Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Category: British Literature (page 5 of 10)

Poetry Analysis: Thomas Hardy’s “Plena Timoris”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

In Thomas Hardy’s “Plena Timoris,”  the title is a phrase from Latin that signifies “a woman full of panic and dread”. The poem mirrors the diffidence of a woman who has hitherto lived in a roseate world characterized only  by positive vibes. Premchand in his novel Godan gives a description on the changes that love undergoes over time and space: “Early married life throbs with love and desire; like the dawn the span of life is suffused with a roseate glow. The afternoon of life dissolves illusion into its stinging rays, but brings face to face with reality.” An incident in the woman’s life changes her outlook towards life and her beloved. Thomas Hardy’s novels are characterized by a pervading sense of pessimism. Thomas Hardy once wrote:” “There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn’t there.”This becomes the lady’s predicament towards the end of the poem. However, Thomas Hardy also mentions that “Fear is the mother of foresight.”

The lovers looked over the parapet-stone:
The moon in its southing directly blent
Its silver with their environment.
Her ear-rings twinkled; her teeth, too, shone
As, his arm around her, they laughed and leant.

The beginning of the poem portrays the lovers as comfortable in each other’s company as they explore the world with their joint insight.…

Poetry Analysis: Elizabeth Daryush’s “Children of Wealth in your Warm Nursery”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Elizabeth Daryush, the English poetess, was the daughter of British poet laureate   Robert Bridges. She was a product of the sophisticated Victorian and Edwardian England. She employs the traditional verse style, and her themes pertain to the refined and elite classes, and the injustice they caused to other classes. She is best known for her experiments with syllabic meter. Finlay noted, “For her. . .poetry always dealt with the `stubborn fact’ of life as it is, and the only consolations it offered were those of understanding and a kind of half- Christian, half-stoical acceptance of the inevitable.” However, he also argued that Daryush’s best poems transcend such fatalism, “dealing with the moral resources found in one’s own being. . .and a recognition of the beauties in the immediate, ordinary world around us.”

The phrase “children of wealth” signifies two meanings. The word ‘wealth’ may qualify the word ‘children’ as an adjective. Further, it may also imply that they were the children of their parents. The word ‘wealth’ is substituted for parents here. Therefore, it suggests their artificial upbringing with all amenities that wealth could buy. It is far from human touch. The poetess emphasizes in this aspect yt gain with the phrase that they are guided by the warmth of their nursery, and not by maternal warmth.…

Poetry Analysis: Phyllis McCormack’s Crabbit Old Woman

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

 

“Crabbit Old Woman”, is also entitled  ”Look Closer Look Closer Nurse, Kate, Open Your Eyes or What Do You See?” The authorship of the prescribed poem is uncertain.  It has been pointed out by critics that the author is Phyllis McCormack. The tone of the poem is persuasive; the speaker of the poem is an infirm woman in the geriatric ward of a Dundee nursing home. The poem was  first published in the  poetry anthology Elders (Reality Press, 1973) edited by Chris Searle. Searle is uncertain about the authorship of the piece, but voices it as the genuine writing of an old woman. “Crabbit Old Woman” had later featured in the Christmas edition of “Beacon House News” .It was a magazine of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Association.

This was the Lady’s gift to generations to come. The poem has been oft quoted in works meant for caring for the elderly and underlines the need to enable them to lead a life of self-esteem. It comes across as a poniter to humane treatment where man is caught in the rat race of survival of the fittest.

As per  the Daily Mail ( 12 March 1998), “Phyllis McCormack’s son claims that his mother wrote it while working at the Sunnyside Hospital in Montrose in the 1960s, where she submitted it anonymously to a small magazine intended just for Sunnyside with the title “Look Closer Nurse.”

