AP English Literature and Composition
Poetry Book
Mrs. Loux
Piscataway High School
2013-2014 School Year
Name: ____________________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
How to Explicate a Poem ................................................................................................................................................................. 3
TP-CASTT ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Close Reading
Much madness is divinest Sense / Emily Dickinson ........................................................................................................................ 6
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning / John Donne ............................................................................................................................ 7
1
My Last Duchess / Robert Browning ............................................................................................................................................... 9
Diction/Denotation/Connotation
Dulce et Decorum Est / Wilfred Own ............................................................................................................................................ 11
Pathedy of Manners / Ellen Kay .................................................................................................................................................... 13
One Art / Elizabeth Bishop ............................................................................................................................................................ 15
The Naming of Parts / Henry Reed ................................................................................................................................................ 16
When my love swears that she is made of truth / William Shakespeare ........................................................................................ 17
Blackberry-picking / Seamus Heaney ............................................................................................................................................ 18
Imagery
The Red Wheelbarrow / William Carlos Williams ........................................................................................................................ 19
I felt a funeral in my brain / Emily Dickinson ................................................................................................................................ 20
Birches / Robert Frost .................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Spring / Gerard Manley Hopkins ................................................................................................................................................... 23
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime / William Carlos Williams ................................................................................................... 24
Figurative Language: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Apostrophe, Metonymy
To His Coy Mistress / Andrew Marvell ......................................................................................................................................... 25
Introduction to Poetry / Billy Collins ............................................................................................................................................. 27
Metaphors / Sylvia Plath ................................................................................................................................................................ 28
Mirror / Sylvia Plath ...................................................................................................................................................................... 28
The Author to Her Book / Anne Bradstreet ................................................................................................................................... 29
Figurative Language: Symbol, Allegory
To the Virgins, to make much of time / Robert Herrick .................................................................................................................. 30
Because I could not stop for Death / Emily Dickinson .................................................................................................................. 31
Ulysses / Lord Alfred Tennyson .................................................................................................................................................... 32
A Noiseless Patient Spider / Walt Whitman .................................................................................................................................. 34
Figurative Language: Paradox, Overstatement, Understatement, Irony
Barbie Doll / Marge Piercy ............................................................................................................................................................ 35
The Sun Rising / John Donne ......................................................................................................................................................... 36
Incident / Countee Cullen .............................................................................................................................................................. 37
Ozymandias / Percy Bysshe Shelley ............................................................................................................................................... 38
The Chimney Sweeper / William Blake .......................................................................................................................................... 39
The Chimney Sweeper / William Blake .......................................................................................................................................... 39
Allusion
Out, Out- / Robert Frost ................................................................................................................................................................. 40
My Son the Man / Sharon Olds ...................................................................................................................................................... 41
Siren Song / Margaret Atwood ....................................................................................................................................................... 42
Meaning and Idea
The Lamb / William Blake ............................................................................................................................................................. 43
The Tyger / William Blake ............................................................................................................................................................ 44
Tone
My Papa’s Waltz / Theodore Roethke ........................................................................................................................................... 45
Dover Beach / Matthew Arnold ..................................................................................................................................................... 46
The Flea / John Donne ................................................................................................................................................................... 48
Structure
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night / Dylan Thomas ............................................................................................................. 49
Mad Girl’s Love Song / Silvia Plath .............................................................................................................................................. 50
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / William Shakespeare ................................................................................................... 51
To the Mercy Killers / Dudley Randall .......................................................................................................................................... 52
When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be / John Keats ................................................................................................................ 53
Poems for Further Reading
Anthem for Doomed Youth / Wilfred Owen .................................................................................................................................. 54
Frost at Midnight / Samuel Coleridge ............................................................................................................................................. 55
The Bishop Orders His Tomb to Saint Praxed’s Church / Robert Browning ................................................................................. 57
There’s no Frigate like a book / Emily Dickinson .......................................................................................................................... 60
Kubla Khan / Samuel Coleridge ..................................................................................................................................................... 60
Ode on a Grecian Urn / John Keats ................................................................................................................................................ 62
How to Explicate a Poem
“explication de texte” or “close reading”
This sheet explains ONE way to attempt an explication of a poem, by examining each "piece" of the
poem separately. An "explication" is simply an explanation of how all the elements in a poem work
together to achieve the total meaning and effect.
