Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Category: British Literature (page 9 of 10)

Poetry Analysis: Wordsworth’s “The Rainbow”

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The Child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be

The poem “The Rainbow” also holds the alternative title “My Heart Leaps Up”.Wordsworth stated in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” that a true poet should be enchanted by things absent, as though they were present. The symbol of the Rainbow is emblematic of his ideology. The rainbow is a natural phenomenon. It exists visually, however, is not present as a tangible object, or rather materially. I came across the following in an internet article: A cube has six sides. We live in a universe of three dimensions. Each dimension has two directions: front-back, right-left, up-down; yielding a total of six. The seventh is then the middle point, a thing of zero dimensions, and untouchable. Present, but intangible. It therefore represents the holiness that is inherent in the universe. Wordsworth’s poem follows similar lines.

The rainbow embodies the seven colours that are the most basic elements of what white light is made of.…

Poetry Analysis: Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

William Wordsworth was the quintessential Romantic who rendered the natural supernatural.  Wordsworth’s “Upon Westminster Bridge” presents a different subject matter as compared to his other poems. The poet chose for the subject of his poems the serene setting and the rustic folk because “in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language.” This poem is unlike his other poems that typically depict the landscapes of the Lake District.

The prescribed poem “Upon Westminster Bridge” reveals the pristine beauty of the city as it is untouched by the multitudes, and the sound and fury of everyday life. The poem, although written in 1802, was published in 1808.The context is Wordsworth’s visit to his former French mistress Annette Vallon and their illegitimate daughter, Caroline. His sister, Dorothy Wordsworth accompanied him during the meeting.Although he wanted to marry Vallon in 1791, he had been forced to return to Britain owing to the possibility of war between France and Britain. The Treaty of Amiens (1802) enabled him to travel once again to France. However, by then, time and space had altered relationships.…

Poetry Analysis: William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us “

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

William Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” presents a fatalistic picture as viewed from an unstable past and towards an uncertain tomorrow. The poem was composed in 1802 and published in Poems, In Two Volumes (1807).It is in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet with the rhyme scheme abbaabbacdcdcd. It was essentially a response to the Industrial Revolution steeped in commercial values and the materialistic march for progress. Wordsworth perceived the same as “the decadent material cynicism of the time.”

In the reification process, nature too was perceived as a commodity. People lost communion with nature and relegated the therapeutic powers of Nature. Wordsworth comprehended that Nature was the ultimate panacea for the worldly trials and tribulations .Nature was also endowed with the ability to render moral elevation. Words like “late and soon” bridge the gap between the past and present. Energies are simply wasted in “getting and spending” or indulging in profit and gain as life has transformed into a business proposition. Being a writer, he also hints at the trading of creativity for money.” Little do we comprehend that Nature is ours”: Wordsworth her refers to external nature that is sidelined as well as the masking of our inner natures.…

Poetry Analysis: Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”

September 29, 2014 / / 1 Comment

William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” was published in the collection The Tower (1928). Penned in ottava rima, the poem is allegorical. It depicts a voyage that is emblematic of the spiritual quest, combating intellectual stagnation and emotional drainage. “Sailing to Byzantium” is Yeats’s standpoint on the advance in age, and the prerequisite to maintaining the vivacity and vigor in old age -a youthful spirit and sharp intellect.

The poet writes the poem as he enters the threshold of old age (60 yrs) He avows:

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unaging intellect.

The country remains for the young of the human world, the animal world(birds) and the vegetative world(trees)Note that the country does remain for the animal world and the vegetative world, but does not for the aged. The fish, flesh and fowl command and commend during the summer of their years. Nevertheless, what is begotten has to untimely die the way that it is born.…

Poetry Analysis: Yeats’s “Byzantium”

September 29, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Yeats’ “Byzantium’ is a companion-piece to “Sailing to Byzantium.” Byzantium reminds one of the Hellenistic city of Byzantium renowned for its architectural splendour. In his introduction to the poem, Yeats writes: ”Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian millennium. A walking mummy. Flames at the street corners where the soul is purified, birds of hammered gold singing in the golden trees, in the harbour, offering their backs to the wailing dead that they may carry them to paradise.”

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins.