The term ‘crabbit’ is Scottish slang for ‘grumpy’ or ‘miserable’.…

Poetry Analysis: Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”

December 20, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins to make much of Time” extols the ‘carpe diem’ motif, the rose being a powerful emblem of the brevity of life. ’ Carpe diem’ is a Latin phrase meaning ‘seize the day.’ It was a common theme in Cavalier poetry. The rose also symbolizes the beauty of youth and its ephemeral nature. The poem was penned in 1648 and published in a collection of verse entitled Hesperides. The theme of the poem is similar to Ben Jonson’s poem “Song: To Celia” where the speaker stresses on the transient nature of life, but advises to seek union in holy matrimony and not in adulterous association. The latter combined with the ‘carpe diem’ motif was utilized in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” The combination of Christianity and the carpe diem motif is singular to Robert Herrick, and has not been employed in conventional poetry. The influence emerges from Herrick’s’ position as vicar of Dean Prior, as appointed by King Charles I. The background of the poem is the political turbulence that led to Britain’s Civil War. Therefore it emphasized the relishing of the present while it lasted.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.…

Poetry Analysis: Rudyard Kipling’s “If”

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Rudyard Kipling’s “If” is one of the most celebrated poems in the corpus of English Literature. The poem was published in 1910 in Kipling’s collection of children’s stories, Rewards and Fairies,along with “Brother Square Toes,” Washington’s inspiring tenure during the French Revolution.The poem aims at delivering moral instruction to the little minds and also functions as a source of motivation. It soon turned into an anthem to impart instruction and instill inspiration. The emphasis on the second person “you’ indicates the one-to-one correspondence between the speaker and listener.

The first lesson the poet communicates is to be positive in face of differences of opinion and disapproval. The easiest resort for a person is to blame his failures on others: the basic tendency of men to pacify the supreme ego . One should learn to take responsibility for his actions. Self-confidence and Self-respect are the best assets one can own. Nevertheless, self-confidence must not verge on over-confidence and must make room for others’ views and beliefs. One must rely on the self, while others regard his capabilities with suspicion. If one patiently and persistently waits for the fruits of one’s perseverance, nothing can stop him. A wise man once said: “A man is not poor if he does not possess a penny.…

Poetry Analysis: Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on an Island”

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on an Island” is included in Death of a Naturalist (1991).The word ‘island’ foregrounds the concept of isolation. The modern way of existence, is an egotistical one. It is set in an era of competition, and focuses on survival instinct. People like to live as isolated entities divorced from each other, and lead a complacent life free from the responsibilities of brotherhood. The idea of the joint family is no longer cherished, and people prefer to confine themselves to nuclear families. The lesser the number, the more the advantages, and less significant the disadvantages. They are free from all hassles of ties and are self-satisfied. However, little do they comprehend that a “storm” can occur on this island too.

The poem begins with the line: “We are prepared: we build our houses squat.”That is, people presume they are prepared for the inevitable. They build their houses ‘squat’.’ Squat’ implies to cower or crouch, and therefore assumes a protective posture. The house is designed to function this way. The walls are set with solid rock, the house is roofed in ‘slate’ and the stage is set for the ideal life. The ‘wizened’ earth has never troubled them. Since the earth exists before the speaker, it is seen as aged (echoing once again the concept of living with the elders of the joint family).Beneath the age of the earth, the speaker fails to discern the vast experience that it encompasses.…

Poetry Analysis: Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”

December 6, 2014 / / 1 Comment

The advent of pseudo-modernism onto a hitherto serene arena is the theme of Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”. The poem was so famous that it heralded a new school of poets, namely ‘the Pylon Poets’ to label the work of Spender and his associates.

The literal meaning of ‘pylons’ point to tall metallic posts that hold electric wires.Though they appear to be the harbinger of electricity, he feels that they are an intrusion into the peaceful countryside. The emblem of the pylons possess powerful symbolic significance. Their being tall, they seem to have a ‘towering’ influence on our lives. Secondly, though they are static, their energy is kinetic and therefore shown to be all-pervasive. Their being metallic, it projects a picture of being frozen to human emotions. Besides, pylons are universal, just as we cannot live without electricity and the most eloquent emblem of modern technology. They seem to run into everywhere and everything, as though runs the quick perspective of the future. Wordsworth defined poetry as the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science.

