What's the time?

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        MARIANA

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        Measure for Measure.

With blackest moss the flower-plots
   Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
   That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
   Unlifted was the clinking latch;
   Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
     She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
       He cometh not,’ she said;
     She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!’

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!’

Upon the middle of the night,
   Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
   From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
   In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
   Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
     She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
       He cometh not,’ she said;
     She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!’

About a stone-cast from the wall
   A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
   The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
   All silver-green with gnarled bark:
   For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
     She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
       He cometh not,’ she said;
     She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!’

And ever when the moon was low,
   And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
   She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
   And wild winds bound within their cell,
   The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
     She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
       He cometh not,’ she said;
     She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!’

All day within the dreamy house,
   The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
   Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,
Or from the crevice peer’d about.
   Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,
   Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
     She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
       He cometh not,’ she said;
     She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!’

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,
   The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
   The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
   When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
   Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
     Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,
       He will not come,’ she said;
     She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
       Oh God, that I were dead!’
 

Wordsworth is the best.

It's 7:28 AM and I got up at 7 AM after a very good nights sleep. The children's Ibuprofen that I took right before bed (because I can't swallow pills I have to have elixir) worked a treat and I felt no pain all night. Slept like a baby.

Hi Diana,

I was very interested to read that you have a framed picture depicting this poem. As you can see, I did find a copy which I have posted.

Yes, I guess I am a romantic, head in the clouds, but not always feet on the ground, that is my trouble I think.

On the subject of literary greats, the short story of 'The Happy Prince' by Oscar Wilde in one of my very favourite pieces of work. I managed to get a young ADHD boy, whom I tutored privately, interested in listening to, and eventually reading quality books, raising his reading age by 2 years in 6 months. Before that, he just used to look at comics! lol  

Hi Sue,

I hope you soon feel much better.

Ray. 

Oh Diana!

It does the same to me too! The story is heartbreaking and some may say mawkish and oversentimental, but the power of Wilde's writing, shines through in that story.

Are you married Ray? Are you married Diana?