{"id":97,"date":"2019-07-18T18:24:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T18:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/poem-anthology\/"},"modified":"2023-12-06T21:40:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T21:40:03","slug":"poem-anthology","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/poem-anthology\/","title":{"raw":"An Anthology of Poems for Further Study","rendered":"An Anthology of Poems for Further Study"},"content":{"raw":"

Philip Kevin Paul (1971\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

\"Such a Tiny Light\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"Such a Tiny Light<\/a>\" and learn about its context.\r\n
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Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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  1. \u201c'Such a Tiny Light,'\u201d Paul explains, \u201crepresents my conversation with and sensitivity to mortality and loss.\u201d What examples of mortality and loss does he provide in the poem to reinforce this theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. What is the form or genre of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Identify examples of personification in the poem, and explain how they support the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. What, literally, is the tiny light to which the poem\u2019s title alludes?\u00a0 What (metaphorically\/symbolically) does the tiny light represent?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    Gregory Scofield (1966\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

    \"The Sewing Circle\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"The Sewing Circle\" [PDF]<\/a>.\r\n
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    Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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    1. Who is the narrator of this poem?\u00a0 What seminal event in Canadian history inspired this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
    2. What is a sewing circle?\u00a0 How has Scofield altered its traditional purpose to underscore the theme of his poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
    3. Why does the poem include so many religious references, and how does the narrator\u2019s faith influence the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
    4. Identify and explain the effect of the simile Scofield uses in stanzas 6-7.<\/li>\r\n \t
    5. Describe the tone, the voice of the poem.\u00a0 Does the tone suggest the outcome of battle to be fought?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

      Marilyn Dumont (1955\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

      \"Leather and Naugahyde\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"Leather and Naugahyde<\/a>.\"\r\n
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      Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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      1. What are the qualities of \u201cLeather and Naugahyde\u201d that make it a poem, rather than a single prose paragraph?<\/li>\r\n \t
      2. What is Naugahyde and why is it an effective metaphor for the differences in ethnic identities at the heart of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
      3. What is a \u201ctreaty guy\u201d? How and why does his attitude towards the poem\u2019s narrator suddenly change? What is the nature of the change?<\/li>\r\n \t
      4. What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
      5. Read additional information on indigenous Canadian authors [PDF]<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

        Rita Dove (1952\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

        \"Heart to Heart\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"Heart to Heart<\/a>.\"\r\n
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        Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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        1. What is a clich\u00e9? List the clich\u00e9s related to the human heart that Dove references in the poem. What is her purpose in doing so?<\/li>\r\n \t
        2. How would you describe the tone, the voice of the poem? How does the form of the poem shape the tone? Is there a change in tone, as the poem comes to an end?<\/li>\r\n \t
        3. Poems about hearts are usually love poems. Is this a love poem? Support your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
        4. Watch an interview with Rita Dove<\/a>. Does the interview give you any insights into the theme and form of \u201cHeart to Heart\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

          Emma Laroque (1949\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

          \"The Red in Winter\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"The Red in Winter<\/a>\" and learn about its context.\r\n
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          Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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          1. What is the significance\u2014the double entendre\u2014of the title of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
          2. How do personification and symbolism add layers of meaning to this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
          3. How does the form of the poem\u2014its brevity, especially\u2014influence its theme?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

            Yusef Komunyakaa (1947\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

            \"Facing It\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \"Facing It<\/a>\" and watch and listen to Komunyakka read \"Facing It.<\/a>\"\r\n
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            Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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            1. How do we know that the poet, visiting the Vietnam Veteran\u2019s Memorial, is a Vietnam vet himself?<\/li>\r\n \t
            2. Komunyakaa wants readers to know that civilians who would not have served in Vietnam still were involved in the war.\u00a0 How does he accomplish this?<\/li>\r\n \t
            3. Why and how is race important in the context of this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
            4. What is the significance of the name \u201cAndrew Johnson\u201d mentioned in the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
            5. Note two examples of imagery in the poem and determine how the imagery enhances the impact the poem has on its readers.<\/li>\r\n \t
            6. Why does the poet end \u201cFacing It\u201d as he does?\u00a0 Do you think this is an effective ending?\u00a0 Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

              Wendy Cope (1945\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

              \"Bloody Men\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cBloody Men<\/a>.\u201d\r\n
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              Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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              1. In her poetry, Wendy Cope often uses humour to express a serious theme.\u00a0 How does \u201cBloody Men\u201d illustrate this technique?<\/li>\r\n \t
              2. Is this a feminist or an anti-feminist poem? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
              3. What is the form of the poem? Why does Cope use this form?<\/li>\r\n \t
              4. Comment on the effectiveness of the extended simile\/metaphor at the centre of this poem. What does Cope mean by \u201cflashing their indicators\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
              5. See an interview with Cope<\/a>. How does the interview help you understand and appreciate \u201cBloody Men\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                Kay Ryan (1945\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

                \"Blandeur\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cBlandeur<\/a>.\u201d\r\n
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                Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                1. What does Ryan say in this poem about the nature of nature? What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                2. What is a pun? How is the title of this poem a pun?<\/li>\r\n \t
                3. \u201cBlandeur is not a word found in the dictionary, nor is \u201cunlean.\u201d Has Ryan made a mistake? Why does she make up her own words?<\/li>\r\n \t
                4. See an interview with Ryan<\/a>. How does the interview help you understand and appreciate \u201cBlandeur\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                  Billy Collins (1941\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

                  \"Introduction to Poetry\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cIntroduction to Poetry<\/a>.\"\r\n
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                  Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                  1. What is the source of the speaker\u2019s frustration in the poem? How does this frustration help to establish the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                  2. Compare and contrast the two ways of reading poetry presented in \u201cIntroduction to Poetry.\u201d In your opinion, which method is preferable?<\/li>\r\n \t
                  3. What metaphors does Collins use for the art of reading poetry? Do you think they are effective?<\/li>\r\n \t
                  4. Watch and hear Collins read and discuss his poetry<\/a>. How does his presentation help you understand and appreciate \u201cIntroduction to Poetry\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                    Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

                    \"Now that the Buffalo's Gone\"<\/h2>\r\nRead the lyrics of \u201cNow that the Buffalo\u2019s Gone\"<\/a>. Hear Buffy Saint-Marie sing<\/a> the song.\r\n
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                    Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                    1. Why does the author reference the Buffalo in this song? For what is the buffalo a symbol and a metaphor?<\/li>\r\n \t
                    2. What is the theme of this poem\/song?<\/li>\r\n \t
                    3. What is the basis of the comparison the author makes between the government\u2019s defeat of Germany and the defeat of Native Americans? How are the \u201cvictories\u201d similar and how are they different? Is the analogy effective?<\/li>\r\n \t
                    4. The tribes the author references in the final stanza are the Inuit, Cheyanne, and Navaho? What is the significance of her choice of these three tribes?<\/li>\r\n \t
                    5. Buffy Sainte-Marie recorded \u201cNow that the Buffalo\u2019s Gone\u201d in 1964. Have conditions for indigenous people improved? Remained the same? Gotten worse? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                      Margaret Atwood (1939\u2013)<\/h1>\r\n

                      \"You Fit into Me\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cYou Fit into Me<\/a>.\"\r\n
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                      Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                      1. What do we expect the hook and eye reference in the first stanza to be about? What does it actually refer to, as revealed in the second stanza? How does this juxtaposition inform the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                      2. What do you think is the source of the problems with the relationship alluded to in the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                      3. What is the form\/genre of this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                      4. Watch and listen to Margaret Atwood read one of her poems<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                        Sylvia Plath (1932\u20131963)<\/h1>\r\n

                        \"Mirror\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cMirror<\/a>.\"\r\n
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                        Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                        1. Who narrates this poem? What literary device is Plath using here? How does this narrator inform the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                        2. What is the form or genre of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                        3. How is the poem relevant to contemporary life?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                          Adrienne Rich (1929\u20132012)<\/h1>\r\n

                          \"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cAunt Jennifer\u2019s Tigers<\/a>.\"\r\n

                          \"Diving into the Wreck\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cDiving into the Wreck<\/a>.\" Watch and hear Rich read \u201cDiving into the Wreck\"<\/a>.\r\n
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                          Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                          1. \u201cAunt Jennifer\u2019s Tigers\u201d was published in 1950, before the feminist movement caught fire. How does the poem foreshadow Rich\u2019s eventual emergence as a leading feminist poet?<\/li>\r\n \t
                          2. How do we know Aunt Jennifer is not in a happy marriage?<\/li>\r\n \t
                          3. How does Aunt Jennifer cope with the sorrow in her life? What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                          4. What is the form of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                          5. Compare and contrast \u201cAunt Jennifer\u2019s Tigers\u201d with William Blake\u2019s \u201cThe Tiger.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                          6. How is the aphorism \u201cWe destroy in order to recreate\u201d relevant to the context and the theme of \u201cDiving into the Wreck?\"<\/li>\r\n \t
                          7. Identify three examples of symbolism used in \u201cDiving into the Wreck\u201d and reflect upon how the symbolism augments the theme of the poem.<\/li>\r\n \t
                          8. How and why is the sunken ship that the narrator explores an effective extended metaphor to enhance the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                          9. Can we tell by reading this poem that the poet is a feminist? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                            Maya Angelou (1928\u20132014)<\/h1>\r\n

                            \"Still I Rise\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cStill I Rise<\/a>.\u201d Watch and hear Angelou read \u201cStill I Rise\"<\/a>.\r\n

                            \"Phenomenal Women\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cPhenomenal Woman<\/a>.\" Watch and hear Angelou read \u201cPhenomenal Woman\u201d<\/a>.\r\n
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                            Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                            1. \u201cStill I Rise\u201d has a distinctive rhythm pattern. Identify the rhythm and explain why it is effective. Why does the rhythm pattern change in the last few stanzas?<\/li>\r\n \t
                            2. Based upon the evidence in these poems, what social causes\/movements does Angelou support? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                            3. How might we know these poems were written by the same author?<\/li>\r\n \t
                            4. What stereotypes about female beauty does Angelou debunk in \u201cPhenomenal Woman\u201d? What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                              Maxine Kumin (1925\u20132014)<\/h1>\r\n

                              \"Morning Swim\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cMorning Swim<\/a>.\u201d\r\n

                              \"Woodchucks\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cWoodchucks<\/a>.\u201d Watch and hear Kumin read \u201cWoodchucks\u201d<\/a>.\r\n
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                              Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                              1. Hear the hymn \u201cAbide with Me\"<\/a>. Explain why the narrator of \u201cMorning Swim\u201d is singing this hymn, while she swims. How does the hymn help develop the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                              2. Provide three examples of imagery in \u201cMorning Swim\u201d and explain how imagery supports the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                              3. Compare and contrast the forms of the two poems by Kumin, noting especially similarities and differences in theme and form.<\/li>\r\n \t
                              4. What does \u201cNIMBY\u201d stand for, and how is the phrase relevant to the theme of \u201cWoodchucks\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                              5. Think of a time when your own values and ideals have been challenged by extraneous circumstances and relate this conflict to the theme of \u201cWoodchucks.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                Feature Unit: The Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance<\/h1>\r\n
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                                The Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                                Introduction<\/h2>\r\nIn the early years of the twentieth century, a labour shortage, mainly in the manufacturing sector, combined with a pervasive racism, which the abolition of slavery had failed to eradicate, lured hundreds of thousands of African Americans north, to the large cities of New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago.\u00a0 Many settled in the Harlem borough of New York.\u00a0 Prosperity fosters culture, and soon black artists, musicians, poets, playwrights, and novelists were painting, writing music, editing literary magazines, producing plays, and publishing their stories and poems.\r\n\r\nClaude McKay\u2019s 1922 poetry collection Harlem Shadows<\/em> is among the earliest and most successful books, credited by some literary historians as the book that initiated the Harlem Renaissance.\u00a0 Jean Toomer\u2019s, Cane<\/em>, appeared a year later, to critical acclaim from not only black but prominent white authors, notably Sherwood Anderson.\u00a0 Langston Hughes has emerged as the great poet of the movement, mainly because of his innovative style, echoing the jazz rhythms and speech patterns of African American musicians and ordinary citizens, evident in the poems included in his 1926 collection, The Weary Blues<\/em>.\u00a0 Countee Cullen preferred to work in traditional regular verse forms, though his poetry collections, Copper Sun<\/em>, in 1927 and The Ballad of the Brown Girl<\/em>, a year later, reveal his commitment to the struggle for equal rights.\r\n\r\nAs a literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance faded in the 1930\u2019s, as the Great Depression challenged the same economic prosperity that had helped to launch the Renaissance.\u00a0 But the Harlem Renaissance left a lasting legacy.\u00a0 It provided the inspiration\u2014and fuel\u2014for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 It resurged in the Black Arts Movement of the 1970\u2019s, when poets like Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, using more militant language and angrier tones, protested against the same social conditions which had angered and frustrated the poets of the Harlem Renaissance.\r\n

                                Claude McKay (1889\u20131948)<\/h2>\r\n

                                \"Harlem Shadows\"<\/h3>\r\n
                                I hear the halting footsteps of a lass\r\nIn Negro Harlem when the night lets fall\r\nIts veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass\r\nTo bend and barter at desire's call.\r\nAh, little dark girls who in slippered feet\r\nGo prowling through the night from street to street!Through the long night until the silver break\r\nOf day the little gray feet know no rest;\r\nThrough the lone night until the last snow-flake\r\nHas dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,\r\nThe dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet\r\nAre trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.\r\n\r\nAh, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way\r\nOf poverty, dishonor and disgrace,\r\nHas pushed the timid little feet of clay,\r\nThe sacred brown feet of my fallen race!\r\nAh, heart of me, the weary, weary feet\r\nIn Harlem wandering from street to street.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                Activities<\/h3>\r\n
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                                1. What is the significance of the title of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                2. What is the tone, the voice, of this poem and how does the poet achieve this tone?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                3. Assess the poem\u2019s rhythm and rhyme scheme.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                4. Whom does the poet blame for the plight of the \u201cdusky, half-clad girls of tired feet\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                  Jean Toomer (1894\u20131967)<\/h2>\r\n

                                  \"Georgia Dusk\"<\/h3>\r\n
                                  The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue\r\nThe setting sun, too indolent to hold\r\nA lengthened tournament for flashing gold,\r\nPassively darkens for night\u2019s barbecue,A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,\r\nAn orgy for some genius of the South\r\nWith blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,\r\nSurprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,\r\nAnd silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,\r\nSoft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill\r\nTheir early promise of a bumper crop.\r\n\r\nSmoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile\r\nCurls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low\r\nWhere only chips and stumps are left to show\r\nThe solid proof of former domicile.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,\r\nRace memories of king and caravan,\r\nHigh-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,[footnote]The magician\/healer of the African village. The ostrich is native to Africa. It cannot fly; hence it might have symbolic overtones in a poem which touches on African American freedom and oppression.[\/footnote]\r\nGo singing through the footpaths of the swamp.\r\n\r\nTheir voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,\r\nStrumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .\r\nTheir voices rise . . the chorus of the cane\r\nIs caroling a vesper[footnote]A religious service held in the late afternoon\/early evening.[\/footnote] to the stars . .\r\n\r\nO singers, resinous and soft your songs\r\nAbove the sacred whisper of the pines,\r\nGive virgin lips to cornfield concubines,\r\nBring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                  Activities<\/h3>\r\n
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                                  1. Where and when is this poem set? How might the \u201cdusk\u201d of the title be used symbolically?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                  2. There is a narrative tinge to the poem. Summarize the story it tells.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                  3. What is the poet urging the black sawmill workers to do in the poem\u2019s last stanza?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                  4. The Harlem Renaissance poets were concerned with African American emancipation, civil rights, equality. How do these concerns figure in \u201cGeorgia Dusk\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                    Langston Hughes (1902\u20131967)<\/h2>\r\n

                                    \"Harlem\"<\/h3>\r\nRead \u201cHarlem<\/a>.\"\r\n

                                    Activities<\/h3>\r\n
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                                    1. What is the veiled threat implicit in this poem? What are the sources of the threat? How does this threat inform the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                    2. Identify similes and metaphors Hughes uses in the poem and assess why the are effective?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                    3. Hear Hughes read \u201cHarlem\u201d<\/a>. How does hearing the poet read his work help you understand and appreciate it?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                      Countee Cullen (1903\u20131946)<\/h2>\r\n

                                      \"Yet Do I Marvel\"<\/h3>\r\n
                                      I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind\r\nAnd did He stoop to quibble could tell why\r\nThe little buried mole continues blind,\r\nWhy flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,\r\nMake plain the reason tortured Tantalus[footnote]In Greek mythology, Tantalus was left stranded in a pool of water, as punishment for his offenses against the gods. Above him were branches filled with ripe fruits, but they were always just out of reach, whenever he tried to pick them. Below his was sweet water, but it receded whenever he tried to drink. Our word \u201ctantalize\u201d comes from the Tantalus myth.[\/footnote]\r\nIs baited by the fickle fruit, declare\r\nIf merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus[footnote]In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was forced to push a heavy boulder up a hill (in some versions of the myth, climb a never-ending staircase) as punishment for his offenses against the gods. Whenever he was about to crest the hill, the boulder rolled back down.[\/footnote]\r\nTo struggle up a never-ending stair.\r\nInscrutable His ways are, and immune\r\nTo catechism[footnote]Explication of a Christian text.[\/footnote] by a mind too strewn\r\nWith petty cares to slightly understand\r\nWhat awful brain compels His awful hand.\r\nYet do I marvel at this curious thing:\r\nTo make a poet black, and bid him sing!<\/div>\r\n

                                      Activities<\/h3>\r\n
                                        \r\n \t
                                      1. What is the issue troubling the poet? What four examples does he provide to illustrate the nature of the problem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                      2. Does the \u201ccurious thing\u201d referenced near the end of the poem help to exonerate God and the gods or is it another example of the gods\u2019 indifferent cruelty?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                      3. How do we know this poem is a Shakespeare sonnet?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                      4. Watch and hear \u201cYet Do I Marvel\u201d read<\/a>. Does hearing the poem read aloud help you understand it?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                        John Magee (1922\u20131941)<\/h1>\r\n

                                        \"High Flight\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                        Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,\r\nAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;\r\nSunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth\r\nOf sun-split clouds, \u2014and done a hundred things\r\nYou have not dreamed of \u2014Wheeled and soared and swung\r\nHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there\r\nI've chased the shouting wind along, and flung\r\nMy eager craft through footless halls of air...\r\nUp, up the long, delirious, burning blue\r\nI've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace\r\nWhere never lark or even eagle flew \u2014\r\nAnd, while with silent lifting mind I've trod\r\nThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,\r\nPut out my hand, and touched the face of God.<\/div>\r\n
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                                        Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                        \r\n
                                          \r\n \t
                                        1. Why does Magee describe the \u201cbonds of earth\u201d as \u201csurly\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                        2. Magee tries to use the rhythm of his language to mimic the feel of a small plane (here a spitfire in which he was training to be a fighter pilot in World War II) in flight. Does he succeed? Support your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                        3. Why does God enter the poem in the last line? How does the reference add to the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                        4. How do we know this poem is a sonnet?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                          Dylan Thomas (1914\u20131953)<\/h1>\r\n

                                          \"Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                          Do not go gentle into that good night,\r\nOld age should burn and rave at close of day;\r\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,\r\nBecause their words had forked no lightning they\r\nDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright\r\nTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,\r\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,\r\nAnd learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,\r\nDo not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight\r\nBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,\r\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height,\r\nCurse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.\r\nDo not go gentle into that good night.\r\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.<\/div>\r\n
                                          \r\n

                                          Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                          \r\n
                                            \r\n \t
                                          1. To what do the phrases \u201cthat good night\u201d and \u201cthe dying of the light,\u201d which echo throughout the poem, refer?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                          2. What is the form\/genre of this poem? How does the form influence the poem\u2019s content?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                          3. Thomas references four types of people who refuse to go gentle into that good night, who rage against the dying of the light. What are these four types of people? Why have all of them experienced disappointments in their lives? What is the nature of these disappointments? How do they or should they express their regrets?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                          4. Watch and hear Thomas read \u201cDo Not Go Gentle into that Good Night\u201d<\/a>. Does the reading of the poem help you understand and appreciate it? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                            Stevie Smith (1902\u20131971)<\/h1>\r\n

                                            \"Not Waving but Drowning\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cNot Waving but Drowning<\/a>.\u201d Watch and hear Smith read and explain the context of \u201cNot Waving but Drowning\u201d<\/a>.\r\n
                                            \r\n

                                            Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                            \r\n
                                              \r\n \t
                                            1. How does the metaphor implicit in the poem\u2019s title signal the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                            2. Why do the drowning man\u2019s friends misread and misinterpret signals he sends them?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                            3. Assess the truth of the theme of the poem, providing an example if you can.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                              E.E. Cummings (1894\u20131962)<\/h1>\r\n

                                              \"Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town<\/a>.\" Watch and hear Cummings read \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town\u201d<\/a>.\r\n

                                              \"Somewhere I Have Never Travelled\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cSomewhere I Have Never Travelled<\/a>.\" Watch and hear Cummings read \u201cSomewhere I Have Never Travelled\u201d<\/a>.\r\n
                                              \r\n

                                              Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                              \r\n
                                                \r\n \t
                                              1. What is a ballad? How is \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town\u201d like a ballad? How is it not?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              2. Why are the names of the characters in \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town\u201d so indeterminate? How do their names help establish the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              3. Paraphrase stanza six of \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              4. The syntax is some lines of \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town\u201d is convoluted to such an extent they make no literal sense. Identify two or three examples. What is Cummings\u2019 point in so defying the conventions of language?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              5. Compare and contrast the form of \u201cSomewhere I Have Never Travelled\u201d with the form of \u201cAnyone Lived in a Pretty How Town.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              6. To whom is \u201cSomewhere I Have Never Travelled\u201d addressed? Who is the \u201cI\u201d; who is the \u201cyou\u201d in the poem? How do you know this?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              7. What effect does the \u201cyou\u201d in the poem have upon the speaker? How does this relationship help establish the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                              8. Paraphrase stanza four of \u201cSomewhere I Have Never Travelled.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                T.S. Eliot (1888\u20131965)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                \"The Hollow Men\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cThe Hollow Men<\/a>.\"\r\n

                                                \"The Journey of the Magi\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cThe Journey of the Magi<\/a>.\"\r\n

                                                \"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock<\/a>.\u201d\r\n
                                                \r\n

                                                Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                \r\n
                                                  \r\n \t
                                                1. Consider the form of \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d: short, free-verse lines, in five parts, sub-divided into stanzas of various length and number. Some lines seem to end before the poet\u2019s thought is completed. How does this form augment the poem\u2019s theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                2. Is \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d as relevant today as it was when Eliot wrote it? Who are \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d of contemporary society, and what do they need to lead a more fulfilling life?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                3. Compare and contrast the tone (cf. Glossary) of \u201cThe Journey of the Magi\u201d with the tone of the earlier poems by Eliot. Is there a difference in tone? How do you account for the difference or the lack thereof?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                4. Like \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,\u201d \u201cThe Journey of the Magi\u201d is a free-verse narrative poem, its speaker one of the Magi or Wise Men. Compare and contrast the characters of Prufrock and the Wise Man.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                5. Is \u201cThe Journey of the Magi\u201d a Christian poem only, or is it relevant to people of other faiths? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                6. What features of \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d identify it as a dramatic monologue (cf. Glossary)?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                7. Why does Prufrock find it impossible to ask \u201cthe overwhelming question\u201d? What changes might he make to his life and attitude that would help him ask the woman the question?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                8. Does Prufrock evoke your pity? Your condemnation? Can you identify with him, in any way?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                  E. J. Pratt (1882\u20131964)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                  \"From Stone to Steel\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cFrom Stone to Steel<\/a>.\u201d\r\n
                                                  \r\n

                                                  Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                  \r\n
                                                    \r\n \t
                                                  1. Throughout the poem, Pratt presents many comparisons and contrasts: the stone age, bronze age, steel age; Java and Geneva; the Neanderthal and the Aryan; paganism and Christianity; the Euphrates and the Rhine; the temple and the cave. What point is Pratt making? What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                  2. Paraphrase the third stanza of the poem.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                  3. How does the regular verse form of the poem complement its theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                  4. In what sense do \u201cThe yearlings still the altars crave \/ As satisfaction for a sin\u201d?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                    Feature Unit: The Poetry of World War I<\/h1>\r\n
                                                    \r\n

                                                    The Poetry of World War I<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                    \r\n

                                                    Introduction<\/h2>\r\nThe \u201cwar to end wars,\u201d as H.G. Wells described it in a series of newspaper articles,[footnote]The articles were later published in book form as The War That Will End War (https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/warthatwillendwa00welluoft&gt;)[\/footnote] began in 1914. The main belligerents were the allied forces of France, Britain, and the dominions, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; Russia (until 1917) and, after April 1917, the United States\u2014versus the central powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Few believed that the war would last very long, but gradually both sides became mired in a stalemate, and it dragged on until November 1918, with unparalleled loss of life\u2014nearly nine million combatants and millions of civilians died as a result of the war.\r\n\r\nOne striking difference between the war poetry of the Victorian Age as seen in Tennyson\u2019s \u201cThe Charge of the Light Brigade\u201d and the poetry of World War I is the shift from a more or less unquestioning acceptance of war to a growing disillusionment. Although Tennyson makes clear that the military command had blundered in this instance, he refuses to dwell on the incompetence of the generals and instead emphasizes the bravery of the British soldier. Similarly, Rupert Brooke, perhaps the public face of the British war effort before his death prior to seeing action, carries forward a romanticized, chivalric view of war, particularly in his poem, \u201cThe Soldier,\u201d a poem that Dean Inge, one of the most important clergymen in Britain, read as part of his Easter Sunday sermon at St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral in 1914, and to which Winston Churchill referred in an obituary published in the Times<\/em> three days after Brooke\u2019s death. Even Siegfried Sassoon, the poet who, along with Wilfred Owen, was considered one of the poets most critical of the war, seems to echo Brooke\u2019s romanticizing attitude in an early poem, \u201cAbsolution\u201d:\r\n
                                                    \u2026War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,\r\nAnd, fighting for our freedom, we are free.\r\n\r\nHorror of wounds and anger at the foe,\r\nAnd loss of things desired; all these must pass.\r\nWe are the happy legion\u2026<\/blockquote>\r\nBut as the war dragged on, with more and more poets killed and the survivors increasingly disillusioned, a patriotic poem such as \u2018The Soldier\u2019 became a ridiculous anachronism in the face of the realities of trench warfare, and the even more blatantly patriotic note sounded by John Freeman\u2019s \u2018Happy is England Now,\u2019 which claimed that \u2018there\u2019s not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain\/But shines the purer; happiest is England now\/In those that fight\u2019 seemed obscene\u201d (Norton Anthology of English Literature<\/em>, 20th Century and After<\/em>, 9th ed., 2017). And unlike Tennyson\u2019s uncritical response to the effects of blundering generals, Sassoon implies in a later poem, that the cheery old general, safely distant from the front line, who passes two enlisted men on their way to the front, is perhaps the real enemy: \u201cNow the soldiers he smiled at are most of\u00a0 \u2019em dead\/And we\u2019re cursing his Staff for incompetent swine\u201d (\u201cThe General\u201d). Interestingly, Sassoon tempered the sting of the final line in the published version. A draft version reads, \u201cmurdered them\u201d rather than \u201cdid for them.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a complete account of the rich history of World War I poetry, see the First World War Poetry Digital Archives<\/a>.\r\n

