Brit Lit Works

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour 4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 7: The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 9: And smale foweles maken melodye, 10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye 11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, 14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; 15: And specially from every shires ende 16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, 17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke, 18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour 4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 7: The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 9: And smale foweles maken melodye, 10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye 11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, 14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; 15: And specially from every shires ende 16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, 17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke, 18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke

“General Prologue” Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

• introduces group 30 pilgrims + author

• adventure

• plan: 120 tales, actually 24

• variety of characters + tales: courtly romance, chivalry, Fabliaux

• narrative of pilgrimage:

  • connects individual tales, holds stories together

  • meta-narrative

What sholde I moore seyn, but this Millere

He nolde his wordes for no man forbere,

But tolde his cherles tale in his manere;

Me thynketh that I shal reherce it heere.

And therfore every gentil wight I preye,

For Goddes love, demeth nat that I seye

Of yvel entente, but that I moot reherce

Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse,

Or elles falsen som of my mateere.

And therfore who-so list it nat yheere,

Turne over the leef, and chese another tale; [!!]

For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale,

Of storial thyng that toucheth gentillesse,

And eek moralitee, and hoolynesse.

Blameth nat me if that ye chese amys;

The Millere is a cherl, ye knowe wel this,

The Miller’s Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer

A good WIF was ther, OF biside BATHE,

But she was somdel deef, and that was scathe.

Of clooth-makyng she hadde swich an haunt,

She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.

In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon

That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon;

And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she,

That she was out of alle charitee.

Hir coverchiefs ful fyne weren of ground;

I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound

That on a Sonday weren upon hir heed.

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,

Ful streit yteyd, and shoes ful moyste and newe.

Boold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewe.

She was a worthy womman al hir lyve:

Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve,

Withouthen oother compaignye in youthe, -

But therof nedeth nat to speke as nowthe.

And thries hadde she been at Jerusalem;

She hadde passed many a straunge strem;

At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne,

In Galice at Seint-Jame, and at Coloigne.

She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye.

Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye.

Upon an amblere esily she sat,

Ywympled wel, and on hir heed an hat

As brood as is a bokeler or a targe;

A foot-mantel aboute hir hipes large,

And on hir feet a paire of spores sharpe.

In felaweshipe wel koude she laughe and carpe.

Of remedies of love she knew per chaunce,

For she koude of that art the olde daunce.

General Prologue: The Wife of Bath, Geoffrey Chaucer

A povre wydwe, somdel stape in age,

Was whilom dwellyng in a narwe cotage

Biside a greve, stondynge in a dale.

This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale,

Syn thilke day that she was last a wyf,

In pacience ladde a ful symple lyf,

For litel was hir catel and hir rente.

By housbondrie, of swich as God hir sente,

She foond hirself and eek hire doghtren two.

Thre large sowes hadde she, and namo,

Three keen, and eek a sheep that highte Malle.

Ful sooty was hir bour and eek hire halle,

In which she eet ful many a sklendre meel-

Of poynaunt sauce hir neded never a deel.

No deyntee morsel passed thurgh hir throte,

Hir diete was accordant to hir cote.

Repleccioun ne made hire nevere sik,

Attempree diete was al hir phisik,

And exercise, and hertes suffisaunce.

This gentil cok hadde in his governaunce

Sevene hennes, for to doon al his plesaunce,

Whiche were hise sustres and his paramours,

And wonder lyk to hym as of colours;

Of whiche the faireste hewed on hir throte

Was cleped faire damoysele Pertelote.

Curteys she was, discreet, and debonaire

And compaignable, and bar hyrself so faire

The nun’s priest’s tale, Geoffrey Chaucer

• main theme: “do not fall for flattery”

• Seducer: fox → Rooster (proud, “Let me hear your beautiful voice”; Hen: widow (lives in small cottage, frugal live)

• moral: don’t be proud and don’t fall for temptation

Loving in truth, and faine in verse my loue to show,

That she (deare she) might take some pleasure of my paine:

Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pittie winne, and pittie grace obtaine,

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine:

Oft turning others leaues, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitfull showers vpon my sunne-burn'd braine.

But words came halting foorth, wanting Inuentions stay,

Inuention Natures childe, fled step-dame Studies blowes,

And others feete still seem'd but strangers in my way.

