Selected Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

MARIANA

In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure , the character Angelo rejects his betrothed fiancée Mariana when her dowry is lost at sea. He accuses her of being unfaithful to him and she hides from the world in shame at a ‘moated grange’ in a nearby town. Despite her cruel rejection, her ‘violent and unruly’ passion for Angelo actually grows during her seclusion.

‘With blackest moss the flower-plots/Were thickly crusted, one and all:’ – harsh and glutinous consonants resist any fluency in the poem’s rhythm and rhyme, and create effectively a strong sense of the crabbed, restricted and decaying life of the heroine.

‘The rusted nails fell from the knots’ – Everything in Mariana is in a state of advanced decay, lacking any motion or energy.

‘That held the pear to the gable-wall.’ – Pear trees were often trained to grow flat against walls. The ‘gable-wall’ is that which supports the protruding roof V that is known as a ‘gable.’

‘Unlifted was the clinking latch;’ – This is an intriguing detail. The latch would clink if it were lifted, by the visitor who never comes. With every wind blown clink, Mariana imagines Angelo’s return.

‘the lonely moated grange.’ – A potent image of isolation, and the poem’s only quotation from Shakespeare’s play.

‘He cometh not," she said;’ – The poem’s first reference to Angelo (if we discount the clinking latch).

‘She said, "I am aweary, aweary,/I would that I were dead!" – most refrains are paced faster than the verse: this one is slow and languorous – repetitive with many long vowels – and its almost unchanging nature mimics the unchanging life of Mariana.

‘Her tears fell with the dews at even;’ = evening.