[Greek: deduke men ha selanna kai Plaeiades, mesai de nuktes, para d'
erchet h'ora ego de mona kateud'o.]

"The moon has set and the Pleiades, and it is midnight: the hour too
is going by, but I sleep alone."

It was long popularly supposed that the scene of the poem was a farm
near Somersby known as Baumber's farm, but Tennyson denied this and said
it was a purely "imaginary house in the fen," and that he "never so much
as dreamed of Baumbers farm". See 'Life', i., 28.



With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach [1] to the garden-wall. [2]
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; [3]
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.