Victorian poetry was written during Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901. Victorian poets were influenced by Romanticism and shared traits like skepticism of religion. Alfred Lord Tennyson was one of the most prominent Victorian poets. He was born in 1809 and served as Poet Laureate for over 40 years. His poem "Mariana" tells the story of a woman abandoned in a moated house who expresses her loneliness and desire to die. The poem uses descriptive language and imagery to depict Mariana's depression and isolation without advancing the narrative.

1. Victorian Poetry
Ahmada
Deny Ramadhani
Ira susanti
Masmawati

2. Definition of Victorian Poetry
• Victorian poetry is self-defining: poetry written during the
reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). But the dates of
Victoria's reign also seem to mark out a consistent
sensibility in poetry. Victorian poets were heirs to the
romantics, and many of the generalizations about
Romantic poetry still apply: distrust of organized religion,
skepticism, interest in the occult and the mysterious.

3. Biography of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson was born on Aug. 6, 1809 in
Somersby, Lincolnshire to a middle class family.
Tennyson was the fourth of the 12 children born to
rector Rev. George Clayton Tennyson and Elizabeth
Fytche, who was a vicar’s daughter. His father not
only oversaw the rectory at Somersby but served in
the towns of Benniworth, Bag Enderby and Grimsby
as well during the boy’s life. Lord Alfred Tennyson,
arguably the most prominent of the Victorian Poets,
held the title of Poet Laureate for over forty years.
His poems were marked a wide range of topics from
romance, to nature, to criticism of political and
religious institutions; a pillar of the establishment
not failing to attack the establishment. His Charge of
the Light Brigade was a fierce criticism of a famous
military blunder; while the Princess dealt with
pseudo-chivalry common among the royalty. The
poems of In Memoriam dealt with Tennysons
exploration of his feelings of love, loss and desire.

4. The poetry by Tennyson
MARIANA
‘Mariana in the moated grange.’
—Measure for Measure
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:
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 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 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 stone-cast from the wall

5. • 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 and
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 creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the
mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot
shriek’d,
• Or from the crevice peer’d about.
Old faces glimmer’d thro’ 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 thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western 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!’

6. Analysis of Tennyson’s poetry
Mariana
1. Story/narration
This poem derives from a line in Measure for
Measure : “Mariana in the moated grange”,
where she waits for a lover, Angelo, who in fact
has jilted her.• The poem is highly descriptive
and contains some striking images but it is not
really a narrative: nothing happens. It is a poem
that is about depression, abandonment,
isolation.
‘Mariana in the moated grange.’
—Measure for Measure

7. 2. Stanzas
“Mariana” takes the form of seven twelve-line stanzas. Central couplet
perhaps binds stanzas tightly, prevents advancement.
3. Rhyme
“Mariana” takes the form of seven twelve-line stanzas, each of which
is divided into three four-line rhyme units according to the pattern
ABAB CDDC EFEF.
4. Language
• Imagery: visual but little metaphor,
• Simile is static metonymic
• Lexis/ diction focuses on synonyms for decay, negativity -everything
is damp, decaying, mouldy, even the sense of the poem ‘s reshness;
has few active present-tense verbs• Sound: assonance, hence
sad•assonanta