                                                    Wilfred Owen (1893\u20131918)<\/h2>\r\n

                                                    \"Disabled\"<\/h3>\r\n
                                                    He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,\r\nAnd shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,\r\nLegless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park\r\nVoices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,\r\nVoices of play and pleasure after day,\r\nTill gathering sleep had mothered them from him.About this time Town used to swing so gay\r\nWhen glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,\r\nAnd girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,\r\n\u2014In the old times, before he threw away his knees.\r\nNow he will never feel again how slim\r\nGirls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.\r\nAll of them touch him like some queer disease.\r\n\r\nThere was an artist silly for his face,\r\nFor it was younger than his youth, last year.\r\nNow, he is old; his back will never brace;\r\nHe's lost his colour very far from here,\r\nPoured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,\r\nAnd half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,\r\nAnd leap of purple spurted from his thigh.\r\nOne time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,\r\nAfter the matches carried shoulder-high.\r\nIt was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,\r\nHe thought he'd better join. He wonders why . . .\r\nSomeone had said he'd look a god in kilts.\r\n\r\nThat's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,\r\nAye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,\r\nHe asked to join. He didn't have to beg;\r\nSmiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.\r\nGermans he scarcely thought of; and no fears\r\nOf Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts\r\nFor daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;\r\nAnd care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;\r\nEsprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.\r\nAnd soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.\r\n\r\nSome cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.\r\nOnly a solemn man who brought him fruits\r\nThanked him; and then inquired about his soul.\r\nNow, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,\r\nAnd do what things the rules consider wise,\r\nAnd take whatever pity they may dole.\r\nTo-night he noticed how the women's eyes\r\nPassed from him to the strong men that were whole.\r\nHow cold and late it is! Why don't they come\r\nAnd put him into bed? Why don't they come?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                    \"Dulce et Decorum Est\"[footnote]Owen alludes in the title and in the last two lines to Horace, Odes 3.2.13: \u201cIt is sweet and fitting to die for one\u2019s country.\u201d[\/footnote]<\/h3>\r\n
                                                    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,\r\nKnock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,\r\nTill on the haunting flares we turned our backs\r\nAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.\r\nMen marched asleep. Many had lost their boots\r\nBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;\r\nDrunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots\r\nOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines[footnote]5.9-caliber shells.[\/footnote] that dropped behind.Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!\u2014An ecstasy of fumbling,\r\nFitting the clumsy helmets just in time;\r\nBut someone still was yelling out and stumbling\r\nAnd flound\u2019ring like a man in fire or lime...\r\nDim, through the misty panes and thick green light,\r\nAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.\r\n\r\nIn all my dreams, before my helpless sight,\r\nHe plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.\r\n\r\nIf in some smothering dreams you too could pace\r\nBehind the wagon that we flung him in,\r\nAnd watch the white eyes writhing in his face,\r\nHis hanging face, like a devil\u2019s sick of sin; (20)\r\nIf you could hear, at every jolt, the blood\r\nCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,\r\nObscene as cancer, bitter as the cud\r\nOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,\u2014\r\nMy friend, you would not tell with such high zest (25)\r\nTo children ardent for some desperate glory,\r\nThe old Lie: Dulce et decorum est<\/em>\r\nPro patria mori<\/em>.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                    \"Futility\"<\/h3>\r\n
                                                    Move him into the sun\u2014\r\nGently its touch awoke him once,\r\nAt home, whispering of fields unsown.\r\nAlways it woke him, even in France,\r\nUntil this morning and this snow.\r\nIf anything might rouse him now\r\nThe kind old sun will know.Think how it wakes the seeds\u2014\r\nWoke, once, the clays of a cold star.\r\nAre limbs so dear-achieved, are sides\r\nFull-nerved,\u2014still warm,\u2014too hard to stir?\r\nWas it for this the clay grew tall?\r\n\u2014O what made fatuous sunbeams toil\r\nTo break earth's sleep at all?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                    \"Anthem for Doomed Youth\"[footnote]Siegfried Sassoon helped Owen with the revision of this poem and suggested the word \"anthem\" for the title.[\/footnote]<\/h3>\r\nWhat passing-bells for these who die as cattle[footnote]Jon Stallworthy notes in his edition of Owen\u2019s poetry, \u201cWO was probably responding to the anonymous Prefatory Note to Poems of Today: an Anthology (1916), of which he possessed the December 1916 reprint: 'This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, ...may also know something of the newer poetry of their own day. Most of the writers are living...while one of the youngest...has gone singing to lay down his life for his country\u2019s cause....there is no arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle and interpenetrate throughout, to the music of Pan\u2019s flute, and of Love\u2019s viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the passing-bells of Death.\u2019\u201d[\/footnote]?\r\n\u2014 Only the monstrous anger of the guns.\r\nOnly the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle\r\nCan patter out their hasty orisons.\r\nNo mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;\r\nNor any voice of mourning save the choirs,\u2014\r\nThe shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;\r\nAnd bugles calling for them from sad shires.\r\n\r\nWhat candles may be held to speed them all?\r\nNot in the hands of boys, but in their eyes\r\nShall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.\r\nThe pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;\r\nTheir flowers the tenderness of patient minds,\r\nAnd each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds[footnote]Stallworthy reminds the reader that \u201cthe drawing down of blinds, now an almost-forgotten custom, indicated either that a funeral procession was passing or that there had been a death in the house. It was customary to keep the coffin in the house until taking it to church; it would be placed in the darkened parlour, with a pall and flowers on it and lighted candles nearby. Relatives and friends would enter the room to pay their last respects. The sestet of the poem, in fact, refers to a household in mourning.\u201d[\/footnote].\r\n

                                                    Owen Activities<\/h2>\r\n
                                                      \r\n \t
                                                    1. Look at the following recruitment poster<\/a>. Do you think Owen had it in mind when he wrote the last line of \"Disabled\"?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    2. Read Dr. Stuart Lee\u2019s Background to \u201cDulce et Decorum Est\"<\/a>. Which one of the four do you prefer and why?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    3. Notice the subtitle in the first: \u201cTo a Certain Poetess\u201d Who might that be? Remember to click on the Stage 1 and 2 links at To visit Oxford Tutorial page for Dulce et Decorum Est<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    4. What has occurred just before the poem \"Futility\" begins?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    5. What scene do you visualize at the opening of \"Futility\"?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    6. Who is speaking in \"Futility\"? What is his relation to \"him\"?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    7. To whom is he speaking in line 1 of \"Futility\"?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    8. Why does the speaker in \"Futility\" want \"him\" moved into the sun?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    9. What reasons does the speaker in \"Futility\" give for thinking the sun will help?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    10. What is the connotation of \"sun\"? \"snow\u201d? \u201cclay\"?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    11. What does \"fatuous\" mean?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    12. Rhythm: How should we read the second stanza of \"Futility\"? What effect do the many hyphens have on the tempo of our reading?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    13. How does the title \"Futility\" relate to the theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                    14. What kind of sonnet is \"Anthem for Doomed Youth\"? What is its rhyme scheme?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                      Siegfried Sassoon (1886\u20131967)<\/h2>\r\n

                                                      \"Counter-Attack\"<\/h3>\r\nRead Sassoon's \"Counter-Attack.<\/a>\"\r\n

                                                      Sassoon Activities<\/h2>\r\n
                                                        \r\n \t
                                                      1. What does the image in line 8 of Stanza 2 describe? One critic is reminded of the Goya painting The Colossus<\/em><\/a>, which described another war scene (the Peninsular War). What do you think?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                      2. In the published version of the poem (Collected Poems<\/em>: 1908-1956, Faber), the lines 7\u201313 are indented. What would be the effect or purpose of this indentation?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                        Wallace Stevens (1879\u20131955)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                        \"The Emperor of Ice Cream\"<\/h2>\r\nRead \u201cThe Emperor of Ice Cream<\/a>.\u201d\r\n
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                                                        Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                        \r\n
                                                          \r\n \t
                                                        1. What is a wake? What evidence in the poem suggests its setting is a wake?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                        2. What is the denotation and the connotation of the \u201cwenches\u201d of line 4?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                        3. Express line 7 in your own words. How does this line, along with line 15, suggest the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                        4. What is hedonism? Does \u201cThe Emperor of Ice Cream\u201d embrace or reject a hedonistic philosophy? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                        5. Hear \"The Emperor of Ice Cream\" read and explicated<\/a>. Does the explication enhance your understanding and enjoyment?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                          E.A. Robinson (1869\u20131935)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                          \"Richard Cory\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                          Whenever Richard Cory went down town,\r\nWe people on the pavement looked at him:\r\nHe was a gentleman from sole to crown,\r\nClean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,\r\nAnd he was always human when he talked;\r\nBut still he fluttered pulses when he said,\r\n\"Good-morning,\" and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich\u2014yes, richer than a king\u2014\r\nAnd admirably schooled in every grace:\r\nIn fine, we thought that he was everything\r\nTo make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,\r\nAnd went without the meat, and cursed the bread;\r\nAnd Richard Cory, one calm summer night,\r\nWent home and put a bullet through his head.<\/div>\r\n
                                                          \r\n

                                                          Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                          \r\n
                                                            \r\n \t
                                                          1. What does Richard Cory look like? Why is his physical appearance important to the poem\u2019s meaning?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                          2. What is the form\/genre of this poem, its rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme? How does the form intensify the shock of the poem\u2019s ending?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                          3. When is the poem set? How does the setting intensify the shock of the poem\u2019s ending?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                          4. Is the story embedded in this poem credible? Support your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            William Butler Yeats (1865\u20131939)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                            \"The Lake Isle of Innisfree\"[footnote]Innisfree is a small island in the middle of Lough (Lake) Gill, near Sligo, the town in the northwest of Ireland, where Yeats spent many happy summers, holidaying with his mother\u2019s family. He was living in London in 1888 when he wrote the poem. The poem expresses the universal desire to \u201cget away from it all,\u201d to retreat from a busy life in the city and find a quiet haven, surrounded by nature\u2019s beauty. Though one of his most famous poems, he, ironically, grew weary of reciting it at his lectures, so often was it requested.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,\r\nAnd a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles[footnote]Thin branches woven together.[\/footnote] made;\r\nNine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,\r\nAnd live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,\r\nDropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;\r\nThere midnight\u2019s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,\r\nAnd evening full of the linnet\u2019s wings.\r\n\r\nI will arise and go now, for always night and day\r\nI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;\r\nWhile I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,\r\nI hear it in the deep heart\u2019s core.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"No Second Troy\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            Why should I blame her[footnote]Maud Gonne, the beautiful Irish revolutionary leader, whom Yeats loved for much of his life.\u00a0She was to him the reincarnation of Helen of Troy, in the ancient world a major trading port in what is now Turkey.\u00a0Helen was so beautiful, she was abducted by the Trojan Paris, and her husband, Menelaus, King of the Greek city of Sparta, attacked Troy to get her back.[\/footnote]\u00a0that she filled my days\r\nWith misery[footnote]Yeats proposed to Maud, but she admitted to him she had two children with a married French journalist.\u00a0Later, she married John MacBride, a major in the Irish Republican Army, a man Yeats despised.\u00a0 (cf. \u201cEaster, 1916\u201d).[\/footnote], or that she would of late\r\nHave taught to ignorant men most violent ways,\r\nOr hurled the little streets upon the great.\r\nHad they but courage equal to desire?\r\nWhat could have made her peaceful with a mind\r\nThat nobleness made simple as a fire,\r\nWith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind\r\nThat is not natural in an age like this,\r\nBeing high and solitary and most stern?\r\nWhy, what could she have done, being what she is?\r\nWas there another Troy for her to burn?<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Easter, 1916\"[footnote]On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a paramilitary group of Irish republicans occupied central Dublin and proclaimed Ireland independent of Great Britain. The British government regained control within the week, and, ultimately charged the republican leaders with treason. They were tried quickly and executed, compounding rather than solving the problem, in that many moderate republicans were outraged and radicalized. Yeats was among them. His bewildered new perspective is expressed in the poem\u2019s famous refrain, \u201cA terrible beauty is born.\u201d He knew many of the revolutionary leaders, including Maud Gonne\u2019s estranged husband whom he despised, as \u201cA drunken vainglorious lout,\u201d but whom he nevertheless acknowledges in this poem.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            I have met them at close of day\r\nComing with vivid faces\r\nFrom counter or desk among grey\r\nEighteenth-century houses.\r\nI have passed with a nod of the head\r\nOr polite meaningless words,\r\nOr have lingered awhile and said\r\nPolite meaningless words,\r\nAnd thought before I had done\r\nOf a mocking tale or a gibe\r\nTo please a companion\r\nAround the fire at the club,\r\nBeing certain that they and I\r\nBut lived where motley[footnote]Colourful, often ragged clothing worn by a court jester.[\/footnote] is worn:\r\nAll changed, changed utterly:\r\nA terrible beauty is born.That woman's[footnote]Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927), the only woman among the revolutionary and the only one spared execution, sentenced instead to a long prison sentence, later commuted.[\/footnote] days were spent\r\nIn ignorant good-will,\r\nHer nights in argument\r\nUntil her voice grew shrill.\r\nWhat voice more sweet than hers\r\nWhen, young and beautiful,\r\nShe rode to harriers?\r\nThis man[footnote]Padraic Pearse (1879-1916), a teacher and a poet.[\/footnote] had kept a school\r\nAnd rode our winged horse[footnote]Pegasus, the winged horse, upon whom rode the poets\u2019 muse.[\/footnote];\r\nThis other his helper and friend[footnote]Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916), Yeats's fellow poet and dramatist.[\/footnote]\r\nWas coming into his force;\r\nHe might have won fame in the end,\r\nSo sensitive his nature seemed,\r\nSo daring and sweet his thought.\r\nThis other man I had dreamed\r\nA drunken, vainglorious lout[footnote]John MacBride, Irish Republican Army major, whom Yeats despised because he had married and abused Maud before she left him.[\/footnote].\r\nHe had done most bitter wrong\r\nTo some who are near my heart,\r\nYet I number him in the song;\r\nHe, too, has resigned his part\r\nIn the casual comedy;\r\nHe, too, has been changed in his turn,\r\nTransformed utterly:\r\nA terrible beauty is born.\r\n\r\nHearts with one purpose alone\r\nThrough summer and winter seem\r\nEnchanted to a stone\r\nTo trouble the living stream.\r\nThe horse that comes from the road.\r\nThe rider, the birds that range\r\nFrom cloud to tumbling cloud,\r\nMinute by minute they change;\r\nA shadow of cloud on the stream\r\nChanges minute by minute;\r\nA horse-hoof slides on the brim,\r\nAnd a horse plashes within it;\r\nThe long-legged moor-hens dive,\r\nAnd hens to moor-cocks call;\r\nMinute by minute they live:\r\nThe stone's in the midst of all.\r\n\r\nToo long a sacrifice\r\nCan make a stone of the heart.\r\nO when may it suffice?\r\nThat is Heaven's part, our part\r\nTo murmur name upon name,\r\nAs a mother names her child\r\nWhen sleep at last has come\r\nOn limbs that had run wild.\r\nWhat is it but nightfall?\r\nNo, no, not night but death;\r\nWas it needless death after all?\r\nFor England may keep faith[footnote]That is, may grant independence to Ireland, as Britain finally did in 1921.[\/footnote]\r\nFor all that is done and said.\r\nWe know their dream; enough\r\nTo know they dreamed and are dead;\r\nAnd what if excess of love\r\nBewildered them till they died?\r\nI write it out in a verse \u2014\r\nMacDonagh and MacBride\r\nAnd Connolly[footnote]James Connolly (1870-1916), prominent trade unionist, one of the rebellion\u2019s paramilitary commanders.[\/footnote] and Pearse\r\nNow and in time to be,\r\nWherever green is worn,\r\nAre changed, changed utterly:\r\nA terrible beauty is born.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"The Second Coming\"[footnote]The second coming of Jesus Christ\u2014whom Yeats envisions here as an anti-Christ\u2014on Judgment Day.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\nTurning and turning in the widening gyre[footnote]A spiral that continues to widen until it collapses. The gyre is Yeats\u2019s symbol of a civilization spiralling out of control, at the end of its 2,000-year cycle.[\/footnote]\r\n
                                                            The falcon cannot hear the falconer;\r\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;\r\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,\r\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere\r\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;\r\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst\r\nAre full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;\r\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.\r\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out\r\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi[footnote]The spirit of the world. Similar to Carl Jung\u2019s notion of the collective unconscious, it is a storehouse of knowledge shared by all; here, knowledge of a saviour or demon.[\/footnote]\r\nTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert\r\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,[footnote]The anti-Christ, similar to the Beast of the Apocalypse, described in the \u201cBook of Revelation\u201d in the Christian Bible.[\/footnote]\r\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,\r\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it\r\nReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.\r\nThe darkness drops again; but now I know\r\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep[footnote]The 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.[\/footnote]\r\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,[footnote]Wherein lay the baby Jesus.[\/footnote]\r\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,\r\nSlouches towards Bethlehem[footnote]Town in the Middle East, famous as the birthplace of Jesus.[\/footnote] to be born?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"A Prayer for My Daughter\"[footnote]Yeats was 54 when his first child, a daughter Ann, was born on February 26, 1919. An artist, she never married and died in 2001. Yeats\u2019s son, two years younger, was an Irish politician. He died in 2007, survived by three daughters and a son.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            Once more the storm is howling, and half hid\r\nUnder this cradle-hood and coverlid\r\nMy child sleeps on. There is no obstacle\r\nBut Gregory's wood[footnote]On Lady Gregory\u2019s property (cf. \u201cThe Wild Swans at Coole\u201d), and near the ancient Norman tower, Thoor Ballylee, in Galway, which Yeats renovated, and where he lived, on and off, from his marriage in 1917 until his death.[\/footnote] and one bare hill\r\nWhereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.\r\nBred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;\r\nAnd for an hour I have walked and prayed\r\nBecause of the great gloom that is in my mind.I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour\r\nAnd heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,\r\nAnd-under the arches of the bridge, and scream\r\nIn the elms above the flooded stream;\r\nImagining in excited reverie\r\nThat the future years had come,\r\nDancing to a frenzied drum,\r\nOut of the murderous innocence of the sea.\r\n\r\nMay she be granted beauty and yet not\r\nBeauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,\r\nOr hers before a looking-glass, for such,\r\nBeing made beautiful overmuch,\r\nConsider beauty a sufficient end,\r\nLose natural kindness and maybe\r\nThe heart-revealing intimacy\r\nThat chooses right, and never find a friend.\r\n\r\nHelen[footnote]See \u201cNo Second Troy,\u201d note 1.[\/footnote] being chosen found life flat and dull\r\nAnd later had much trouble from a fool,\r\nWhile that great Queen,[footnote]Venus, the goddess of love.[\/footnote] that rose out of the spray,\r\nBeing fatherless could have her way\r\nYet chose a bandy-legged smith[footnote]Vulcan, lame; i.e., bandy-legged, blacksmith to the gods.[\/footnote] for man.\r\nIt's certain that fine women[footnote]Yeats is likely thinking of Maud Gonne, who married a man vastly inferior, in Yeats\u2019s opinion, to him.[\/footnote] eat\r\nA crazy salad with their meat\r\nWhereby the Horn of plenty[footnote]In Greek myth, the horn of the goat that suckled the chief of the gods, Zeus, filling Zeus with nectar and ambrosia; hence, the horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance, \u201cplenty.\u201d[\/footnote] is undone.\r\n\r\nIn courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;\r\nHearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned\r\nBy those that are not entirely beautiful;\r\nYet many, that have played the fool\r\nFor beauty's very self, has charm made wise.\r\nAnd many a poor man that has roved,\r\nLoved and thought himself beloved,\r\nFrom a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.\r\n\r\nMay she become a flourishing hidden tree\r\nThat all her thoughts may like the linnet be,\r\nAnd have no business but dispensing round\r\nTheir magnanimities of sound,\r\nNor but in merriment begin a chase,\r\nNor but in merriment a quarrel.\r\nO may she live like some green laurel\r\nRooted in one dear perpetual place.\r\n\r\nMy mind, because the minds that I have loved,\r\nThe sort of beauty that I have approved,\r\nProsper but little, has dried up of late,\r\nYet knows that to be choked with hate\r\nMay well be of all evil chances chief.\r\nIf there's no hatred in a mind\r\nAssault and battery of the wind\r\nCan never tear the linnet from the leaf.\r\n\r\nAn intellectual hatred is the worst,\r\nSo let her think opinions are accursed.\r\nHave I not seen the loveliest woman[footnote]Maud Gonne again.[\/footnote] born\r\nOut of the mouth of plenty's horn,\r\nBecause of her opinionated mind\r\nBarter that horn and every good\r\nBy quiet natures understood\r\nFor an old bellows full of angry wind?\r\n\r\nConsidering that, all hatred driven hence,\r\nThe soul recovers radical innocence\r\nAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,\r\nSelf-appeasing, self-affrighting,\r\nAnd that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;\r\nShe can, though every face should scowl\r\nAnd every windy quarter howl\r\nOr every bellows burst, be happy still.\r\n\r\nAnd may her bridegroom bring her to a house\r\nWhere all's accustomed, ceremonious;\r\nFor arrogance and hatred are the wares\r\nPeddled in the thoroughfares.\r\nHow but in custom and in ceremony\r\nAre innocence and beauty born?\r\nCeremony's a name for the rich horn,\r\nAnd custom for the spreading laurel tree\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Leda and the Swan\"[footnote]Leda was the queen of the Greek city state, Sparta; the Swan was Zeus, supreme god of Greek mythology. According to the myth that inspired this sonnet, Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan and raped her. Nine months later, Leda gave birth to two girls. Helen would precipitate the Trojan War when she ran off with the Trojan prince, Paris, escaping from her Greek husband Menelaus. Clytemnestra would marry and murder Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army and the brother of Menelaus. Leda also gave birth to two boys: Castor and Pollux.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            A sudden blow: the great wings beating still\r\nAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressed\r\nBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,\r\nHe holds her helpless breast upon his breast.How can those terrified vague fingers push\r\nThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?\r\nAnd how can body, laid in that white rush,\r\nBut feel the strange heart beating where it lies?\r\n\r\nA shudder in the loins engenders there\r\nThe broken wall, the burning roof and tower[footnote]References events of the Trojan War.[\/footnote]\r\nAnd Agamemnon dead.\r\n\r\nBeing so caught up,\r\nSo mastered by the brute blood of the air,\r\nDid she put on his knowledge with his power\r\nBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Sailing to Byzantium\"[footnote]In A Vision, the book wherein he outlines his personal philosophy, Yeats identified sixth-century Byzantium (present-day Istanbul in Turkey) as his idea of Utopia. The unity of purpose among citizens from all walks of life to create a city that revealed their reverence for art, poetry, music, and architecture was, for Yeats, a model all nations, especially Ireland, should follow.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            IThat[footnote]Ireland.[\/footnote] is no country for old men. The young\r\nIn one another's arms, birds in the trees\r\n\u2014 Those dying generations \u2014 at their song,\r\nThe salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,\r\nFish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long\r\nWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.\r\nCaught in that sensual music all neglect\r\nMonuments of unageing intellect.\r\n\r\nII\r\n\r\nAn aged man is but a paltry thing,\r\nA tattered coat upon a stick, unless\r\nSoul clap its hands and sing,[footnote]One of Yeats\u2019s favourite poets was William Blake (1757-1827), who claimed he saw the soul of a brother who had just died, rise out of his body and ascend to heaven, clapping its hands for joy as it did so. Here Yeats says old age is \u201ca paltry thing\u201d unless we can renew our spirit.[\/footnote] and louder sing\r\nFor every tatter in its mortal dress,\r\nNor is there singing school but studying\r\nMonuments of its own magnificence;\r\nAnd therefore I have sailed the seas and come\r\nTo the holy city of Byzantium.\r\n\r\nIII\r\n\r\nO sages standing in God's holy fire\r\nAs in the gold mosaic of a wall,\r\nCome from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,[footnote]To \u201cperne\u201d means to spin; the gyre is the ever-widening spiral, Yeats's favourite symbol of the progress of life and civilization. The \u201csages\u201d on the Byzantium mosaics approach the poet in this manner to symbolize his spiritual rebirth.[\/footnote]\r\nAnd be the singing-masters of my soul.\r\nConsume my heart away; sick with desire\r\nAnd fastened to a dying animal\r\nIt knows not what it is; and gather me\r\nInto the artifice of eternity.\r\n\r\nIV\r\n\r\nOnce out Of nature I shall never take\r\nMy bodily form from any natural thing,\r\nBut such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make\r\nOf hammered gold and gold enamelling[footnote]In Yeats\u2019s own note to this poem, he references the golden mechanical birds which sat in a tree in the emperor\u2019s palace in Byzantium and sang. Yeats wants to be reincarnated as one of these birds, to end the cycle of birth and rebirth, once he is \u201cOut of nature.\u201d The singing echoes his own profession as a poet.[\/footnote]\r\nTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;\r\nOr set upon a golden bough to sing\r\nTo lords and ladies of Byzantium\r\nOf what is past, or passing, or to come.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Among School Children\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            II walk through the long schoolroom questioning;\r\nA kind old nun in a white hood replies;\r\nThe children learn to cipher and to sing,\r\nTo study reading-books and histories,\r\nTo cut and sew, be neat in everything\r\nIn the best modern way \u2014 the children's eyes\r\nIn momentary wonder stare upon\r\nA sixty-year-old smiling public man.[footnote]Yeats was a politician when he wrote the poem, a senator in the Irish Free State. The inspiration for this poem was an official visit he made to a school in Waterford in 1926.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nII\r\n\r\nI dream of a Ledaean[footnote]Maud Gonne, who was to Yeats the reincarnation of Helen of Troy, the \u201cLedaean body,\u201d in that her mother was Leda. See notes to \u201cLeda and the Swan.\u201d[\/footnote] body, bent\r\nAbove a sinking fire, a tale that she\r\nTold of a harsh reproof, or trivial event\r\nThat changed some childish day to tragedy \u2014\r\nTold, and it seemed that our two natures blent\r\nInto a sphere from youthful sympathy,\r\nOr else, to alter Plato's[footnote]The reference is to Greek philosopher Plato\u2019s Symposium, the parable being that the primitive human was spherical, like an egg, divided in the process of evolution. Love is the desire to form the sphere again.[\/footnote] parable,\r\nInto the yolk and white of the one shell.\r\n\r\nIII\r\n\r\nAnd thinking of that fit of grief or rage\r\nI look upon one child or t'other there\r\nAnd wonder if she stood so at that age \u2014\r\nFor even daughters of the swan can share\r\nSomething of every paddler's heritage \u2014\r\nAnd had that colour upon cheek or hair,\r\nAnd thereupon my heart is driven wild:\r\nShe stands before me as a living child.\r\n\r\nIV\r\n\r\nHer present image floats into the mind \u2014\r\nDid Quattrocento[footnote]Some 15th-century (\u201cQuattrocento\u201d) Italian painters painted women in the anorexic way Maud now appears to Yeats.[\/footnote] finger fashion it\r\nHollow of cheek as though it drank the wind\r\nAnd took a mess of shadows for its meat?\r\nAnd I though never of Ledaean kind\r\nHad pretty plumage once \u2014 enough of that,\r\nBetter to smile on all that smile, and show\r\nThere is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.\r\n\r\nV\r\n\r\nWhat youthful mother, a shape upon her lap\r\nHoney of generation[footnote]The neo-Platonic philosopher, Porphyry, believed that an ambrosia, honey-like drug was released at birth, and if the infant tasted it, he or she would forget about the bliss of prenatal happiness; but if he or she did not taste it, the infant would be condemned to a sad life because he or she would always search for the unattainable happiness of a previous life.[\/footnote] had betrayed,\r\nAnd that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape\r\nAs recollection or the drug decide,\r\nWould think her Son, did she but see that shape\r\nWith sixty or more winters on its head,\r\nA compensation for the pang of his birth,\r\nOr the uncertainty of his setting forth?\r\n\r\nVI\r\n\r\nPlato thought nature but a spume[footnote]Froth; insubstantial matter, in contrast, in Plato\u2019s view, to a real substantial ideal world, a \u201cparadigm of things.\u201d[\/footnote] that plays\r\nUpon a ghostly paradigm of things;\r\nSolider Aristotle[footnote]Aristotle was \u201csolider\u201d in that he believed the physical world we experience is the real world, not the \u201cspume\u201d Plato believed it was.[\/footnote] played the taws\r\nUpon the bottom of a king of kings;[footnote]Alexander the Great (356 \u2013 323 BC), leader of the Greek confederation, student of Aristotle who strapped him, \u201cplayed the taws,\u201d when he needed discipline.[\/footnote]\r\nWorld-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras[footnote]Greek philosopher, venerated by his followers who thought he had a golden thigh, the sign of a god. He believed that the beauty of music reflected a universal harmony.[\/footnote]\r\nFingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings\r\nWhat a star sang and careless Muses heard:\r\nOld clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.\r\n\r\nVII\r\n\r\nBoth nuns and mothers worship images,\r\nBut those the candles light are not as those\r\nThat animate a mother's reveries,\r\nBut keep a marble or a bronze repose.\r\nAnd yet they too break hearts \u2014 O presences\r\nThat passion, piety or affection knows,\r\nAnd that all heavenly glory symbolise \u2014\r\nO self-born mockers of man's enterprise;\r\n\r\nVIII\r\n\r\nLabour is blossoming or dancing where\r\nThe body is not bruised to pleasure soul.\r\nNor beauty born out of its own despair,\r\nNor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.\r\nO chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,\r\nAre you the leaf, the blossom or the bole[footnote]Stem or trunk.[\/footnote]?\r\nO body swayed to music, O brightening glance,\r\nHow can we know the dancer from the dance?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Byzantium\"[footnote]In \u201cSailing to Byzantium,\u201d written four years earlier in 1926, Yeats expresses his desire to be reincarnated as a work of art, a golden bird, living in sixth-century Byzantium (now Istanbul), his ideal city. In this poem, he imagines he has achieved his dream, and he watches as other souls are purified.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            The unpurged images of day recede;\r\nThe Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;\r\nNight resonance recedes, night walkers' song\r\nAfter great cathedral gong;\r\nA starlit or a moonlit dome[footnote]Of the sprawling Greek Orthodox basilica, St. Sophia (now a museum).[\/footnote] disdains\r\nAll that man is,\r\nAll mere complexities,\r\nThe fury and the mire of human veins.Before me floats an image, man or shade,\r\nShade more than man, more image than a shade;\r\nFor Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth\r\nMay unwind the winding path;[footnote]After death, when the soul is in Hades (the underworld), the bobbin or spool or gyre of life may unwind, in preparation to enter the realm of pure spirit.[\/footnote]\r\nA mouth that has no moisture and no breath\r\nBreathless mouths may summon;\r\nI hail the superhuman;\r\nI call it death-in-life and life-in-death.\r\n\r\nMiracle, bird or golden handiwork,\r\nMore miracle than bird or handiwork,\r\nPlanted on the star-lit golden bough,\r\nCan like the cocks of Hades crow,[footnote]To announce a reincarnation.[\/footnote]\r\nOr, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud\r\nIn glory of changeless metal\r\nCommon bird or petal\r\nAnd all complexities of mire or blood.\r\n\r\nAt midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit\r\nFlames that no faggot[footnote]A bundle of sticks tied together, used to fuel fire.[\/footnote] feeds, nor steel has lit,\r\nNor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,\r\nWhere blood-begotten spirits come\r\nAnd all complexities of fury leave,\r\nDying into a dance,\r\nAn agony of trance,\r\nAn agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.[footnote]Here Yeats describes the ritual process whereby the mortal soul is purified to render it immortal.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nAstraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,\r\nSpirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.\r\nThe golden smithies of the Emperor![footnote]Overwhelmed by the number of sprits who come on the backs of dolphins, which in Greek mythology carried souls to the Isles of the Blessed, the goldsmiths call a halt to the purification process, unable to accommodate any more, for now.[\/footnote]\r\nMarbles of the dancing floor\r\nBreak bitter furies of complexity,\r\nThose images that yet\r\nFresh images beget,\r\nThat dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented[footnote]From the ringing of the gong, the funeral bell.[\/footnote] sea.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop\"[footnote]Between 1929 and 1932, Yeats wrote seven poems featuring the wisdom of an old peasant woman who lived in Galway.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            I met the Bishop on the road\r\nAnd much said he and I.\r\n'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,\r\nThose veins must soon be dry;\r\nLive in a heavenly mansion,\r\nNot in some foul sty.''Fair and foul are near of kin,\r\nAnd fair needs foul,' I cried.\r\n'My friends are gone, but that's a truth\r\nNor grave nor bed denied,\r\nLearned in bodily lowliness\r\nAnd in the heart's pride.\r\n\r\n'A woman can be proud and stiff\r\nWhen on love intent;\r\nBut Love has pitched his mansion in\r\nThe place of excrement;\r\nFor nothing can be sole or whole\r\nThat has not been rent.'\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                            \"The Circus Animals' Desertion\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                            II sought a theme and sought for it in vain,\r\nI sought it daily for six weeks or so.\r\nMaybe at last, being but a broken man,\r\nI must be satisfied with my heart, although\r\nWinter and summer till old age began\r\nMy circus animals were all on show,\r\nThose stilted boys, that burnished chariot,\r\nLion and woman and the Lord knows what.\r\n\r\nII\r\n\r\nWhat can I but enumerate old themes?\r\nFirst that sea-rider Oisin[footnote]Pronounced \u201cUsheen,\u201d Oisin was a hero in Irish mythology, a warrior poet, and the subject of Yeats\u2019s early epic poem, The Wanderings of Oisin.[\/footnote] led by the nose\r\nThrough three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,\r\nVain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,\r\nThemes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,\r\nThat might adorn old songs or courtly shows;\r\nBut what cared I that set him on to ride,\r\nI, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?\r\n\r\nAnd then a counter-truth filled out its play,\r\n'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;\r\nShe, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,\r\nBut masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.\r\nI thought my dear[footnote]Maud Gonne, who starred not in Yeats play The Countess Cathleen, but in his 1902 play Cathleen ni Houlihan. She hated the British and was, indeed, a fanatical and active opponent of their rule in Ireland.[\/footnote] must her own soul destroy,\r\nSo did fanaticism and hate enslave it,\r\nAnd this brought forth a dream and soon enough\r\nThis dream itself had all my thought and love.\r\n\r\nAnd when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread\r\nCuchulain[footnote]A hero in Irish mythology, and a recurring character in several of Yeats\u2019s plays and poems.[\/footnote] fought the ungovernable sea;\r\nHeart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said\r\nIt was the dream itself enchanted me:\r\nCharacter isolated by a deed\r\nTo engross the present and dominate memory.\r\nPlayers and painted stage took all my love,\r\nAnd not those things that they were emblems of.\r\n\r\nIII\r\n\r\nThose masterful images because complete\r\nGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?\r\nA mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,\r\nOld kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,\r\nOld iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut\r\nWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,\r\nI must lie down where all the ladders start\r\nIn the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
                                                            \r\n