2
Examine the situation in the poem
Poetic voice:
o Who is the speaker? What kind of person is the speaker? Is the poet speaking to the
reader directly or is the poem told through a fictional "persona"?
o To whom is he speaking? What can we learn about the audience?
Tone:
o What is the speaker's attitude toward the subject of the poem? What sort of tone of
voice seems to be appropriate for reading the poem out loud? What words, images,
or ideas give you a clue to the tone?
o Does the poem express an emotion or describe a mood?
o How is the tone achieved?
Setting:
o Does the poem tell a story? Is it a narrative poem? If so, what events occur? What is
the occasion?
o What is the setting in TIME (hour, season, century, etc.)?
o What is the setting in PLACE (indoors, outdoors, city, country, land, sea, region,
nation, hemisphere, etc.)?
Theme and Purpose:
o What is the central purpose of the poem?
o State the central idea or theme of the poem in a sentence.
Examine the structure of the poem:
Form:
o Look at the number of lines, their length, their arrangement on the page. How does
the form relate to the content? Is it a traditional form or "free form"?
o Why do you think the poem chose that form for his poem?
Movement:
o How does the poem develop?
o Are the images and ideas developed chronologically, by cause and effect, by free
association?
o Does the poem circle back to where it started, or is the movement from one attitude
to a different attitude (e.g. from despair to hope)?
Syntax:
o How many sentences are in the poem? Are the sentences simple or complicated?
o Are the verbs in front of the nouns instead of in the usual "noun, verb" order? Why?
Punctuation:
o What kind of punctuation is in the poem?
o Does the punctuation always coincide at the end of a poetic line? If so, this is called
an end-stopped line. If there is no punctuation at the end of a line and the thought
continues to the next line, this is called enjambment. Is there any punctuation in the
middle of a line? Why does the poet want you to pause in the middle?
Title:
o What does the title mean? How does it relate to the poem itself?
Examine the language of the poem:
Diction or Word Choice:
o Discussion the diction of the poem. Point out words that are particularly well chosen
and explain why.
o Is the language colloquial, formal, simple, unusual?
3
o Do you know what all the words mean? If not, look them up.
o What moods or attitudes are associated with words that stand out for you?
Allusions:
o Are there any allusions (references) to something outside the poem, such as events or
people from history, mythology, or religion?
Imagery:
o Look at the figurative language of the poem--metaphors, similes, analogies,
personification, metonymy and their appropriateness. How do these images add to
the meaning of the poem or intensify the effect of the poem?
o Is there a structure of imagery?
o Look at the figurative language of the poem--metaphors, similes, analogies,
personification, metonymy and their appropriateness. How do these images add to
the meaning of the poem or intensify the effect of the poem?
o Is there a structure of imagery?
Other Literary Devices:
o Point out and explain any symbols.
o Is the poem allegorical? If so, explain.
o Point out any examples of paradox, understatement, overstatement, and irony. What
is their function?
Examine the musical devices in the poem:
Rhyme scheme:
o Does the rhyme occur in a regular pattern, or irregularly? Is the effect formal,
satisfying, musical, funny, disconcerting?
Rhythm or meter:
o In most languages, there is a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a word or
words in a sentence. In poetry, the variation of stressed and unstressed syllables and
words has a rhythmic effect. What is the tonal effect of the rhythm here?
o Other "sound effects": alliteration, assonance, consonance, repetition. What tonal
effect do they have here?
o Has the poem created a change in mood for you--or a change in attitude? How have
the technical elements helped the poet create this effect?
Sources:
1. http://wwwpp.uwrf.edu/~sl01/explcat.html
2. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense, 11th ed.
TP-CASTT Analysis
A good way “into a poem” especially during a high-pressure situation (timed exam).

Title: Ponder the title before reading the poem
4

Paraphrase: Translate the poem into your own words

Connotation: Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal (DICTION)

Attitude: Observe both the speaker’s and the poet’s attitude (TONE)

Shifts: Note shifts in speakers and in attitudes
o Devices that help readers discover shifts:
 Key words (but, yet, however, although)
 Punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis)
 Stanza or paragraph divisions
 Changes in line or stanza length, or both
 Irony (sometimes irony hides shifts)
 Structure (how the work is written can affect its meaning)
 Changes in sound (may indicate changes in meaning)
 Changes in diction (ex: slang to formal language)

Title: Example the title again, this time on an interpretive level

Theme: Determine what the poet is saying (Use what is IN the poem to come up with a
the theme) This should NOT be something trite (Ex: Don’t judge a book by its cover OR
Life is like a box of chocolates.)
