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 marshland
Came to her; without hope of change,
In sleep she seemed 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 stonecast? from the wall stone's throw
A sluice with blackened waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
40 The clustered marish-mosses2 crept.
Hard0 by a poplar shook alway, close
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
45 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,3
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 in the pane; the mouse
Behind the moldering wainscot0 shrieked, wooden paneling
65 Or from the crevice peered 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,
2. The little marsh-moss lumps that lloat on the 3. According to Virgil, Aeolus, god of winds, kept surface of water [Tennyson's note). the winds imprisoned in a cave (Aeneid 1.50?59).
.
1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
70 He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'