                                                            Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                            \r\n

                                                            \"The Lake Isle of Innisfree\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                              \r\n \t
                                                            1. How would you describe the tone, the voice, and the mood of this poem?\u00a0 Is it melancholy, enthusiastic, or some point between?\u00a0How does Yeats achieve this tone?\u00a0How does it complement his theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                            2. What is alliteration (cf. Glossary)?\u00a0Find an example in \u201cLake Isle\u201d and comment on its effect.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                            3. Determine the poem\u2019s rhythm (cf. Glossary) and rhyme scheme (cf. Glossary) and assess their effect on theme.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                              \"No Second Troy\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                \r\n \t
                                                              1. How do you interpret the last line of this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                              2. Why is this poem almost, but not quite, a Shakespearean sonnet (cf. Glossary)?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                              3. What does this poem reveal about Yeats\u2019s attitude to Maud, who was married to another man, when Yeats wrote this poem?\u00a0 Does he love her still? Dislike her? Resent her?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                \"Easter, 1916\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                  \r\n \t
                                                                1. The rhythm of this poem is unusual, basically uneven iambic trimetre (cf. Glossary).\u00a0Why do you think Yeats used this rhythm for this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                2. Explain the meaning of the poem\u2019s famous refrain, \u201cA terrible beauty is born.\u201d\u00a0Reveal in your answer the type of figurative language exemplified in the phrase \u201ca terrible beauty.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                3. \u201cEaster, 1916\u201d presupposes a considerable knowledge of historical and biographical context.\u00a0Does the need for this knowledge add to or take away from the poem\u2019s intensity?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                  \"A Prayer for My Daughter\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                    \r\n \t
                                                                  1. What are the character traits and the outlook on life Yeats hopes his daughter will possess?\u00a0 How does Yeats\u2019s relationship with Maud Gonne influence his hopes?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                  2. Why is there a \u201cgreat gloom\u201d in Yeats\u2019s mind, as he writes this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                  3. \u201cA Prayer for My Daughter\u201d is a regular verse poem, mainly iambic pentameter, with an aabbcddc rhyme scheme.\u00a0Note that in lines 6 and 7 of each stanza (after the first) Yeats switches to iambic tetrameter.\u00a0What effect does this switch have on theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                    \"Leda and the Swan\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                      \r\n \t
                                                                    1. What are three features of the form and structure of \u201cLeda and the Swan\u201d that identify it as a sonnet (cf. Glossary)?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                    2. What, in the Christian faith, is the Annunciation, and how and why does Yeats connect the Annunciation to the events he describes in this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                    3. Express in your own words the meaning of the question with which the sonnet concludes.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                      \"Sailing to Byzantium\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                        \r\n \t
                                                                      1. Note the rhyme scheme (cf. Glossary) of this poem. It is regular, but Yeats makes extensive use of half rhyme (cf. Glossary).\u00a0What is the effect of this use of half rhyme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                      2. Review Yeats\u2019s biography and determine why he expresses disappointment in his native Ireland at the beginning of this poem.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                      3. The desire to transcend death is a common poetic theme.\u00a0How does Yeats render this theme in \u201cSailing to Byzantium\u201d? How does he hope to transcend death?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                        \"Among School Children\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                          \r\n \t
                                                                        1. In \u201cAmong School Children,\u201d Yeats seeks common ground among apparently disparate, things, people, and ideas: nuns, mothers, and philosophers; Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras; leaf, blossom, and bole; music, dancer, and dance.\u00a0 How does this search for a unity of purpose influence the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                        2. An understanding of this poem presupposes so much reader prior knowledge of the poet\u2019s life and of philosophy and mythology. What are the benefits and the drawbacks this presupposition?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                        3. The verse form of the poem is Ottava rima (cf. Glossary).\u00a0Why might Yeats have chosen this form for this poem?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                          \"Byzantium\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                            \r\n \t
                                                                          1. Is \u201cByzantium\u201d a regular verse or a free verse poem (cf. Glossary)?\u00a0Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                          2. What is it that Yeats, now reincarnated as a golden bird, witnesses from his perch on the golden bough of the Emperor\u2019s palace? What are his mood and emotions as he witnesses the transformation?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                          3. The desire that Yeats expresses in \u201cSailing to Byzantium\u201d and its fulfillment in \u201cByzantium\u201d has been described by some as visionary and by others as eccentric.\u00a0How would you describe the goal, expressed in these poems, Yeats wants to achieve?\u00a0Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                            \"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                              \r\n \t
                                                                            1. What is satire (cf. Glossary)?\u00a0In what sense is \u201cCrazy Jane\u201d a satiric poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                            2. The poem is framed as a debate between Jane and a bishop.\u00a0What argument does Jane advance to win the debate?\u00a0Do you support hers or the bishop\u2019s argument?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                            3. The poem is a first-person narrative, written in modified ballad stanzas (cf. Glossary).\u00a0Why might Yeats have chosen this form for this poem?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                              \"The Circus Animals' Desperation\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                \r\n \t
                                                                              1. What fear does Yeats express in this poem?\u00a0How will he overcome this fear?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                              2. How might readers know, without referring to Yeats\u2019s biography, that this is one of his\u00a0last poems?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                              3. Explain the famous metaphor with which this poem concludes.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                Rudyard Kipling (1865\u20131936)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                \"Fuzzy Wuzzy\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                Soudan Expeditionary force. Early campaignWe've fought with many men acrost the seas,\r\nAn' some of 'em was brave an' some was not.\r\nThe Paythan[footnote]Pathans, people on the northwest frontier of India.[\/footnote]\u00a0an' the Zulu an' Burmese;\r\nBut the Fuzzy[footnote]Sudanese followers of the Mahdi, so called because of their frizzled hair (Durand, Ralph. A Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling<\/em> [London: 1914]).[\/footnote]\u00a0was the finest o' the lot.\r\nWe never got a ha\u2019porth\u2019s[footnote]A halfpenny\u2019s worth.[\/footnote]\u00a0change of 'im:\r\n'E squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses,\r\n'E cut our sentries up at Suakim[footnote]A port in northeast Sudan on the Red Sea, it was the headquarters of British and Egyptian troops operating in the eastern Sudan against the dervishes in 1884 (Durand, 22).[\/footnote],\r\nAn' 'e played the cat an' banjo with our forces.\r\nSo 'ere's to<\/em> you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;\r\nYou're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;\r\nWe gives you your certificate, an' if you want it signed\r\nWe'll come an' 'ave a romp with you whenever you're inclined.\r\n\r\nWe took our chanst among the Kyber\u2019ills[footnote]Khyber Mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.[\/footnote],\r\nThe Boers[footnote]Dutch-speaking settlers in South Africa who fought against the British in the Boer Wars.[\/footnote]\u00a0knocked us silly at a mile,\r\nThe Burman give us Irriwady chills[footnote]In the Burmese campaign, the British forces came down with malaria near the Irrawady River.[\/footnote],\r\nAn' a Zulu impi<\/em>[footnote]A regiment of the Zulus, a Bantu ethnic group in South Africa.[\/footnote]\u00a0dished us up in style:\r\nBut all we ever got from such as they\r\nWas pop[footnote]Ginger beer.[\/footnote]\u00a0to what the Fuzzy made us swaller[footnote]Swallow.[\/footnote];\r\nWe 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say,\r\nBut man for man the Fuzzy knocked us 'oller.\r\nThen 'ere's to<\/em> you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' the missis and the kid;\r\nOur orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did.\r\nWe sloshed you with Martinis[footnote]A rifle in general use in the British Army from 1871-1888.[\/footnote], an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;\r\nBut for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square[footnote]In 1884, near Tamai, the Sudanese army broke into the first British brigade square (a formation of soldiers) and \u201ctemporarily captured the naval guns\u201d (Durand, 23).[\/footnote].\r\n\r\n'E 'asn't got no papers of 'is own,\r\n'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards,\r\nSo we must certify the skill 'e's shown\r\nIn usin' of 'is long two-\u2018anded swords:\r\nWhen 'e's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush\r\nWith 'is coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear,\r\nAn 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush\r\nWill last an 'ealthy Tommy[footnote]Colloquial term for a British soldier.[\/footnote]\u00a0for a year.\r\nSo 'ere's to<\/em> you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' your friends which are no more,\r\nIf we 'adn't lost some messmates we would 'elp you to deplore;\r\nBut give an' take's the gospel, an' we'll call the bargain fair,\r\nFor if you 'ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square!\r\n\r\n'E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,\r\nAn', before we know, 'e's 'ackin' at our 'ead;\r\n'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive,\r\nAn' 'e's generally shammin'[footnote]Pretending.[\/footnote]\u00a0when 'e's dead.\r\n'E's a daisy[footnote]Good fellow.[\/footnote], 'e's a ducky[footnote]Nice chap.[\/footnote], 'e's a lamb[footnote]Darling.[\/footnote]!\r\n'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree[footnote]A drunken binge.[\/footnote],\r\n'E's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn\r\nFor a Regiment o' British Infantree!\r\nSo 'ere's to<\/em> you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;\r\nYou're a pore benighted 'eathen, but a first-class fightin' man;\r\nAn' 'ere's to<\/em> you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air\u2014\r\nYou big black boundin' beggar\u2014for you broke a British square!\r\n\r\n[The editor is indebted to Representative Poetry<\/em>, ed. Ian Lancashire for many of the notes to this poem].\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
                                                                                \r\n

                                                                                Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                \r\n
                                                                                  \r\n \t
                                                                                1. Who is the poem\u2019s speaker? Why would Kipling have chosen him to represent British presence in the Nile region?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                2. The term \u201cFuzzy-Wuzzy\u201d refers to the Sudanese Hadandoa tribesmen of the upper Nile, who charged into battle with their hair arranged to look as fearsome as possible. What is the effect of the speaker\u2019s use of this term? Of his reference to his enemy in the singular?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                3. What do we know about the speaker from his use of language?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                4. What attitudes are ascribed to the speaker as he says, \u201cWe\u2019ll come an\u2019 \u2018have romp with you whenever you\u2019re inclined\u201d? What other attitudes seemingly appropriate for a British soldier does he exhibit?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                5. On what grounds does the speaker respect his enemy? Are the Hadandoa expected to successfully defend their homeland? What are the implications of praising the tribesmen for breaking \u201ca British square\u201d (a reference to the victory of the Sudanese in the battle of Tamai, 1884)?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                6. How do the poem\u2019s stanza form and rhythms convey or complement its meaning?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                7. In reading this poem, what attitude toward the issue of imperialist wars is the Victorian reader expected to take?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                  Pauline Johnson (1861\u20131913)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                  \"The Song My Paddle Sings\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                  West wind, blow from your prairie nest,\r\nBlow from the mountains, blow from the west.\r\nThe sail is idle, the sailor too;\r\nO! wind of the west, we wait for you.\r\nBlow, blow!\r\nI have wooed you so,\r\nBut never a favour you bestow.\r\nYou rock your cradle the hills between,\r\nBut scorn to notice my white lateen.[footnote]A sail in the shape of a triangle.[\/footnote]I stow the sail, unship the mast:\r\nI wooed you long but my wooing's past;\r\nMy paddle will lull you into rest.\r\nO! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,\r\nSleep, sleep,\r\nBy your mountain steep,\r\nOr down where the prairie grasses sweep!\r\nNow fold in slumber your laggard wings,\r\nFor soft is the song my paddle sings.\r\n\r\nAugust is laughing across the sky,\r\nLaughing while paddle, canoe and I,\r\nDrift, drift,\r\nWhere the hills uplift\r\nOn either side of the current swift.\r\n\r\nThe river rolls in its rocky bed;\r\nMy paddle is plying its way ahead;\r\nDip, dip,\r\nWhile the waters flip\r\nIn foam as over their breast we slip.\r\n\r\nAnd oh, the river runs swifter now;\r\nThe eddies circle about my bow.\r\nSwirl, swirl!\r\nHow the ripples curl\r\nIn many a dangerous pool awhirl!\r\n\r\nAnd forward far the rapids roar,\r\nFretting their margin for evermore.\r\nDash, dash,\r\nWith a mighty crash,\r\nThey seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.\r\n\r\nBe strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!\r\nThe reckless waves you must plunge into.\r\nReel, reel.\r\nOn your trembling keel,\r\nBut never a fear my craft will feel.\r\n\r\nWe've raced the rapid, we're far ahead!\r\nThe river slips through its silent bed.\r\nSway, sway,\r\nAs the bubbles spray\r\nAnd fall in tinkling tunes away.\r\n\r\nAnd up on the hills against the sky,\r\nA fir tree rocking its lullaby,\r\nSwings, swings,\r\nIts emerald wings,\r\nSwelling the song that my paddle sings.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
                                                                                  \r\n

                                                                                  Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                  \r\n
                                                                                    \r\n \t
                                                                                  1. Why does the speaker \u201cstow the sail\u201d of her canoe?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                  2. What is the effect of the word repetition at the middle of each stanza?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                  3. What type of figurative language does Johnson use throughout this poem? What is its effect?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                  4. In what sense is \u201cThe Song My Paddle Sings\u201d a narrative poem? What elements of suspense are in the narrative?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                  5. Compare and contrast this poem with John Magee\u2019s \u201cHigh Flight\u201d and with Lampman\u2019s \u201cMorning on the Lievre.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                  6. Hear a musical version of \"The Song My Paddle Sings\"<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                    A.E. Housman (1859\u20131936)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                    \"Loveliest of Trees\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                    Loveliest of trees, the cherry now\r\nIs hung with bloom along the bough,\r\nAnd stands about the woodland ride\r\nWearing white for Eastertide.Now, of my threescore years and ten[footnote]Psalm 90:10 \u201cThe days of our years are threescore and ten....\u201d A score is 20, so threescore and ten is 70 years.[\/footnote],\r\nTwenty will not come again,\r\nAnd take from seventy springs a score,\r\nIt only leaves me fifty more.\r\n\r\nAnd since to look at things in bloom\r\nFifty springs are little room,\r\nAbout the woodlands I will go\r\nTo see the cherry hung with snow.\r\n

                                                                                    \"Is My Team Ploughing\"<\/h2>\r\n\"Is my team ploughing,\r\nThat I was used to drive\r\nAnd hear the harness jingle\r\nWhen I was man alive?\"\r\n\r\nAy, the horses trample,\r\nThe harness jingles now;\r\nNo change though you lie under\r\nThe land you used to plough.\r\n\r\n\"Is football playing\r\nAlong the river shore,\r\nWith lads to chase the leather,\r\nNow I stand up no more?\"\r\n\r\nAy, the ball is flying,\r\nThe lads play heart and soul;\r\nThe goal stands up, the keeper\r\nStands up to keep the goal.\r\n\r\n\"Is my girl happy,\r\nThat I thought hard to leave,\r\nAnd has she tired of weeping\r\nAs she lies down at eve?\"\r\n\r\nAy, she lies down lightly,\r\nShe lies not down to weep,\r\nYour girl is well contented.\r\nBe still, my lad, and sleep.\r\n\r\n\"Is my friend hearty,\r\nNow I am thin and pine,\r\nAnd has he found to sleep in\r\nA better bed than mine?\"\r\n\r\nYes, lad, I lie easy,\r\nI lie as lads would choose;\r\nI cheer a dead man's sweetheart,\r\nNever ask me whose.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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                                                                                    Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                    \r\n

                                                                                    \"Loveliest of Trees\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                      \r\n \t
                                                                                    1. How old is the speaker in the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                    2. What is the setting of the poem (i.e., time and place)?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                    3. What is the speaker\u2019s purpose in the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                    4. What is the significance of the word \u201cEastertide\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                    5. What kind of cycle is suggested by the second stanza, and how is this connected to Eastertide and nature?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                    6. What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                      \"Is My Team Ploughing\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                        \r\n \t
                                                                                      1. According to Thomas Hardy\u2019s widow, this was Hardy's favourite Housman poem. Compare it with Hardy\u2019s \u201cAh, Are You Digging on My Grave?\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                      2. Of the three kinds of irony \u2014 verbal, situational, and dramatic \u2014 which type do you find in this poem? Discuss.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                      3. View Ian Bostridge\u2019s rendition of Ralph Vaughan Williams\u2019s \u201cIs My Team Ploughing\u201d<\/a>. How does the singer emphasize the colloquy between the living and the dead?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                      4. Dr. Joseph Mersand, in his edition of A Shropshire Lad<\/i>, points out that Vaughan Williams cut stanzas 3 and 4, which prompted Housman\u2019s angry observation, \u201cHow would he like me to cut two bars of his music?\u201d (A Shropshire Lad<\/i>, p. 82). Which version, Housman\u2019s original or that of Vaughan Williams, do you prefer?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nRead \"Farewell to Barn and Stack\"<\/a> by A. E. Housman\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                        Thomas Hardy (1840\u20131928)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                        \"Drummer Hodge\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                        IThey throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest\r\nUncoffined - just as found:\r\nHis landmark is a kopje-crest[footnote]Afrikaans for \"small hill.\"[\/footnote]\r\nThat breaks the veldt[footnote]South African grassland.[\/footnote]\u00a0around;\r\nAnd foreign constellations west\r\nEach night above his mound.\r\n\r\nII\r\n\r\nYoung Hodge the Drummer never knew -\r\nFresh from his Wessex home -\r\nThe meaning of the broad Karoo[footnote]Semi-desert region of South Africa.[\/footnote],\r\nThe Bush, the dusty loam,\r\nAnd why uprose to nightly view\r\nStrange stars amid the gloam.\r\n\r\nIII\r\n\r\nYet portion of that unknown plain\r\nWill Hodge forever be;\r\nHis homely Northern breast and brain\r\nGrow to some Southern tree,\r\nAnd strange-eyed constellations reign\r\nHis stars eternally.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                        \"The Ruined Maid\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                        \"O 'Melia[footnote]Short and familiar form of Amelia.[\/footnote], my dear, this does everything crown!\r\nWho could have supposed I should meet you in Town?\r\nAnd whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?\" \u2014\r\n\"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?\" said she.\u2014 \"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,\r\nTired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks[footnote]Weeds.[\/footnote];\r\nAnd now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!\" \u2014\r\n\"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined,\" said she.\r\n\r\n\u2014 \"At home in the barton[footnote]Farmyard.[\/footnote]\u00a0you said thee' and thou,'\r\nAnd thik oon,' and the\u00e4s oon,' and t'other'; but now\r\nYour talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!\" \u2014\r\n\"Some polish is gained with one's ruin,\" said she.\r\n\r\n\u2014 \"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak\r\nBut now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,\r\nAnd your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!\" \u2014\r\n\"We never do work when we're ruined,\" said she.\r\n\r\n\u2014 \"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,\r\nAnd you'd sigh, and you'd sock[footnote]Sigh.[\/footnote]; but at present you seem\r\nTo know not of megrims[footnote]Low spirits.[\/footnote]\u00a0or melancho-ly!\" \u2014\r\n\"True. One's pretty lively when ruined,\" said she.\r\n\r\n\u2014 \"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,\r\nAnd a delicate face, and could strut about Town!\" \u2014\r\n\"My dear \u2014 a raw country girl, such as you be,\r\nCannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined,\" said she.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                        \"The Convergence of the Twain\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                        (Lines on the loss of the <\/i>Titanic)<\/i>I\r\n\r\nIn a solitude of the sea\r\nDeep from human vanity,\r\nAnd the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.\r\n\r\nII\r\n\r\nSteel chambers, late the pyres\r\nOf her salamandrine fires,\r\nCold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.\r\n\r\nIII\r\n\r\nOver the mirrors meant\r\nTo glass the opulent\r\nThe sea-worm crawls \u2014 grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.\r\n\r\nIV\r\n\r\nJewels in joy designed\r\nTo ravish the sensuous mind\r\nLie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.\r\n\r\nV\r\n\r\nDim moon-eyed fishes near\r\nGaze at the gilded gear\r\nAnd query: \"What does this vaingloriousness down here?\" ...\r\n\r\nVI\r\n\r\nWell: while was fashioning\r\nThis creature of cleaving wing,\r\nThe Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything\r\n\r\nVII\r\n\r\nPrepared a sinister mate\r\nFor her \u2014 so gaily great \u2014\r\nA Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.\r\n\r\nVIII\r\n\r\nAnd as the smart ship grew\r\nIn stature, grace, and hue,\r\nIn shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.\r\n\r\nIX\r\n\r\nAlien they seemed to be;\r\nNo mortal eye could see\r\nThe intimate welding of their later history,\r\n\r\nX\r\n\r\nOr sign that they were bent\r\nBy paths coincident\r\nOn being anon twin halves of one august event,\r\n\r\nXI\r\n\r\nTill the Spinner of the Years\r\nSaid \"Now!\" And each one hears,\r\nAnd consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.\r\n

                                                                                        \"Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave\"<\/h2>\r\n\"Ah, are you digging on my grave,\r\nMy loved one? \u2014 planting rue[footnote]A strong-scented, woody herb. Also, sorrow, regret.[\/footnote]?\"\r\n\u2014 \"No: yesterday he went to wed\r\nOne of the brightest wealth has bred.\r\n'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,\r\n'That I should not be true.'\"\r\n\r\n\"Then who is digging on my grave,\r\nMy nearest dearest kin?\"\r\n\u2014 \"Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!\r\nWhat good will planting flowers produce?\r\nNo tendance of her mound can loose\r\nHer spirit from Death's gin[footnote]A trap.[\/footnote].'\"\r\n\r\n\"But someone digs upon my grave?\r\nMy enemy? \u2014 prodding sly?\"\r\n\u2014 \"Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate\r\nThat shuts on all flesh soon or late,\r\nShe thought you no more worth her hate,\r\nAnd cares not where you lie.\r\n\r\n\"Then, who is digging on my grave?\r\nSay \u2014 since I have not guessed!\"\r\n\u2014 \"O it is I, my mistress dear,\r\nYour little dog , who still lives near,\r\nAnd much I hope my movements here\r\nHave not disturbed your rest?\"\r\n\r\n\"Ah yes! You<\/i> dig upon my grave...\r\nWhy flashed it not to me\r\nThat one true heart was left behind!\r\nWhat feeling do we ever find\r\nTo equal among human kind\r\nA dog's fidelity!\"\r\n\r\n\"Mistress, I dug upon your grave\r\nTo bury a bone, in case\r\nI should be hungry near this spot\r\nWhen passing on my daily trot.\r\nI am sorry, but I quite forgot\r\nIt was your resting place.\"\r\n

