Selected Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

‘Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;’ – She cries all night, every night, almost as a part of nature; she is losing her independent existence; never described directly, she is like a ghostly presence in the poem.

‘She could not look on the sweet heaven,/Either at morn or eventide.’ – Perhaps meaning that, in her sorrow, she never looks up, though perhaps she hates the dawn because she has no hope (and a new day symbolizes this), and she hates the evening because it confirms that her lover will not come that day.

‘After the flitting of the bats,/When thickest dark did trance the sky,’ – and when the surroundings most mirror her mood.

‘She drew her casement-curtain by,/And glanced athwart the glooming flats.’ – The unusual preposition ‘athwart’ implies the conflict in her heart as she peers out of her confinement. The flat lands (reminiscent of Tennyson’s home county Lincolnshire) give no grounds for hope or optimism. The word ‘casement’ means window.

‘Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:/The cock sung out an hour ere light:’ – Night and day seem confused at the grange, and in Mariana’s mind as she is wakeful all night.

‘In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,’ – Not actual sleep-walking but a dream of endless wandering.

‘Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn’ – Morning is usually associated with renewal and youth. The expression ‘gray-eyed’ makes the dawn seem old and weary, and perhaps suggests the effect of the sun seen through clouds.

‘About a stone-cast from the wall/A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,’ – Strangely vivid, and probably a yonic symbol, emblematic of Mariana’s frustration at the absence of her lover.

‘The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.’ – Tennyson employs three trochees in succession, also using alliterative effects, such as sibilance. The effect is slightly sinister, suggesting the inevitable decay of Mariana’s heart and mind. The word ‘marish’ is an archaic form of ‘marsh,’ used here, most likely, simply because it is a trochee.