A lovely work of art inspired by a dismal poem....

'Mariana' - Sir John Everett Millais, 1850/51

Sir John Everett Millais based Mariana (1851) upon Tennyson's poem of the same name, which derives from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and tells of a woman who has lived alone for five years after having been rejected by her fiance, Angelo, after her dowry was lost in a shipwreck. Millais chose to illustrate the following lines:

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Alone in her house on a grey autumn afternoon, Mariana stands up from her needlework to stretch her back and look longingly out the window. Autumn leaves are scattered about on the floor. The changing of the season from summer to fall is impending, so much so that it is overtaking the interior of Mariana's home. Just as the seasons change outside, the fertile spring and summer of Mariana's life is coming to a close as she is left alone, facing life as a lonely spinster. - victorianweb.org

Mariana (2nd stanza)
published 1830

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

'The Moxon Tennyson'
Pen and Ink illustration by Millais
Wood engraving by Dalziel Brothers 1857

Scanned image by George P. Landow

Edward Moxon published "Poems" by Alfred Tennyson in 1933