Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Kraken

After reading this poem several times through I came to believe that the Kraken represents the changes that Tennyson is seeing around him. The world went through great changes and advancements in his time, and I think that the Kraken represents the old ways of life. “Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. /There hath he lain for ages and will lie/Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, /until the latter fire shall heat the deep; /Then once by man and angels to be seen,/in roaring he shall rise on the surface die”.(pg.586). I think the giant arms that has lain for ages is the old way of life, and then man comes along with the changes he is seeing and changes everything. Using the Kraken, a mythological beast, might show the fear that came with these changes. Many people do not like change, and rebel from it more from fear than anything. This giant beast could represent the fight that the people were putting up as changes were being made.

Virginia Woolf

A Room of One’s Own Chapter 3

What I liked about this particular passage is how she created an alter ego for William Shakespeare to prove her point that because of the times no woman could write plays like the famous playwright. She creates Judith , sister to William. While they both supposedly grow up in the same household, both were not afford the same benefits. Judith is just as talented as her brother, but with the prejudice of her sex, she was limited to how far he “genius: would go. Knowing she would not go far in the theater, a different fate awaits her: “ Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in the face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows-at last Nick Greene the actor-manger took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so-who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?-killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant Castle”.(pg1241) This outlook shows that the times were based not only on social status, as proven by the aristocracy, but also by gender status. This is the type of writing that made her famous, and this theme of inequality goes throughout her writings. I must admit that I recognized the famous name of this author but knew very little about her. She seemed to me to a very adamant advocate for women’s rights, and she chose to express these beliefs in her writings. I think the answer is clear she was right, no woman could write like Shakespeare that the time not because of lack of genius but because of what was allowed by society, What a shame that is; imagine how many people we will never know about from that time that did not write because they were woman.

T.S. Eliot

Journey of the Magi

The way I interpreted this poem was it was written from the view of one of the wise men headed to visit the new born Christ child. The way he describes the camels journey gives the impression they are in the desert: “ And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,/Lying down in the melting snow./There were times we regretted/The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,/And the silken girls bringing sherbet.”

Also in that passage I felt as if he was turning his back on the old ways of his beliefs and looking towards the new one that were emerging. It seems that at the end of the poem the person making this journey has accepted the change because he wrote: ‘we returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms, /But not longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/With an alien people clutching their gods./I should be glad of another death”. After their journey he returns back to his Kingdom, and because of the change that came from within he is no longer happy with the old ways of life. I think that he sees that by dying ‘again” it will cause a “rebirth” in the form of his new found faith, by Dying he frees himself from his old beliefs and is reborn in the new ways.

William Butler Yeats

Who Goes with Fergus?

I chose this poem because it has some of the myth and magic that I find interesting. In the poem Yeats is calling up his fellow man to follow the beliefs of King Fergus: “Who will go drive with Fergus now, /And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,/And dance upon the level shore?/Young man, lift up your russet brow,/And lift your tender eyelids, maid/And brood on hopes and fear no more.”I know from books that I had read that King Fergus was a mythical and ancient King of Ireland. Many rulers that followed were named after him to honor his legacy.  I feel that since Yeats had a strong sense of countryman ship, he wanted his fellow Irishmen to go back to the days when nature and man were one. At the end on the second stanza he goes into great detail describing the countryside he sees: “For Fergus rules the brazen cars, /And rules the shadows of the wood,/And the white breast of the dim sea/And all disheveled wandering stars.”  Ireland was a country of great turmoil and I can’t help but to interpret this poem as a calling for people to go back to a simpler life: to leave the life of arguing and governing behind, and embrace the natural world around them.

Thomas Hardy

The Convergence of the Twain

This poem was written about one of the worse tragedies of our time, the sinking of the Titanic. Right from the beginning he talks about the ship herself and her fate: “
In solitude of the sea/Deep from human vanity,/And the pride if Life that planned her, stilly couches she.” I feel that the vanity in which he talks about was the way she was built and the men around her. She was the biggest ship of her time, and the builders boasted she was unsinkable, a very arrogant and costly claim considering the outcome. Now the ship is at the bottom of the sea away from all the boasting and glamour. In stanza 7 he talks about what befell her, the iceberg.” Prepared a sinister mate/ For her-so gaily great-/A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate”. As we all know from history the ship had received many warnings about icebergs, but they ignored them and it eventually led to their fate. I have always been fascinated with the Titanic, I was always struck by mans arrogance and sense of entitlement when it came to controlling things that were totally uncontrollable. There would not have been as many death on that ship had there been enough lifeboats, that is true, but the sense of greatness they had, to not even include them, shows that man has yet to conquer his greatest challenge, his own vanity.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

