |
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, | 30 |
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, | 35 |
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. | 40 |
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, | 45 |
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, | 50 |
In the white curtain, to and fro, | |
She saw the gusty shadow sway. | |
But when the moon was very low, | |
And wild winds bound within their cell, | |
The shadow of the poplar fell | 55 |
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!’ | 60 |
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 peer’d about. | 65 |
Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, | |
Old footsteps trod the upper floors, | |
Old voices call’d her from without. | |
She only said, ‘My life is dreary, | |
He cometh not,’ she said; | 70 |
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 | 75 |
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. | 80 |
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!’ |