The poet begins by glorifying the hills and cottages that haunt our imagination, as they possess an elusive quality. The secret about these, says the poet was their ‘stone’: the only natural thing about them that nothing else could endow with.…

Poetry Analysis:Stephen Spender’s “My Parents Kept Me from Children who were Rough

December 6, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Stephen Spender’s “My parents kept me from children who were rough” has as the focal point of the poem the idea conveyed in the title itself. The verb ‘keep’ with reference to the context of the poem implies “preventing”. However, the verb ‘keep’ also has its own negative connotations as in the illegitimate “keep”. Therefore it also indicates the deed of holding a person “illegally”. The notion that the parents were obdurate on restraining the speaker from such company, implies that the speaker desired to befriend them. He portrays the children for the most part with the adjective “rough”. That is, they come across as ‘rough’ both in appearance and attitude. The gist of the title verges on the fact that had these children not been ‘rough’, the parents would not have remained reluctant on their child befriending them.

These street kids flung words just as they threw stones… their verbalizing was aggressive, impulsive and raw. Generally, the act of throwing stones is intended to provoke someone, to chase someone away or to articulate contempt. One deduces that their choice of words was therefore incorrigibly abusive .They were clothed in torn dresses. These, however were not dictated by fashion, but by abject poverty.…

Poetry Analysis: Philip Larkin’s “Toads Revisited”

November 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Philip Larkin’s “Toads Revisited”  is the companion piece to “Toads,” and  appears in the  collection Whitsun Weddings .The poem is in off-rhymed couplets, full rhymes appearing  at the end. In Philip Larkin’s “Toads”, the Toad stood as a symbol of  the stagnation of life, and stagnation of one’s rational and intellectual capabilities as it is sacrificed for the ‘labour’ of work. In Larkin’s “Toads Revisited,” he analyses people out of his work-premises in relation with himself. He visualizes the atmosphere of the park that should act as a welcome change:

Walking around in the park

Should feel better than work:

The lake, the sunshine,

The grass to lie on

The ‘blurred playground noises’ and ‘black-stockinged nurses’ convey the idea that it is not a bad place to be. Yet, it does not suit him. He finds himself better off than the people he encounters with in the park: shaking old men having nothing significant to do. There are also the ‘hare-eyed’ clerks in constant uncertainty regarding their financial stability and regarding everything with an air of insecurity. There are patients yet to recover from their misfortunes and therefore ’vague.’ There are shabby or shoddy tramps in long coats searching in deep-litter baskets for something worthwhile to consume.…

Poetry Analysis: Philip Larkin ‘s “Toads”

November 30, 2014 / / 1 Comment

The toad in Philip Larkin’s “Toads” is a central metaphor by itself for a vocation that is forced. Especially, one that you have no attitude and aptitude for. The toad has been utilized as the apt metaphor as it is sluggish and ugly. It squats incorrigibly on areas that it is not supposed to, and is a pertinent emblem for stagnation. Here it stands for the stagnation of life, and stagnation of one’s rational and intellectual capabilities as it is sacrificed for the ‘labour’ of work..

The poet had an aptitude for writing that forms his area of expertise. The ‘wit’ here is a larger metaphor for people preferring money over their aptitude/area of interest. People do not resort to the vocation that they love for the want of more money, and therefore give in to the rat race…something that is represented by the great American Dream. The position of ‘squatting” is also an incorrigible/difficult one. The speaker strives to use his wit as a pitchfork and drive it away.

A week has only seven days, six of which the Toad soils. No adequate time is left for recreation. Just for the reason that that one has to toil to pay his bills, and that is totally out of proportion.…

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