                                                                                        \"Channel Firing\"[footnote]The title refers to gunnery practice in the English Channel in April 1914. World War I began on August 4, 1914.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\nThat night your great guns, unawares,\r\nShook all our coffins as we lay,\r\nAnd broke the chancel[footnote]Part of the church nearest the altar.[\/footnote]\u00a0window-squares,\r\nWe thought it was the Judgment-day\r\n\r\nAnd sat upright. While drearisome\r\nArose the howl of wakened hounds:\r\nThe mouse let fall the altar-crumb,\r\nThe worms drew back into the mounds,\r\n\r\nThe glebe[footnote]A portion of land assigned to a clergyman as part of his benefice.[\/footnote]\u00a0cow drooled. Till God called, \u201cNo;\r\nIt\u2019s gunnery practice out at sea\r\nJust as before you went below;\r\nThe world is as it used to be:\r\n\r\n\u201cAll nations striving strong to make\r\nRed war yet redder. Mad as hatters\r\nThey do no more for Christ\u00e9s sake\r\nThan you who are helpless in such matters.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat this is not the judgment-hour\r\nFor some of them\u2019s a blessed thing,\r\nFor if it were they\u2019d have to scour\r\nHell\u2019s floor for so much threatening....\r\n\r\n\u201cHa, ha. It will be warmer when\r\nI blow the trumpet (if indeed\r\nI ever do; for you are men,\r\nAnd rest eternal sorely need).\u201d\r\n\r\nSo down we lay again. \u201cI wonder,\r\nWill the world ever saner be,\u201d\r\nSaid one, \u201cthan when He sent us under\r\nIn our indifferent century!\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd many a skeleton shook his head.\r\n\u201cInstead of preaching forty year,\u201d\r\nMy neighbour Parson Thirdly said,\r\n\u201cI wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.\u201d\r\n\r\nAgain the guns disturbed the hour,\r\nRoaring their readiness to avenge,\r\nAs far inland as Stourton Tower[footnote]King Alfred\u2019s Tower was built near Stourton in the county of Wiltshire, to celebrate a victory by the Saxon, King Alfred, over the Danes in AD 878. Camelot was the legendary site of King Arthur\u2019s court, and Stonehenge is the site of the prehistoric stone circle at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.\r\n

                                                                                        \"The Man He Killed\"<\/h2>\r\n\"Had he and I but met\r\nBy some old ancient inn,\r\nWe should have sat us down to wet\r\nRight many a nipperkin!\r\n\r\n\"But ranged as infantry,\r\nAnd staring face to face,\r\nI shot at him as he at me,\r\nAnd killed him in his place.\r\n\r\n\"I shot him dead because \u2014\r\nBecause he was my foe,\r\nJust so: my foe of course he was;\r\nThat's clear enough; although\r\n\r\n\"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,\r\nOff-hand like \u2014 just as I \u2014\r\nWas out of work \u2014 had sold his traps \u2014\r\nNo other reason why.\r\n\r\n\"Yes; quaint and curious war is!\r\nYou shoot a fellow down\r\nYou'd treat if met where any bar is,\r\nOr help to half-a-crown.\"\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
                                                                                        \r\n

                                                                                        Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                                                                                        \"Drummer Hodge\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                          \r\n \t
                                                                                        1. What place and what war make up the setting?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                        2. Compare the point of stanza 3 to a similar point made in Rupert Brooke\u2019s \u201cThe Soldier.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                          \"The Ruined Maid\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                            \r\n \t
                                                                                          1. What are some meanings of the word \u201cruined\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                          2. Look up the word \u201cmaid.\u201d What does the word mean in the title?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                          3. Describe the structure:\u00a0the number of\u00a0speakers, the use of dashes, who speaks first, who speaks last.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                          4. Describe the two former co-workers.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                          5. Can you distinguish between the two women\u2019s speech patterns?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                          6. What is the main irony?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                            \"The Convergence of the Twain\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                              \r\n \t
                                                                                            1. In what year did the Titanic<\/i> sink?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            2. Define both nouns in the title.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            3. Paraphrase the first stanza, placing the grammatical subject at the beginning of the sentence.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            4. Who is guilty of pride?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            5. How does alliteration emphasize theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            6. How is the deity depicted? How is the deity depicted in \u201cLet Me Enjoy\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            7. What is the \"creature of cleaving wing\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                            8. Clarify the marriage metaphor in the poem.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                              \"Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                \r\n \t
                                                                                              1. Clarify the major irony and its type in this poem.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                              2. Compare this poem with Housman\u2019s \u201cIs My Team Ploughing?\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                                \"Channel Firing\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                  \r\n \t
                                                                                                1. To what promised biblical event does the poem refer?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                2. Who is the speaker?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                3. How does Hardy use humour to make serious points about war?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                4. How is this a pessimistic poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                5. Discuss the thematic significance of the three places mentioned in the last two lines.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                                  \"The Man He Killed\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                    \r\n \t
                                                                                                  1. Comment on how the speaker\u2019s diction characterizes him.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                  2. Why did the soldier enlist?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                  3. Give specific examples of irony in the third stanza and final stanzas. What are the denotations of \u201cquaint\u201d and \u201ccurious\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                  4. How does Hardy\u2019s use of dashes affect the metre and theme?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                    Archibald Lampman (1861\u20131899)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                    \"Morning on the Lievre\"[footnote]The Lievre is a tributary, flowing into the Ottawa River, about 97 kilometers north of Ottawa. A camping trip with fellow poet Duncan Campbell Scott inspired Lampman to write this poem.[\/footnote]<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                    Far above us where a jay\r\nScreams his matins[footnote]A morning prayer, especially in the Anglican Church.\u00a0 Lampman\u2019s father was an Anglican minister.[\/footnote] to the day,\r\nCapped with gold and amethyst,[footnote]A precious stone, violet or purple in colour.[\/footnote]\r\nLike a vapor from the forge\r\nOf a giant somewhere hid,\r\nOut of hearing of the clang\r\nOf his hammer, skirts of mist\r\nSlowly up the woody gorge\r\nLift and hang.Softly as a cloud we go,\r\nSky above and sky below,\r\nDown the river; and the dip\r\nOf the paddles scarcely breaks,\r\nWith the little silvery drip\r\nOf the water as it shakes\r\nFrom the blades, the crystal deep\r\nOf the silence of the morn,\r\nOf the forest yet asleep;\r\nAnd the river reaches borne\r\nIn a mirror, purple gray,\r\nSheer away\r\nTo the misty line of light,\r\nWhere the forest and the stream\r\nIn the shadow meet and plight,\r\nLike a dream.\r\n\r\nFrom amid a stretch of reeds,\r\nWhere the lazy river sucks\r\nAll the water as it bleeds\r\nFrom a little curling creek,\r\nAnd the muskrats peer and sneak\r\nIn around the sunken wrecks\r\nOf a tree that swept the skies\r\nLong ago,\r\nOn a sudden seven ducks\r\nWith a splashy rustle rise,\r\nStretching out their seven necks,\r\nOne before, and two behind,\r\nAnd the others all arow,\r\nAnd as steady as the wind\r\nWith a swivelling whistle go,\r\nThrough the purple shadow led,\r\nTill we only hear their whir\r\nIn behind a rocky spur[footnote]Here meaning a projection from the base of the mountain.[\/footnote],\r\nJust ahead.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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                                                                                                    Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                                    \r\n
                                                                                                      \r\n \t
                                                                                                    1. Compare this poem with two other poems you have studied about the effects of nature\u2019s beauty.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    2. How do we know this is a free verse poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    3. Identify a simile in the poem\u2019s first stanza. Is the simile appropriate and effective?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    4. What does the poet mean by \u201csky below,\u201d in the second stanza?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    5. What is the tone, the mood, the voice of this poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    6. What is the effect of the alliteration in the final stanza?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                    7. Watch the film the National Film Board of Canada made of \"Morning on the Lievre\"<\/a>. Does the film enhance your appreciation of the poem? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                      Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844\u20131889)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                      \"God's Grandeur\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                      The world is charged with the grandeur of God.\r\nIt will flame out, like shining from shook foil;\r\nIt gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil[footnote]Likely olive oil, a sacramental oil in the Catholic faith. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest.[\/footnote]\r\nCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod[footnote]Obey God\u2019s commands.[\/footnote]?\r\nGenerations have trod, have trod, have trod;\r\nAnd all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;\r\nAnd wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil\r\nIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;\r\nThere lives the dearest freshness deep down things;\r\nAnd though the last lights off the black West went\r\nOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs \u2014\r\nBecause the Holy Ghost[footnote]The Holy Spirit, the resurrected soul of Jesus.[\/footnote] over the bent\r\nWorld broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
                                                                                                      \r\n

                                                                                                      Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                                      \r\n
                                                                                                        \r\n \t
                                                                                                      1. Compare and contrast this sonnet with Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cThe World Is Too Much with Us.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                      2. To what extent does the theme of this poem, written in the middle of the 19th century hold true today?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                      3. Why, in the context of this poem, will humankind never destroy nature?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                      4. How does Hopkin\u2019s language, his style, reinforce humankind\u2019s relationship with the natural world, as the poet describes it in the poem\u2019s ocatave?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                        Christina Rossetti (1830\u20131894)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                        \"Goblin Market\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                        Morning and evening\r\nMaids heard the goblins cry:\r\n\"Come buy our orchard fruits,\r\nCome buy, come buy:\r\nApples and quinces,\r\nLemons and oranges,\r\nPlump unpecked cherries,\r\nMelons and raspberries,\r\nBloom-down-cheeked peaches,\r\nSwart-headed mulberries,\r\nWild free-born cranberries,\r\nCrab-apples, dewberries,\r\nPine-apples, blackberries,\r\nApricots, strawberries;\u2014\r\nAll ripe together\r\nIn summer weather,\u2014\r\nMorns that pass by,\r\nFair eves that fly;\r\nCome buy, come buy:\r\nOur grapes fresh from the vine,\r\nPomegranates full and fine,\r\nDates and sharp bullaces[footnote]Bullaces, greengages, damsons are all varieties of plum. A bilberry resembles a blueberry.[\/footnote],\r\nRare pears and greengages,\r\nDamsons and bilberries,\r\nTaste them and try:\r\nCurrants and gooseberries,\r\nBright-fire-like barberries[footnote]Oblong red berries of a barberry shrub.[\/footnote],\r\nFigs to fill your mouth,\r\nCitrons from the South,\r\nSweet to tongue and sound to eye;\r\nCome buy, come buy.\"Evening by evening\r\nAmong the brookside rushes,\r\nLaura bowed her head to hear,\r\nLizzie veiled her blushes:\r\nCrouching close together\r\nIn the cooling weather,\r\nWith clasping arms and cautioning lips,\r\nWith tingling cheeks and finger-tips.\r\n\"Lie close,\" Laura said,\r\nPricking up her golden head:\r\n\"We must not look at goblin men,\r\nWe must not buy their fruits:\r\nWho knows upon what soil they fed\r\nTheir hungry thirsty roots?\"\r\n\"Come buy,\" call the goblins\r\nHobbling down the glen.\r\n\"O,\" cried Lizzie, \"Laura, Laura,\r\nYou should not peep at goblin men.\"\r\nLizzie covered up her eyes,\r\nCovered close lest they should look;\r\nLaura reared her glossy head,\r\nAnd whispered like the restless brook:\r\n\"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,\r\nDown the glen tramp little men.\r\nOne hauls a basket,\r\nOne bears a plate,\r\nOne lugs a golden dish\r\nOf many pounds' weight.\r\nHow fair the vine must grow\r\nWhose grapes are so luscious;\r\nHow warm the wind must blow\r\nThrough those fruit bushes.\"\r\n\"No,\" said Lizzie, \"no, no, no;\r\nTheir offers should not charm us,\r\nTheir evil gifts would harm us.\"\r\nShe thrust a dimpled finger\r\nIn each ear, shut eyes and ran:\r\nCurious Laura chose to linger\r\nWondering at each merchant man.\r\nOne had a cat's face,\r\nOne whisked a tail,\r\nOne tramped at a rat's pace,\r\nOne crawled like a snail,\r\nOne like a wombat[footnote]A burrowing marsupial resembling a small bear.[\/footnote] prowled obtuse and furry,\r\nOne like a ratel[footnote]A nocturnal animal resembling a badger. Pronounced \u201cray-tell.\u201d[\/footnote] tumbled hurry-scurry.\r\nShe heard a voice like voice of doves\r\nCooing all together:\r\nThey sounded kind and full of loves\r\nIn the pleasant weather.\r\n\r\nLaura stretched her gleaming neck\r\nLike a rush-imbedded swan,\r\nLike a lily from the beck[footnote]A small brook.[\/footnote],\r\nLike a moonlit poplar branch,\r\nLike a vessel at the launch\r\nWhen its last restraint is gone.\r\n\r\nBackwards up the mossy glen\r\nTurned and trooped the goblin men,\r\nWith their shrill repeated cry,\r\n\"Come buy, come buy.\"\r\nWhen they reached where Laura was\r\nThey stood stock still upon the moss,\r\nLeering at each other,\r\nBrother with queer brother;\r\nSignalling each other,\r\nBrother with sly brother.\r\nOne set his basket down,\r\nOne reared his plate;\r\nOne began to weave a crown\r\nOf tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown\r\n(Men sell not such in any town);\r\nOne heaved the golden weight\r\nOf dish and fruit to offer her:\r\n\"Come buy, come buy,\" was still their cry.\r\nLaura stared but did not stir,\r\nLonged but had no money:\r\nThe whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste\r\nIn tones as smooth as honey,\r\nThe cat-faced purr'd,\r\nThe rat-paced spoke a word\r\nOf welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;\r\nOne parrot-voiced and jolly\r\nCried \"Pretty Goblin\" still for \"Pretty Polly\";\u2014\r\nOne whistled like a bird.\r\n\r\nBut sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:\r\n\"Good folk, I have no coin;\r\nTo take were to purloin:\r\nI have no copper in my purse,\r\nI have no silver either,\r\nAnd all my gold is on the furze\r\nThat shakes in windy weather\r\nAbove the rusty heather.\"\r\n\"You have much gold upon your head,\"\r\nThey answered altogether:\r\n\"Buy from us with a golden curl.\"\r\nShe clipped a precious golden lock,\r\nShe dropped a tear more rare than pearl,\r\nThen sucked their fruit globes fair or red:\r\nSweeter than honey from the rock[footnote]cf. Deuteronomy 32:13, \u201c...suck honey out of the rock.\u201d[\/footnote],\r\nStronger than man-rejoicing wine,\r\nClearer than water flowed that juice;\r\nShe never tasted such before,\r\nHow should it cloy with length of use?\r\nShe sucked and sucked and sucked the more\r\nFruits which that unknown orchard bore;\r\nShe sucked until her lips were sore;\r\nThen flung the emptied rinds away,\r\nBut gathered up one kernel stone,\r\nAnd knew not was it night or day\r\nAs she turned home alone.\r\nLizzie met her at the gate\r\nFull of wise upbraidings:\r\n\"Dear, you should not stay so late,\r\nTwilight is not good for maidens;\r\nShould not loiter in the glen\r\nIn the haunts of goblin men.\r\nDo you not remember Jeanie,\r\nHow she met them in the moonlight,\r\nTook their gifts both choice and many,\r\nAte their fruits and wore their flowers\r\nPlucked from bowers\r\nWhere summer ripens at all hours?\r\nBut ever in the noonlight\r\nShe pined and pined away;\r\nSought them by night and day,\r\nFound them no more, but dwindled and grew gray,\r\nThen fell with the first snow,\r\nWhile to this day no grass will grow\r\nWhere she lies low:\r\nI planted daisies there a year ago\r\nThat never blow.\r\nYou should not loiter so.\"\r\n\"Nay, hush,\" said Laura:\r\n\"Nay, hush, my sister:\r\nI ate and ate my fill,\r\nYet my mouth waters still;\r\nTo-morrow night I will\r\nBuy more,\"\u2014and kissed her.\r\n\"Have done with sorrow;\r\nI'll bring you plums to-morrow\r\nFresh on their mother twigs,\r\nCherries worth getting;\r\nYou cannot think what figs\r\nMy teeth have met in,\r\nWhat melons icy-cold\r\nPiled on a dish of gold\r\nToo huge for me to hold,\r\nWhat peaches with a velvet nap,\r\nPellucid grapes without one seed:\r\nOdorous indeed must be the mead\r\nWhereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink,\r\nWith lilies at the brink,\r\nAnd sugar-sweet their sap.\"\r\n\r\nGolden head by golden head,\r\nLike two pigeons in one nest\r\nFolded in each other's wings,\r\nThey lay down in their curtained bed:\r\nLike two blossoms on one stem,\r\nLike two flakes of new-fallen snow,\r\nLike two wands of ivory\r\nTipped with gold for awful kings.\r\nMoon and stars gazed in at them,\r\nWind sang to them lullaby,\r\nLumbering owls forbore to fly,\r\nNot a bat flapped to and fro\r\nRound their rest:\r\nCheek to cheek and breast to breast\r\nLocked together in one nest.\r\nEarly in the morning\r\nWhen the first cock crowed his warning,\r\nNeat like bees, as sweet and busy,\r\nLaura rose with Lizzie:\r\nFetched in honey, milked the cows,\r\nAired and set to rights the house,\r\nKneaded cakes of whitest wheat,\r\nCakes for dainty mouths to eat,\r\nNext churned butter, whipped up cream,\r\nFed their poultry, sat and sewed;\r\nTalked as modest maidens should:\r\nLizzie with an open heart,\r\nLaura in an absent dream,\r\nOne content, one sick in part;\r\nOne warbling for the mere bright day's delight,\r\nOne longing for the night.\r\n\r\nAt length slow evening came:\r\nThey went with pitchers to the reedy brook;\r\nLizzie most placid in her look,\r\nLaura most like a leaping flame.\r\nThey drew the gurgling water from its deep;\r\nLizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags[footnote]Irises.[\/footnote],\r\nThen turning homeward said: \"The sunset flushes\r\nThose furthest loftiest crags;\r\nCome, Laura, not another maiden lags,\r\nNo wilful squirrel wags,\r\nThe beasts and birds are fast asleep.\"\r\nBut Laura loitered still among the rushes\r\nAnd said the bank was steep.\r\nAnd said the hour was early still,\r\nThe dew not fallen, the wind not chill:\r\nListening ever, but not catching\r\nThe customary cry,\r\n\"Come buy, come buy,\"\r\nWith its iterated jingle\r\nOf sugar-baited words:\r\nNot for all her watching\r\nOnce discerning even one goblin\r\nRacing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;\r\nLet alone the herds\r\nThat used to tramp along the glen,\r\nIn groups or single,\r\nOf brisk fruit-merchant men.\r\n\r\nTill Lizzie urged: \"O Laura, come;\r\nI hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:\r\nYou should not loiter longer at this brook:\r\nCome with me home.\r\nThe stars rise, the moon bends her arc,\r\nEach glow-worm winks her spark,\r\nLet us get home before the night grows dark;\r\nFor clouds may gather\r\nThough this is summer weather,\r\nPut out the lights and drench us through;\r\nThen if we lost our way what should we do?\"\r\n\r\nLaura turned cold as stone\r\nTo find her sister heard that cry alone,\r\nThat goblin cry,\r\n\"Come buy our fruits, come buy.\"\r\nMust she then buy no more such dainty fruit?\r\nMust she no more such succous[footnote]Succulent.[\/footnote] pasture find,\r\nGone deaf and blind?\r\nHer tree of life drooped from the root:\r\nShe said not one word in her heart's sore ache;\r\nBut peering thro' the dimness, naught discerning,\r\nTrudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;\r\nSo crept to bed, and lay\r\nSilent till Lizzie slept;\r\nThen sat up in a passionate yearning,\r\nAnd gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept\r\nAs if her heart would break.\r\n\r\nDay after day, night after night,\r\nLaura kept watch in vain,\r\nIn sullen silence of exceeding pain.\r\nShe never caught again the goblin cry:\r\n\"Come buy, come buy\";\u2014\r\nShe never spied the goblin men\r\nHawking their fruits along the glen:\r\nBut when the noon waxed bright\r\nHer hair grew thin and gray;\r\nShe dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn\r\nTo swift decay, and burn\r\nHer fire away.\r\n\r\nOne day remembering her kernel-stone\r\nShe set it by a wall that faced the south;\r\nDewed it with tears, hoped for a root,\r\nWatched for a waxing shoot,\r\nBut there came none;\r\nIt never saw the sun,\r\nIt never felt the trickling moisture run:\r\nWhile with sunk eyes and faded mouth\r\nShe dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees\r\nFalse waves in desert drouth\r\nWith shade of leaf-crowned trees,\r\nAnd burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.\r\n\r\nShe no more swept the house,\r\nTended the fowls or cows,\r\nFetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,\r\nBrought water from the brook:\r\nBut sat down listless in the chimney-nook\r\nAnd would not eat.\r\n\r\nTender Lizzie could not bear\r\nTo watch her sister's cankerous care,\r\nYet not to share.\r\nShe night and morning\r\nCaught the goblins' cry:\r\n\"Come buy our orchard fruits,\r\nCome buy, come buy.\"\r\nBeside the brook, along the glen,\r\nShe heard the tramp of goblin men,\r\nThe voice and stir\r\nPoor Laura could not hear;\r\nLonged to buy fruit to comfort her,\r\nBut feared to pay too dear.\r\nShe thought of Jeanie in her grave,\r\nWho should have been a bride;\r\nBut who for joys brides hope to have\r\nFell sick and died\r\nIn her gay prime,\r\nIn earliest winter-time,\r\nWith the first glazing rime,\r\nWith the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.\r\n\r\nTill Laura, dwindling,\r\nSeemed knocking at Death's door:\r\nThen Lizzie weighed[footnote]Considered.[\/footnote] no more\r\nBetter and worse,\r\nBut put a silver penny in her purse,\r\nKissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze\r\nAt twilight, halted by the brook;\r\nAnd for the first time in her life\r\nBegan to listen and look.\r\n\r\nLaughed every goblin\r\nWhen they spied her peeping:\r\nCame towards her hobbling,\r\nFlying, running, leaping,\r\nPuffing and blowing,\r\nChuckling, clapping, crowing,\r\nClucking and gobbling,\r\nMopping and mowing,\r\nFull of airs and graces,\r\nPulling wry faces,\r\nDemure grimaces,\r\nCat-like and rat-like,\r\nRatel and wombat-like,\r\nSnail-paced in a hurry,\r\nParrot-voiced and whistler,\r\nHelter-skelter, hurry-skurry,\r\nChattering like magpies,\r\nFluttering like pigeons,\r\nGliding like fishes,\u2014\r\nHugged her and kissed her;\r\nSqueezed and caressed her;\r\nStretched up their dishes,\r\nPanniers and plates:\r\n\"Look at our apples\r\nRusset and dun,\r\nBob at our cherries,\r\nBite at our peaches,\r\nCitrons and dates,\r\nGrapes for the asking,\r\nPears red with basking\r\nOut in the sun,\r\nPlums on their twigs;\r\nPluck them and suck them,\r\nPomegranates, figs.\"\r\n\r\n\"Good folk,\" said Lizzie,\r\nMindful of Jeanie,\r\n\"Give me much and many\";\u2014\r\nHeld out her apron,\r\nTossed them her penny.\r\n\"Nay, take a seat with us,\r\nHonor and eat with us,\"\r\nThey answered grinning:\r\n\"Our feast is but beginning.\r\nNight yet is early,\r\nWarm and dew-pearly,\r\nWakeful and starry:\r\nSuch fruits as these\r\nNo man can carry;\r\nHalf their bloom would fly,\r\nHalf their dew would dry,\r\nHalf their flavor would pass by.\r\nSit down and feast with us,\r\nBe welcome guest with us,\r\nCheer you and rest with us.\"\r\n\"Thank you,\" said Lizzie; \"but one waits\r\nAt home alone for me:\r\nSo, without further parleying,\r\nIf you will not sell me any\r\nOf your fruits though much and many,\r\nGive me back my silver penny\r\nI tossed you for a fee.\"\r\nThey began to scratch their pates,\r\nNo longer wagging, purring,\r\nBut visibly demurring,\r\nGrunting and snarling.\r\nOne called her proud,\r\nCross-grained, uncivil;\r\nTheir tones waxed loud,\r\nTheir looks were evil.\r\nLashing their tails\r\nThey trod and hustled her,\r\nElbowed and jostled her,\r\nClawed with their nails,\r\nBarking, mewing, hissing, mocking,\r\nTore her gown and soiled her stocking,\r\nTwitched her hair out by the roots,\r\nStamped upon her tender feet,\r\nHeld her hands and squeezed their fruits\r\nAgainst her mouth to make her eat.\r\n\r\nWhite and golden Lizzie stood,\r\nLike a lily in a flood,\u2014\r\nLike a rock of blue-veined stone\r\nLashed by tides obstreperously,\u2014\r\nLike a beacon left alone\r\nIn a hoary roaring sea,\r\nSending up a golden fire,\u2014\r\nLike a fruit-crowned orange-tree\r\nWhite with blossoms honey-sweet\r\nSore beset by wasp and bee,\u2014\r\nLike a royal virgin town\r\nTopped with gilded dome and spire\r\nClose beleaguered by a fleet\r\nMad to tug her standard down.\r\n\r\nOne may lead a horse to water,\r\nTwenty cannot make him drink.\r\nThough the goblins cuffed and caught her,\r\nCoaxed and fought her,\r\nBullied and besought her,\r\nScratched her, pinched her black as ink,\r\nKicked and knocked her,\r\nMauled and mocked her,\r\nLizzie uttered not a word;\r\nWould not open lip from lip\r\nLest they should cram a mouthful in;\r\nBut laughed in heart to feel the drip\r\nOf juice that syrupped all her face,\r\nAnd lodged in dimples of her chin,\r\nAnd streaked her neck which quaked like curd.\r\nAt last the evil people,\r\nWorn out by her resistance,\r\nFlung back her penny, kicked their fruit\r\nAlong whichever road they took,\r\nNot leaving root or stone or shoot.\r\nSome writhed into the ground,\r\nSome dived into the brook\r\nWith ring and ripple,\r\nSome scudded on the gale without a sound,\r\nSome vanished in the distance.\r\n\r\nIn a smart, ache, tingle,\r\nLizzie went her way;\r\nKnew not was it night or day;\r\nSprang up the bank, tore through the furze,\r\nThreaded copse and dingle,\r\nAnd heard her penny jingle\r\nBouncing in her purse,\u2014\r\nIts bounce was music to her ear.\r\nShe ran and ran\r\nAs if she feared some goblin man\r\nDogged her with gibe or curse\r\nOr something worse:\r\nBut not one goblin skurried after,\r\nNor was she pricked by fear;\r\nThe kind heart made her windy-paced\r\nThat urged her home quite out of breath with haste\r\nAnd inward laughter.\r\n\r\nShe cried \"Laura,\" up the garden,\r\n\"Did you miss me?\r\nCome and kiss me.\r\nNever mind my bruises,\r\nHug me, kiss me, suck my juices\r\nSqueezed from goblin fruits for you,\r\nGoblin pulp and goblin dew.\r\nEat me, drink me, love me;\r\nLaura, make much of me:\r\nFor your sake I have braved the glen\r\nAnd had to do with goblin merchant men.\"\r\n\r\nLaura started from her chair,\r\nFlung her arms up in the air,\r\nClutched her hair:\r\n\"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted\r\nFor my sake the fruit forbidden?\r\nMust your light like mine be hidden,\r\nYour young life like mine be wasted,\r\nUndone in mine undoing\r\nAnd ruined in my ruin,\r\nThirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?\"\r\nShe clung about her sister,\r\nKissed and kissed and kissed her:\r\nTears once again\r\nRefreshed her shrunken eyes,\r\nDropping like rain\r\nAfter long sultry drouth;\r\nShaking with aguish[footnote]Feverish.[\/footnote] fear, and pain,\r\nShe kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.\r\n\r\nHer lips began to scorch,\r\nThat juice was wormwood to her tongue,\r\nShe loathed the feast:\r\nWrithing as one possessed she leaped and sung,\r\nRent all her robe, and wrung\r\nHer hands in lamentable haste,\r\nAnd beat her breast.\r\nHer locks streamed like the torch\r\nBorne by a racer at full speed,\r\nOr like the mane of horses in their flight,\r\nOr like an eagle when she stems the light\r\nStraight toward the sun,\r\nOr like a caged thing freed,\r\nOr like a flying flag when armies run.\r\n\r\nSwift fire spread through her veins, knocked at her heart,\r\nMet the fire smouldering there\r\nAnd overbore its lesser flame;\r\nShe gorged on bitterness without a name:\r\nAh! fool, to choose such part\r\nOf soul-consuming care!\r\nSense failed in the mortal strife:\r\nLike the watch-tower of a town\r\nWhich an earthquake shatters down,\r\nLike a lightning-stricken mast,\r\nLike a wind-uprooted tree\r\nSpun about,\r\nLike a foam-topped water-spout\r\nCast down headlong in the sea,\r\nShe fell at last;\r\nPleasure past and anguish past,\r\nIs it death or is it life?\r\n\r\nLife out of death.\r\nThat night long Lizzie watched by her,\r\nCounted her pulse's flagging stir,\r\nFelt for her breath,\r\nHeld water to her lips, and cooled her face\r\nWith tears and fanning leaves:\r\nBut when the first birds chirped about their eaves,\r\nAnd early reapers plodded to the place\r\nOf golden sheaves,\r\nAnd dew-wet grass\r\nBowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,\r\nAnd new buds with new day\r\nOpened of cup-like lilies on the stream,\r\nLaura awoke as from a dream,\r\nLaughed in the innocent old way,\r\nHugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;\r\nHer gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray,\r\nHer breath was sweet as May,\r\nAnd light danced in her eyes.\r\n\r\nDays, weeks, months, years\r\nAfterwards, when both were wives\r\nWith children of their own;\r\nTheir mother-hearts beset with fears,\r\nTheir lives bound up in tender lives;\r\nLaura would call the little ones\r\nAnd tell them of her early prime,\r\nThose pleasant days long gone\r\nOf not-returning time:\r\nWould talk about the haunted glen,\r\nThe wicked, quaint[footnote]Strange.[\/footnote] fruit-merchant men,\r\nTheir fruits like honey to the throat,\r\nBut poison in the blood;\r\n(Men sell not such in any town;)\r\nWould tell them how her sister stood\r\nIn deadly peril to do her good,\r\nAnd win the fiery antidote:\r\nThen joining hands to little hands\r\nWould bid them cling together,\r\n\"For there is no friend like a sister,\r\nIn calm or stormy weather,\r\nTo cheer one on the tedious way,\r\nTo fetch one if one goes astray,\r\nTo lift one if one totters down,\r\nTo strengthen whilst one stands.\"\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                        Feature Poet: Emily Dickinson (1830\u20131886)<\/h1>\r\n
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                                                                                                        Emily Dickinson<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                                                                                                        Introduction<\/h2>\r\nEmily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, in Amherst Massachusetts.\u00a0 Her family was prominent in the community; her father was a lawyer and a politician, who served a term in the U.S. Congress.\r\n\r\nEmily attended school in Amherst and enrolled in Mount Holyoake College, where she stayed for less than a year.\u00a0 The curriculum privileged evangelical Christianity and did not mesh with Emily\u2019s independent spirit and free-thinking nature.\r\n\r\nShe returned to Homestead, her spacious family home in Amherst, where she would live for most of the rest of her life.\u00a0 She settled into a routine which was partly domestic\u2014she loved to bake, and she tended a most beautiful fragrant garden\u2014and partly intellectual\u2014she was a voracious reader and a prolific poet and letter writer.\u00a0 She wrote nearly 1,800 poems, over the course of her life.\r\n\r\nShe had close friendships, though they tended to be affirmed through the frequent long letters she wrote nearly every day.\u00a0 Some were school friends, and some were older men.\u00a0 One was Samuel Bowles, editor of a local newspaper, one of the few editors to publish any of her poems.\u00a0 Another was Charles Wadsworth, a Philadelphia preacher whom she met on one of her rare trips away from Amherst.\u00a0 They corresponded regularly, though few of their letters are extant.\u00a0 Another was Thomas Higginson, editor of the Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, who rejected her poems for publications but entered into a correspondence with the aspiring young poet.\u00a0 A later correspondent was a Massachusetts judge Otis Lord, whose interest in Emily may have been romantic, after his wife died in December of 1877, though no romance developed.\r\n\r\nNeither she nor her younger sister Lavinia married.\u00a0 Too many young men left Amherst to strike it rich in the Gold Rush or to fight in the Civil War.\u00a0 There were few men available to court upper-middle class women.\u00a0 And, in such poems as \u201cI Cannot Live with You,\u201d Emily expresses her reluctance to marry and lose her own independent identity to that of wife and mother.\r\n\r\nShe was close to her family, celebrating the birth of her brother\u2019s children and devastated by the death of her nephew Gilbert in 1882.\u00a0 Her most intense friendship was with Austin\u2019s wife, her sister-in-law Susan, in whom she confided and to whom she sent her poems for constructive criticism.\u00a0 The relationship was close, if contentious at times, and perhaps, at least in the view of some biographers, intimate.\u00a0 Susan lived with her family next door to Emily\u2019s house.\u00a0 The two houses are now the Emily Dickinson Museum<\/a>.\r\n\r\nEmily died in 1886, likely from kidney disease.\u00a0 She had asked Lavinia to destroy the letters stacked in her dresser drawers.\u00a0 Lavinia destroyed the letters\u2014an immeasurable loss to American literary history\u2014but she saved the poems\u2014an immeasurable gift to world literature.\u00a0 Her brother\u2019s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of an Amherst College professor, and another one of Emily\u2019s pen pals, recognized the excellence of Emily\u2019s work.\u00a0 With the help of Higginson, she arranged for publication of a book of selected poems, privileging those that were regular in rhythm and rhyme; providing titles, which Emily had not; and even altering the content of some poems to render them more conventional.\u00a0 That book appeared in 1890.\u00a0\u00a0 Thereafter, more and volumes appeared, culminating in R.W. Franklin\u2019s Variorum edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson<\/em>, published in 1998.\r\n\r\nDickinson wrote nearly two thousand poems.\u00a0 Her themes are conventional\u2014nature, faith, death\u2014but her treatment of the themes is complex.\u00a0 Nature is beautiful, a tonic that eases a troubled heart and mind; but it is also has a dark side, in the form of a bird that bites a worm in half and eats it raw, a snake slithering ominously through the grass.\u00a0 God\u2019s love can comfort us\u2014if God exists.\u00a0 \u201cFaith is a fine invention,\u201d she writes, though it\u2019s advisable to turn to science for answers to some questions. The soul is immortal: Death is not the end of existence, in such poems as \u201cBecause I Could not Stop for Death.\u201d \u00a0But in \u201cSafe in Their Alabaster Chambers,\u201d the dead seem soulless.\u00a0 She did not write often about love, though the passion of poems such as \u201cWild Nights, Wild Nights\u201d suggest an unexpected longing for physical intimacy.\r\n\r\nShe wrote several startling poems about her health, which was fragile.\u00a0 One of her few trips outside Amherst was to Boston to see an eye specialist about her vision issues.\u00a0 \u00a0Her shaky mental health\u2014her proneness to depression\u2014emerges in such poems as \u201cThere\u2019s a Certain Slant of Light\u201d and I Felt a Funeral in My Brain.\u201d\r\n\r\nDickinson\u2019s style, similarly, reflects her preference for conventional regular verse forms, but her work explodes beyond the confines of regular verse in compact images dense with meaning, jarring half-rhymes, and those signature dashes which moderate the pace of her poems.\r\n

