Literature Tuesday..... Mariana

I remember when I started college I had very little experience with "literature." I read a lot, but I was unfamiliar with literature. American public high schools do not prepare students for that. I of course was not a great student so that may have also been part of the problem.

But then we read Tennyson and I met Mariana. My heart broke for her. I wanted to put my arm around her and help diminish her pain. And for the first time I started to look at language and the ability to paint pictures with words. While in college I tried to appreciate literature, but never had the time. There were works to be read and papers to be written and all on deadline. The professors wanted us to analyze and dissect and explain. All of this took the brief spark of Mariana away and I studies, as I was supposed to and got through college.

And then I began commuting to work and needed something to read on the train. I reintroduced myself to the authors and the words that had been mundane while I was studying them. I fell in love with Dickens and Austen .... muddled my way through Hawthorne and Shakespeare. And even if I did not understand the political background or the satire I enjoyed the stories.

Today my bookshelves are full of the classics (and every Stephen King book written). They have become fond friends. And while I got a Nook for Christmas which will make carrying my "books" easier, I will never dispose of the books on my shelves ..... even the ones that are highlighted to the hilt with notes in the margins!



Mariana by Henrietta Rae



Mariana in the moated Grange

Alfred Tennyson

With blackest moss the flowerpots
   Were thickly crusted, one and all,
The rusted nails fell from the knots
   That held the peach to the garden wall.
The broken sheds looked 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 the bats,
   When thickest dark did trance the sky,
   She drew her casementcurtain 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 nightfowl 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 grey-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 stonecast from the wall,
   A sluice with blackened waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
   The clustered marishmosses crept.

 Hard by a poplar shook alway,
   All silvergreen with gnarled bark,
   For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding grey.
     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 an' away,

 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
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 creaked;
The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse
   Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
   Old faces glimmered through 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 thickmoted sunbeam lay
   Athwart the chambers, and the day
Downsloped was westering in his bower.

     Then, said she, "I am very dreary,
       He will not come," she said;
     She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
       Oh God, that I were dead!"