Much madness is divinest sense
Emily Dickinson
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye,
Much sense, the starkest madness.
5
‘Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevail:
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you’re straightaway dangerous
And handled with a chain.
Questions
1.
What is the paradox presented in the poem?
2.
How do the concepts implied by the words “discerning” (2) and “majority” (4) provide the
resolution of this paradox?
3.
How do we know that the speaker does not believe that the majority is correct? How do the
last five lines extend the subject beyond a contrast between sanity and insanity?
4.
How does the poem reflect Dickinson’s ideas on immorality and her place in the world?
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
While some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no.
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
6
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it ism
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul be fixed foot, makes now show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.
Note: Line 11 is a reference to the spheres of Ptolemaic cosmology, whose movements caused no
such disturbance as does a movement of the earth – that is, an earthquake.
Questions
1.
Is the speaker in the poem about to die? Or about to leave on a journey? (The answer may
be found in careful analysis of the simile in the last three stanzas and by noticing that the
idea of dying in stanza 1 is introduced in a simile.)
2.
Find and explain three similes and one metaphor used to describe the parting of true lovers.
What is the essential difference between their two kinds of love?
3
The figure in the last three stanzas is one of the most famous in English literature.
Demonstrate its appropriateness by obtaining two pencils to imitate the two legs.
4.
What is the motivation of the speaker in this “valediction”?
7
My Last Duchess
Robert Browning
FERRARA
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
8
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
9
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Questions:
1. To whom is the Duke speaking? What is the occasion? Are the Duke’s remarks about his
last Duchess a digression or do they have some relation to the business at hand?
2. Characterize the Duke as fully as you can. How does your characterization differ from the
Duke’s opinion of himself? What kind of irony is this?
3. Why was the Duke dissatisfied with his last Duchess?
4. What opinion do you get about the Duchess’s personality, and how does it differ from the
Duke’s opinion?
5. What characteristics are revealed about the Italian Renaissance in this poem? (Consider:
marriage customs, social class, art, etc.)
6. Should Browning have told us what happened to the Duchess?
7. Compare the context of this poem to that of Dickinson’s “Much Madness is divinest Sense”
Dulce et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
10
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Questions:
1. The title alludes to the type of drama called “comedy of manners” and coins a word
combining the suffix -edy with the Greek root path- (as in pathetic, sympathy, pathology).
How does the poem narrate a story with both comic and pathetic implications?
2. For what might the central character be blamed?
3. Explore the multiple denotations and connotations attached to each of these words:
a. brilliant (1 and 28)
11
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
interest (4)
reward (4)
cultured (5)
jargon (5)
circles (28)
4. Why are the poet’s words more effective than these possible synonyms:
a. “captured” (3) rather than learned
b. “conversed” (8) rather than chatted, gossiped, or talked
c. “catalogues” (10) rather than volumes or multitudes
d. “espouse” (13) rather than marry
5. Discuss the effect of the word “re-wed” (line 19).
6. At what point in the poem does the speaker shift from language that represents the way the
woman might have talked about herself to language that reveals how the speaker judges her?
Pathedy of Manners
Ellen Kay
At twenty she was brilliant and adored,
Phi Beta Kappa, sought for every dance;
Captured symbolic logic and the glance
Of men whose interest was their sole reward.
12
She learned the cultured jargon of those bred
5
To antique crystal and authentic pearls,
Scorned Wagner, praised the Degas dancing girls,
And when she might have thought, conversed instead.
She hung up her diploma, went abroad,
Saw catalogues of domes and tapestry,
Rejected an impoverished marquis,
And learned to tell real Wedgwood from a fraud.
Back home her breeding led her to espouse
A bright young man whose pearl cufflinks were real.
They had an ideal marriage, and ideal
But lonely children in an ideal house.
I saw her yesterday at forty-three,
Her children gone, her husband one year dead,
Toying with plots to kill time and re-wed
Illusions of lost opportunity.
10
15
20
But afraid to wonder what she might have known
With all that wealth and mind had offered her,
She shuns conviction, choosing to infer
Tenets of every mind except her own.