Thus great with childe to speak, and helplesse in my throwes,

Biting my trewand pen, beating my selfe for spite,

Foole, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart and write.

“Loving in Truth”, Sir Philip Sidney

• love for lady, attempts to write poem but writer’s block → reflects writers process (=meta-poem)

• obstacle: reads other people’s work for inspiration → distracts him

• solution: look into his heart not words of others

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 dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

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.

“Sonnet 18”, William Shakespeare

• sonnet about known man

• doesn’t know how to express himself → “I can immortalize you through my art”

• Seasons = comparisons life (Summer: prime, youth, beauty)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.

Coral is far more red, than her lips' red.

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun.

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask't, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground;

And yet by heav'n I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare

“Sonnet 130”, William Shakespeare

• against petrarchan tradition sonnet (idealisation of woman)

• he loves her despite not fitting ideal standards, “Real” person

As virtuous men passe mildly away,

And whisper to their soules, to goe,

Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,

The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,

T'were prophanation of our joyes

To tell the layetie our love.

Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares,

Men reckon what it did and meant,

But trepidation of the spheares,

Though greater farre, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love

(Whose soule is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refin'd.

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.

Our two soules therefore, which are one,

Though I must goe, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiffe twin compasses are two,

Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the'other doe.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leanes, and hearkens after it,

And growes erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to mee, who must

Like th'other foot, obliquely runne;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begunne.

“A veldiction: forbidding mourning”, John Donne

• bond between two lovers so strong they can bear physical seperation

• unusual images meant to illustrate strength of union

• speaker elevates himself + his love

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,

Or chide my palsy, or my gout,

My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,

Take you a course, get you a place,

Observe his Honour, or his Grace,

Or the King's real, or his stamped face

Contemplate, what you will, approve,

So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?

What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?

Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?

When did my colds a forward spring remove?

When did the heats which my veins fill

Add one more to the plaguy bill?

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

Litigious men, which quarrels move,

Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;

Call her one, me another fly,

We are tapers too, and at our own cost die,

And we in us find the eagle and the dove.

The phoenix riddle hath more wit

We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tombs and hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;

And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;

As well a well-wrought urn becomes

The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,

And by these hymns all shall approve

Us canoniz'd for love;

And thus invoke us: "You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove

Into the glasses of your eyes

(So made such mirrors, and such spies,

That they did all to you epitomize)

Countries, towns, courts: beg from above

A pattern of your love!"

“The Canonization”, John Donne

• metaphysical poem

• two becoming one: dying (little death = orgasm)

• religious language in order to depict sexual love

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?

'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,

Where can we find two better hemispheres

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or thou and I

Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.

“The Good-Morrow”, John Donne

• morning after joined night

• mutual, not one sided

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For if above all these my sins abound,

'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace

When we are there; here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that's as good

As if thou had'st  seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

“Holy Sonnets”, John Donne

• love poetry but religious

• “at the round earth’s imagn’d corners (…)” → refers to bible

• resurrection

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can;

Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,

Contract into a span."

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that alone of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

"For if I should," said he,

"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:

So both should losers be.

"Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast."

“The Pulley,”, George Herbert

• best known metaphysical poem

• God bestows number of gifts for mankind except for one gift (sense of contentment) Why? → otherwise they wouldn’t go searching for him

• God acts as pully drawing humanity to himself

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

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 winged 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 preserv'd 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 am'rous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.

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.

“To his Coy Mistress”, Andrew Marvell

• argument to lady because she doesn’t want to make love but time is “flying”, youth will be good, what good does it do preserve your vigirnity?

• attempt to persuade

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts: who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

“When I consider…”", John Milton

• deeply felt personal dilemma → God has given him gift to write but cannot exercise is becaue he is blind

• asks what he should do, does God still expect me to write about his praise?

