Writer’s Intro:
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is one of the greatest Victorian poets in English Literature. He is called the representative of the Victorian age because he shows all the Victorian trends in his poetry. Lack of passion and emotion, ideological conflict, technological advancement, religious controversies, materialism, industrialism, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge are the main trends of the period. So, it’s very easy to make a summary of Locksley Hall of him.
Theme:
Locksley Hall deals with the theme of pain and suffering of unfulfilled love.
Locksley Hall Summary
The opening part of the summary
The poem is about how painful it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back. First, the speaker talks about the good times he had at Locksley Hall with the woman he loved, Amy. But after Amy left him, he got very angry and bitter. He says a lot of bad things about her and the man she chose. At the end of the poem, he says that he hopes a storm will wipe out Locksley Hall.
Early one morning, a soldier (The poem’s speaker) asks his comrades to leave him at Locksley Hall near the sea. In his youth, he spent many a night in the hall looking out a window at the stars. 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”. And so it was with him when he told his cousin Amy (The woman who rejected the soldier) that “all the current of my being sets to thee”. And she told him, “I have loved thee long”.
The middle part of the summary
They spent many mornings on the high ground 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 belittled herself and married a man unworthy of her. Consequently, the speaker says, her husband’s “nature will weight to drag thee down”). He will treat her about the same as he does his dog and horse. She will have to be there for him no matter how he feels. But the speaker says, “I had loved you more than any wife was ever loved.”
The person speaking scolds Amy for leaving him, saying that it seems like she never really loved him. And her husband will die one day, but not before she has a child who will be the center of her world. When her child grows, she will lecture it with a “hoard of maxims” telling the child to be chary (not willing to take a risk) of her feelings (as Amy’s parents did). Such feelings could be dangerous. The soldier ponders for a moment about the world and the future, then hears the announced call of his men coming for him and says, “I am shamed thro’ all my nature to have loved so slight a thing”.
The ending part of the summary of Locksley Hall
The soldier dreams of going to a far-off land in the Orient with no traders and no ships with European flags. There, he would wed a savage woman who would bear him “dusky” children who could “whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks”. But he changes his mind and says he does not prefer a rude and barbarous life. He bids farewell to Locksley Hall, hoping that a thunderbolt will strike Locksley Hall down.
This is the end of our content Locksley Hall summary. Thank you for reading the content. Anyway, if you want to read more summaries from Victorian Poetry, please check the following articles:
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