Critical appreciation of “Locksley Hall”

This poem was first published in 1842.The idea of this poem came to Tennyson from Sir william Jones’s prose translation of Moallakat, The seven Arabic poems hanging up in the temple of Mecca.  

The speaker of Locksley Hall wishes to release himself from the limitations of his present life. He thinks over possibilities not only about his own future but about that of the world. He speaks those famous verses of prophecy which seem to predict the coming of the airplane, of aerial fighting and the world war, the League of Nations and the U.N.O. everything goes with a faith that ultimately all will be well and Future progress is not so far away. The lines spoken in “Locksley Hall” have a “ring and swing”; they are firm, short, concise and memorable.

The lines in “Locksley Hall” are spoken by a desperately unstable character where two voices are audible. One of the voices is heavy with doubt and unbelief; It is the voices of “palsied heart..The jaundiced eye”. Perhaps the progress of science will not bring happiness, Just as knowledge doesn’t always bring wisdom. For the speaker himself, happiness might even involve a reversal progress, with its machinery and its literature, its inhibitions and frustrations. This dark side of the speaker’s mind, desperate at having loved and lost at and he finds himself also the victim of money-ridden society.

Tennyson was annoyed when his readers gave a biographical interpretation of the poem. According to Tennyson “Locksley Hall is an imaginary place and the hero is also an imaginary. The whole poem represents young life, its good side, its lacks, and its desire”.

Tennyson gives what he calls a “dramatic impression”, that a man who has returned to the Hall Where he had spent his child hood. Now he recalls the hopes of his youth, his frustrated dating, social injustice, the materialism of the age, his disappointment. He considers the possibility of escape from this civilization. But finally accepts the progress established upon scientific discovery, trade and cooperation.

When Tennyson emphasized, that this is not an unbiased opinion of history, but events viewed by a highly characterized individual naïve passionate, rebellious, complex and annoyed. Changing mood, He moves through stages of anger, bluster, excitement, determination and so on. The portrait is of an unbalanced and fragmented personality.

“In Locksley Hall, we met an unconfident modern youth who is depressed and confused by his own inability to face busy competition of ordinary English life.

Restlessness, boredom, impatience of monotonous life, set him dreaming of something like a new odyssey. But the hero of Locksley Hall is no Ulysses. The bonds of culture and luxury are too strong for him. The plan of adventure is abandoned as quickly as it is formed. He remains to support himself with the march of mind (progress) and the wonders of scientific discovery. The great and lasting success of Locksley Hall shows the power of genius in presenting an ordinary situation poetically. It can kindle up and transform common emotion and deals boldly with the facts and feeling of everyday life.

Some of the Nature-pictures in the poem are remarkable. For example “Orion sloping slowly to the west” and “the Pleiades, rising thro’ the mellow shade”. There is a beautiful simile in the comparison of the Pleiades with “a swarm of fire flies tangled in a silver braid”. The picture of the spring which brings new color and new feathers to the robin and the dove is lovely. Another beautiful picture occurs when the speaker refers to the tropical land where he would like to settle down. The metaphors contained in lines 31-34 of the poem have justifiably been praised.

You can avoid the group of words which has been highlighted in red color.