Locksley Hall is fictional, and barely mentioned within the poem. Nevertheless, it is the backdrop for a poetic expression of loss, and resolution to a renewed vitality.
First Views of Locksley Hall
Locksley Hall begins with melancholic introspection. Privacy is created with the request “Comrades, leave me here a little”. The initial verbs used emphasise a lack of action, the persona wants only to “rest” and “look”. While the scenery has movement, it is cast in stillness, sad with flying “Dreary gleams”, and empty with “sandy tracts,/hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts”, giving a feeling of inanition.
Despite the initial vacillation in the poem, a sense of forward movement emerges. Orion is alluded to, not for Tennyson’s knowledge of astronomy, but because Orion’s story of failed engagement to Merope parallels the events later described with. Exuberance is created as “a youth/sublime” is recalled, and especially in the optimistic presentation of time:
- The past is “like a fruitful land reposed”,
- The present enclosing a “promise”,
- and in the future, “far as human eye could see; ..the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.-”
Although there is a apparent renewal which is enforced with spring's arrival, as “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love”, this is merely a foil to the outcry of despondency that makes up the bulk of the poem. Most poignant is the personification of Love, who aggressively “took up the harp of Life, and…Smote the chord of Self.”
Dejection in Poetry
Tennyson breaks the poem’s passive, detached tone with the persona’s sudden exclamations that Amy is “mine no more!” The depression that follows is interesting for several aspects:
- Love
There is an element of bitterness in the persona’s reactions to rejection. He declares “[Amy] art mated with a clown”, and imagines the estranged relationship he hopes she will suffer with a certain glee, where she becomes “old and formal, fitted to thy petty part” with only “self-contempt” for herself finally. This bitterness arises from Amy’s rejection rather than actual hate for the partner. Although he hopes that they are “Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace”, he eventually can only conclude “she never loved me truly”.
- Society and Nature
Part of the persona’s angst derives from the conflict between society and nature, described by Bloom as “an issue that consumed both Romantic and Victorian writers alike.” The “social lies that warp us from the living truth!”, refers to the marriage being a consummation by society’s standards, yet deviates from “honest Nature’s rule”, as his perception that he should receive her love because he “had loved thee more than ever wife was loved” is broken.
- Poetic power
To critics such as June Hagen, the poem’s conflict is the loss of “poetic creativity”, rather than love. The hearkening to the “dreary, dreary moorland!” and “barren, barren shore!” could be hence seen to manifest a situation where depression impoverishes his creative abilities.
Nevertheless, the poet regains confidence with the paradoxical “truth” that he “sings”: “That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.” With his decision to “turn that earlier page”, and calling for “Mother-age” to hide his unhappiness in youth, is able to move on, and "ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet."
The Vision of the World
The latter part is noticeably more upbeat, as the persona again gazes upon the wonder of “the Vision of the world.”
There is reunification with society, as “the individual withers, and the world is more and more”, and his focus shifts from away his own dismal personal state This is seen in his vision of “the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world”, and also his glad response to rejoin his comrades at the bugle call.
The barrenness in nature is replaced, as the gloomy moors give way to “heavens fill[ed] with shouting”, the “yonder shining Orient”, and the “heavy-fruited tree” upon Eden. There is a sense of opulence conveyed in the expanse of geographical scope and richness of words.
Most importantly, the persona paradoxically grows as he reverts to youth. A sense of carpe diem is raised, in the energy of his “wild pulsation”, and his willingness to “take some savage woman”. The verbs are movement oriented now; such as “dive”, “run”, “leap the rainbows of the brooks.”
As Clyde de L. Ryals comments: “He can bid farewell to Locksley Hall, for he has ridded himself of his obsessive concern with the Hall as a symbol of despair.” And indeed, he moves onward: “For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.” This is markedly different from the sense of entrapment and powerlessness in the earlier Mariana.
Yet despite the poem's impressiveness, especially in the final lines, Locksley Hall has been critiqued for what might be considered its weaknesses.
Bibliography
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems Edited by Christopher Ricks
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Bloom’s Major Poets Edited by Harold Bloom
Jing Heng Fong - I'm starting university this year, and look forward to writing and gaining experience at Suite.
