ANALYSIS "LORD RANDAL" From reading the title, I can make conjectures about the possible content of the

text. Since ballad topics usually deal with the supernatural, the battles between borders and tragic love stories, Lord Randall will probably recount the story of a lord who fought a terrible battle . A first reading will say if my conjecture is right. From looking at the layout the reader understands the text is poetic: it has been arranged into ten stanzas of four lines each. The ten stanzas recall a similar pattern: they are all divided into two direct speeches of two lines each. As a matter of fact, the ballad is a mixture of dialogue and narration. A closer reading and analysis will surely contribute to unveil the content of the text as well as the function of its component parts. In the first quatrain Lord Randal comes back from hunting and tells his mother to make his bed because he is tired and he wants to lie down. In stanzas 2-6 his mother insists in asking what happened to him. He answers her he has been poisoned by his lover, who gave him eels fried in a pan. He gave the leavings to his dogs. As a result, they died. In the last four stanzas, knowing that his son would die the mother asks him what he would leave her, his brother, his sister and his love. He answers he would leave 24 cows to her, gold and silver to his sister, his houses and lands to his brother and hell and fire to his love. The denotative analysis clearly shows that the first quatrain has an introductory function to the scene described in the whole poem. The function of stanzas 2-6 consists of developing the story and unveiling what happened to Lord Randall. The last four stanzas have a conclusive function. The intelligent reader realises there is not a syntactic difference between the ten stanzas: in fact the syntax of the first two lines is interrogative (the mother asks questions) while that of the last two lines is affirmative (Lord Randall answers his mother). Taking in consideration the phonological level, one can say this poem has a really strong sound effect. You can find different phonological elements in it. First of all the anaphoric construction. The reader can note the repetition of the same words in the first and in the last two lines. The device is used to aid memorization. As a matter of fact, the ballad is an oral form of poetry that was handed over from generation to generation. The repetition of the same syntactic structure creates a sound pattern A further device used by the poet is rhyme. Son rhymes with man and soon rhymes with down (in a Scottish pronunciation). Choosing the rhyme scheme, the narrator probably wanted to make the poem more impressive in the reader's mind. Lord Randal is a story of treachery and betrayal which has a tragic ending. Lords and ladies are the protagonists of the ballad. The story is told through dialogue, begins in the middle of the events and develops through continuous smooth movements. The setting is outlined through essential concrete details. The language contains preponderance of monosyllabic words, concrete nouns, Anglo-Saxon words and stock adjectives. The syntax is predominantly that of successive statements and is therefore straightforward. The use of repetition is frequent and involves a full stanza. The function of this is to create a refrain (a phrase or line repeated at intervals). La Belle Dame Sans Merci Summary La Belle Dame Sans Merci is one of the finest ballads in the English language. A ballad is a simple song of several stanzas sung to the same melody. It usually narrates a popular story and has a refrain-line or lines repeated in the poem. This ballad is based on the popular story of a beautiful lady without mercy. Keats introduces the medieval theme of a gallant knight and a lady in need. Simultaneously he gives to the story a fairytale atmosphere to express the plot of the ballad. The theme of the poem seems to be the danger of succumbing to false sensuous charms. The knight had returned to the forlorn and beautiful lady in the meadow. He placed her on his horse and went to her faery abode. There he was lulled asleep and in his dream he came to