                                                                                                        Poems<\/h2>\r\n
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                                                                                                        39 [I never lost as much but twice -][footnote]Dickinson did not number or title her poems.\u00a0 In 1998, Belknap Press published The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition<\/em>, edited by R.W. Franklin, who numbered the poems in chronological order, based upon the best available evidence on the order in which Dickinson composed them.\u00a0 He used the number followed by the first line, the line enclosed in square brackets, to identify the poems.\u00a0 His numbering has become the standard.[\/footnote]<\/h3>\r\nI never lost as much but twice,\r\nAnd that was in the sod.[footnote]A loved one has died, and Dickinson is reminded of two others now dead and buried.[\/footnote]\r\nTwice have I stood a beggar\r\nBefore the door of God!\r\n\r\nAngels\u2014twice descending\r\nReimbursed my store\u2014[footnote]Perhaps her nieces and\/or nephews, children of her brother Austin.[\/footnote]\r\nBurglar! Banker\u2014Father![footnote]God stole from her; then He deposited two more loved ones into the bank of her love; the third name she gives to God\u2014\u201cFather\u201d\u2014seems to suggest she is reconciled to inevitable change.[\/footnote]\r\nI am poor once more!\r\n

                                                                                                        112 [Success is counted sweetest]<\/h3>\r\nSuccess is counted sweetest\r\nBy those who ne'er succeed.\r\nTo comprehend a nectar\r\nRequires sorest need.\r\n\r\nNot one of all the purple Host[footnote]The victorious army which defeated\u2014took the flag\u2014of the enemy.[\/footnote]\r\nWho took the Flag today\r\nCan tell the definition\r\nSo clear of victory\r\n\r\nAs he defeated \u2013 dying \u2013\r\nOn whose forbidden ear\r\nThe distant strains of triumph\r\nBurst agonized and clear!\r\n

                                                                                                        124 [Safe in their Alabaster Chambers -]<\/h3>\r\nSafe in their Alabaster Chambers -\r\nUntouched by Morning -\r\nand untouched by noon -\r\nSleep the meek members of the Resurrection,\r\nRafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -\r\n\r\nGrand go the Years,\r\nIn the Crescent above them -\r\nWorlds scoop their Arcs -[footnote]The universe evolves and revolves in its orbits.[\/footnote]\r\nand Firmaments - row -\r\nDiadems[footnote]Jewels of monarchs.[\/footnote] - drop -\r\nAnd Doges[footnote]Chief magistrates; important people.[\/footnote] surrender -\r\nSoundless as Dots,\r\nOn a Disk of Snow.\r\n

                                                                                                        202 [\u201cFaith\u201d is a fine invention]<\/h3>\r\n\u201cFaith\u201d is a fine invention\r\nFor Gentlemen who\u00a0see!\r\n<\/em>But Microscopes are prudent\r\nIn an Emergency!\r\n

                                                                                                        207 [I taste a liquor never brewed -]<\/h3>\r\nI taste a liquor never brewed -\r\nFrom Tankards scooped in Pearl -\r\nNot all the Frankfort[footnote]Known for producing fine white wines.[\/footnote] Berries\r\nYield such an Alcohol!\r\n\r\nInebriate of air - am I -\r\nAnd Debauchee of Dew -\r\nReeling - thro' endless summer days -\r\nFrom inns of molten Blue -\r\n\r\nWhen \"Landlords\" turn the drunken Bee\r\nOut of the Foxglove's door -\r\nWhen Butterflies - renounce their \"drams\" -\r\nI shall but drink the more!\r\n\r\nTill Seraphs[footnote]Angels.[\/footnote] swing their snowy Hats -\r\nAnd Saints - to windows run -\r\nTo see the little Tippler\r\nLeaning against the - Sun!\r\n

                                                                                                        236 [Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -]<\/h3>\r\nSome keep the Sabbath going to Church \u2013\r\nI keep it, staying at Home \u2013\r\nWith a Bobolink for a Chorister \u2013\r\nAnd an Orchard, for a Dome \u2013\r\n\r\nSome keep the Sabbath in Surplice \u2013\r\nI, just wear my Wings \u2013\r\nAnd instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,\r\nOur little Sexton[footnote]Caretaker of a church and churchyard.[\/footnote] \u2013 sings.\r\n\r\nGod preaches, a noted Clergyman \u2013\r\nAnd the sermon is never long,\r\nSo instead of getting to Heaven, at last \u2013\r\nI\u2019m going, all along.\r\n

                                                                                                        269 [Wild Nights -Wild Nights!]<\/h3>\r\nWild nights - Wild nights!\r\nWere I with thee\r\nWild nights should be\r\nOur luxury!\r\n\r\nFutile - the winds -\r\nTo a Heart in port -\r\nDone with the Compass -\r\nDone with the Chart!\r\n\r\nRowing in Eden -\r\nAh - the Sea!\r\nMight I but moor - tonight -\r\nIn thee!\r\n

                                                                                                        320 [ There\u2019s a certain Slant of light]<\/h3>\r\nThere's a certain Slant of light,\r\nWinter Afternoons \u2013\r\nThat oppresses, like the Heft\r\nOf Cathedral Tunes \u2013\r\n\r\nHeavenly Hurt, it gives us \u2013\r\nWe can find no scar,\r\nBut internal difference \u2013\r\nWhere the Meanings, are \u2013\r\n\r\nNone may teach it \u2013 Any \u2013\r\n'Tis the seal Despair \u2013\r\nAn imperial affliction\r\nSent us of the Air \u2013\r\n\r\nWhen it comes, the Landscape listens \u2013\r\nShadows \u2013 hold their breath \u2013\r\nWhen it goes, 'tis like the Distance\r\nOn the look of Death \u2013\r\nWhen is \u201cThere\u2019s a Certain Slant of Light\u201d set?\u00a0 What is the significance of this setting?\r\n

                                                                                                        340 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain]<\/h3>\r\nI felt a Funeral, in my Brain,\r\nAnd Mourners to and fro\r\nKept treading - treading - till it seemed\r\nThat Sense was breaking through -\r\n\r\nAnd when they all were seated,\r\nA Service, like a Drum -\r\nKept beating - beating - till I thought\r\nMy mind was going numb -\r\n\r\nAnd then I heard them lift a Box\r\nAnd creak across my Soul\r\nWith those same Boots of Lead, again,\r\nThen Space - began to toll,\r\n\r\nAs all the Heavens were a Bell,\r\nAnd Being, but an Ear,\r\nAnd I, and Silence, some strange Race,\r\nWrecked, solitary, here -\r\n\r\nAnd then a Plank in Reason, broke,\r\nAnd I dropped down, and down -\r\nAnd hit a World, at every plunge,\r\nAnd Finished knowing - then -\r\n

                                                                                                        355 [It was not Death, for I stood up]<\/h3>\r\nIt was not Death, for I stood up,\r\nAnd all the Dead, lie down -\r\nIt was not Night, for all the Bells\r\nPut out their\u00a0Tongues, for Noon.\r\n\r\nIt was not Frost, for on my Flesh\r\nI felt\u00a0Siroccos[footnote]Hot winds.[\/footnote]\u00a0- crawl -\r\nNor Fire - for just my marble feet\r\nCould keep a\u00a0Chancel,[footnote]Part of the church behind the altar.[\/footnote]\u00a0cool -\r\n\r\nAnd yet, it tasted, like them all,\r\nThe Figures I have seen\r\nSet orderly, for Burial\r\nReminded me, of mine -\r\n\r\nAs if my life were shaven,\r\nAnd fitted to a frame,\r\nAnd could not breathe without a key,\r\nAnd \u2019twas like Midnight, some -\r\n\r\nWhen everything that ticked - has stopped -\r\nAnd space stares - all around -\r\nOr Grisly frosts - first Autumn morns,\r\nRepeal the Beating Ground -\r\n\r\nBut most, like Chaos - Stopless - cool -\r\nWithout a Chance, or\u00a0spar[footnote]Pole that supports the mast of a ship.\u00a0 The poet is shipwrecked and there is not even a remnant of the ship to save her.[\/footnote]\u00a0-\r\nOr even a Report of Land \u2013\r\nTo justify-Despair.\r\n

                                                                                                        359 [A Bird, came down the Walk -]<\/h3>\r\nA Bird, came down the Walk -\r\nHe did not know I saw -\r\nHe bit an Angle Worm in halves\r\nAnd ate the fellow, raw,\r\n\r\nAnd then, he drank a Dew\r\nFrom a convenient Grass -\r\nAnd then hopped sidewise to the Wall\r\nTo let a Beetle pass -\r\n\r\nHe glanced with rapid eyes,\r\nThat hurried all abroad -\r\nThey looked like frightened Beads, I thought,\r\nHe stirred his Velvet Head. -\r\n\r\nLike one in danger, Cautious,\r\nI offered him a Crumb,\r\nAnd he unrolled his feathers,\r\nAnd rowed him softer Home -\r\n\r\nThan Oars divide the Ocean,\r\nToo silver for a seam,\r\nOr Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,\r\nLeap, plashless[footnote]Without splashing.[\/footnote] as they swim.\r\n

                                                                                                        409 [The Soul selects her own Society -]<\/h3>\r\nThe Soul selects her own Society \u2014\r\nThen \u2014 shuts the Door \u2014\r\nTo her divine Majority \u2014\r\nPresent no more \u2014\r\n\r\nUnmoved \u2014 she notes the Chariots \u2014 pausing \u2014\r\nAt her low Gate \u2014\r\nUnmoved \u2014 an Emperor be kneeling\r\nUpon her Mat \u2014\r\n\r\nI've known her \u2014 from an ample nation \u2014\r\nChoose One \u2014\r\nThen \u2014 close the Valves of her attention \u2014\r\nLike Stone \u2014\r\n

                                                                                                        479 [ Because I could not stop for Death -]<\/h3>\r\nBecause I could not stop for Death \u2013\r\nHe kindly stopped for me \u2013\r\nThe Carriage held but just Ourselves \u2013\r\nAnd Immortality.\r\n\r\nWe slowly drove \u2013 He knew no haste\r\nAnd I had put away\r\nMy labor and my leisure too,\r\nFor His Civility \u2013\r\n\r\nWe passed the School, where Children strove\r\nAt Recess \u2013 in the Ring \u2013\r\nWe passed the Fields of Gazing Grain \u2013\r\nWe passed the Setting Sun \u2013\r\n\r\nOr rather \u2013 He passed Us \u2013\r\nThe Dews drew quivering and Chill \u2013\r\nFor only Gossamer, my Gown \u2013\r\nMy Tippet[footnote]Her shawl, which is made of the fine light fabric tulle.[\/footnote] \u2013 only Tulle \u2013\r\n\r\nWe paused before a House that seemed\r\nA Swelling of the Ground \u2013\r\nThe Roof was scarcely visible \u2013\r\nThe Cornice \u2013 in the Ground \u2013\r\n\r\nSince then \u2013 'tis Centuries \u2013 and yet\r\nFeels shorter than the Day\r\nI first surmised the Horses' Heads\r\nWere toward Eternity \u2013\r\n

                                                                                                        519 [This is my letter to the World]<\/h3>\r\nThis is my letter to the world,\r\nThat never wrote to me,-\r\nThe simple news that Nature told,\r\nWith tender majesty\r\n\r\nHer message is committed\r\nTo hands I cannot see;\r\nFor love of her, sweet countrymen,\r\nJudge tenderly of me!\r\n

                                                                                                        591 [I heard a Fly buzz -when I died -]<\/h3>\r\nI\u00a0heard a Fly buzz - when I died -\r\nThe Stillness in the Room\r\nWas like the Stillness in the Air -\r\nBetween the Heaves of Storm -\r\n\r\nThe Eyes around - had wrung them dry -\r\nAnd Breaths were gathering firm\r\nFor that last Onset - when the King\r\nBe witnessed - in the Room -\r\n\r\nI willed my Keepsakes - Signed away\r\nWhat portion of me be\r\nAssignable - and then it was\r\nThere interposed a Fly -\r\n\r\nWith Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -\r\nBetween the light - and me -\r\nAnd then the Windows failed - and then\r\nI could not see to see -\r\n

                                                                                                        598 [The Brain -is wider than the Sky -]<\/h3>\r\nThe Brain\u2014is wider than the Sky\u2014\r\nFor\u2014put them side by side\u2014\r\nThe one the other will contain\r\nWith ease\u2014and You\u2014beside\u2014\r\n\r\nThe Brain is deeper than the sea\u2014\r\nFor\u2014hold them\u2014Blue to Blue\u2014\r\nThe one the other will absorb\u2014\r\nAs Sponges\u2014Buckets\u2014do\u2014\r\n\r\nThe Brain is just the weight of God\u2014\r\nFor\u2014Heft them\u2014Pound for Pound\u2014\r\nAnd they will differ\u2014if they do\u2014\r\nAs Syllable from Sound\u2014\r\n

                                                                                                        620 [Much Madness is divinest Sense -]<\/h3>\r\nMuch Madness is divinest Sense -\r\nTo a discerning Eye -\r\nMuch Sense - the starkest Madness -\r\n\u2019Tis the Majority\r\nIn this, as all, prevail -\r\nAssent - and you are sane -\r\nDemur - you\u2019re straightway dangerous -\r\nAnd handled with a Chain -\r\n

                                                                                                        656 [I started Early -Took my Dog -]<\/h3>\r\nI started Early - Took my Dog -\r\nAnd visited the Sea -\r\nThe Mermaids in the Basement\r\nCame out to look at me -\r\n\r\nAnd Frigates[footnote]A small war ship.[\/footnote] - in the Upper Floor\r\nExtended Hempen Hands -\r\nPresuming Me to be a Mouse -\r\nAground - upon the Sands -\r\n\r\nBut no Man moved Me - till the Tide\r\nWent past my simple Shoe -\r\nAnd past my Apron - and my Belt\r\nAnd past my Bodice - too -\r\n\r\nAnd made as He would eat me up -\r\nAs wholly as a Dew\r\nUpon a Dandelion's Sleeve -\r\nAnd then - I started - too -\r\n\r\nAnd He - He followed - close behind -\r\nI felt His Silver Heel\r\nUpon my Ankle - Then my Shoes\r\nWould overflow with Pearl -\r\n\r\nUntil We met the Solid Town -\r\nNo One He seemed to know\r\nAnd bowing - with a Mighty look -\r\nAt me - The Sea withdrew -\r\n

                                                                                                        706 [I cannot live with You -]<\/h3>\r\nI cannot live with You \u2014\r\nIt would be Life \u2014\r\nAnd Life is over there \u2014\r\nBehind the Shelf\r\n\r\nThe Sexton keeps the Key to \u2014\r\nPutting up\r\nOur Life \u2014 His Porcelain \u2014\r\nLike a Cup \u2014\r\n\r\nDiscarded of the Housewife \u2014\r\nQuaint \u2014 or Broke \u2014\r\nA newer Sevres pleases \u2014\r\nOld Ones crack \u2014\r\n\r\nI could not die \u2014 with You \u2014\r\nFor One must wait\r\nTo shut the Other's Gaze down \u2014\r\nYou \u2014 could not \u2014\r\n\r\nAnd I \u2014 Could I stand by\r\nAnd see You \u2014 freeze \u2014\r\nWithout my Right of Frost \u2014\r\nDeath's privilege?\r\n\r\nNor could I rise \u2014 with You \u2014\r\nBecause Your Face\r\nWould put out Jesus' \u2014\r\nThat New Grace\r\n\r\nGlow plain \u2014 and foreign\r\nOn my homesick Eye \u2014\r\nExcept that You than He\r\nShone closer by \u2014\r\n\r\nThey'd judge Us \u2014 How \u2014\r\nFor You \u2014 served Heaven \u2014 You know,\r\nOr sought to \u2014\r\nI could not \u2014\r\n\r\nBecause You saturated Sight \u2014\r\nAnd I had no more Eyes\r\nFor sordid excellence\r\nAs Paradise\r\n\r\nAnd were You lost, I would be \u2014\r\nThough My Name\r\nRang loudest\r\nOn the Heavenly fame \u2014\r\n\r\nAnd were You \u2014 saved \u2014\r\nAnd I \u2014 condemned to be\r\nWhere You were not \u2014\r\nThat self \u2014 were Hell to Me \u2014\r\n\r\nSo We must meet apart \u2014\r\nYou there \u2014 I \u2014 here \u2014\r\nWith just the Door ajar\r\nThat Oceans are \u2014 and Prayer \u2014\r\nAnd that White Sustenance \u2014\r\nDespair \u2014\r\n

                                                                                                        764 [My Life had stood -a Loaded Gun -]<\/h3>\r\nMy Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -\r\nIn Corners - till a Day\r\nThe Owner passed - identified -\r\nAnd carried Me away -\r\n\r\nAnd now We roam in Sovreign Woods -\r\nAnd now We hunt the Doe -\r\nAnd every time I speak for Him\r\nThe Mountains straight reply -\r\n\r\nAnd do I smile, such cordial light\r\nOpon the Valley glow -\r\nIt is as a Vesuvian[footnote]Vesuvius is a volcanic mountain in Italy.[\/footnote] face\r\nHad let it\u2019s pleasure through -\r\n\r\nAnd when at Night - Our good Day done -\r\nI guard My Master\u2019s Head -\r\n\u2019Tis better than the Eider Duck\u2019s\r\nDeep Pillow - to have shared -\r\n\r\nTo foe of His - I\u2019m deadly foe -\r\nNone stir the second time -\r\nOn whom I lay a Yellow Eye -\r\nOr an emphatic Thumb -\r\n\r\nThough I than He - may longer live\r\nHe longer must - than I -\r\nFor I have but the power to kill,\r\nWithout - the power to die -\r\n

                                                                                                        1096 [A narrow Fellow in the Grass]<\/h3>\r\nA narrow Fellow in the Grass\r\nOccasionally rides -\r\nYou may have met him? Did you not\r\nHis notice instant is -\r\n\r\nThe Grass divides as with a Comb,\r\nA spotted Shaft is seen,\r\nAnd then it closes at your Feet\r\nAnd opens further on -\r\n\r\nHe likes a Boggy Acre -\r\nA Floor too cool for Corn -\r\nBut when a Boy and Barefoot\r\nI more than once at Noon\r\n\r\nHave passed I thought a Whip Lash\r\nUnbraiding in the Sun\r\nWhen stooping to secure it\r\nIt wrinkled And was gone -\r\n\r\nSeveral of Nature\u2019s People\r\nI know, and they know me\r\nI feel for them a transport\r\nOf Cordiality\r\n\r\nBut never met this Fellow\r\nAttended or alone\r\nWithout a tighter Breathing\r\nAnd Zero at the Bone.\r\n

                                                                                                        1263 [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -]<\/h3>\r\nTell all the truth but tell it slant \u2014\r\nSuccess in Circuit lies\r\nToo bright for our infirm Delight\r\nThe Truth's superb surprise\r\n\r\nAs Lightning to the Children eased\r\nWith explanation kind\r\nThe Truth must dazzle gradually\r\nOr every man be blind \u2014\r\n

