Locksley Hall

Locksley Hall, poem in trochaic metre by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in the collection Poems (1842). The speaker of this dramatic monologue declaims against marriages made for material gain and worldly prestige.

The speaker revisits Locksley Hall, his childhood home, where he and his cousin Amy had fallen in love. Amy, however, was a shallow young woman who acceded to her parents’ desires that she marry a wealthier suitor. The speaker begins the poem by protesting the modern mechanized world but ends by reluctantly accepting the inevitability of change.