A hundred people call, though not one friend,
To parry a hundred doubts with nimble talk.
Her meanings lost in manners, she will walk
Alone in brilliant circles to the end.
25
Questions:
1. How does the poem narrate a story with both comic and pathetic implications?
2. What might the central character be blamed for?
3. What arouses our pity for her?
4. Explore the multiple denotations and connotations attached to each word:
a. “Brilliant” (Lines 1 and 28)
b. “Interest” and “Reward” (Line 4)
c. “Cultured” and “Jargon” (Line 5)
13
d. “Circles” (Line 28)
5. Why does the poet choose to use:
a. “captured” (3) instead of learned
b. “conversed” (8) instead of chatted, gossiped, talked
c. “catalogues” (10) instead of volumes, multitudes
d. “espouse” (13) instead of marry
6. Discuss the momentary ambiguity presented by the word “re-wed” (19).
One Art
Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
14
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Questions:
1. What various denotations of “lose” and its derivative forms are relevant to the context?
What connotations are attached to the separate denotative meanings?
2. Explain how “owned” (14) and “lost” (13) shift the meanings of possessing and losing.
3. What seems to be the purpose of the speaker in the first three tercents (stanzas)? How
is the advice given there supported by the personal experiences related in the next two
tercets (stanzas)?
4. The concluding quatrain (4 lines) contains direct address to a person, as well as, a
command the speaker addresses to herself. How do these details reveal the purpose of
the poem? Can all kinds of losses be mastered with one “art of losing”?
The Naming of Parts
Henry Reed
Today we have the naming of parts. Yesterday
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
15
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have the naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have at strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have the naming of parts.
Questions
1.
Who is the speaker (or speakers) in the poem, and what is the situation?
2.
What basic contrasts are represented by the trainees and the gardens?
3.
What is it that trainees “have not got” (28)? What different meanings have the phrases
“easing the spring” (22) and “point of balance” (27)?
4.
What differences in language and rhythm do you find between the lines that involve the
“naming of parts” and those that describe the gardens?
5.
Does the repetition of certain phrases throughout the poem have any special function? What
does it accomplish?
6.
What statement does the poem make about war as it affects men and their lives?
When my love swears that she is made of truth
William Shakespeare
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
16
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although the knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth supprest.
but wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Questions
1.
How old is the speaker? How old is his beloved? What is the nature of their relationship?
2.
How is the contradiction in line 2 to be resolved? In lines 5-6? Who is lying to whom?
3.
How do “simply” and “simple” (8) differ in meaning?
4.
What is the tone of this poem – that is, the attitude of the speaker toward his situation?
Should line 11 be taken as an expression of (a) wisdom, (b) conscious rationalization, or (c)
self-deception? In answering these questions, consider both the situation and the
connotations of the key words throughout the poem.
Blackberry-picking
Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
17
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Questions
1.
Especially in the first stanza, this poem contains diction likening the blackberries to what?
List the words that support your assertion.
2.
The tone shifts dramatically in the second stanza; describe this new tone and then tell how
the tone you have identified is supported by the connotations of the words in this section of
the poem.
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
18
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Questions
1. This poem contains only 16 words. In spite of the poem’s brevity, does it effectively
express an image? Explain your answer and describe why you do or do not think this poem
is successful.
2. William Carlos Williams ascribed to a school of thought which held that poetry’s main
purpose is to express an image, not to convey some deeper hidden meaning. Do you agree
or disagree with this position? Explain your answer.
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
19
That Sense was breaking through And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then –
Questions:
1. What sense are being evoked by imagery? Can you account for the fact that one
important sense is absent from the poem?
2. In sequence, what aspects of a funeral and burial are represented in the poem? Is it
possible to define the sequence of mental events that are being compared to them?
3. With respect to the funeral activities in stanzas 1-3, where is the speaker imaginatively
located?
4. What finally happens to the speaker?
Birches
Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
20
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
21
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Questions
1.
List at least three examples of figurative language (i.e. simile, metaphor, personification).
2.
Only one word in this poem is in italics. Why do you think that the author chose to italicize
this word? What is its significance in the meaning of the poem as a whole?
3.
Discuss the use of imagery in this poem. To which sense do you believe this poem most
appeals? Back up your answer with evidence from the text.
Spring
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
22
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. –Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Questions
1.
The first line makes an abstract statement. How is this statement brought to carry
conviction?
2.
