Locksley Hall - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The unnamed protagonist is a soldier traveling with a small military unit. He asks his company to continue ahead as he pauses for sentimental reasons. He then quickly reveals that the place he has stopped at is called Locksley Hall, and he spent his childhood there. The rest of the poem, though written as rhymed metered verse, follows the stream of consciousness of its protagonist as an interior monologue. The protagonist struggles to reach some sort of catharsis on his childhood feelings.

In his monologue, the protagonist begins with fond memories of his childhood sweetheart, but those memories quickly lead to a burst of anger as he relates that the object of his affections abandoned him due to her parents' disapproval. He proceeds to offer a biting criticism of her husband who supplanted him in her affections, interspersed with personal reflection. This criticism is only really interrupted when he reflects that she will eventually have a child, and will be more concerned with her child than about the protagonist. The protagonist promptly continues his angry tirade, this time directed at the mother-child relationship.

The protagonist reveals frustration with his present career, which he identifies as an escape from a depression and sense of hopelessness, saying:

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,

When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. (lines 99-104)

In order to be free of his depression, the protagonist continues into a grand description of the world to come, which he views as somewhat utopian. He relapses into anger briefly again when he hears a bugle call from his comrades telling him to hurry up.

Much of the remainder of the poem is built up of an odd contrast between the beauty of civilization and the beauty of the noble savage. He recalls the land where he was born (which he only says is somewhere in the Orient), and lovingly notes its lack of civilization, describing it as "Summer isles of Eden" and "knots of Paradise."

In the end, he rejects the ideal of the noble savage, preferring the progress that civilization has made. He also immediately thereafter turns his back on Locksley Hall, and marches forth to meet his comrades.