                                                                                                        1773 [My life closed twice before its close]<\/h3>\r\nMy\u00a0life\u00a0closed\u00a0twice\u00a0before\u00a0its\u00a0close\u2014\r\nIt\u00a0yet\u00a0remains\u00a0to\u00a0see\r\nIf\u00a0Immortality\u00a0unveil\r\nA\u00a0third\u00a0event\u00a0to\u00a0me\r\n\r\nSo\u00a0huge,\u00a0so\u00a0hopeless\u00a0to\u00a0conceive\r\nAs\u00a0these\u00a0that\u00a0twice\u00a0befell.\r\nParting\u00a0is\u00a0all\u00a0we\u00a0know\u00a0of\u00a0heaven.\r\nAnd\u00a0all\u00a0we\u00a0need\u00a0of\u00a0hell.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                        Activities<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                          \r\n \t
                                                                                                        1. What does the poet beg for \u201cBefore the door of God\u201d in \u201cI Never Lost as Much but Twice\u201d? What does the line \u201cAngels\u2014twice descending\u201d mean? To whom does \u201cBanker\u201d refer in the last stanza?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        2. What argument is the poet making in \u201cSuccess Is Counted Sweetest\u201d? Do you agree with her?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        3. What is the form of \u201cSafe in Their Alabaster Chambers,\u201d and how does the form help establish the theme of the poem? How are the first and second stanzas connected to each other? Explain the simile in the last two lines.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        4. Does Dickinson place more faith in science or religion? Support your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        5. What effect does the beauty of nature have on the poet in \u201cI Taste a Liquor Never Brewed\u201d? What are the \u201cinns of molten Blue\u201d referenced in the second stanza? How does the use of alliteration in the final stanza of enliven the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        6. What does the poet mean by the reference to her \u201cWings\u201d in \u201cSome Keep the Sabbath Going to Church\u201d? Why is it better to worship in God in nature than in a church?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        7. How does the rhythm of \u201cWild Nights, Wild Nights\u201d inform the action in the poem? Explain the metaphor in the second stanza. To whom does the \u201cthee\u201d in the last line refer?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        8. Paraphrase the second stanza of \u201cThere\u2019s a Certain Slant of Light.\u201d How is \u201cthe certain slant of light\u201d used metaphorically? Is this an effective metaphor? Support your answer. What is the soundtrack to \u201cThere\u2019s a Certain Slant of Light\u201d? How is the soundtrack appropriate to the tone and theme of the poem? What is the nature of the \u201cDespair\u201d the poet alludes to in stanza 3? How do such phrases as \u201cHeavenly Hurt\u201d and \u201cimperial affliction\u201d help define the nature of the despair? What type of figurative language is \u201cheavenly hurt\u201d an example of? Note the trochaic meter of \u201cThere\u2019s a Certain Slant of Light.\u201d Why is the trochaic meter appropriate for this poem? Compare and contrast the mood of the poet at the start of the poem with her mood at the end of the poem.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        9. What is wrong with the speaker in \u201cI Felt a Funeral in My Brain\u201d? What is happening to her?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        10. Find two examples of imperfect rhyme in the poem. Does the imperfect rhyme mar or enhance the poem? Explain your answer. How is a funeral and its rituals an appropriate metaphor for the poet\u2019s condition in \u201cI Felt a Funeral in My Brain\u201d? What is the significance of the inconclusive ending to the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        11. How, in the first two stanzas of \u201cIt Was not Death\u201d is the poet\u2019s fate worse than death? Is there any relief for the state the poet is in? Explain your answer. What is the effect of the imperfect rhyme the poet uses throughout the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        12. How does \u201cA Bird Came Down the Walk\u201d defy a conventional view of the beauty and harmony of the natural world? What do you make of the final stanza? When is the ocean \u201cToo silver for a seam\u201d? What are the \u201cBanks of Noon\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        13. What is the theme of \u201cThe Soul Selects Her Own Society\u201d? Do you agree with the argument implicit in this poem? Note the rhythm of \u201cThe Soul Selects Her Own Society.\u201d Dickinson usually alternates between a line with four beats and a line with three beats, usually iambic. But in this poem, she alternates four with two, and, in the last stanza, four iambic beats with just one. How does this rhythm support the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        14. How is Death personified in \u201cBecause I Could not Stop for Death\u201d? Explain the poet\u2019s symbolism is stanza 3. What is the \u201chouse\u201d of stanza 5? Where is the carriage going, and how does its destination inform the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        15. What is the chief source of Dickinson\u2019s inspiration, judging from \u201cThis Is My Letter to the World\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        16. How is the phrase \u201ctender majesty\u201d an apt description of nature? Dickinson commits, entrusts, the poem to your hands. What does she ask in return?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        17. Identify the simile in stanza 1 of \u201cI Heard a Fly Buzz,\u201d and comment on its effectiveness.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        18. Who is the \u201cKing\u201d the family of the dying person awaits? Dickinson does not use enjambment regularly but uses it to dramatic effect in Stanza 3. Where is the enjambment and what is its effect? How is significant, symbolic, that a fly buzzes at the moment of the narrator\u2019s death?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        19. In what sense is the brain wider than the sky and deeper than the sea? What is the significance of the poet\u2019s claim that \u201cThe Brain is just the weight of God? What is the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        20. Is Dickinson correct, when she says, in \u201cMuch Madness is Divinest Sense\u201d that \u201c\u2019Tis the Majority \/ In this, as all, prevail\u201d? What example does she give to support her theme? What example can you provide to confirm her theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        21. What elements of a nursery rhyme does \u201cI Started Early\u2014Took My Dog\u201d have in the first two stanzas? How does the narrative change thereafter? Why does the narrator remain still in stanza 3, while the tide rises past her waist? How might the rising tide be used metaphorically? Note the spondee in the first line of stanza 5; why does Dickinson change the rhythm here? How can the narrator feel \u201cHis Silver Heel\u201d (note that she capitalizes each word), if \u201cHe\u201d is chasing her from behind? What is the \u201cPearl\u201d which covers her shoes? What is the nature of the danger the narrator faces, and does she escape from it?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        22. What seems to have provoked Dickinson to write \u201cI Cannot Live with You\u201d? What reasons does she give for her refusal to agree with the request from the \u201cYou\u201d in the poem? What does she offer in place of the request made to her? How do you think the \u201cYou\u201d might respond\u201d? What do the last two lines of the poem mean to you?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        23. Who is the narrator of \u201cMy Life Had Stood\u2014a Loaded Gun\u201d? What story does the narrator tell? Explain the apparent paradox with which the poem concludes.<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        24. What is \u201cthe narrow fellow in the grass\u201d? What does the poet say here about the nature of nature? What does \u201cZero at the Bone\u201d mean?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                        25. In what sense is \u201cTell All the Truth but Tell It Slant\u201d a poem about white lies? In what sense is it a poem about poetry? In what sense is it a poem about religion? Watch Jack Nicolson, as Colonel Jessup give his \u201cyou can\u2019t handle the truth\u201d speech from A Few Good Men<\/a>. How might this speech and Dickinson\u2019s poem be similar?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                          Robert Browning (1812\u20131889)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                          \"Porphyria's Lover\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                          The rain set early in to-night,\r\nThe sullen wind was soon awake,\r\nIt tore the elm-tops down for spite,\r\nAnd did its worst to vex the lake:\r\nI listened with heart fit to break.\r\nWhen glided in Porphyria; straight\r\nShe shut the cold out and the storm,\r\nAnd kneeled and made the cheerless grate\r\nBlaze up, and all the cottage warm;\r\nWhich done, she rose, and from her form\r\nWithdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,\r\nAnd laid her soiled gloves by, untied\r\nHer hat and let the damp hair fall,\r\nAnd, last, she sat down by my side\r\nAnd called me. When no voice replied,\r\nShe put my arm about her waist,\r\nAnd made her smooth white shoulder bare,\r\nAnd all her yellow hair displaced,\r\nAnd, stooping, made my cheek lie there,\r\nAnd spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,\r\nMurmuring how she loved me \u2014 she\r\nToo weak, for all her heart's endeavour,\r\nTo set its struggling passion free\r\nFrom pride, and vainer ties dissever,\r\nAnd give herself to me for ever.\r\nBut passion sometimes would prevail,\r\nNor could to-night's gay feast restrain\r\nA sudden thought of one so pale\r\nFor love of her, and all in vain:\r\nSo, she was come through wind and rain.\r\nBe sure I looked up at her eyes\r\nHappy and proud; at last I knew\r\nPorphyria worshipped me; surprise\r\nMade my heart swell, and still it grew\r\nWhile I debated what to do.\r\nThat moment she was mine, mine, fair,\r\nPerfectly pure and good: I found\r\nA thing to do, and all her hair\r\nIn one long yellow string I wound\r\nThree times her little throat around,\r\nAnd strangled her. No pain felt she;\r\nI am quite sure she felt no pain.\r\nAs a shut bud that holds a bee,\r\nI warily oped her lids: again\r\nLaughed the blue eyes without a stain.\r\nAnd I untightened next the tress\r\nAbout her neck; her cheek once more\r\nBlushed bright beneath my burning kiss:\r\nI propped her head up as before,\r\nOnly, this time my shoulder bore\r\nHer head, which droops upon it still:\r\nThe smiling rosy little head,\r\nSo glad it has its utmost will,\r\nThat all it scorned at once is fled,\r\nAnd I, its love, am gained instead!\r\nPorphyria's love: she guessed not how\r\nHer darling one wish would be heard.\r\nAnd thus we sit together now,\r\nAnd all night long we have not stirred,\r\nAnd yet God has not said a word!<\/div>\r\n
                                                                                                          \r\n

                                                                                                          Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

                                                                                                          \r\n
                                                                                                            \r\n \t
                                                                                                          1. Why does the speaker murder Porphyria?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                          2. Read the following essay about Browning's \"Porphyria's Lover\"<\/a>, which argues that Shakespeare\u2019s Othello<\/em> is another source for the poem.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nRead\u00a0\"The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister\"<\/a>,\u00a0\"The Bishop Orders His Tomb\"<\/a>, and see the study questions<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                            Edgar Allan Poe (1809\u20131849)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                            \"The Raven\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                            Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,\r\nOver many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore\u2014\r\nWhile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,\r\nAs of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.\r\n\u201c\u2019Tis some visitor,\u201d I muttered, \u201ctapping at my chamber door\u2014\r\nOnly this and nothing more.\u201dAh, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;\r\nAnd each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.\r\nEagerly I wished the morrow;\u2014vainly I had sought to borrow\r\nFrom my books surcease of sorrow\u2014sorrow for the lost Lenore\u2014\r\nFor the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore\u2014\r\nNameless here for evermore.\r\n\r\nAnd the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain\r\nThrilled me\u2014filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;\r\nSo that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating\r\n\u201c\u2019Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door\u2014\r\nSome late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;\u2014\r\nThis it is and nothing more.\u201d\r\n\r\nPresently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,\r\n\u201cSir,\u201d said I, \u201cor Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;\r\nBut the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,\r\nAnd so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,\r\nThat I scarce was sure I heard you\u201d\u2014here I opened wide the door;\u2014\r\nDarkness there and nothing more.\r\n\r\nDeep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,\r\nDoubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;\r\nBut the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,\r\nAnd the only word there spoken was the whispered word, \u201cLenore?\u201d\r\nThis I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, \u201cLenore!\u201d\u2014\r\nMerely this and nothing more.\r\n\r\nBack into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,\r\nSoon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.\r\n\u201cSurely,\u201d said I, \u201csurely that is something at my window lattice;\r\nLet me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore\u2014\r\nLet my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;\u2014\r\n\u2019Tis the wind and nothing more!\u201d\r\n\r\nOpen here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,\r\nIn there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;\r\nNot the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;\r\nBut, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door\u2014\r\nPerched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door\u2014\r\nPerched, and sat, and nothing more.\r\n\r\nThen this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,\r\nBy the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,\r\n\u201cThough thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,\u201d I said, \u201cart sure no craven,\r\nGhastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore\u2014\r\nTell me what thy lordly name is on the Night\u2019s Plutonian[footnote]In Roman mythology, Pluto is god of the underworld, of Hell.[\/footnote] shore!\u201d\r\nQuoth the Raven \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nMuch I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,\r\nThough its answer little meaning\u2014little relevancy bore;\r\nFor we cannot help agreeing that no living human being\r\nEver yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door\u2014\r\nBird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,\r\nWith such name as \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only\r\nThat one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.\r\nNothing farther then he uttered\u2014not a feather then he fluttered\u2014\r\nTill I scarcely more than muttered \u201cOther friends have flown before\u2014\r\nOn the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.\u201d\r\nThen the bird said \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nStartled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,\r\n\u201cDoubtless,\u201d said I, \u201cwhat it utters is its only stock and store\r\nCaught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster\r\nFollowed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore\u2014\r\nTill the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore\r\nOf \u2018Never\u2014nevermore\u2019.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,\r\nStraight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;\r\nThen, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking\r\nFancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore\u2014\r\nWhat this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore\r\nMeant in croaking \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing\r\nTo the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom\u2019s core;\r\nThis and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining\r\nOn the cushion\u2019s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o\u2019er,\r\nBut whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o\u2019er,\r\nShe shall press, ah, nevermore!\r\n\r\nThen, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer\r\nSwung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.\r\n\u201cWretch,\u201d I cried, \u201cthy God hath lent thee\u2014by these angels he hath sent thee\r\nRespite\u2014respite and nepenthe[footnote]A drug of Greek mythology. When ingested, nepenthe induces relief from pain, sorrow, and grief.[\/footnote] from thy memories of Lenore;\r\nQuaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!\u201d\r\nQuoth the Raven \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cProphet!\u201d said I, \u201cthing of evil!\u2014prophet still, if bird or devil!\u2014\r\nWhether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,\r\nDesolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted\u2014\r\nOn this home by Horror haunted\u2014tell me truly, I implore\u2014\r\nIs there\u2014is there balm in Gilead?[footnote]In the Bible, Gilead is a region in Jordan associated with despair; hence, it is the name of the nation in Margaret Atwood\u2019s dystopian novel, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>.\u00a0 The speaker asks \u201cIs there\u2026balm in Gilead\u201d?\u00a0 Will I ever have relief from my suffering.[\/footnote]\u2014tell me\u2014tell me, I implore!\u201d\r\nQuoth the Raven \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cProphet!\u201d said I, \u201cthing of evil!\u2014prophet still, if bird or devil!\r\nBy that Heaven that bends above us\u2014by that God we both adore\u2014\r\nTell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,[footnote]Arabic word for paradise; Eden.[\/footnote]\r\nIt shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore\u2014\r\nClasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.\u201d\r\nQuoth the Raven \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBe that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!\u201d I shrieked, upstarting\u2014\r\n\u201cGet thee back into the tempest and the Night\u2019s Plutonian shore!\r\nLeave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!\r\nLeave my loneliness unbroken!\u2014quit the bust above my door!\r\nTake thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!\u201d\r\nQuoth the Raven \u201cNevermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting\r\nOn the pallid bust of Pallas[footnote]In Greek mythology, the Goddess of Wisdom.[\/footnote] just above my chamber door;\r\nAnd his eyes have all the seeming of a demon\u2019s that is dreaming,\r\nAnd the lamp-light o\u2019er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;\r\nAnd my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor\r\nShall be lifted\u2014nevermore!\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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                                                                                                            Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                                                                                                            1. What is the narrator\u2019s state of mind? Why is he in this state of mind?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                            2. The poem is set at midnight in December. Why is this significant?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                            3. Why might we suspect the narrator is hallucinating?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                            4. How does the poem\u2019s dramatic trochaic meter, frequent use of alliteration, and internal rhyme influence tone and theme?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                            5. What does the Raven mean by \u201cNevermore\u201d? How does the Raven\u2019s declaration help establish the theme of the poem?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                            6. Watch and hear James Earl Jones read \u201cThe Raven\u201d<\/a>. Watch and hear Vincent Price read \u201cThe Raven\u201d<\/a>. Which version do you prefer? Why?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

                                                                                                              Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809\u20131892)<\/h1>\r\n

                                                                                                              \"The Lady of Shallot\"<\/h2>\r\n
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                                                                                                              Part I<\/h3>\r\nOn either side the river lie\r\nLong fields of barley and of rye,\r\nThat clothe the wold[footnote]A plain.[\/footnote] and meet the sky;\r\nAnd through the field the road runs by\r\nTo many-towered Camelot;\r\nAnd up and down the people go,\r\nGazing where the lilies blow[footnote]Bloom.[\/footnote]\r\nRound an island there below,\r\nThe island of Shalott.\r\n\r\nWillows whiten[footnote]The white underside of the willow leaves are lifted by the wind.[\/footnote] , aspens quiver,\r\nLittle breezes dusk and shiver\r\nThrough the wave that runs for ever\r\nBy the island in the river\r\nFlowing down to Camelot.\r\nFour grey walls, and four grey towers,\r\nOverlook a space of flowers,\r\nAnd the silent isle imbowers\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nBy the margin, willow-veiled,\r\nSlide the heavy barges trailed\r\nBy slow horses; and unhailed\r\nThe shallop[footnote]A small, open boat propelled by oars or sails and used mainly in shallow waters.[\/footnote] flitteth silken-sailed\r\nSkimming down to Camelot:\r\nBut who hath seen her wave her hand?\r\nOr at the casement seen her stand?\r\nOr is she known in all the land,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott?\r\n\r\nOnly reapers, reaping early\r\nIn among the bearded barley,\r\nHear a song that echoes cheerly\r\nFrom the river winding clearly,\r\nDown to towered Camelot:\r\nAnd by the moon the reaper weary,\r\nPiling sheaves in uplands airy,\r\nListening, whispers \"\u2018Tis the fairy\r\nLady of Shalott.\u201d\r\n

                                                                                                              Part II<\/h3>\r\nThere she weaves by night and day\r\nA magic web with colours gay.\r\nShe has heard a whisper say,\r\nA curse is on her if she stay[footnote]Pause.[\/footnote]\r\nTo look down to Camelot.\r\nShe knows not what the curse may be,\r\nAnd so she weaveth steadily,\r\nAnd little other care hath she,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nAnd moving through a mirror[footnote]At her loom, the lady faces the back of her tapestry, and weaves by consulting a mirror in which the design is reflected.[\/footnote] clear\r\nThat hangs before her all the year,\r\nShadows of the world appear.\r\nThere she sees the highway near\r\nWinding down to Camelot:\r\nThere the river eddy whirls,\r\nAnd there the surly village-churls[footnote]Peasants.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd the red cloaks of market girls,\r\nPass onward from Shalott.\r\n\r\nSometimes a troop of damsels glad,\r\nAn abbot on an ambling pad,\r\nSometimes a curly shepherd-lad,\r\nOr long-haired page in crimson clad,\r\nGoes by to towered Camelot;\r\nAnd sometimes through the mirror blue\r\nThe knights come riding two and two:\r\nShe hath no loyal knight and true,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nBut in her web she still delights\r\nTo weave the mirror\u2019s magic sights,\r\nFor often through the silent nights\r\nA funeral, with plumes and lights\r\nAnd music, went to Camelot:\r\nOr when the moon was overhead,\r\nCame two young lovers lately wed;\r\n\u201cI am half sick of shadows,\" said\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n

                                                                                                              Part III<\/h3>\r\nA bow-shot from her bower-eaves,\r\nHe rode between the barley-sheaves,\r\nThe sun came dazzling through the leaves,\r\nAnd flamed upon the brazen greaves[footnote]Armour for the leg below the knee.[\/footnote]\r\nOf bold Sir Lancelot.\r\nA red-cross knight for ever kneeled\r\nTo a lady in his shield,\r\nThat sparkled on the yellow field,\r\nBeside remote Shalott.\r\n\r\nThe gemmy bridle glittered free,\r\nLike to some branch of stars we see\r\nHung in the golden Galaxy.\r\nThe bridle bells rang merrily\r\nAs he rode down to Camelot:\r\nAnd from his blazoned baldric[footnote]A belt worn over one shoulder to support a sword or bugle.[\/footnote] slung\r\nA mighty silver bugle hung,\r\nAnd as he rode his armour rung,\r\nBeside remote Shalott.\r\n\r\nAll in the blue unclouded weather\r\nThick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather,\r\nThe helmet and the helmet-feather\r\nBurned like one burning flame together,\r\nAs he rode down to Camelot.\r\nAs often through the purple night,\r\nBelow the starry clusters bright,\r\nSome bearded meteor, trailing light,\r\nMoves over still Shalott.\r\n\r\nHis broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;\r\nOn burnished hooves his war-horse trode;\r\nFrom underneath his helmet flowed\r\nHis coal-black curls as on he rode,\r\nAs he rode down to Camelot.\r\nFrom the bank and from the river\r\nHe flashed into the crystal mirror,\r\n\u201cTirra lirra[footnote]In Shakespeare\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale,<\/em> (4.3: 11-12), Autolycus sings about \u201ctumbling in the hay\u201d with his \u201caunts\u201d (whores).[\/footnote],\" by the river\r\nSang Sir Lancelot.\r\n\r\nShe left the web, she left the loom,\r\nShe made three paces through the room,\r\nShe saw the water-lily bloom,\r\nShe saw the helmet and the plume,\r\nShe looked down to Camelot.\r\nOut flew the web and floated wide;\r\nThe mirror cracked from side to side;\r\n\u201cThe curse is come upon me,\" cried\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n

                                                                                                              Part IV<\/h3>\r\nIn the stormy east-wind straining,\r\nThe pale yellow woods were waning,\r\nThe broad stream in his banks complaining,\r\nHeavily the low sky raining\r\nOver towered Camelot;\r\nDown she came and found a boat\r\nBeneath a willow left afloat,\r\nAnd round about the prow she wrote\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nAnd down the river\u2019s dim expanse,\r\nLike some bold se\u00ebr in a trance\r\nSeeing all his own mischance\u2014\r\nWith a glassy countenance\r\nDid she look to Camelot.\r\nAnd at the closing of the day\r\nShe loosed the chain, and down she lay;\r\nThe broad stream bore her far away,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nLying, robed in snowy white\r\nThat loosely flew to left and right\u2014\r\nThe leaves upon her falling light\u2014\r\nThrough the noises of the night\r\nShe floated down to Camelot:\r\nAnd as the boat-head wound along\r\nThe willowy hills and fields among,\r\nThey heard her singing her last song,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nHeard a carol, mournful, holy,\r\nChanted loudly, chanted lowly,\r\nTill her blood was frozen slowly,\r\nAnd her eyes were darkened wholly,\r\nTurned to towered Camelot.\r\nFor ere she reached upon the tide\r\nThe first house by the water-side,\r\nSinging in her song she died,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nUnder tower and balcony,\r\nBy garden-wall and gallery,\r\nA gleaming shape she floated by,\r\nDead-pale between the houses high,\r\nSilent into Camelot.\r\nOut upon the wharfs they came,\r\nKnight and burgher, lord and dame,\r\nAnd round the prow they read her name,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\r\n\r\nWho is this? and what is here?\r\nAnd in the lighted palace near\r\nDied the sound of royal cheer;\r\nAnd they crossed themselves for fear,\r\nAll the knights at Camelot:\r\nBut Lancelot mused a little space;\r\nHe said, \u201cShe has a lovely face;\r\nGod in his mercy lend her grace,\r\nThe Lady of Shalott.\u201d\r\n

                                                                                                              \"Ulysses\"<\/h2>\r\nThe main source of this dramatic monologue is Dante\u2019s <\/em>Inferno XXVI, 94-126. Here Ulysses sets out westward through the Pillars of Hercules: \u201cWhen I left Circe....not fondness for my son, ...nor Penelope\u2019s claim to the joys of love could drive out of my mind the lust to experience the far-flung world....I put out on the...open sea\/with a single ship\/and only those few souls\/who stayed true when the rest deserted me.\u201d But Tennyson melds details of this account with those of Homer\u2019s <\/em>Odyssey 19-24, after he has returned to Ithaca and been reunited with his wife and son and resumed his duties as king.<\/em>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIt little profits that an idle king,\r\nBy this still hearth, among these barren crags,\r\nMatch'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole\r\nUnequal laws unto a savage race,\r\nThat hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.\r\n\r\nI cannot rest from travel: I will drink\r\nLife to the lees; all times I have enjoy'd\r\nGreatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those\r\nThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and when\r\nThro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades[footnote]A cluster of stars in Taurus, associated by the ancients with rainy weather.[\/footnote]\r\nVext the dim sea: I am become a name;\r\nFor always roaming with a hungry heart\r\nMuch have I seen and known; cities of men\r\nAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,\r\nMyself not least, but honour'd of them all;\r\nAnd drunk delight of battle with my peers,\r\nFar on the ringing plains of windy Troy,\r\nI am a part of all that I have met;\r\nYet all experience is an arch wherethro'\r\nGleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades\r\nFor ever and for ever when I move.\r\nHow dull it is to pause, to make an end[footnote]cf. Ulysses\u2019 speech in Shakespeare\u2019s Troilus and Cressida<\/em> 3.3. 144-47: \u201cPerseverance...\/Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang\/Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail\/In monumental mockery.\u201d[\/footnote],\r\nTo rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!\r\nAs tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life\r\nWere all too little, and of one to me\r\nLittle remains: but every hour is saved\r\nFrom that eternal silence, something more,\r\nA bringer of new things; and vile it were\r\nFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,\r\nAnd this gray spirit yearning in desire\r\nTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,\r\nBeyond the utmost bound of human thought.\r\n\r\nThis is my son, mine own Telemachus,\r\nTo whom I leave the scepter and the isle\u2014\r\nWell-loved of me, discerning to fulfil\r\nThis labour, by slow prudence to make mild\r\nA rugged people, and thro' soft degrees\r\nSubdue them to the useful and the good.\r\nMost blameless is he, centred in the sphere\r\nOf common duties, decent not to fail\r\nIn offices of tenderness, and pay\r\nMeet adoration to my household gods,\r\nWhen I am gone. He works his work, I mine.\r\n\r\nThere lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:\r\nThere gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,\r\nSouls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me\u2014\r\nThat ever with a frolic welcome took\r\nThe thunder and the sunshine, and opposed\r\nFree hearts, free foreheads\u2014you[footnote]The companions of Ulysses.[\/footnote]\u00a0and I are old;\r\nOld age hath yet his honour and his toil;\r\nDeath closes all: but something ere the end,\r\nSome work of noble note, may yet be done,\r\nNot unbecoming men that strove with Gods.\r\nThe lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:\r\nThe long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep\r\nMoans round with many voices. Come, my friends,\r\n'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.\r\nPush off, and sitting well in order smite\r\nThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holds\r\nTo sail beyond the sunset, and the baths\r\nOf all the western stars, until I die.\r\nIt may be that the gulfs will wash us down:\r\nIt may be we shall touch the Happy Isles[footnote]The Elysian Fields, or Greek paradise.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd see the great Achilles[footnote]Greek hero of the Iliad<\/em> who defeated Hector in the Trojan War. When he died, his arms went to Ulysses.[\/footnote], whom we knew.\r\nTho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'\r\nWe are not now that strength which in old days\r\nMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;\r\nOne equal temper of heroic hearts,\r\nMade weak by time and fate, but strong in will\r\nTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.\r\n

                                                                                                              \"Selected poems from In Memoriam A.H.H.\"<\/h2>\r\nObiit MDCCCXXXIII[footnote]He died in 1883.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nStrong Son of God, immortal Love,\r\nWhom we, that have not seen thy face,\r\nBy faith, and faith alone, embrace,\r\nBelieving where we cannot prove;\r\n\r\nThine are these orbs of light and shade[footnote]Sun and moon.[\/footnote];\r\nThou madest Life in man and brute;\r\nThou madest Death; and lo, thy foot\r\nIs on the skull which thou hast made.\r\n\r\nThou wilt not leave us in the dust:\r\nThou madest man, he knows not why,\r\nHe thinks he was not made to die;\r\nAnd thou hast made him: thou art just.\r\n\r\nThou seemest human and divine,\r\nThe highest, holiest manhood, thou.\r\nOur wills are ours, we know not how;\r\nOur wills are ours, to make them thine.\r\n\r\nOur little systems[footnote]Systems of philosophy.[\/footnote]\u00a0have their day;\r\nThey have their day and cease to be:\r\nThey are but broken lights of thee,\r\nAnd thou, O Lord, art more than they.\r\n\r\nWe have but faith: we cannot know;\r\nFor knowledge is of things we see\r\nAnd yet we trust it comes from thee,\r\nA beam in darkness: let it grow.\r\n\r\nLet knowledge grow from more to more,\r\nBut more of reverence in us dwell;\r\nThat mind and soul, according well,\r\nMay make one music as before[footnote]Before mind and soul came to sing different tunes with the advent of science.[\/footnote],\r\n\r\nBut vaster. We are fools and slight;\r\nWe mock thee when we do not fear:\r\nBut help thy foolish ones to bear;\r\nHelp thy vain worlds to bear thy light.\r\n\r\nForgive what seem'd my sin in me;\r\nWhat seem'd my worth since I began;\r\nFor merit lives from man to man,\r\nAnd not from man, O Lord, to thee.\r\n\r\nForgive my grief for one removed,\r\nThy creature, whom I found so fair.\r\nI trust he lives in thee, and there\r\nI find him worthier to be loved.\r\n\r\nForgive these wild and wandering cries,\r\nConfusions of a wasted youth;\r\nForgive them where they fail in truth,\r\nAnd in thy wisdom make me wise.\r\n\r\n\u20141849<\/em>.[footnote]The 11 stanzas that Tennyson wrote as a prologue were written after the rest of the poem was complete.[\/footnote]\r\n

                                                                                                              I<\/h3>\r\nI held it truth, with him who sings\r\nTo one clear harp in divers tones[footnote]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).[\/footnote],\r\nThat men may rise on stepping-stones\r\nOf their dead selves to higher things.\r\n\r\nBut who shall so forecast the years\r\nAnd find in loss a gain to match?\r\nOr reach a hand thro' time to catch\r\nThe far-off interest of tears?\r\n\r\nLet Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,\r\nLet darkness keep her raven gloss:\r\nAh, sweeter to be drunk with loss,\r\nTo dance with death, to beat the ground,\r\n\r\nThan that the victor Hours should scorn\r\nThe long result of love, and boast,\r\n'Behold the man that loved and lost,\r\nBut all he was is overworn.'\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              II<\/h3>\r\nOld Yew, which graspest at the stones\r\nThat name the under-lying dead,\r\nThy fibres net the dreamless head,\r\nThy roots are wrapt about the bones.\r\n\r\nThe seasons bring the flower again,\r\nAnd bring the firstling to the flock;\r\nAnd in the dusk of thee, the clock[footnote]The clock of the church tower behind the yew.[\/footnote]\r\nBeats out the little lives of men.\r\n\r\nO, not for thee the glow, the bloom,\r\nWho changest not in any gale,\r\nNor branding summer suns avail\r\nTo touch thy thousand years of gloom[footnote]The yew tree, symbolic of grief, has a very long life.[\/footnote]:\r\n\r\nAnd gazing on thee, sullen tree,\r\nSick for thy stubborn hardihood,\r\nI seem to fail from out my blood\r\nAnd grow incorporate into thee.\r\n