As with “Sailing to Byzantium,” the first stanza deals with the animate world that is being left behind for an eternal world of fixity. The images here are ‘unpurged.’ The emperor’s drunken men driven by instinct are abed. The cathedral ’gong’ sends the impulsive nightwalkers out of the scene. A starlit/moonlit dome disparages all that man stands for. The dome is a minuscule metaphor for the larger Byzantium that is a contrast to man with its enduring nature.…

Poetry Analysis: Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

eatsThe poem “The Second Coming” was written in 1919 and is included in the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer(1921). Harmon (1998) lists “The Second Coming” as one of the hundred most anthologized poems in the English language. It was first printed in The Dial (1920).  Written after the First World War; it utilizes elements of Christianity like the apocalypse and the second coming to depict post-war Europe. Critics like Richard Ellman and Harold Bloom have proposed that the text pertains to the Russian Revolution of 1917.The poem is penned in rough iambic pentameter.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

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

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.…

Poetry Analysis: Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” is one of the last poems of Yeats, and is in iambic pentameter. It first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and London Mercury. Yeats refers to the stagnation of his creative faculties and the loss of sustenance of his poetic output as he contemplates over his past works. He utilizes the metaphor of the circus animals to refer to his poetic themes, characters and sources of inspiration. The circus animal is a source of amusement, and it gets deserted with the onset of age as it loses its luster and utility value.

The poet laments over his vain attempts to discover a poetic theme. Being a broken man, he can no longer hold his thoughts in coherence .He must be satisfied with the emotional coherence that he still has intact. He refers to the elements of circus:

 

Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

 

The stilted boys refer to the circus boys, yet at the same time refer to the companions of the poet’s youth. The ‘burnished chariot’ alludes to the classical references in his poems. The phrase ‘lion and woman’ refers to the lion and lion–tamer. It may point to Maud Gonne whom the poet regarded as the epitome of classical beauty.…

Poetry Analysis: Yeats’ “A Prayer for my Daughter”

September 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Yeats’ “A Prayer for my Daughter” was written in 1919, and published in the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poet juxtaposes ideas of domesticity and political import, innocence and murderousness, and rationale and sentiment.

Yeats’s “A Prayer for my Daughter” presents the image of a child who sleeps soundly through a thunderous storm. The child referred to here is Anne Butler Yeats, who was born a month after Yeats penned “The Second Coming”. The prescribed poem is placed after “The Second Coming” in the collection. The storm born on the Atlantic Ocean is emblematic of the larger violence of the Irish War of Independence.The external unrest is a concretization of the poet’s internal trauma. The image of the child sleeping innocently by the haystack evocatively signifies the image of Christ. In Yeats‘s “The Second Coming”, the coarse fiend replaces the divine image of Christ. Apart from the wood around Lady Gregory’s estate, nothing seems to bar the intensity of the storm.

The poet is in a state of trance owing to contemplation. He senses the rising sea-wind scream:

“And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,

And under the arches of the bridge, and scream

In the elms above the flooded stream;”

The sea-wind traverses all the realms and makes its presence felt.…

Poetry Analysis: R.S. Thomas’ “Death of a Peasant”

September 13, 2014 / / 1 Comment

“My chief aim is to make a poem . You make it for yourself firstly, and then if other people want to join in… then there we are.”

The speaker begins in his is abrupt, dramatical style as he does in “Evans:”

You remember Davies? He died, you know,
With his face to the wall, as the manner is
Of the poor peasant in his stone croft
On the Welsh hills. I recall the room

He dies with his face to the wall: the typical case of the poor peasant. Is it, in a sort of punishment that he turns his face to the wall? Is it owing to shame or guilt one wonders. The speaker then goes on to elaborate that this was the manner with all the peasants. Perhaps to the peasant, this was his way of sacramental absolution. A ‘croft’ is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable with a crofter’s dwelling thereon.(Wikipedia). The ‘poor peasant’ dwelt in his ‘stone croft’. The word ‘croft’ therefore denotes the limitedness of his existence, and the confinement in which the peasant is. His knowledge of the world is restricted to this area. The word ‘hard’ points to the rigid conditions and the inflexible way of life making use of the barest basic amenities of life.…

Philip Sidney’s Sonnet 1 “Loving in Truth”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“Loving in Truth” is the first in Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella. The name of the sonnet sequence echoes the romance of their rapport: of Philip Sidney and his lady love, Penelope Devereux. “Astro” in Greek means “star,” while “phel” or “phil” implies love .The word ‘stella’ in Latin signifies ‘star’. Therefore, Sidney is a star-lover, his star being his Stella. He orbits around the luminous Stella, who radiates him with her love and warmth. The poet and his beloved together as a couple represent the Greco-Roman concord of feeling and form. This classical sensibility was revived during the Renaissance and Sidney exemplifies the same in his sonnet. This sonnet is written in a hexam¬eter, consisting of six two-syllable feet per line.

The poet asserts that being truly and sincerely in love with his lady love he attempts to capture his love for her in verse. He desires to consecrate his love in poetry so that his beloved would comprehend his agony. The poet juxtaposes two complementary entities in the phrase “pleasure of my pain” to signify the bitter-sweet reality of the feeling of love. The pleasure might enable her to read his poetry; poetry may impart her with knowledge.…

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