• voice of patience personified speaks to speaker in poem, calms him down, God does not need eyes or your gifts → “yoke” = bear the burden God had in mind for your

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing Heav'nly Muse, …

(book 1)

“Paradise Lost”, John Milton

• published 1667

• blank verse

• satan emerges real hero of story

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

“The Daffodils”, William Wordsworth

• new thinking of nature expressed in poem

• lonely speaker walks in nature, comes across flowers + appreciates what the ymean to him

• last stanza: shows what we’ve read is recollected

• poem divided two sections:

  • stanza 1-3: actual events (Poet on his walk, comes across flowers)

  • stanza 4: defining event as recollection, pleasure to think and remember, flowers flash up on inner eye

• words referring to seeing printed bold in poem

  • I saw - accidental seeing

  • I gazed - intentional directed observation

  • Inward eye - event of seeing is being transformed in event of speaker remembering

• what it means to him: beginning he was alone (first sentence), “heavenly hosts” → angels commanded by God → flowers are like humans/angels (dance, move, company); adds impression of dialogue, mutual understanding flowers + poet are equal part of nature

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

“Ode: Intimitations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”, William Wordsworth

• use of “language really used by man” includes depiction experience of simple folk in Wordsworth’s poetry, experience children in poems (special position in romantic thinking because child = natural, innocent, not corrupted by society)

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, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart,

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and 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?

“The Tyger”, William Blake

• from “Songs of Innocend and Experience: showing two contrary states of human soul” (Collection of poems)

• entire question sentences

  • If tiger so powerful how powerful must creator be?

  • “distant deeps or skies” → is tiger bad or good; is he who made the lamb (symbol of Christ) also good or bad; why did they create two different animals

    • why does God allow evil in world? (tiger = evil because he cannot but kill → natural instincts)

• tiger represents dynamic principle → no principle no change in world

• most dangerous part of tiger: brain

XVIII.

And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,

The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!

How in an hour the power which gave annuls

Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!

In ‘pride of place’ here last the eagle flew,

Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,

Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through:

Ambition’s life and labours all were vain;

He wears the shattered links of the world’s broken chain.

XIX.

Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit,

And foam in fetters, but is Earth more free?

Did nations combat to make One submit;

Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?

What! shall reviving thraldom again be

The patched-up idol of enlightened days?

Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we

Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze

And servile knees to thrones? No; prove before ye praise!

“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, George Gordon

• about Lord Byron

  • first “popstar” in literature

    • “I woke up one morning and found myself famous”

  • byronic hero

• waterloo

  • napolean beaten

  • triumph conservatism

  • liberty, equality

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 lips, 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." --

“Ozymandias”, Percy Bysshe Shelley

• speaker recounts tale from traveller from antique land

• Ramses II = “sneer to cold command” → smile with bad intention

  • tyrant, cold blooded

  • “the heart that fed these passions” = pharaoh himmself

• political message: tyranny will not last

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

“Ode to the West Wind”, Percy Bysshe Shelley

• longing for freedom of burdens of existence on earth

• speaker adressess winds and desire wind’s freedom

• as we grow up we lose natural freedom that made us alike with windless; we’re weighed down by material existence

• rebellion against political oppression and longing for freedom

… quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

“Ode to Nightingale”, John Keats

• temporary escape

• bird never knew suffering; messenger from world of immortal art

• despair clash between reality and ideal world

  • ideal world expression differently:

    • Byron: cynicism, irony

    • Keats and Shelley: beauty, reach out from material world to distant world

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good

Will be the final end of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroy'd,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last--far off--at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

“In Memoriam A.H.H.”, Alfred Lord Tennyson (54)

• piece written upon death of person + engagement of changes going around him

• wants to find meaning in world, that every being has meaning in life but can’t be certain; there’s no define will, we can’t know → like an infant crying out for comfort

• science changes view of nature = almost hostile viewed

The wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave,

Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,

And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

“In Memoriam A.H.H”, Alfred Lord Tennyson (55)

• Tennyson question if God and nature are at odds; nature doesn’t seem careful, only protective of species not individuals → cruel

• in end: speaker bit more secure in his faith → hope

"So careful of the type?" but no.

From scarped cliff and quarried stone

She cries, "A thousand types are gone:

I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death:

The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law--

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer, or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil.

“In Memoriam A.H.H”, Alfred Lord Tennyson (56)

• agenda: cosmic struggle

• speaker is right → evidence → Darwin is correct

• looking back at “types” (species) which have been lost

• nature doesn’t care

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:  …

[…]

… 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!

[…]

… 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.

“Ulysses”, Alfred Lord Tennyson

• continuation of story → peaceful quiet life at home doesn’t appeal to Ulysses → talks to his companion, asking to accompany him to one last journey → leads him beyond horizon unknown world, wants to live life to the full, see the utmost, know the utmost

• optimism

• dramatic monologue

The sea is calm to-night.

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-blanch'd 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 furl'd.

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.