The sky is described as being “all in a rush / With richness” (7-8). In what other respects is
this poem “rich”?
3.
To what two tings does the speaker compare the spring in lines 9-14? In what ways are the
comparisons appropriate?
4.
Lines 11-14 might be made clearer by paraphrasing them thus: “Christ, lord, child of the
virgin: save the innocent mind of a girl and boy before sin taints it, since it is most like yours
and worth saving.” Why are Hopkins’ lines more effective, both in imagery and in syntax?
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime
William Carlos Williams
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
23
flames as it has flamed
often before, but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirty-five years
I lived with my husband.
The plum tree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red,
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they,
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
Questions:
1. Why is springtime so poignant a time for this lament? What has been the speaker’s
previous experience at this time of year?
2. Imagery may have degrees of vividness, depending on its particularity, concreteness,
and specific detail. What is the result of the contrast between the vividness of lines 2-3
and the relative flatness of lines 13-14? How does the fact that “masses” (10,11)
appeals to two senses relate to the speakers emotional condition?
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
24
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped ower.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Questions:
1. What is the speaker urging his sweetheart to do? Why is she being “coy”?
2. Outline the speaker’s argument in three sentences that begin with the words If, But and
Therefore. Is his argument valid?
3. Explain the appropriateness of “vegetable love” (11). What simile in the third section
25
contrasts with it and how? What image in the third section contrasts with the distance
between the Ganges and the Humber? Of what would the speaker be “complaining” by
the Humber (7)?
4. Explain the figures in lines 22, 24, and 40 and their implications.
5. Explain the last two lines. For what is “sun” a metonymy?
6. What philosophy is the poet advancing? (Consider both love and time.)
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
26
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Questions:
1. What is the basic situation of the poem?
2. Who are “I”? (1) and “them” (1)?
3. Explain the simile in line 3. From that point onward the speaker invents a series of
metaphors. For each of them define what a poem is being compared to and how the
metaphor expresses characteristic or quality of poetry. (Example: how is like a “hive”
(4) full of buzzing bees?)
4. The last five lines present a single extended metaphor to express what “they want to
do” when they encounter a poem. What are “they” and “the poem” compared to, and
how do these comparisons reflect a different attitude toward poetry from the ones
expressed in the first 11 lines? What, ultimately, does this poem express about poetry
and its readers?
Mirror
Sylvia Plath
27
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
the eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Questions:
1. Who is the speaker? What is the central purpose of the poem, and by what means is it achieved?
2. In what ways is the mirror like and unlike a person (stanza 1)? In what ways is it like a lake
(stanza 2)?
3. What is the meaning of the last two lines?
Metaphors
Sylvia Plath
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils,
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
Questions
1.
Like its first metaphor, this poem is a riddle to be solved by identifying the literal terms of
its metaphors. after you have identified the speaker (“riddle,” “elephant,” “house,” “melon,”
“stage,” “cow”), identify the literal meanings of the related metaphors (“syllables,”
“tendrils,” “fruit,” “ivory,” “timbers,” “loaf,” “yeasty rising,” “money,” “purse,” “train”).
2.
How do you interpret line 9?
3.
How does the form of the poem relate to its content?
4.
Is this poem a complaint? Explain your answer.
The Author to Her Book
Anne Bradstreet
28
Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,
Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find.
In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.
In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou art not known,
If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none:
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.
Questions:
1. What similarities does the speaker find between a child and a book of poems?
2. What does she plan to do now that her child has been put on public display?
3. Trace the developing attitudes of the speaker toward the child/book.
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick
29
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
Questions:
1. The first two stanzas might be interpreted literally if the third and fourth stanzas did
not force us to interpret them symbolically. What do the “rosebuds” symbolize (stanza
1)? What does the course of a day symbolize (stanza 2)? Does the poet narrow the
meaning of the rosebud symbol in the last stanza or merely name one of its specific
meanings?
2. How does the title help us interpret the meaning of the symbol? Why is “virgins” a
more meaningful word than maidens?
3. Why is such haste a necessary in gathering the rosebuds? Who really is dying?
4. What are the “worse, and worst” times (11)? Why?
5. Why is the wording of the poem better than these possible alternatives: blooms for
“smiles” (3); course for “race” (7); used for “spent” (11); spend for “use” (13)?