                                                                                                              III<\/h3>\r\nO Sorrow, cruel fellowship,\r\nO Priestess in the vaults of Death,\r\nO sweet and bitter in a breath,\r\nWhat whispers from thy lying lip?\r\n\r\n'The stars,' she whispers, \u2018blindly run[footnote]cf. \u201cPlanets and Suns run blindly thro\u2019 the sky,\u201d Pope, \u201cEssay on Man\u201d, I. 252.[\/footnote];\r\nA web is wov'n across the sky;\r\nFrom out waste places comes a cry,\r\nAnd murmurs from the dying sun:\r\n\r\n'And all the phantom, Nature, stands?\r\nWith all the music in her tone,\r\nA hollow echo of my own,?\r\nA hollow form with empty hands.'\r\n\r\nAnd shall I take a thing so blind,\r\nEmbrace her as my natural good;\r\nOr crush her, like a vice of blood,\r\nUpon the threshold of the mind?\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              IV<\/h3>\r\nTo Sleep I give my powers away;\r\nMy will is bondsman to the dark;\r\nI sit within a helmless bark,\r\nAnd with my heart I muse and say:\r\n\r\nO heart, how fares it with thee now,\r\nThat thou should'st fail from thy desire,\r\nWho scarcely darest to inquire,\r\n'What is it makes me beat so low?'\r\n\r\nSomething it is which thou hast lost,\r\nSome pleasure from thine early years.\r\nBreak, thou deep vase of chilling tears,\r\nThat grief hath shaken into frost!\r\n\r\nSuch clouds of nameless trouble cross\r\nAll night below the darken'd eyes;\r\nWith morning wakes the will, and cries,\r\n'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              V<\/h3>\r\nI sometimes hold it half a sin\r\nTo put in words the grief I feel;\r\nFor words, like Nature, half reveal\r\nAnd half conceal the Soul within.\r\n\r\nBut, for the unquiet heart and brain,\r\nA use in measured language lies;\r\nThe sad mechanic exercise,\r\nLike dull narcotics, numbing pain.\r\n\r\nIn words, like weeds[footnote]Mourning clothes.[\/footnote], I'll wrap me o'er,\r\nLike coarsest clothes against the cold:\r\nBut that large grief which these enfold\r\nIs given in outline and no more.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              VI<\/h3>\r\nOne writes, that 'Other friends remain,'\r\nThat \u2018Loss is common to the race'?\r\nAnd common is the commonplace,\r\nAnd vacant chaff well meant for grain.\r\n\r\nThat loss is common would not make\r\nMy own less bitter, rather more:\r\nToo common! Never morning wore\r\nTo evening, but some heart did break.\r\n\r\nO father, wheresoe'er thou be,\r\nWho pledgest now thy gallant son;\r\nA shot, ere half thy draught be done,\r\nHath still'd the life that beat from thee.\r\n\r\nO mother, praying God will save\r\nThy sailor,\u2014while thy head is bow'd,\r\nHis heavy-shotted hammock-shroud[footnote]Sailors were often buried in their own hammocks, which were weighted to allow the corpse to sink.[\/footnote]\r\nDrops in his vast and wandering grave.\r\n\r\nYe know no more than I who wrought\r\nAt that last hour to please him well;\r\nWho mused on all I had to tell,\r\nAnd something written, something thought;\r\n\r\nExpecting still his advent home;\r\nAnd ever met him on his way\r\nWith wishes, thinking, 'here to-day,'\r\nOr 'here to-morrow will he come.'\r\n\r\nO somewhere, meek, unconscious dove[footnote]Tennyson\u2019s sister Emilia (1811-87), who had been engaged to Hallam. She later married Richard Jesse, a British naval officer, and their eldest son was given the names Arthur Henry Hallam.[\/footnote],\r\nThat sittest ranging golden hair;\r\nAnd glad to find thyself so fair,\r\nPoor child, that waitest for thy love!\r\n\r\nFor now her father's chimney glows\r\nIn expectation of a guest;\r\nAnd thinking \u2018this will please him best,'\r\nShe takes a riband or a rose;\r\n\r\nFor he will see them on to-night;\r\nAnd with the thought her colour burns;\r\nAnd, having left the glass, she turns\r\nOnce more to set a ringlet right;\r\n\r\nAnd, even when she turn'd, the curse\r\nHad fallen, and her future Lord\r\nWas drown'd in passing thro' the ford,\r\nOr kill'd in falling from his horse.\r\n\r\nO what to her shall be the end?\r\nAnd what to me remains of good?\r\nTo her, perpetual maidenhood,\r\nAnd unto me no second friend.\r\n

                                                                                                              VII<\/h3>\r\nDark house[footnote]The house at 67 Wimpole Street where Hallam had lived.[\/footnote], by which once more I stand\r\nHere in the long unlovely street,\r\nDoors, where my heart was used to beat\r\nSo quickly, waiting for a hand,\r\n\r\nA hand that can be clasp'd no more?\r\nBehold me, for I cannot sleep,\r\nAnd like a guilty thing I creep\r\nAt earliest morning to the door.\r\n\r\nHe is not here; but far away\r\nThe noise of life begins again,\r\nAnd ghastly thro' the drizzling rain\r\nOn the bald street breaks the blank day.\r\n

                                                                                                              VIII<\/h3>\r\nA happy lover who has come\r\nTo look on her that loves him well,\r\nWho 'lights and rings the gateway bell,\r\nAnd learns her gone and far from home;\r\n\r\nHe saddens, all the magic light\r\nDies off at once from bower and hall,\r\nAnd all the place is dark, and all\r\nThe chambers emptied of delight:\r\n\r\nSo find I every pleasant spot\r\nIn which we two were wont to meet,\r\nThe field, the chamber, and the street,\r\nFor all is dark where thou art not.\r\n\r\nYet as that other, wandering there\r\nIn those deserted walks, may find\r\nA flower beat with rain and wind,\r\nWhich once she foster'd up with care;\r\n\r\nSo seems it in my deep regret,\r\nO my forsaken heart, with thee\r\nAnd this poor flower of poesy\r\nWhich little cared for fades not yet.\r\n\r\nBut since it pleased a vanish'd eye[footnote]Hallam wrote a positive review of Tennyson\u2019s early poems in 1831.[\/footnote],\r\nI go to plant it on his tomb,\r\nThat if it can it there may bloom,\r\nOr, dying, there at least may die.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              IX<\/h3>\r\nFair ship, that from the Italian shore[footnote]Hallam\u2019s body was brought back by ship from Trieste, the Italian port.[\/footnote]\r\nSailest the placid ocean-plains\r\nWith my lost Arthur's loved remains,\r\nSpread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.\r\n\r\nSo draw him home to those that mourn\r\nIn vain; a favourable speed\r\nRuffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead\r\nThro' prosperous floods his holy urn.\r\n\r\nAll night no ruder air perplex\r\nThy sliding keel, till Phosphor[footnote]The morning star.[\/footnote], bright\r\nAs our pure love, thro' early light\r\nShall glimmer on the dewy decks.\r\n\r\nSphere all your lights around, above;\r\nSleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;\r\nSleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,\r\nMy friend, the brother of my love;\r\n\r\nMy Arthur, whom I shall not see\r\nTill all my widow'd race be run;\r\nDear as the mother to the son,\r\nMore than my brothers are to me.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              X<\/h3>\r\nI hear the noise about thy keel;\r\nI hear the bell struck in the night:\r\nI see the cabin-window bright;\r\nI see the sailor at the wheel.\r\n\r\nThou bring'st the sailor to his wife,\r\nAnd travell'd men from foreign lands;\r\nAnd letters unto trembling hands;\r\nAnd, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.\r\n\r\nSo bring him; we have idle dreams:\r\nThis look of quiet flatters thus\r\nOur home-bred fancies. O to us,\r\nThe fools of habit, sweeter seems\r\n\r\nTo rest beneath the clover sod,\r\nThat takes the sunshine and the rains,\r\nOr where the kneeling hamlet drains\r\nThe chalice of the grapes of God;\r\n\r\nThan if with thee the roaring wells\r\nShould gulf him fathom-deep in brine;\r\nAnd hands so often clasp'd in mine,\r\nShould toss with tangle and with shells.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XI<\/h3>\r\nCalm is the morn without a sound,\r\nCalm as to suit a calmer grief,\r\nAnd only thro' the faded leaf\r\nThe chestnut pattering to the ground:\r\n\r\nCalm and deep peace on this high wold[footnote]An upland plain.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd on these dews that drench the furze[footnote]A spiny evergreen shrub.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd all the silvery gossamers\r\nThat twinkle into green and gold:\r\n\r\nCalm and still light on yon great plain\r\nThat sweeps with all its autumn bowers,\r\nAnd crowded farms and lessening towers,\r\nTo mingle with the bounding main:\r\n\r\nCalm and deep peace in this wide air,\r\nThese leaves that redden to the fall;\r\nAnd in my heart, if calm at all,\r\nIf any calm, a calm despair:\r\n\r\nCalm on the seas, and silver sleep,\r\nAnd waves that sway themselves in rest,\r\nAnd dead calm in that noble breast\r\nWhich heaves but with the heaving deep.\r\n

                                                                                                              XII<\/h3>\r\nLo, as a dove when up she springs\r\nTo bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,\r\nSome dolorous message knit below\r\nThe wild pulsation of her wings;\r\n\r\nLike her I go; I cannot stay;\r\nI leave this mortal ark behind,\r\nA weight of nerves without a mind,\r\nAnd leave the cliffs, and haste away\r\n\r\nO'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,\r\nAnd reach the glow of southern skies,\r\nAnd see the sails at distance rise,\r\nAnd linger weeping on the marge,\r\n\r\nAnd saying; \u2018Comes he thus, my friend?\r\nIs this the end of all my care?'\r\nAnd circle moaning in the air:\r\n'Is this the end? Is this the end?'\r\n\r\nAnd forward dart again, and play\r\nAbout the prow, and back return\r\nTo where the body sits, and learn\r\nThat I have been an hour away.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XIII<\/h3>\r\nTears of the widower, when he sees\r\nA late-lost form that sleep reveals,\r\nAnd moves his doubtful arms, and feels\r\nHer place is empty, fall like these;\r\n\r\nWhich weep a loss for ever new,\r\nA void where heart on heart reposed;\r\nAnd, where warm hands have prest and closed,\r\nSilence, till I be silent too.\r\n\r\nWhich weep the comrade of my choice,\r\nAn awful thought, a life removed,\r\nThe human-hearted man I loved,\r\nA Spirit, not a breathing voice.\r\n\r\nCome, Time, and teach me, many years,\r\nI do not suffer in a dream;\r\nFor now so strange do these things seem,\r\nMine eyes have leisure for their tears;\r\n\r\nMy fancies time to rise on wing,\r\nAnd glance about the approaching sails,\r\nAs tho' they brought but merchants' bales,\r\nAnd not the burthen that they bring.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XIV<\/h3>\r\nIf one should bring me this report,\r\nThat thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,\r\nAnd I went down unto the quay,\r\nAnd found thee lying in the port;\r\n\r\nAnd standing, muffled round with woe,\r\nShould see thy passengers in rank\r\nCome stepping lightly down the plank,\r\nAnd beckoning unto those they know;\r\n\r\nAnd if along with these should come\r\nThe man I held as half-divine;\r\nShould strike a sudden hand in mine,\r\nAnd ask a thousand things of home;\r\n\r\nAnd I should tell him all my pain,\r\nAnd how my life had droop'd of late,\r\nAnd he should sorrow o'er my state\r\nAnd marvel what possess'd my brain;\r\n\r\nAnd I perceived no touch of change,\r\nNo hint of death in all his frame,\r\nBut found him all in all the same,\r\nI should not feel it to be strange.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XV<\/h3>\r\nTo-night the winds begin to rise\r\nAnd roar from yonder dropping day:\r\nThe last red leaf is whirl'd away,\r\nThe rooks are blown about the skies;\r\n\r\nThe forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,\r\nThe cattle huddled on the lea;\r\nAnd wildly dash'd on tower and tree\r\nThe sunbeam strikes along the world:\r\n\r\nAnd but for fancies, which aver\r\nThat all thy motions gently pass\r\nAthwart a plane of molten glass[footnote]Calm sea.[\/footnote],\r\nI scarce could brook the strain and stir\r\n\r\nThat makes the barren branches loud;\r\nAnd but for fear it is not so,\r\nThe wild unrest that lives in woe\r\nWould dote and pore on yonder cloud\r\n\r\nThat rises upward always higher,\r\nAnd onward drags a labouring breast,\r\nAnd topples round the dreary west,\r\nA looming bastion fringed with fire.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XIX<\/h3>\r\nThe Danube to the Severn[footnote]Hallam died in Vienna, on the Danube River, and was buried in the church at Clevedon on the Severn River in southwest England.[\/footnote]\u00a0gave\r\nThe darken'd heart that beat no more;\r\nThey laid him by the pleasant shore,\r\nAnd in the hearing of the wave.\r\n\r\nThere twice a day the Severn fills;\r\nThe salt sea-water passes by,\r\nAnd hushes half the babbling Wye,\r\nAnd makes a silence in the hills.\r\n\r\nThe Wye is hush'd nor moved along,\r\nAnd hush'd my deepest grief of all,\r\nWhen fill'd with tears that cannot fall,\r\nI brim with sorrow drowning song.\r\n\r\nThe tide flows down, the wave again\r\nIs vocal in its wooded walls;\r\nMy deeper anguish also falls,\r\nAnd I can speak a little then.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XXIV<\/h3>\r\nAnd was the day of my delight\r\nAs pure and perfect as I say?\r\nThe very source and fount of Day\r\nIs dash'd with wandering isles of night.\r\n\r\nIf all was good and fair we met,\r\nThis earth had been the Paradise\r\nIt never look'd to human eyes\r\nSince our first Sun arose and set.\r\n\r\nAnd is it that the haze of grief\r\nMakes former gladness loom so great?\r\nThe lowness of the present state,\r\nThat sets the past in this relief?\r\n\r\nOr that the past will always win\r\nA glory from its being far;\r\nAnd orb into the perfect star\r\nWe saw not, when we moved therein?\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XXVII<\/h3>\r\nI envy not in any moods\r\nThe captive void of noble rage,\r\nThe linnet born within the cage,\r\nThat never knew the summer woods:\r\n\r\nI envy not the beast that takes\r\nHis license in the field of time,\r\nUnfetter'd by the sense of crime,\r\nTo whom a conscience never wakes;\r\n\r\nNor, what may count itself as blest,\r\nThe heart that never plighted troth\r\nBut stagnates in the weeds of sloth;\r\nNor any want-begotten rest.\r\n\r\nI hold it true, whate'er befall;\r\nI feel it, when I sorrow most;\r\n'Tis better to have loved and lost\r\nThan never to have loved at all.\r\n

                                                                                                              XXVIII<\/h3>\r\nThe time draws near the birth of Christ[footnote]As the first Christmas (1833) after Hallam\u2019s death approaches, the poet listens to the church bells from four villages. A.C. Bradley suggests that the second part of \"In Memoriam\" begins here in XXVIII. A Commentary on Tennyson\u2019s In Memoriam.<\/em>[\/footnote]:\r\nThe moon is hid; the night is still;\r\nThe Christmas bells from hill to hill\r\nAnswer each other in the mist.\r\n\r\nFour voices of four hamlets round,\r\nFrom far and near, on mead and moor,\r\nSwell out and fail, as if a door\r\nWere shut between me and the sound:\r\n\r\nEach voice four changes[footnote]Arrangements of church bell ringing.[\/footnote]\u00a0on the wind,\r\nThat now dilate, and now decrease,\r\nPeace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,\r\nPeace and goodwill, to all mankind.\r\n\r\nThis year I slept and woke with pain,\r\nI almost wish'd no more to wake,\r\nAnd that my hold on life would break\r\nBefore I heard those bells again:\r\n\r\nBut they my troubled spirit rule,\r\nFor they controll'd me when a boy;\r\nThey bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,\r\nThe merry merry bells of Yule.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XXX<\/h3>\r\nWith trembling fingers did we weave\r\nThe holly round the Chrismas hearth;\r\nA rainy cloud possess'd the earth,\r\nAnd sadly fell our Christmas-eve.\r\n\r\nAt our old pastimes in the hall\r\nWe gambol'd, making vain pretence\r\nOf gladness, with an awful sense\r\nOf one mute Shadow watching all.\r\n\r\nWe paused: the winds were in the beech:\r\nWe heard them sweep the winter land;\r\nAnd in a circle hand-in-hand\r\nSat silent, looking each at each.\r\n\r\nThen echo-like our voices rang;\r\nWe sung, tho' every eye was dim,\r\nA merry song we sang with him\r\nLast year: impetuously we sang:\r\n\r\nWe ceased: a gentler feeling crept\r\nUpon us: surely rest is meet:\r\n\u2018They rest,' we said, \u2018their sleep is sweet,'\r\nAnd silence follow'd, and we wept.\r\n\r\nOur voices took a higher range;\r\nOnce more we sang: \u2018They do not die\r\nNor lose their mortal sympathy,\r\nNor change to us, although they change;\r\n\r\n'Rapt from the fickle and the frail\r\nWith gather'd power, yet the same,\r\nPierces the keen seraphic flame\r\nFrom orb to orb, from veil to veil.'\r\n\r\nRise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,\r\nDraw forth the cheerful day from night:\r\nO Father, touch the east, and light\r\nThe light that shone when Hope was born.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XXXIV<\/h3>\r\nMy own dim life should teach me this,\r\nThat life shall live for evermore,\r\nElse earth is darkness at the core,\r\nAnd dust and ashes all that is;\r\n\r\nThis round of green, this orb of flame,\r\nFantastic beauty such as lurks\r\nIn some wild Poet, when he works\r\nWithout a conscience or an aim.\r\n\r\nWhat then were God to such as I?\r\n'Twere hardly worth my while to choose\r\nOf things all mortal, or to use\r\nA tattle patience ere I die;\r\n\r\n'Twere best at once to sink to peace,\r\nLike birds the charming serpent draws,\r\nTo drop head-foremost in the jaws\r\nOf vacant darkness and to cease.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XXXIX<\/h3>\r\nOld warder[footnote]The churchyard yew. This section was written in 1868; cf. II.[\/footnote]\u00a0of these buried bones,\r\nAnd answering now my random stroke\r\nWith fruitful cloud and living smoke,\r\nDark yew, that graspest at the stones\r\n\r\nAnd dippest toward the dreamless head,\r\nTo thee too comes the golden hour\r\nWhen flower is feeling after flower;\r\nBut Sorrow?fixt upon the dead,\r\n\r\nAnd darkening the dark graves of men,?\r\nWhat whisper'd from her lying lips?\r\nThy gloom is kindled at the tips,\r\nAnd passes into gloom again.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              L<\/h3>\r\nBe near me when my light is low,\r\nWhen the blood creeps, and the nerves prick\r\nAnd tingle; and the heart is sick,\r\nAnd all the wheels of Being slow.\r\n\r\nBe near me when the sensuous frame\r\nIs rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;\r\nAnd Time, a maniac scattering dust,\r\nAnd Life, a Fury slinging flame.\r\n\r\nBe near me when my faith is dry,\r\nAnd men the flies of latter spring,\r\nThat lay their eggs, and sting and sing\r\nAnd weave their petty cells and die.\r\n\r\nBe near me when I fade away,\r\nTo point the term of human strife,\r\nAnd on the low dark verge of life\r\nThe twilight of eternal day.\r\n

                                                                                                              LIV<\/h3>\r\nOh yet we trust that somehow good\r\nWill be the final goal of ill,\r\nTo pangs of nature, sins of will,\r\nDefects of doubt, and taints of blood;\r\n\r\nThat nothing walks with aimless feet;\r\nThat not one life shall be destroy'd,\r\nOr cast as rubbish to the void,\r\nWhen God hath made the pile complete;\r\n\r\nThat not a worm is cloven in vain;\r\nThat not a moth with vain desire\r\nIs shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,\r\nOr but subserves another's gain.\r\n\r\nBehold, we know not anything;\r\nI can but trust that good shall fall\r\nAt last\u2014far off\u2014at last, to all,\r\nAnd every winter change to spring.\r\n\r\nSo runs my dream: but what am I?\r\nAn infant crying in the night:\r\nAn infant crying for the light:\r\nAnd with no language but a cry.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LV<\/h3>\r\nThe wish, that of the living whole\r\nNo life may fail beyond the grave,\r\nDerives it not from what we have\r\nThe likest God within the soul[footnote]The inner consciousness\u2014the divine in man [Tennyson\u2019s note].[\/footnote]?\r\n\r\nAre God and Nature then at strife,\r\nThat Nature lends such evil dreams?\r\nSo careful of the type[footnote]Species; i.e., Nature ensures the preservation of the species but is indifferent to the fate of the individual.[\/footnote]\u00a0she seems,\r\nSo careless of the single life;\r\n\r\nThat I, considering everywhere\r\nHer secret meaning in her deeds,\r\nAnd finding that of fifty seeds\r\nShe often brings but one to bear,\r\n\r\nI falter where I firmly trod,\r\nAnd falling with my weight of cares\r\nUpon the great world's altar-stairs\r\nThat slope thro' darkness up to God,\r\n\r\nI stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,\r\nAnd gather dust and chaff, and call\r\nTo what I feel is Lord of all,\r\nAnd faintly trust the larger hope[footnote]Tennyson\u2019s son Hallam writes in the biography of his father, \u201c...by \u2018the larger hope\u2019 that the whole human race would through, perhaps, ages of suffering, be at length purified and saved\u201d (Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir,<\/em> I, 321-22).[\/footnote].\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LVI<\/h3>\r\n'So careful of the type?' but no.\r\nFrom scarp\u00e8d cliff and quarried stone\r\nShe[footnote]Nature.[\/footnote]\u00a0cries, \u2018A thousand types are gone[footnote]The new science of geology, particularly in Charles Lyell\u2019s Principles of Geology<\/em> (1830) , which Tennyson had read, was providing evidence that countless forms of life have disappeared from the earth.[\/footnote]:\r\nI care for nothing, all shall go.\r\n\r\n'Thou makest thine appeal to me:\r\nI bring to life, I bring to death:\r\nThe spirit does but mean the breath:\r\nI know no more.' And he, shall he,\r\n\r\nMan, her last work, who seem'd so fair,\r\nSuch splendid purpose in his eyes,\r\nWho roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,\r\nWho built him fanes[footnote]Temples.[\/footnote]\u00a0of fruitless prayer,\r\n\r\nWho trusted God was love indeed\r\nAnd love Creation's final law?\r\nTho' Nature, red in tooth and claw\r\nWith ravine, shriek'd against his creed?\r\n\r\nWho loved, who suffer'd countless ills,\r\nWho battled for the True, the Just,\r\nBe blown about the desert dust,\r\nOr seal'd within the iron hills?\r\n\r\nNo more? A monster then, a dream,\r\nA discord. Dragons of the prime,\r\nThat tare each other in their slime,\r\nWere mellow music match'd with him.\r\n\r\nO life as futile, then, as frail!\r\nO for thy voice to soothe and bless!\r\nWhat hope of answer, or redress?\r\nBehind the veil, behind the veil.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LIX<\/h3>\r\nO Sorrow, wilt thou live with me\r\nNo casual mistress, but a wife,\r\nMy bosom-friend and half of life;\r\nAs I confess it needs must be;\r\n\r\nO Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,\r\nBe sometimes lovely like a bride,\r\nAnd put thy harsher moods aside,\r\nIf thou wilt have me wise and good.\r\n\r\nMy centred passion cannot move,\r\nNor will it lessen from to-day;\r\nBut I'll have leave at times to play\r\nAs with the creature of my love;\r\n\r\nAnd set thee forth, for thou art mine,\r\nWith so much hope for years to come,\r\nThat, howsoe'er I know thee, some\r\nCould hardly tell what name were thine.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LXVII<\/h3>\r\nWhen on my bed the moonlight falls,\r\nI know that in thy place of rest\r\nBy that broad water of the west[footnote]Hallam was buried near the Severn River in southwestern England.[\/footnote],\r\nThere comes a glory on the walls;\r\n\r\nThy marble bright in dark appears,\r\nAs slowly steals a silver flame\r\nAlong the letters of thy name,\r\nAnd o'er the number of thy years.\r\n\r\nThe mystic glory swims away;\r\nFrom off my bed the moonlight dies;\r\nAnd closing eaves of wearied eyes\r\nI sleep till dusk is dipt in gray;\r\n\r\nAnd then I know the mist is drawn\r\nA lucid veil from coast to coast,\r\nAnd in the dark church like a ghost\r\nThy tablet glimmers to the dawn.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LXXII<\/h3>\r\nRisest thou thus, dim dawn, again[footnote]The first anniversary of Hallam\u2019s death,\u00a0September 15, 1884.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd howlest, issuing out of night,\r\nWith blasts that blow the poplar white,\r\nAnd lash with storm the streaming pane?\r\n\r\nDay, when my crown'd estate[footnote]State of happiness.[\/footnote]\u00a0begun\r\nTo pine in that reverse of doom[footnote]Reversal of fortunes as the result of Hallam\u2019s death.[\/footnote],\r\nWhich sicken'd every living bloom,\r\nAnd blurr'd the splendour of the sun;\r\n\r\nWho usherest in the dolorous hour\r\nWith thy quick tears that make the rose\r\nPull sideways, and the daisy close\r\nHer crimson fringes to the shower;\r\n\r\nWho might'st have heaved a windless flame\r\nUp the deep East, or, whispering, play'd\r\nA chequer-work of beam and shade\r\nAlong the hills, yet look'd the same.\r\n\r\nAs wan, as chill, as wild as now;\r\nDay, mark'd as with some hideous crime,\r\nWhen the dark hand struck down thro' time,\r\nAnd cancell'd nature's best: but thou,\r\n\r\nLift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows\r\nThro' clouds that drench the morning star,\r\nAnd whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar,\r\nAnd sow the sky with flying boughs,\r\n\r\nAnd up thy vault with roaring sound\r\nClimb thy thick noon, disastrous day;\r\nTouch thy dull goal of joyless gray,\r\nAnd hide thy shame beneath the ground.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LXXVIII<\/h3>\r\nAgain at Christmas[footnote]The second Christmas (1884) after Hallam\u2019s death.[\/footnote]\u00a0did we weave\r\nThe holly round the Christmas hearth;\r\nThe silent snow possess'd the earth,\r\nAnd calmly fell our Christmas-eve:\r\n\r\nThe yule-clog[footnote]Yule log.[\/footnote]\u00a0sparkled keen with frost,\r\nNo wing of wind the region swept,\r\nBut over all things brooding slept\r\nThe quiet sense of something lost.\r\n\r\nAs in the winters left behind,\r\nAgain our ancient games had place,\r\nThe mimic picture's[footnote]Tableau-vivant; literally, \u201cliving picture,\"\u00a0a silent and motionless group of people arranged to represent a scene or incident.[\/footnote]\u00a0breathing grace,\r\nAnd dance and song and hoodman-blind.\r\n\r\nWho show'd a token of distress?\r\nNo single tear, no mark of pain:\r\nO sorrow, then can sorrow wane?\r\nO grief, can grief be changed to less?\r\n\r\nO last regret, regret can die!\r\nNo\u2014mixt with all this mystic frame,\r\nHer deep relations are the same,\r\nBut with long use her tears are dry.\r\n

