master
Locksley Hall
1837 – 1838 // Author was 28 years old /about the time when Rosa Baring’s marriage was being arranged. The speaker denounces the materialism which he thinks has cost him the women he loves and determines to commit himself to the progressive politics of the day.
Characters
Soldier: The poem's speaker.
Amy: Woman who rejected the soldier.
Amy's Husband: Man whose character the speaker disparages.
Amy's Parents: Apparent taskmasters who opposed Amy's relationship with the soldier.
Other Soldiers: Comrades of the poem's speaker.
Theme
.......The theme of the poem is the bitterness of unrequited love. The speaker first recalls the happy times at Locksley Hall with Amy, the woman he loved. But after Amy left him, he became extremely bitter and angry. He heaps curses on her and the man she chose. He ends the poem by hoping that a storm destroys Locksley Hall.
Summary
.......Early one morning, a soldier asks his comrades to leave him at Locksley Hall, an estate on an eminence near the sea. In his youth, he spent many a night at the hall gazing out a window at stars, in particular those in the constellation Orion and in the Pleiades cluster. During the day, he often wandered the beach while thinking of the promises of the future.
.......“In the Spring,” the knight says, “a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love” (line 20). And so it was with him when he told his cousin Amy that “all the current of my being sets to thee” (line 24). And she told him, “I have loved thee long” (line 30). They spent many mornings on the moorland listening to the sounds of nature, and they passed many evenings by the sea watching the ships go by.
.......Now she is out of his life, for she was a “Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue.” She lowered herself and married a man unworthy of her. Consequently, the speaker says, her husband's “nature will have weight to drag thee down” (line 48). He will treat her little
1837 – 1838 // Author was 28 years old /about the time when Rosa Baring’s marriage was being arranged. The speaker denounces the materialism which he thinks has cost him the women he loves and determines to commit himself to the progressive politics of the day.
Characters
Soldier: The poem's speaker.
Amy: Woman who rejected the soldier.
Amy's Husband: Man whose character the speaker disparages.
Amy's Parents: Apparent taskmasters who opposed Amy's relationship with the soldier.
Other Soldiers: Comrades of the poem's speaker.
Theme
.......The theme of the poem is the bitterness of unrequited love. The speaker first recalls the happy times at Locksley Hall with Amy, the woman he loved. But after Amy left him, he became extremely bitter and angry. He heaps curses on her and the man she chose. He ends the poem by hoping that a storm destroys Locksley Hall.
Summary
.......Early one morning, a soldier asks his comrades to leave him at Locksley Hall, an estate on an eminence near the sea. In his youth, he spent many a night at the hall gazing out a window at stars, in particular those in the constellation Orion and in the Pleiades cluster. During the day, he often wandered the beach while thinking of the promises of the future.
.......“In the Spring,” the knight says, “a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love” (line 20). And so it was with him when he told his cousin Amy that “all the current of my being sets to thee” (line 24). And she told him, “I have loved thee long” (line 30). They spent many mornings on the moorland listening to the sounds of nature, and they passed many evenings by the sea watching the ships go by.
.......Now she is out of his life, for she was a “Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue.” She lowered herself and married a man unworthy of her. Consequently, the speaker says, her husband's “nature will have weight to drag thee down” (line 48). He will treat her little