No Worst, There is None

This is an incredibly dark sonnet written by Hopkins. I felt the pain coming from every line that he wrote, almost as if he struggled to think clearly enough to write it. From the first stanza I felt his believed abandonment by his deep devotion and God: “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring./Comforter, where, where is your comforting?/Mary, mother of us where is your relief.”  Hopkins was so devoted to his religion and at the same time was so hurt by it. He confessed he was pained by what he saw and experienced “It made life even a burden to me” (pg. 773). He also wrote this as he as living in Ireland, a move that caused him to feel even more alone, and isolated. Reading this example of his “terrible sonnet” I feel great pity for this man. It takes a special person to enter into the priesthood, a calling. I would have thought in order for him to achieve this great task he would have been truly happy to be in the vocation, but he obviously had more demons in him than he could fight.

Oscar Wilde

Symphony in Yellow

I was familiar with Oscar Wilde due to his famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray; it was one of my favorites growing up. The reason I chose this poem was for two reasons. One was because I had never heard of it before and two the simplicity of it. Was it possible that someone as “intricate” as Oscar Wilde could write something so basic? I read this poem as couple of times trying to see what he was saying and every time I read it I could picture the colors he was describing, and I could see the river. Then I thought maybe this is a poem about art. Being an Aesthete, this is exactly what they would have wanted us to see and appreciate. In the first stanza:

An omnibus across the bridge

Crawls like a yellow butterfly,

And, here and there, a passer-by

Shows like a little restless midge”

The wording is so descriptive; to me it seems he wants you to see exactly what he has written. There is no doubt Oscar Wilde was brilliant and quite a character, but I think there was a quiet side that not many people got to see ,because it would have interfered with the persona he as creating.

John Stuart Mill

Statement repudiating the Rights of Husbands

I have to say that I have a great admiration for john Stuart Mill. He was way ahead of his time when it came to fighting for women’s rights; not just women’s rights but sexual equality. This statement was obviously written right as he was about to marry his love Harriett Taylor. I think after knowing how women were treated in marriages of the time, which I am sure Harriett was, treated the same way, he decided he would make her a full partner in their marriage. He wanted her to have the right to own property and not stay bound to him if she chose not to do so .He shows us this in the passage: “ And in the event between Mrs. Taylor and me I declare it to be my will and intention and the condition of the engagement between us, that she retains in all respected whatever the same absolute freedom of action, and freedom of disposal of herself and all of that does or may at any time belong to her, as if no such marriage had taken place.” (pg 515) They views that he had support that he wanted nothing less than equality in their relationship. Even after she had died and he was in a government post years later, he was still fighting for the rights of women. I feel his writing and beliefs are still very relevant because we can see several examples around the world were women and others are still being oppressed. Just proves his thought process was before its time. I think of him as one of the first advocates of equality.

Victorian LAdies and Gentlemen

Charlotte Bronte

Letter to Emily Bronte

I read this letter and found it amazing how things have changed for this profession. Obviously by the letters information she was not treated well at all by the Lady of the house. She was there to maintain order with the children, but the children did not have to follow any kind of order. As for correcting them, I soon quickly found that was entirely out of the question: they are to do as they like. (pg. 560) In addition to her duties with the children she was given additional tasks such as: sewing and needlework. In this day and age people who need someone to govern their children, or take care of them, go out of their way to make sure that they are highly qualified, and able to handle them in any matter appropriate. The governess is given the right to punish and correct the children when in her care, and most likely her only duty would be just the children. It amazed me to find that they wanted someone who was mannered and properly brought up to take care of their children, but treated them as if they were second class citizens, not from the economic background they required. Being a teacher of small children I sometimes see myself slipping into the “governing” role, and know the importance of guidance. In the Victorian age, these poor women were not seen as an asset to the children’s upbringing, but in my opinion, mainly as someone to keep the children away from the parents when they were not wanted around.

