Herbert 35, LOVE Love bade me welcome : yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lack’d any thing. A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here: Love said, You shall be he. I the unkind, ungrateful ? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them : let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not says Love, who bore the blame ? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat. 15 The effective use of monosyllables in this poem implies hesitancy and Pause.Pope 1% 45. A LITTLE LEARNING ove Mou no ») A tittle learning is a dangerous thing; 5‘ Drink deep, or taste not the Pieri There shallow draughts intoxicate 2 ¢) <“And’ drinking largelt sobérs us again. 20/,)0\-2, %» Fired at first with what the Muse imparts, 5 In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts; “While from the bounded level of our mind. \ Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, ee But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise ; New distant scenes of endless science rise ! 10 So pleased at first at the towering Alps we try, Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; The eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last : yo But those attained, we tremble to survey 15 es ag ees labours of the lengthened way; ing prospect tires our i Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on ioe a Written when Dae was only rict in Thessaly (Greece), the jeetry or learning. 7 bounded : reputed home of the Muses. Here it means Pp aK iS Lave rndw> KuaWieI4@ |Ou a d/ Lh4 my spirit seal; fears : now, no force ‘nor sees; rth’s diurnal course es, and trees. ; of Wordsworth. It is an elegy on the death of tis ractory answer is available. Maybe she was of Wordsworth’s imagination. Mr. Aubrey de . “That these poems are Jove-poems is certain: 5 left unrecorded.” If the t might perhaps have felt that there Wordsworth—that infinite tenderness which is oeti in poetry. This poem was composed in 7 A contrast is forced upon nan form as it was and as it is. Compare '§. Landor’s Lines in Memory of Rose oriam, lyrics ix-xix; A.B. Housman’s The-Night The use of this word adds weight andKeats 87. ODE TO A NIGHTINGAy My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness Dai My sense, as though of hemlock I had dean” Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains” One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,— That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a draught of vintage ! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvéd earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth. O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim And Purple-stainéd mouth ; _ T might drink, and leave the world unseen, nd with thee fade away into the forest dim. Fade far away, What thou amo, The weariness, ¢ Here, where mei here pa Isy sh; Fe Youth gi dissolve, and quite forget ng the leaves hast never known, he fever, and the fret m sitand hear each other groan; lakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, TOws pale, and spectre-thin, and dies 160)gos Z pere but to think is to be full of sorrow nd jeaden-eyed despairs ; Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, where i or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow. Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee ! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalméd darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; and the pastoral eglantine; *d up in leaves; The grass, White hawthorn, Fast-fading violets cover And mid-May’s eldest child The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous jraunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling J listen; and for many 2 time J have been half in love with easeful Death, ft names in many a muséd rhyme, Call’d him so’ n To take into the air my quiet breath; Wow more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, (ae) 30 35 45 50 55Keats While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! u : Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. 5 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown : Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 10 Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades i Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream ? Fled is that music :—do I wake or sleep ? 80 This ode was composed in the Spring of 1819. pet ee song of @ nightingale that had GAB fist eloae asthe emerpace es ‘be Keats’ in Hampstead. This Ode is “one of the six or eight amore ot ‘tiend of unique and perfect in style that it is hard to see how any exw us Poems SO have improved them.” 4 Lethe: the river of forgetfulness. 4, perenee Should as imagined by the Greeks; 7 Dryad: a nymph inhabiting a tree guderworld, watching @ gjKeats ove its . pala nomen, originally Sabine, goddess of the Spring and of flowers; ee ‘@' song: the poetry of the troubadours, the court-poets of the twelfth century. The language they used was the Romantic language of southern France. Provence is the Roman Pro vincia; sunburnt mirth: epithet transferred from the People to their mirth; 15 warm South: The force of the epithet is to give the idea of genial Nature favouring the merriment; 16 Hip- pocrene: the fount of the Muses, which was struck out of the Mount Helicon by the hoof of Pegasus, the winged horse; 17 winking: twinkling, breaking and sparkling; 26 spectre-thin: thin as a spectre; 32 Bacchus: the ancient god of wine whe was fabled to have driven a team of tigers round the world; pards: leopards; 37 Fays: fairies; 42 Soft incense: scented blossoms; 51 darkling: in the dark. 60 requiem: a hymn or mass sung for the repose of the soul of the dead; 64 clown: peasant; 66 Ruth: the young widow in the Bible who leaves her own country to accompany her widowed mother-in-law. She gleans the field of a rich man, Boaz, in an alien land. Boaz later marries her; 70 faery lands: The expression has a Greek origin which means “haunt of demigods, dear to birds.” The epithet “forlorn” adds a modern romantic note.Shelley 81, ODE TO THE WEST WIND O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s p, cing Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dean Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill i (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hiil: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, oh hear ! Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, 15 Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head a Of some fierce Maenad, ev’n from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height— The locks! of the a ing s Brits ahing Whe Tne: Thou dirge : > thi i i Will be the dome of a vast ne pie 3 Vaulted with all thy congregated ant eee from whose Solid ner eee lack rain, and fire, g Hever mere Perec ANd: hail witl-purse : Cos da4 5 oh, hear !lleY thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams, The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, qull’d by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, ‘And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers go sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers into chasms, while far below ‘Cleave themselves The sea-blooms and the 00zy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear ! _-{fI were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; Ifl were a swift cloud to fly with thee; _ Awave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable ! Tf even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, whea to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seem’d a vision, I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee i prayer Oh, lift me as 2 Wave af, I fall upoa the thorns A heavy weight of how One too like thee * tameless +a as the forest is: ey'n ai : ; are falling like its own foe) ! rs has chain’d and bow'd , and sw! Make me thy lyre What if my leaves ift, and proud. 30 35 45 55Shelley The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, % My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous one ! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 0 65 Perhaps the greatest of all Shelley’s (1792-1822) lyrics, it was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence in 1819. Ths verse sweeps along with the elemental rush of the wind it celebrates. 18 angels messengers. 21 Maenad: In Greek mythology, “the frenzied ones”—the nam given to the female companions of the god Dionysus or Bacchus, 32 pumice isle in Baiae’s bay: isle formed by deposits of lava from Vesuvius on the coas! of Campania at the western end of the bay of Naples. 39 oozy: moist. 431 were...boyhood: Compare Coleridge’s regretful recollection of his boyhood ir. Youth and Age 9-17. 54 I fall...I bleed: Cf. Shelley’s Epipsychidion,“1 pat, I sink, I tremble, I expire.” 56 one too...proud: Cf. Shelley’s description of himself in Adonais, St xxxi-xxxiii 62 be thou me: the rhyming of ‘one’ to ‘own! in line 58 is a blemish here. 64 quicken: to make quick or alive. 69-70: Ti trumpet...be far behind: The finest expression of a prophetic mood. Stopfor Brooke says, “The cry is prophetic of that unconquerable hope for mankind which underlying the greater part of Shelley’s poetry, has made half its infle- cace upon the world.” ( 146ae 91. BREAK, BREAK, BREAK preak, preak, break, On thy cold grey stones, O Sea ! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. © well for the fisherman’s boy, 5 That he shouts with his sister at play ! 0 well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay ! ‘And the stately ships go 07 To their haven under the hill; 10 But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still ! Break, break, break, 1 ‘At the foot of thy crags» O Sea! - But the tender grace of a day that 1s dead Will never come pack to me. ; i sus of Tennyson. It has sim- This i ood example of the lyrical genius O° : Fi Tt eee musical appeal and deep eoinas Th Soe aoe . ; Pe simplest here. The vw Pi pest concentrates # as Sinig grey stones’ both symbolize and project a wn from the ees boy and the sailor lad shout and sing at work or is mood. The fisher, activities ont emphasize the poet's Sense Of ORR sib Iyrical ory of the poet's passion and pain: play, but their extr Jiness and loss. It is, ‘of course, # (18 )sonins 108. GOD’S GRANDEUR The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod ? 5 Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10 And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and wtih ah ! bright wings. Another poem in sprung rhythm, four or five stresses to a line. 4 reck: heed. 6 seared: hardened, made callous. 9 spent: exhausted. ( 199 )Auden 123. LOOK, STRANGER Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear 5 May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at the small field’s ending pause When the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck ’ weer TO And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, And a gull lodges _ ok A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Le Diverge on urgent voluntary errands; And this full view Gi Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror 20 And all the summer through the water saunter. This is one of W.H. Auden’s (1907— _) few pieces of natural description, perhaps of a coastal scene in the West Country. A poem of place and scene, it suffers from none of the strain of some of his poems and is the first piece in a collection of his poems with this title. It is the objective presentation of a scene, remarkable for the beauty of its imagery and the music of its lines that are rich in alliteration and assonance. 5: so that the music of the waves ¢ 228 )Auden i i course. 12: may go lazily twisting and turning through the ear like a suns yall The foam made by the dashing waves is sucked in by the ae os ing water moves the coarse gravel. As the gravel moves an ‘oam i i catch at to subside, it appears as if the former is making a rude attempt to the latter.