Because I could not stop for Death
30
Emily Dickenson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove; he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove,
At recess, in the ring,
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun,
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews drew quivering and chill;
For only gossamer, my gown;
My tippet, only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible.
The cornice, in the ground.
Since then, ‘tis centuries, and yet
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
Questions
1.
What is the allegorical meaning of this ride?
2.
Explain the irony of “kindly” and “civility” (8).
3.
As what is death personified?
4.
The fourth stanza alters the metrical pattern of the poem. What aspect of this hypothetical
experience is emphasized by the alteration?
Ulysses
31
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Setting: Ithaca, the island from which the Greek hero Ulysses departed to fight the Trojan War, and
to which he returns after a long journey. The story of his return is told in Homer’s The Odyssey, in
which Ulysses, whom his people assume to be dead, assumes the disguise of a goatherd to enter the
palace where a group of idle, rich men are wooing his wife Penelope.
Time: the period immediately after the conquest of Troy by the Greeks, a mythic period whose
historical counterpart was bronze age Greece.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
32
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Questions:
1. To whom is Ulysses talking? What is his precise relationship to them? How does this
relationship control the meaning of the message he wants to get across to them?
2. Ulysses’s speech is divided into three sections beginning at lines 1, 33, and 44. What is
the topic or purpose of each section? To whom is he speaking to in each section?
3. Characterize Ulysses. What kind of person is he as Tennyson represents him?
4. What why of life is symbolized by Ulysses?
5. How is the idea of travel represented in the poem?
6. Give two symbolic implications of the westward direction of Ulysses’s journey.
7. Interpret lines 18-21 and 26-29. What metaphor is implied in line 23? What is
symbolized by “the thunder and the sunshine” (48)?
8. What do the two metonymies in line 49 stand for?
33
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you need will be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Questions
1.
In this poem, why is Whitman’s comparison – of his soul to the spider – considered to be a
symbol and not a simile or a metaphor?
2.
In what ways are the spider and the soul contrasted? What do the contrasts contribute to the
meaning of the symbol?
3.
Can the questing soul represent human actions other than the search for spiritual certainties?
34
Barbie Doll
Marge Piercy
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and
offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Questions:
1. In what ways is the girl described in this poem different from a Barbie doll? Discuss the
poem’s contrast of the living girl, a human being with intelligence and healthy
appetites, and the doll, an inanimate object.
2. The poem contains a surprising but apt simile. What is it? Why is this image
appropriate?
3. What physical characteristics does the poet use to describe the Barbie doll? How do
these qualities contribute to her fate?
4. Discuss the verbal irony in the phrase “the magic of puberty” (5) and in the last three
lines. What is the target of this satire?
35
The Sun Rising
John Donne
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour ‘prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late tell me
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom though saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, “all here in one bed lay.”
She’s all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us, compared with this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Sine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
Questions
1.
As precisely as possible, identify the time of day and the locale. What three “persons” does
the poem involve?
2.
What is the speaker’s attitude toward the sun in stanzas 1 and 2? How and why does it
change in stanza 3?
3.
Does the speaker understate or overstate the actual qualities of the sun? Point out specific
examples. What does the under / overstatement accomplish?
4.
Who is actually the intended listener for this intended apostrophe? What is the speaker’s
purpose? What is the poem’s purpose?
36
Incident
Countee Cullen
Once riding in old Baltimore
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
Questions
1.
What accounts for the effectiveness of the last stanza?
2.
Comment on the title. Does it match up with the subject of the poem?
3.
Does the last stanza understate or overstate Cullen’s reaction? Explain your answer with
evidence.
37
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Questions:
1. What figure of speech is exemplified in “hand” and “heart”?
2. Characterie Ozymandias.
3. Of what is Ozymandias a symbol? What contemporary reference might the poem have
had in Shelley’s time?
4. What is the theme of the poem and how is it stated?
38
The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow
William Blake
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? say?"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."
The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young
William Blake
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
39
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
‘Out, Out—’
Robert Frost
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
Questions:
1. How does this poem differ from a newspaper account that might have dealt with the
same incident?
2. To whom does “they” refer?
3. Does the ending of the poem seem to you more callous or merely realistic? Would a
more tearful and sentimental ending have made the poem better or worse?
4. What is the figure of speech in lines 21-22?
40
My Son the Man
Sharon Olds
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains. It seems
no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the gold interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight. I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one. This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
Questions:
1. To what event does the speaker compare Houdini’s escape?
2. How does this allusion express the speaker’s feelings about her son? Are they mixed
feelings?