Robert Browning

My Last Duchess

I have to say I liked this poem very much. There is defiantly something very dark about this poem. After reading it several times and thinking about it I see this poem as a kind of admittance on the Dukes part. The first thing he admits about his wife is she liked to flirt. Starting on line 20 he wrote:

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

The line that she was easily impressed and that her looks went everywhere seem to me to say she liked talking and flirting with lots of people. I think that her behavior caused him great pain or embarrassment because the second thing I think he admits is that he was the one who killed his wife. The book told that she dies early in the marriage of possible poisoning. The stanza that makes me believe this opinion starts on line 45:

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Than all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count you master’s known munificence

The passage that all smiles stopped together is what makes me think that he was responsible for her death. All in all I think this is a very deep and personal poem. The Duke in the poem is telling of something very personal about his relationship with his first wife, I wonder what was going on in Browning’s life to make him reach such a level.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnet #43

This single sonnet that she wrote to her future husband holds one of the most romantic and famous lines in poetry.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and Ideal grace”

Written to her husband while they were courting each other, she knew she would love him so intensely that nothing could break the bound. I like the fact that she wrote these poems to, and about him, but he did not know they existed until she showed them to him after they were married. I think it shows the passion she felt for him. In the third line where she talks about loving him with where her soul can reach, I think this is where she starts to talk about loving him even in death, something she confirms with the last line. I also think in the last part of the sonnet where she says:

In my old grief’s, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,-I love with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

I think she was possibly referring to her father at this. She went against his wishes to marry this man, and since he would never see her again, she “lost” this love from her childhood.

Thomas Carlyle

Labour -Know Thy Work

Just from the title alone, I think we are able to see how high a regard Carlyle holds in work. Throughout the writing he gives examples of the importance of work. In the first paragraph he wrote: “Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair”. (481). It also seems to me he does not believe in idle hands either. But it is the last paragraph of his writing that I was drawn to. “Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness; He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it!” (482). He was talking about having a passion for what we do in life. I think I identified with this so much because I made that type of a choice last year. I chose to leave my previous occupation to become a teacher. The previous job paid me much better than a teacher’s salary, but it was something that I wanted to do. One of the first things one of my professors told me when I entered the school was teachers do not go into this field for the money, it is a calling, and she was right. I think that is what Carlyle was saying here. Work is necessary, but you should find a job or “life-purpose” that you feel passionate about.

Felecia Hemans

The Homes of England

I read this poem through and immediately got the feeling that this was a poem dedicated to women. After reading her biography and knowing she was abandoned by her husband and forced to support her family with her writing, it is natural that her writings would be influenced by this. The beginning of the poem starts us out in the larger homes of England and goes down to the smaller or “poorer” members of the country. But what made me feel that this was a tribute to women was the last stanza where she wrote:

May hearts of native proof be rear’d

To guard each hallowed wall!

And green for ever be the groves,

And bright the flowery sod,

Where first the child’s glad spirit loves

Its country and its God!

Reading this passage is what made me think that she was celebrating the rearing and teaching of children, and in her age it as the woman who taught the children, so it was natural that this poem was a tribute to them.

John Keats

This living hand

I think that the living hand was very symbolic to him as he was a writer and poet and his arm was his life. To lose it would have cost him everything. I also think that this poem has a very haunting tone to it. The second line where he says:

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb

I kind of feel that since Keats was aware of his condition and the eventual outcome of his illness that his writings took on a melancholy tone. He really seems to be directing this poem to a certain person I get this feeling from the lines:

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own hea(r)t dry of blood

Almost sounds as if he is talking to someone who might have harmed him at some point but in the end he comes out alright by showing his hand to the reader.

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d-see here it is-

I hold it towards you-.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias

This poem was written to the Egyptian kings. He writes:

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desart…Near them on the sand

This description is of a statue of one of the kings of Egypt. Shelly traveled extensively and I am guessing he became interested in the kings of this ancient world. I think that in his day not all of the statues had been uncovered or were on display as they are now, and were only partly on view, which would explain how the statues seem to be in pieces from his description. I think that with the way he looked on life, feeling he was above certain things in society, he felt a kinship to royalty, making himself higher and more prominent than he actually was. I feel he could be talking about himself in this poem as well as the king of Egypt.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

This poem was obviously written about a woman who Byron found attractive, maybe even in love with. His description of her in the first stanza contains one of his most famous lines:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies:

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

To me, this poem sounds of a love that cannot be had, he sees someone who is close to him but almost forbidden, so he writes this poem in her honor. I guess that this poem could be about his sister whom he had an unusually close bond with, but with his history there is no telling who the subject of this famous poem could be. I was actually familiar with this poem when I read it, having learned it a younger age. This poem, about beauty and love has endured all these years.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This poem seems to me about building a paradise that the author wishes to live in. He also goes into great detail of how it would look which to me means it someplace dear to his heart he wrote:

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

And folding sunny posts of greenery.