                                                                                                              LXXX<\/h3>\r\nIf any vague desire should rise,\r\nThat holy Death ere Arthur died\r\nHad moved me kindly from his side,\r\nAnd dropt the dust on tearless eyes;\r\n\r\nThen fancy shapes, as fancy can,\r\nThe grief my loss in him had wrought,\r\nA grief as deep as life or thought,\r\nBut stay'd in peace with God and man.\r\n\r\nI make a picture in the brain;\r\nI hear the sentence that he speaks;\r\nHe bears the burthen of the weeks\r\nBut turns his burthen into gain.\r\n\r\nHis credit thus shall set me free;\r\nAnd, influence-rich to soothe and save,\r\nUnused example from the grave\r\nReach out dead hands to comfort me.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LXXXVI<\/h3>\r\nSweet after showers[footnote]This poem signals \u201cthe full new life which is beginning to revive in the poet\u2019s heart and to dispel the last shadow of the evil dreams which Nature seemed to lend when he was under the sway of...Doubt and Death\u201d (Bradley, 223).[\/footnote], ambrosial air,\r\nThat rollest from the gorgeous gloom\r\nOf evening over brake and bloom\r\nAnd meadow, slowly breathing bare\r\n\r\nThe round of space, and rapt below\r\nThro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,\r\nAnd shadowing down the horned flood\r\nIn ripples, fan my brows and blow\r\n\r\nThe fever from my cheek, and sigh\r\nThe full new life that feeds thy breath\r\nThroughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,\r\nIll brethren, let the fancy fly\r\n\r\nFrom belt to belt of crimson seas\r\nOn leagues of odour streaming far,\r\nTo where in yonder orient star\r\nA hundred spirits whisper \u2018Peace.'\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              LXXXIX<\/h3>\r\nWitch-elms that counterchange the floor\r\nOf this flat lawn with dusk and bright;\r\nAnd thou, with all thy breadth and height\r\nOf foliage, towering sycamore;\r\n\r\nHow often, hither wandering down,\r\nMy Arthur found your shadows fair,\r\nAnd shook to all the liberal air\r\nThe dust and din and steam of town:\r\n\r\nHe brought an eye for all he saw;\r\nHe mixt in all our simple sports;\r\nThey pleased him, fresh from brawling courts\r\nAnd dusty purlieus of the law[footnote]After leaving Cambridge, Hallam became a law student in London.[\/footnote].\r\n\r\nO joy to him in this retreat,\r\nInmantled in ambrosial dark,\r\nTo drink the cooler air, and mark\r\nThe landscape winking thro' the heat:\r\n\r\nO sound to rout the brood of cares,\r\nThe sweep of scythe in morning dew,\r\nThe gust that round the garden flew,\r\nAnd tumbled half the mellowing pears!\r\n\r\nO bliss, when all in circle drawn\r\nAbout him, heart and ear were fed\r\nTo hear him, as he lay and read\r\nThe Tuscan poets[footnote]Dante and Petrarch.[\/footnote]\u00a0on the lawn:\r\n\r\nOr in the all-golden afternoon\r\nA guest, or happy sister, sung,\r\nOr here she brought the harp and flung\r\nA ballad to the brightening moon:\r\n\r\nNor less it pleased in livelier moods,\r\nBeyond the bounding hill to stray,\r\nAnd break the livelong summer day\r\nWith banquet in the distant woods;\r\n\r\nWhereat we glanced from theme to theme,\r\nDiscuss'd the books to love or hate,\r\nOr touch'd the changes of the state,\r\nOr threaded some Socratic dream;\r\n\r\nBut if I praised the busy town,\r\nHe loved to rail against it still,\r\nFor \u2018ground in yonder social mill\r\nWe rub each other's angles down,\r\n\r\n'And merge,' he said, \u2018in form and gloss\r\nThe picturesque of man and man.'\r\nWe talk'd: the stream beneath us ran,\r\nThe wine-flask lying couch'd in moss,\r\n\r\nOr cool'd within the glooming wave;\r\nAnd last, returning from afar,\r\nBefore the crimson-circled star\r\nHad fall'n into her father's grave,\r\n\r\nAnd brushing ankle-deep in flowers,\r\nWe heard behind the woodbine veil\r\nThe milk that bubbled in the pail,\r\nAnd buzzings of the honied hours.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XCIII<\/h3>\r\nI shall not see thee. Dare I say\r\nNo spirit ever brake the band\r\nThat stays him from the native land\r\nWhere first he walk'd when claspt in clay?\r\n\r\nNo visual shade of some one lost,\r\nBut he, the Spirit himself, may come\r\nWhere all the nerve of sense is numb;\r\nSpirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.\r\n\r\nO, therefore from thy sightless range\r\nWith gods in unconjectured bliss,\r\nO, from the distance of the abyss\r\nOf tenfold-complicated change,\r\n\r\nDescend, and touch, and enter; hear\r\nThe wish too strong for words to name;\r\nThat in this blindness of the frame\r\nMy Ghost may feel that thine is near.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XCIV<\/h3>\r\nHow pure at heart and sound in head,\r\nWith what divine affections bold\r\nShould be the man whose thought would hold\r\nAn hour's communion with the dead.\r\n\r\nIn vain shalt thou, or any, call\r\nThe spirits from their golden day,\r\nExcept, like them, thou too canst say,\r\nMy spirit is at peace with all.\r\n\r\nThey haunt the silence of the breast,\r\nImaginations calm and fair,\r\nThe memory like a cloudless air,\r\nThe conscience as a sea at rest:\r\n\r\nBut when the heart is full of din,\r\nAnd doubt beside the portal waits,\r\nThey can but listen at the gates\r\nAnd hear the household jar within.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XCV<\/h3>\r\nBy night we linger'd on the lawn,\r\nFor underfoot the herb was dry;\r\nAnd genial warmth; and o'er the sky\r\nThe silvery haze of summer drawn;\r\n\r\nAnd calm that let the tapers burn\r\nUnwavering: not a cricket chirr'd:\r\nThe brook alone far-off was heard,\r\nAnd on the board the fluttering urn[footnote]Vessel for boiling water for tea or coffee.[\/footnote]:\r\n\r\nAnd bats went round in fragrant skies,\r\nAnd wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes\r\nThat haunt the dusk, with ermine capes\r\nAnd woolly breasts and beaded eyes;\r\n\r\nWhile now we sang old songs that peal'd\r\nFrom knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease,\r\nThe white kine[footnote]Cows.[\/footnote]\u00a0glimmer'd, and the trees\r\nLaid their dark arms about the field.\r\n\r\nBut when those others, one by one,\r\nWithdrew themselves from me and night,\r\nAnd in the house light after light\r\nWent out, and I was all alone,\r\n\r\nA hunger seized my heart; I read\r\nOf that glad year which once had been,\r\nIn those fall'n leaves which kept their green,\r\nThe noble letters of the dead:\r\n\r\nAnd strangely on the silence broke\r\nThe silent-speaking words, and strange\r\nWas love's dumb cry defying change\r\nTo test his worth; and strangely spoke\r\n\r\nThe faith, the vigour, bold to dwell\r\nOn doubts that drive the coward back,\r\nAnd keen thro' wordy snares to track\r\nSuggestion to her inmost cell.\r\n\r\nSo word by word, and line by line,\r\nThe dead man touch'd me from the past,\r\nAnd all at once it seem'd at last\r\nThe living soul was flash'd on mine,\r\n\r\nAnd mine in his was wound, and whirl'd\r\nAbout empyreal heights of thought,\r\nAnd came on that which is, and caught\r\nThe deep pulsations of the world,\r\n\r\nAeonian music[footnote]Age-old music.[\/footnote]\u00a0measuring out\r\nThe steps of Time\u2014the shocks of Chance\u2014\r\nThe blows of Death. At length my trance\r\nWas cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.\r\n\r\nVague words! but ah, how hard to frame\r\nIn matter-moulded forms of speech,\r\nOr ev'n for intellect to reach\r\nThro' memory that which I became:\r\n\r\nTill now the doubtful dusk reveal'd\r\nThe knolls once more where, couch'd at ease,\r\nThe white kine glimmer'd, and the trees\r\nLaid their dark arms about the field;\r\n\r\nAnd suck'd from out the distant gloom\r\nA breeze began to tremble o'er\r\nThe large leaves of the sycamore,\r\nAnd fluctuate all the still perfume,\r\n\r\nAnd gathering freshlier overhead,\r\nRock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung\r\nThe heavy-folded rose, and flung\r\nThe lilies to and fro, and said,\r\n\r\n'The dawn, the dawn,' and died away;\r\nAnd East and West, without a breath,\r\nMixt their dim lights, like life and death,\r\nTo broaden into boundless day.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              XCVI<\/h3>\r\nYou say, but with no touch of scorn,\r\nSweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes\r\nAre tender over drowning flies,\r\nYou tell me, doubt is Devil-born.\r\n\r\nI know not: one[footnote]Hallam.[\/footnote]\u00a0indeed I knew\r\nIn many a subtle question versed,\r\nWho touch'd a jarring lyre at first,\r\nBut ever strove to make it true:\r\n\r\nPerplext in faith, but pure in deeds,\r\nAt last he beat his music out.\r\nThere lives more faith in honest doubt,\r\nBelieve me, than in half the creeds.\r\n\r\nHe fought his doubts and gather'd strength,\r\nHe would not make his judgment blind,\r\nHe faced the spectres of the mind\r\nAnd laid them: thus he came at length\r\n\r\nTo find a stronger faith his own;\r\nAnd Power was with him in the night,\r\nWhich makes the darkness and the light,\r\nAnd dwells not in the light alone,\r\n\r\nBut in the darkness and the cloud,\r\nAs over Sinai's peaks of old,\r\nWhile Israel made their gods of gold,\r\nAltho' the trumpet blew so loud.\r\n

                                                                                                              XCIX<\/h3>\r\nRisest thou thus, dim dawn, again[footnote]September 15, 1835, the second anniversary of Hallam\u2019s death.[\/footnote],\r\nSo loud with voices of the birds,\r\nSo thick with lowings of the herds,\r\nDay, when I lost the flower of men;\r\n\r\nWho tremblest thro' thy darkling red\r\nOn yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast\r\nBy meadows breathing of the past,\r\nAnd woodlands holy to the dead;\r\n\r\nWho murmurest in the foliaged eaves\r\nA song that slights the coming care,\r\nAnd Autumn laying here and there\r\nA fiery finger on the leaves;\r\n\r\nWho wakenest with thy balmy breath\r\nTo myriads on the genial earth,\r\nMemories of bridal, or of birth,\r\nAnd unto myriads more, of death.\r\n\r\nO, wheresoever those may be,\r\nBetwixt the slumber of the poles,\r\nTo-day they count as kindred souls;\r\nThey know me not, but mourn with me.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CIV<\/h3>\r\nThe time draws near the birth of Christ[footnote]The third Christmas since Hallam\u2019s death.[\/footnote];\r\nThe moon is hid, the night is still;\r\nA single church[footnote]Waltham Abbey.[\/footnote]\u00a0below the hill\r\nIs pealing, folded in the mist.\r\n\r\nA single peal of bells below,\r\nThat wakens at this hour of rest\r\nA single murmur in the breast,\r\nThat these are not the bells I know[footnote]Tennyson\u2019s family has moved to a new home in Epping, Surrey, where they spent their first Christmas in 1837, four years after Hallam\u2019s death.[\/footnote].\r\n\r\nLike strangers' voices here they sound,\r\nIn lands where not a memory strays,\r\nNor landmark breathes of other days,\r\nBut all is new unhallow'd ground.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CV<\/h3>\r\nTo-night ungather'd let us leave\r\nThis laurel, let this holly stand:\r\nWe live within the stranger's land,\r\nAnd strangely falls our Christmas-eve.\r\n\r\nOur father's dust is left alone\r\nAnd silent under other snows:\r\nThere in due time the woodbine blows,\r\nThe violet comes, but we are gone.\r\n\r\nNo more shall wayward grief abuse\r\nThe genial hour with mask and mime,\r\nFor change of place, like growth of time,\r\nHas broke the bond of dying use.\r\n\r\nLet cares that petty shadows cast,\r\nBy which our lives are chiefly proved,\r\nA little spare the night I loved,\r\nAnd hold it solemn to the past.\r\n\r\nBut let no footstep beat the floor,\r\nNor bowl of wassail mantle warm;\r\nFor who would keep an ancient form\r\nThro' which the spirit breathes no more?\r\n\r\nBe neither song, nor game, nor feast;\r\nNor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown;\r\nNo dance, no motion, save alone\r\nWhat lightens in the lucid east\r\n\r\nOf rising worlds by yonder wood.\r\nLong sleeps the summer in the seed;\r\nRun out your measured arcs, and lead\r\nThe closing cycle rich in good.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CVI<\/h3>\r\nRing out, wild bells, to the wild sky,\r\nThe flying cloud, the frosty light:\r\nThe year is dying in the night;\r\nRing out, wild bells, and let him die[footnote]New Year\u2019s resolutions. Tennyson is determined \u201cto re-shape his attitude to Hallam\u2019s death: \u2018let him die\u2026.Year by year, Tennyson\u2019s cause has been to keep Hallam\u2019s memory alive; all of a sudden, he sounds resolved to let his memory fade in the comforting knowledge that he lives forever in Christ\u2019 (\u2018Ring in the Christ that is meant to be\u2019)\u201d (Cash 9).[\/footnote].\r\n\r\nRing out the old, ring in the new,\r\nRing, happy bells, across the snow:\r\nThe year is going, let him go;\r\nRing out the false, ring in the true.\r\n\r\nRing out the grief that saps the mind,\r\nFor those that here we see no more;\r\nRing out the feud of rich and poor,\r\nRing in redress to all mankind.\r\n\r\nRing out a slowly dying cause,\r\nAnd ancient forms of party strife;\r\nRing in the nobler modes of life,\r\nWith sweeter manners, purer laws.\r\n\r\nRing out the want, the care, the sin,\r\nThe faithless coldness of the times;\r\nRing out, ring out my mournful rhymes,\r\nBut ring the fuller minstrel in.\r\n\r\nRing out false pride in place and blood,\r\nThe civic slander and the spite;\r\nRing in the love of truth and right,\r\nRing in the common love of good.\r\n\r\nRing out old shapes of foul disease;\r\nRing out the narrowing lust of gold;\r\nRing out the thousand wars of old,\r\nRing in the thousand years of peace.\r\n\r\nRing in the valiant man and free,\r\nThe larger heart, the kindlier hand;\r\nRing out the darkness of the land,\r\nRing in the Christ that is to be.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CVII<\/h3>\r\nIt is the day when he was born[footnote]February 1, Hallam\u2019s birthday.[\/footnote],\r\nA bitter day that early sank\r\nBehind a purple-frosty bank\r\nOf vapour, leaving night forlorn.\r\n\r\nThe time admits not flowers or leaves\r\nTo deck the banquet. Fiercely flies\r\nThe blast of North and East, and ice\r\nMakes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,\r\n\r\nAnd bristles all the brakes and thorns\r\nTo yon hard crescent, as she hangs\r\nAbove the wood which grides and clangs\r\nIts leafless ribs and iron horns\r\n\r\nTogether, in the drifts that pass\r\nTo darken on the rolling brine\r\nThat breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,\r\nArrange the board and brim the glass;\r\n\r\nBring in great logs and let them lie,\r\nTo make a solid core of heat;\r\nBe cheerful-minded, talk and treat\r\nOf all things ev'n as he were by;\r\n\r\nWe keep the day. With festal cheer,\r\nWith books and music, surely we\r\nWill drink to him, whate'er he be,\r\nAnd sing the songs he loved to hear.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CVIII<\/h3>\r\nI will not shut me from my kind,\r\nAnd, lest I stiffen into stone,\r\nI will not eat my heart alone,\r\nNor feed with sighs a passing wind:\r\n\r\nWhat profit lies in barren faith,\r\nAnd vacant yearning, tho' with might\r\nTo scale the heaven's highest height,\r\nOr dive below the wells of Death?\r\n\r\nWhat find I in the highest place,\r\nBut mine own phantom chanting hymns?\r\nAnd on the depths of death there swims\r\nThe reflex of a human face.\r\n\r\nI'll rather take what fruit may be\r\nOf sorrow under human skies:\r\n'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,\r\nWhatever wisdom sleep with thee.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXV<\/h3>\r\nNow fades the last long streak of snow,\r\nNow burgeons every maze of quick[footnote]Hawthorn hedge.[\/footnote]\r\nAbout the flowering squares[footnote]Fields.[\/footnote], and thick\r\nBy ashen roots the violets blow.\r\n\r\nNow rings the woodland loud and long,\r\nThe distance takes a lovelier hue,\r\nAnd drown'd in yonder living blue\r\nThe lark becomes a sightless song.\r\n\r\nNow dance the lights on lawn and lea,\r\nThe flocks are whiter down the vale,\r\nAnd milkier every milky sail\r\nOn winding stream or distant sea;\r\n\r\nWhere now the seamew[footnote]Seabird.[\/footnote]\u00a0pipes, or dives\r\nIn yonder greening gleam, and fly\r\nThe happy birds, that change their sky\r\nTo build and brood; that live their lives\r\n\r\nFrom land to land; and in my breast\r\nSpring wakens too; and my regret\r\nBecomes an April violet,\r\nAnd buds and blossoms like the rest.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXVII<\/h3>\r\nO days and hours, your work is this\r\nTo hold me from my proper place,\r\nA little while from his embrace,\r\nFor fuller gain of after bliss:\r\n\r\nThat out of distance might ensue\r\nDesire of nearness doubly sweet;\r\nAnd unto meeting when we meet,\r\nDelight a hundredfold accrue,\r\n\r\nFor every grain of sand that runs,\r\nAnd every span of shade that steals,\r\nAnd every kiss of toothed wheels,\r\nAnd all the courses of the suns.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXVIII<\/h3>\r\nCont\u00e8mplate all this work of Time[footnote]The Titan giant Cronus (Saturn) regarded as the god of devouring time.[\/footnote],\r\nThe giant labouring in his youth;\r\nNor dream of human love and truth,\r\nAs dying Nature's earth and lime[footnote]Do not dream that love and fidelity are merely transient things.[\/footnote];\r\n\r\nBut trust that those we call the dead\r\nAre breathers of an ampler day\r\nFor ever nobler ends. They[footnote]Scientists.[\/footnote]\u00a0say,\r\nThe solid earth whereon we tread\r\n\r\nIn tracts of fluent heat began,\r\nAnd grew to seeming-random forms,\r\nThe seeming prey of cyclic storms,\r\nTill at the last arose the man;\r\n\r\nWho throve and branch'd from clime to clime,\r\nThe herald of a higher race,\r\nAnd of himself in higher place,\r\nIf so he type[footnote]Prefigures.[\/footnote]\u00a0this work of time\r\n\r\nWithin himself, from more to more;\r\nOr, crown'd with attributes of woe\r\nLike glories, move his course, and show\r\nThat life is not as idle ore,\r\n\r\nBut iron dug from central gloom,\r\nAnd heated hot with burning fears,\r\nAnd dipt in baths of hissing tears,\r\nAnd batter'd with the shocks of doom\r\n\r\nTo shape and use. Arise and fly\r\nThe reeling Faun[footnote]Faunus. Also Pan, Roman god of country life, half-beast, half man.[\/footnote], the sensual feast;\r\nMove upward, working out the beast,\r\nAnd let the ape and tiger die.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXIX<\/h3>\r\nDoors[footnote]The doors of Hallam\u2019s London house at 67 Wimpole Street, to which Tennyson has returned.[\/footnote], where my heart was used to beat\r\nSo quickly, not as one that weeps\r\nI come once more; the city sleeps;\r\nI smell the meadow in the street;\r\n\r\nI hear a chirp of birds; I see\r\nBetwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn\r\nA light-blue lane of early dawn,\r\nAnd think of early days and thee,\r\n\r\nAnd bless thee, for thy lips are bland,\r\nAnd bright the friendship of thine eye;\r\nAnd in my thoughts with scarce a sigh\r\nI take the pressure of thine hand.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXX<\/h3>\r\nI trust I have not wasted breath:\r\nI think we are not wholly brain,\r\nMagnetic mockeries[footnote]Automatons.[\/footnote]; not in vain,\r\nLike Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;\r\n\r\nNot only cunning casts in clay:\r\nLet Science prove we are, and then\r\nWhat matters Science unto men,\r\nAt least to me? I would not stay.\r\n\r\nLet him, the wiser man who springs\r\nHereafter, up from childhood shape\r\nHis action like the greater ape,\r\nBut I was born to other things.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXXIII<\/h3>\r\nThere rolls the deep where grew the tree.\r\nO earth, what changes hast thou seen!\r\nThere where the long street roars, hath been\r\nThe stillness of the central sea.\r\n\r\nThe hills are shadows, and they flow\r\nFrom form to form, and nothing stands;\r\nThey melt like mist, the solid lands,\r\nLike clouds they shape themselves and go.\r\n\r\nBut in my spirit will I dwell,\r\nAnd dream my dream, and hold it true;\r\nFor tho' my lips may breathe adieu,\r\nI cannot think the thing farewell.\r\n\r\n \r\n

                                                                                                              CXXIV<\/h3>\r\nThat which we dare invoke to bless;\r\nOur dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;\r\nHe, They, One, All; within, without;\r\nThe Power in darkness whom we guess,\u2014\r\n\r\nI found Him not in world or sun,\r\nOr eagle's wing, or insect's eye[footnote]Tennyson rejects the argument of God\u2019s existence from the design of nature and hence the need for a designer.[\/footnote],\r\nNor thro' the questions men may try,\r\nThe petty cobwebs we have spun.\r\n\r\nIf e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,\r\nI heard a voice \u2018believe no more,'\r\nAnd heard an ever-breaking shore\r\nThat tumbled in the Godless deep,\r\n\r\nA warmth within the breast would melt\r\nThe freezing reason's colder part,\r\nAnd like a man in wrath the heart\r\nStood up and answer'd \u2018I have felt.'\r\n\r\nNo, like a child in doubt and fear:\r\nBut that blind clamour made me wise;\r\nThen was I as a child that cries,\r\nBut, crying, knows his father near;\r\n\r\nAnd what I am beheld again\r\nWhat is, and no man understands;\r\nAnd out of darkness came the hands\r\nThat reach thro' nature, moulding men.\r\n

                                                                                                              CXXX<\/h3>\r\nThy voice is on the rolling air;\r\nI hear thee where the waters run;\r\nThou standest in the rising sun,\r\nAnd in the setting thou art fair.\r\n\r\nWhat art thou then? I cannot guess;\r\nBut tho' I seem in star and flower\r\nTo feel thee some diffusive power,\r\nI do not therefore love thee less.\r\n\r\nMy love involves the love before;\r\nMy love is vaster passion now;\r\nTho' mix'd with God and Nature thou,\r\nI seem to love thee more and more.\r\n\r\nFar off thou art, but ever nigh;\r\nI have thee still, and I rejoice;\r\nI prosper, circled with thy voice;\r\nI shall not lose thee tho' I die.\r\n

                                                                                                              CXXXI<\/h3>\r\nO living will[footnote]Tennyson equated this with \u201cFree-will, the higher and enduring part of man\u201d (Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir<\/em>, I, 319).[\/footnote]\u00a0that shalt endure\r\nWhen all that seems shall suffer shock,\r\nRise in the spiritual rock[footnote]Christ. cf. 1 Corinthians: 10.4[\/footnote],\r\nFlow thro' our deeds and make them pure,\r\n\r\nThat we may lift from out of dust\r\nA voice as unto him that hears,\r\nA cry above the conquer'd years\r\nTo one that with us works, and trust,\r\n\r\nWith faith that comes of self-control,\r\nThe truths that never can be proved\r\nUntil we close with all we loved,\r\nAnd all we flow from, soul in soul.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[from Epilogue[footnote]The poem comes full circle with a description of the wedding of Tennyson\u2019s sister Cecilia to Edward Lushington and to the birth which will result from their union.[\/footnote]]\r\n\r\n...And rise, O moon, from yonder down,\r\nTill over down and over dale\r\nAll night the shining vapour sail\r\nAnd pass the silent-lighted town,\r\n\r\nThe white-faced halls, the glancing rills,\r\nAnd catch at every mountain head,\r\nAnd o'er the friths that branch and spread\r\nTheir sleeping silver thro' the hills;\r\n\r\nAnd touch with shade the bridal doors,\r\nWith tender gloom the roof, the wall;\r\nAnd breaking let the splendour fall\r\nTo spangle all the happy shores\r\n\r\nBy which they rest, and ocean sounds,\r\nAnd, star and system rolling past,\r\nA soul shall draw from out the vast\r\nAnd strike his being into bounds,\r\n\r\nAnd, moved thro' life of lower phase,\r\nResult in man, be born and think,\r\nAnd act and love, a closer link\r\nBetwixt us and the crowning race\r\n\r\nOf those that, eye to eye, shall look\r\nOn knowledge, under whose command\r\nIs Earth and Earth's, and in their hand\r\nIs Nature like an open book;\r\n\r\nNo longer half-akin to brute,\r\nFor all we thought and loved and did,\r\nAnd hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed\r\nOf what in them is flower and fruit;\r\n\r\nWhereof the man, that with me trod\r\nThis planet, was a noble type\r\nAppearing ere the times were ripe,\r\nThat friend of mine who lives in God,\r\n\r\nThat God, which ever lives and loves,\r\nOne God, one law, one element,\r\nAnd one far-off divine event,\r\nTo which the whole creation moves.\r\n

                                                                                                              \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\"<\/h2>\r\nHalf a league, half a league,\r\nHalf a league onward,\r\nAll in the valley of Death\r\nRode the six hundred.\r\n'Forward, the Light Brigade!\r\nCharge for the guns' he said:\r\nInto the valley of Death\r\nRode the six hundred.<\/span>\r\n\r\n'Forward, the Light Brigade!'\r\nWas there a man dismay'd?\r\nNot tho' the soldiers knew\r\nSome one had blunder'd:\r\nTheirs not to make reply,\r\nTheirs not to reason why,\r\nTheirs but to do and die:\r\nInto the valley of Death\r\nRode the six hundred.\r\n\r\nCannon to right of them,\r\nCannon to left of them,\r\nCannon in front of them\r\nVolley'd and thunder'd;\r\nStorm'd at with shot and shell,\r\nBoldly they rode and well,\r\nInto the jaws of Death,\r\nInto the mouth of Hell\r\nRode the six hundred.\r\n\r\nFlash'd all their sabres bare,\r\nFlash'd as they turned in air\r\nSabring the gunners there,\r\nCharging an army while\r\nAll the world wonder'd:\r\nPlunged in the battery-smoke\r\nRight thro' the line they broke;\r\nCossack and Russian\r\nReel'd from the sabre-stroke\r\nShatter'd and sunder'd.\r\nThen they rode back, but not\r\nNot the six hundred.\r\n\r\nCannon to right of them,\r\nCannon to left of them,\r\nCannon behind them\r\nVolley'd and thunder'd;\r\nStorm'd at with shot and shell,\r\nWhile horse and hero fell,\r\nThey that had fought so well\r\nCame thro' the jaws of Death,\r\nBack from the mouth of Hell,\r\nAll that was left of them,\r\nLeft of six hundred.\r\n\r\nWhen can their glory fade?\r\nO the wild charge they made!\r\nAll the world wonder'd.\r\nHonour the charge they made!\r\nHonour the Light Brigade,\r\nNoble six hundred!\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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                                                                                                              Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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                                                                                                              \"The Lady of Shallot\"<\/h2>\r\n
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                                                                                                              1. After looking at both published versions of the poem, might you, as did George Eliot, express a preference for any of the original lines, published in 1833? If so, which ones would you wish Tennyson had not revised?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              2. What are features of the poem's meter and diction? How do these add to the magical or eerie effect?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              3. What might the striking image of the tower symbolize? the mirror? What is significant about the lady's being\u00a0 enclosed in a high tower?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              4. What was the result of Sir Lancelot's adulterous relationship with King Arthur's queen, Guinevere?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              5. What irony is associated with Lancelot?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              6. After looking at the link above\u2014isolate some details that support the contention that the poem deals with \"the Woman Question\";\u00a0 that is, the position of Victorian women?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              7. What details might support an allegorical interpretation pertaining to art versus life?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              8. Why do you think the Lady of Shalott became the subject of so many Victorian paintings (Hunt, Rossetti, Waterhouse)? First, see the link above:\u00a0 \"The Man Behind the Lady.\"<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                              9. Listen to Loreena McKennitt\u2019s musical adaptation of \u201cThe Lady of Shalott\u201d<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                                                \"Ulysses\"<\/h2>\r\n
                                                                                                                  \r\n \t
                                                                                                                1. Tennyson is quoted as saying that \u201cUlysses\u201d was \u201cwritten soon after Arthur Hallam\u2019s death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in \u2018In Memoriam\u2019\u201d (Memoir<\/em>, I, 196). To which section of \u201cIn Memoriam\u201d is \u201cUlysses\u201d most parallel?<\/li>\r\n \t
                                                                                                                2. Some critics argue that the poem is not wholly a dramatic monologue. Looking at it section by section (i.e., ll. 1\u201332; ll. 33\u201343, and ll. 44\u201370), which section is most clearly a dramatic monologue?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                                                                                                                  \"Selected poems from In Memoriam A.H.H.\"<\/h2>\r\n
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                                                                                                                  1. Download Gatty\u2019s A Key to In Memoriam<\/em> as well as a searchable Project Gutenberg e-text of In Memoriam:<\/em>\r\n