“Dover Beach”, Matthew Arnold

• loss of faith and certainty

• “Sea of faith” has dried out, formerly held world together and shores lie open, certainty sense of everything connect has gone → disorientation

• pastoral poem

• struggle between religious belief and science

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. …

[…]

… 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.

[…]

… Even had you skill

In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

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 chuse

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.  …

“My last Duchess”, Robert Browning

• Duke who has killed / had his late wife killed because of jealousy (she was friendly to everybody)

• Duke is art collector, among them a portrait of his late wife “that’s my last duchess paintedo n the wall looking as if she were alive”

  • painting life-life, realistic

  • she’s dead

• “to such an one” → negative, flirted with everyone in his view

• stoop → lower yourself → that’s what he never does

• arrogant, cruel, possessive, jealous but clever

Glory be to God for dappled things --

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted & pieced -- fold, fallow, & plough;

And all trades, their gear & tackle & trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

“PiedBeauty”, Gerard Manley Hopkins

• clipped sonnet

  • 10 lines instead of 14

• alliteration

• unconventional beauty → “all things center”

  • appreciate beauty of God’s world

I

In a solitude of the sea

Deep from human vanity,

And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres

Of her salamandrine fires,

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

\n III

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

\n IV

Jewels in joy designed

To ravish the sensuous mind

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

\n V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear

And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...

VI

Well: while was fashioning

This creature of cleaving wing,

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate

For her -- so gaily great --

A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

\n IX

Alien they seemed to be;

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history,

\n X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event,

\n XI

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said "Now!" And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres

“The Convergence of the Twain”, Thomas Hardy

• about the Titanic

• he interprets something as it’s sinister fated

  • “immanent will”

  • “spinners of the years”

    • 3 fates of classical mythology

• happened because of human arrogance

  • “ship unsinkable”

• fine collision like something erotic

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

“The Soldier”, Rupert Brooke

• patriotic poem

• willingness to sacrifice oneself for country that nourished you

  • “give something back”; almost like spiritual cleansing

• celebrates identification of body of nation + English superiority

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.

“Anthem for doomed youth”, Wilfred Owen

• “lost generation”

  • = young men dying in the trenches

• how to appropriately mourn and commemorate them? - no glorification, being honest and remembering how they had suffered

• weaponry: described metaphor (monstrous guns)

  • becomes agent → soldiers felt like that

  • very little they could od, much depended on chance

• deconstructs patriotism + glorification of war

The darkness crumbles away

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet's poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies,

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver -what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in men's veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe,

Just a little white with the dust.

“Break of Day in the Trenches”, Isaac Rosenberg

• situation: soldiers stand on guard watching if any enemy activity; one soldier pulls poppy and sticks it behind ear, he sees a rat → rat can do what soldier can’t: cross enemy lines unhindered

  • symbolic: identifies one of the dead

  • poppy fragile, delicate (like humans)

  • rat: lives underneath earth; base below now upper hand, man now almost inferior to rat

  • “bonds to the whims of murder” = survival depends on chance

  • arbitrarness of mess destruction

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“The Second Coming”, William Butler Yeats

• history repeat itself in circles (it spirals)

• alludes second coming of Christ in Bible

  • end of world, apocalypse, day of judgement

• monster embodies war, violence; written immediate aftermath WW1

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent

Above a sinking fire, a tale that she

Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event

That changed some childish day to tragedy--

Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent

Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,

Or else, to alter Plato's parable,

Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

“Among School Children”, William Butler Yeats

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?“

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, T.S. Eliot

• dramatic monologue

• “evening spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table”

  • image of drugged/paralysed

    • kept throughout poem

• speaker moves among circle fashionable people that discuss Michaelangelo

• speaker wnats to ask overwhelming questions

  • what is meaning of life

  • what can we do

    • but: everyone seems to be paralyzed

• written druing WW1

  • people critical what was happening

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like  a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

[…]

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate;

A pettiness.

“Snake”, D.H. Lawrence

• admiration vs. hostility

• snake comes from under surface (hell) ; suppressed feeligns (Freud)

• snake = king of underworld

• “voice of reason” = must be killed

• albatross: reference Rime of Ancient Mariner

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

“Musee des Beaux Arts”, W.H. Auden

• how humans tend to turn blind eye to suffering and injustice

• political poem

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 your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“Do not go gentle into that good night”, Dylan Thomas