After reading his biography I would venture to say that he was heavily into his addiction when he wrote this poem. To me this place that he wants to build this “palace” is a refuge in his mind, a place he can go to escape the world in which he lives. He was not happy with himself or his addiction; it cost him many relationships and took a huge toll on his health. This idyllic place in his mind would have been a paradise or as he himself describes a “Xanadu”. I think we all have a place we go in our minds to escape the world around us sometimes. Memories of our past, or places we wish to visit. It is ironic that in his induced drug addiction, he was able to see something so beautiful.

Dorothy Wordsworth

This poem was something that struck a very personal chord for me. I think she wrote this poem feeling remorseful that she could no longer do the things she loved due to her long illness. I took care of a family member for years that was mostly kept in the house, and this poem reminded me of those years. She wrote:

When shall I tread your garden path?

Or climb you sheltering hill?

When shall I wander, free as air,

And track the foaming hill?

Obviously this is something that she did when was much healthier, and was no longer able to do. She was longing for the days when she could do as she wished, go where she wanted and enjoyed the outside world.

A prisoner on my pillowed couch

Five years in feebleness I’ve lain,

Oh! Shall I e’er with vigorous step

Travel the hills again?

I find it interesting that while she basically is complaining that she is a prisoner, she make mention that he couch is pillowed, giving the impression that she is comfortable  to a certain degree. I think the reason this poem stood out to me was I found myself wondering if the family member I took care of felt regret or remorse for things they could no longer do. I know that they were comfortable in their remaining years, but it is almost sad that the things we love the most, the little things we do, are the things we miss the most.

William Wordsworth There Was a Boy

I must have read this poem at least a dozen times and every time I found something different in the text, but the one thing that I kept coming back to was the impression that the boy was somehow connected to nature. In the poem it describes how he mimicked owl sounds:

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Press’d closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls.

I got the feeling that for child to do this he must have a love and a connection the natural world around him. He felt comfortable talking to the birds, and knew that they would not only answer him but to “shout” their response:

That they might answer him. And they would shout

Across the wat’ry vale and shout again

Responsive to his call, with quivering peals

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud.

I think the poem gives the impression that this boy comes and talks to the owls on a regular basis. When Wordsworth describes him as a boy that was known well was he talking about other people knowing him or was he suggesting that he was well known by the animals in the countryside? At the end of the poem the boy is said to have died, but I am not sure he meant it in the physical way. I think that what dies is the boy’s childhood. We all grow up and the things we do as children are no longer appropriate to do as adults, and he going to the cliffs and calling to the owls may be what was left behind in the boy’s childhood.

William Blake's The Little Black Boy

Racism has always been an underlying issue in our country. In William Blake’s poem The Little Black Boy he adds to the controversy by showing us the equality in us all. In the poem there is mention of the darkness of the ones child’s skin but his soul is white. In the first stanza Blake wrote:

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O my soul is white

White as an angel is the English child:

But I am black as if bereav’d light.

It was my interpretation that the color white was chosen for two reasons. The first: White has always represented purity or innocence. This child no matter what he looked like on the outside was an innocent soul given to his mother by God. The second reason: to me is the one that caused the controversy, it represents that no matter what our differences here on Earth are, we are all equal in the eyes of God. Imagine the outcry from the South when this poem was published. Blake wrote and chose to publish this poem while slavery was still legal in this country. Later on in the poem the mother makes mention for the boy to look to where God lives and the light and warmth he gives. The 3^rd stanza reads:

Look on the rising sun: there God does live

And gives his light and gives his heat away

 And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning joy in the noon day

To me the light, or heat, he gives us is acceptance unto him. Whoever sees the lights and accepts it will have life ever after with him. When you enter into his house there are no barriers that separate us. No segregation between races, only peace and harmony. Slavery is a stain on our country that we will always have to carry as citizens, but this poem showed us that some did not feel the same about the bigotry of the nation. The readers and the author himself believed that all men truly were created equal in the eyes of God, and to many of us those eyes are the ones we really care about.