realize the true nature of the lady who was described by her victims as the beautiful lady without mercy. When he woke up the lady had gone and he found himself abandoned and disillusioned. Cruelty might lurk behind a womans physical beauty and gestures of love. The sedge, a marsh plant resembling coarse grass has already died out in course of season, from the banks of the lake and the songs of birds are heard no more. The cold of the winter is already at hand. The knight has grown thin and his face is filled with dark marks around his eyes because he is ill and tired. The squirrel has completed the harvest of food gathering and his granary is full. The lady says that she sees an abnormal whiteness on the knights forehead and beads of perspiration from extreme pain. The presence of blood seems to fade away from his cheeks and his body is withering fast. Indeed the knight meets the lady in the meadow. She is as beautiful as a fairys child. Her eyes are bright as wild fire, her hair is long and she can move swiftly with her feet. So he made a beautiful garland for her to wear on her head, a bracelet and a waist made of fragrant flowers. She looked at him and demonstrated her love for him. She makes a sweet moan to show that she is unhappy so he mounts her on his horseback. All day long they rode together to the wild country-side. She sang a fairys song all the way and he did not realize how time had passed. The lady gave the knight some eatable wild roots along with some wild honey and manna- the miracle food (the substance miraculously supplied as food to Israelites in the wildernessExodus 16). Then she finally declares how truly she loves him. He was captivated by her love. She took him to her mysterious and magical home. There she wept and sighed profusely, so he kissed her passionately till she broke down into a deep sleep. He too fell into the deep slumber and there it happened where he dreamt the strangest dream in all his life. In his dream, he saw kings, young princess and warriors, all had the same kind of faces which appears death pale in colour. They all cried out in his dream that the lady is without mercy and has held him in eternal bondage. The knight saw that their lips were starving in the evening twilight. They showed a horrified look with their mouths open wide. Then he woke up and found himself in the middle of nowhere on the cold hill-side. No wonder he is here alone and wandering aimlessly in the cold of winter where the sedge has withered and no bird sings. The speaker of the poem comes across a "knight at arms" alone, and apparently dying, in a field somewhere. He asks him what's going on, and the knight's answer takes up the rest of the poem. The knight says that he met a beautiful fairy lady in the fields. He started hanging out with her, making flower garlands for her, letting her ride on his horse, and generally flirting like knights do. Finally, she invited him back to her fairy cave. Sweet, thought the knight. But after they were through smooching, she "lulled" him to sleep, and he had a nightmare about all the knights and kings and princes that the woman had previously seduced they were all dead. And then he woke up, alone, on the side of a hill somewhere. Stanzas 1 & 2 Summary Stanza 1, Lines 1-4 "O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

The poem opens with a question: an unnamed speaker asks a "knight at arms" what's wrong, or what's "ail[ing]" him. Something is clearly wrong with the knight he's "loitering" by himself around the edge of a lake, and he's "pale." The speaker says that the "sedge," or marsh plants, have all died out from around the lake, and "no birds sing." So we're guessing that it's autumn or even early winter since all the birds have migrated, and the plants have "withered."

The presence of the "knight at arms" reminds us of medieval fairy tales with knights and ladies in towers. We think that this is the response Keats intended Stanza 2, Lines 5-8 "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done.

The knight puts the lady on his horse (his "pacing steed") to take a ride. Yes, there might be sexy connotations to this line, too. The knight is so absorbed with his erotic encounter with this fairy lady that he doesn't notice anything else "all day long."

The first part of the stanza echoes the first line of the poem word-for-word. Apparently the knight doesn't answer immediately, so the unnamed speaker has to repeat the question. This time, we get two more adjectives to describe the knight: he's "haggard," or worn-out and tired-looking, and "woe-begone." The knight is obviously both sick and depressed. The last two lines of the stanza do more to set the scene: the squirrels have finished filling up their "granary," or storage of food for the winter, and the crops have already been harvested. We can now safely assume that it's late autumn.

The lady leans "sidelong," or sideways off of the horse and sings "fairy songs" to the knight. Stanza 7, Lines 25-28 "She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna-dew; And sure in language strange she said, 'I love thee true.'

The knight says that the fairy lady found him tasty roots, honey, and manna to eat ("of relish sweet"). "Manna" is the food that the Jewish scriptures say that the Israelites ate when they were wandering around the desert after Moses freed them from slavery in Egypt. It's supposed to be food from heaven, so this word makes the fairy lady seem supernatural, if not actually divine. Alternatively, the association could be with the slavery from which the Israelites had just been freed. After all, the knight does become enslaved to the beautiful fairy lady. This allusion becomes even more potent when it's associated with the "honey wild" that the fairy lady fed the knight. (The Israelites were trying to find the Promised Land, which would flow with "milk and honey.") The fairy lady tells the knight that she loves him, but she says it "in language strange."

Stanza 3, Lines 9-12 "I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever-dew. And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too."

