How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
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. (1-4)
Moss grows all over everything. The natural world has taken over the farmhouse, and nobody seems keen on stopping it. Tennyson opens the poem with this imagery to really drive home the whole "neglected farmhouse" thing, but he's also giving us a window into the relationship between nature and Mariana.
Quote #2
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange. (5-6)
Nature has grown over ancient things and lonely things. Here, Tennyson combines the natural world with the world of memory and loss. The grange is old and lonely, having seen many years without any company. But inanimate objects can't be lonely, right? Tennyson is using pathetic fallacy to set the mood of the poem. It's Mariana's mood that we are experiencing, not nature's.
Quote #3
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried (13-14)
Tennyson again uses nature to tell us something about Mariana. This time, he wants us to know that she cries in the morning, when dew is fresh, but also during the day, when the dew has dried in the sun. Nature seems to be synced up with Mariana's sorrow, even if nature is indifferent to it. It also continues to operate on a cycle, whether or not the man she is waiting for has returned.