Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 165-176
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
- Tennyson seems to be hanging around the place where his friend lived, which he characterizes as a "dark house" (there's that darkness and light contrast again).
- He once used to wait at that house for a hand that clasped his, but now he can't sleep and is creeping around the house in the early hours of the morning. That's kind of weird, since Tenny knows his friend is not there anymore.
- Even though the neighborhood wakes up around him, the speaker sees the breaking day as "ghastly" and "blank." Plus, it's "drizzling rain," so if the scene can get any more depressing, we're not sure what it would take.