The speaker continues to address this sick, depressed "knight at arms." He asks about the "lily" on the knight's "brow," suggesting that the knight's face is pale like a lily. The knight's forehead is sweaty with "anguish" and with "fever," so he's obviously sick.

The last two lines of the stanza describe how the healthy color is rapidly "fading" from the knight's cheeks. Stanza 4, Lines 13-16 "I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

He doesn't say what language it is, or how he's able to understand her. Maybe he's just hearing what he wants to hear, or maybe her magical influence has enabled him to understand her "language strange." Stanza 8, Lines 29-32 "She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sigh'd full sore; And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.

This stanza changes point of view. All of a sudden, the knight answers the unnamed speaker's questions. So now the "I" is the knight, rather than the original speaker. The knight says that he met a beautiful, fairy-like "lady" in the "meads," or fields. She had long hair, was graceful, and had "wild" eyes. (We're not sure what "wild" eyes would look like, but apparently the knight thought it was attractive.)

The fairy lady takes the knight to her "elfin grot." "Elfin" just means having to do with elves, as any Tolkien fans probably figured. And a "grot" is a grotto, or cave. Once they're back at her fairy cave, she cries and sighs loudly. The knight doesn't say why she's crying, and we never find out it's left to our imagination. The knight kisses her weepy eyes four times. (Why "four" kisses? Isn't "three" usually the magic number in fairy tales? )

Stanza 5, Lines 17-20 "I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.

Again, her eyes are described as "wild," and this time it's repeated twice. Stanza 9, Lines 33-36 "And there she lulld me asleep, And there I dream'd ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side.

The knight made a flower wreath, or "garland," for the lady, along with flower "bracelets." The "fragrant zone" is a belt made of flowers. We get the idea that the knight decks out the maiden with flowers. "Fragrant zone" could also be a reference to her lady parts, which would make sense, given where the next two lines go.

The fairy lady "lulls" the knight to sleep like a baby in her cave, and he starts to dream something. He interrupts himself with a dash in line 34, and exclaims "Ah! woe betide!" because even the memory of the dream is horrible as he repeats it to the unnamed speaker. "Woe betide!" is an archaic exclamation used to express extreme grief or suffering. It was old-fashioned even when Keats was writing. The knight's use of this expression emphasizes the medieval romance setting.

And where do the next two lines go? Well, the lady is "look[ing]" at the knight while "lov[ing]" and "moan[ing]," so we think that they two are having sex. Stanza 6, Lines 21-24 "I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery's song.

The knight's dream in the fairy cave is the "latest," or last, dream he'll ever have. Stanza 10, Lines 37-40 "I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:

They cried, 'La belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!'

The knight describes the dream he had: he saw "kings," "princes," and "warriors, and they were all "death pale." In fact, he repeats the word "pale" three times in two lines. This procession of "pale" men could be an allusion to the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse that gets described in the Book of Revelation in the Christian bible. The fourth horseman is Death, and he rides on a pale horse. The pale warriors, princes, and kings all cry out in unison that "La belle dame sans merci" has the knight "in thrall," or in bondage. Line 39 has the title of the poem in it, so it's time to translate it. The title is French and it translates to "the beautiful woman without mercy."

