Tennyson And Keats

11 Pages 2643 Words

most exceptional word painters of the nineteenth century. This is blatantly obvious in his poem, ‘Mariana’. The poem is cyclical, and has a very static feeling – there is no movement other than of night and day, no other distinguishable events. There is no climax, and yet, Tennyson’s use of word painting does create a “narrative of landscape.” From the very first sentence one can detect word painting in both the words, and the images they create. The poem starts with a sentence full of ‘hard’ sounds. The tongue trips over ‘blackest’ and the alliteration of ‘thickly crusted’. The double consonants surrounding a short vowel in both words, creates a harsh, unfriendly atmosphere, and successfully sets the mood of the poem; helped by the use of the word ‘black’, in the first line. Tennyson also uses onomatopoeia in ‘the clinking latch’ to heighten, and add sound to the image. After these short, hard sounds, the assonance of the line ‘upon the lonely moated grange’, sounds hollow and empty, emphasizing Mariana’s solitude, and adding atmosphere. Thus, even after the first stanza, the sounds of the words alone have created the atmosphere and set the mood. Imagery is also at work. We gather that the house is derelict, uncared for, again reflecting its owner's own life - the flowerpots are ‘thickly crusted’ with moss, and the ‘ancient thatch’ is ‘weeded and worn’. She lives in solitude – ‘unlifted was the clinking latch’, and the use of the Victorian simile of fruit - natural imagery is very important - we are told that ‘the rusted nails fell from the knots, that held the pear to the gable wall’. Mariana will never bear fruit – she is ‘wilting’, or pining away. We know that Mariana is very unhappy – she cries all the time ‘with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried’ and yet, she cannot seek comfort from god – ‘she [can]not look on the s...