Elegiacs
Elegiacs - form Summary
Elegiac Couplets Shape Mood
Tennyson uses the elegiac form — alternating hexameter and pentameter lines — to shape a mournful, musical mood. The pastoral twilight scene and gentle natural sounds are held within the steady, elegiac rhythm, which underlines the speaker’s unfulfilled longing for Rosalind. The formal balance of long and short lines slows the narrative and reinforces themes of waiting, loss, and the consolatory promise of evening embodied by Hesperus.
Read Complete AnalysesLowflowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm’d in the gloaming: Thoro’ the black-stemm’d pines only the far river shines. Creeping thro’ blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes, Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly; Deeply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep; dews fell chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly: Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn. Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth: Twin peaks shadow’d with pine slope to the dark hyaline. Lowthroned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast. The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth, Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind. Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even. False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
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