41
Siren Song
Margaret Atwood
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
Questions:
1. What is a “Siren” according to the text?
2. What weakness in men does the siren exploit? How is this allusive poem about
relations between men and women?
42
The Lamb
William Blake
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Questions:
1. Why does the speaker address the “Little Lamb” (1) directly? What effects does the
poem gain for this use of apostrophe?
2. What is the relationship between the two stanzas? Why is this poem constructed this
way?
3. What is significant of the “lamb” imagery? What connotations does it have?
43
The Tyger
William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Questions:
1. Discuss the relationship of this poem to Blake’s “The Lamb”. How do the poems make a
distinctive and meaningful pairing?
2. What is the meaning of the various questions the speakers asks of the tiger? What are
the implications of these questions?
3. What is the symbolic meaning of the tiger? What connotations are associated with this
symbol?
44
My Papa’s Waltz
Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Questions:
1. Using evidence from the poem, determine whether or not the father is abusive to the
child. Be prepared to support your conclusion.
2. What is the overall tone of the poem?
45
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
46
Questions:
1. Identify the physical locale of the cliffs of Dover and their relation to the French coast.
2. Identify Sophocles and the Aegean.
3. What is the speaker’s physical location? Whom is he addressing? What is the time of
day and state of the weather?
4. Discuss the visual and auditory images of the poem and their relation to illusion and
reality.
5. The speaker is lamenting the decline of religious faith in his time. Is he himself a
believer? Does he see any medicine for the world’s maladies?
6. Discuss the imagery in the last three lines. What makes these lines so effective?
7. What term or terms would you choose to describe the overall tone of the poem?
47
The Flea
John Donne
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Questions:
1. How is the poem like a dramatic play?
2. What is the relationship between the speaker and the woman? Describe how she has
habitually “killed” him (16). Why has she done so? How does it happen that he is still
alive? What is his objective in the poem?
3. How logical is the argument in stanza 1?
4. Why and how does the woman triumph in stanza 3? What is the speaker’s response?
How logical is his concluding argument?
5. What is the overall tone of the poem?
48
VILANELLE: Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Questions
1.
Scan the poem. What patterns emerge? Where does the poem stray from the basic patterns
established?
2.
This poem is an example of a French form of poetry known as a villanelle. Based on this
poem, how would you tentatively define this form of poetry? What characteristics of this
poetic form seem to be key?
49
VILANELLE: Mad Girl’s Love Song
Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Questions
1. One key characteristic of villanelles is the repetition of last lines. How would the theme of
this poem be different if these lines were not repeated at the ends of stanzas?
2. Explain the tone of this poem, and identify key textual features or poetic devices that
support the tone you identify.
50
SONNET: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Questions
1.
State the rhyme scheme and the type of meter used in this poem.
2.
What is the effect of the break in the rhyme scheme during the last two lines? What ideas
are emphasized by this rhyming couplet?
51
SONNET: To the Mercy Killers
Dudley Randall
If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lung and pump the heart—even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
Questions
1.
In form this is a Shakespearan sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet
(units of 4, 4, 4, and 2 lines each); but in structure (organization of thought) it follows the
Italian model of an octave and a sestet (8- and 6-line units) in which the first eight lines
introduce a thought and the sestet produces some kind of counterthought. What “turn” of
thought occurs at the end of line 8 in this sonnet?
2.
Identify the paradox in line 2 that introduces the central topic of the poem. (It is also stated
in the title, but line 2 states it more effectively because of its alliteration.)
3.
In what ways does this poem differ from the Shakespearean sonnet?
52
SONNET: When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
John Keats
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Questions
1.
State the rhyme scheme used in this poem.
2.
How does the rhyme scheme at work in this poem change the feel of the text overall?
3.
Based on the three different takes on the sonnet which form do you feel is most effective at
effectively conveying theme? Explain your answer.
53
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
54
Frost at Midnight
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
55
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
56
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church
Robert Browning
Rome, 15—
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well—
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
—Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my church
—What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! ...
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
57
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ...
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father's globe on both His hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black—
'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables . . . but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!
'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world—
And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
—That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line—
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
58
And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
—Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—
Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers—
Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!
59
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleriddge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
60
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
61
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
62
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
63