The nymph, however, does slow down to show the shepherd that there might be some hope for them when she says, in the last quatrain, "But could youth last and love still breed, has joy no date nor age no need". By speaking these words, the nymph indicates to the shepherd that if his love were never-ending, and age was not to effect her beauty or his love for her, "Then these delights my mind might move to come with thee and be thy love". Raleigh's poem "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" is a witty and well-written reply to Marlowe's more innocent "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love". Using similar images and metrics, Raleigh cleverly presents the nymph's world-weary response to the shepherd's new and childlike view of love. In Marlowe's poem, the shepherd reaches out to his love with a pastoral ballad. The piece is very beautiful, painting an idyllic scene wherein the shepherd and his love can roam at their will. The shepherd tells his love that he will give all for her if she would just live with him; together they will "all the pleasures prove" (2) and he would show her to a world where birds sing, the sun shines, and everything is serene and perfect. Even Marlowe's use of language contributes to his scene of happiness with which he tries to lure his love; the poem is written in iambic tetrameter couplets, giving it a lilting and song-like feel. He also employs alliteration quite often and to great effect; soft, rolling sounds like "we will" (2), "mind may move" (27), and "live with me and be my Love" (28) achieve a verbal approximation of the valleys and hills that he speaks of contextually. Raleigh, however, will have none of Marlowe's idealism and naivet. In his poem, the shepherd has sung his song to the lover, and Raleigh's poem is her reply. Interestingly enough, Raleigh uses the word "nymph" instead of a more neutral word like "girl" or a direct counter like "love". Although the word nymph did mean "girl" in Raleigh's time, it also had the mythological connotation of a female spirit who would have been adept at warding off satyrs and would-be suitors. Raleigh's nymph breaks down the shepherd's love-struck ballad quickly and efficiently; in fact, Raleigh's poem has a counter for each of Marlowe's ideas. It begins by having the nymph doubt the shepherd's ability to make true his promises; she questions the "truth in every shepherd's tongue" (2). The shepherd and the nymph see the world in two very different lights: while the shepherd entreats the nymph to come with him, the nymph's response is one of sobering mortality. For all hisromantic ideas of fields and flowers, the nymph knows that it does not matter because eventually "Time drives the flocks from fields to fold" (5) and "flowers fade" (6). Where the shepherd's "birds sing madrigals" (8), the nymph replies that "Philomel becometh dumb" (7), invoking the mythological story of Philomela, a Greek girl who was transformed into a nightingale. The poem continues in this tone until the last stanza; there, Raleigh's nymph concedes that if they were both immortal she might consider joining him, a last bit of hope for Marlowe's poor shepherd. The language of Raleigh's poem contributes greatly to the nymph's demolition of the shepherd's nave and heartfelt plea for love. Raleigh reiterates many of Marlowe's images and ideas, but distorts them through the lens of time. The same alliteration is also used in both; there is, however, a marked difference in their sounds. Marlowe alliterates softer "m" and "l" sounds, giving his poem the aforementioned rolling aspect. Raleigh imitates Marlowe extremely well, but there is a telling difference that can be noted in some places; Raleigh uses a rougher alliteration of sounds like hard "c" and "t" to give his poem a more mocking, satirical bent. This is especially prominent in the second stanza of Raleigh's poem; while Marlowe's second stanza has the softer alliterative sounds, Raleigh's stanza moves stiffly with the "c" sounds in "complains of cares to come "(8).

(If you want to know more about the title, go to the "What's Up With the Title?" section, and then come back.) Stanza 11, Lines 41-44 "I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gapd wide And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.

The knight continues to describe the pale warriors from his dream in the "gloam," or dusk, all he can make out are their "lips." Their mouths are "starv'd" and hungry-looking, and their mouths are all open as they cry out their warning to the knight. The word "gloam" just means dusk or twilight, but it's no accident that Keats uses it after all, "gloam" sounds a lot like "gloom."

The knight wakes up from the dream alone and cold on the side of a hill. Stanza 12, Lines 45-48 "And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."

The knight has finished his story. He tells the original, unnamed speaker, that this is why he's hanging out ("sojourn[ing]" and "loitering") by himself, even though it's so dismal outside. The knight repeats the unnamed speaker's words from the first stanza, so that the poem ends with almost exactly the same stanza with which it began. Analysis on "The Nymph's Reply To The Shepherd"

"The Nymph' s Reply to the Shepherd" Sir Walter Raleigh writes of a nymph's reply to an eager shepherd's request. Through his stunning use of imagery and figurative language, Raleigh paints an exquisite picture of true love versus the shepherd' s lust. In the poem the nymph compares the shepherd' s "love" in the second quatrain to just a momentary feeling, or even a crush, when she says ". . .and Philomel becometh dumb, the rest complains of cares to come." By saying this, the Nymph clearly states that the shepherd's love for her is much like a season and will soon pass out of existence just as summer must one day turn to winter. Sir Walter Raleigh also uses imagery when the Nymph speaks of the gifts that the shepherd can give her, in the fifth quatrain, she says to his offer ". . .Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, In folly ripe in season rotten." Again she tells the shepherd that there is no true love between them, for just as a flower flourishes during the summer, so might the shepherd' s love, but it will not last; as the flower perishes during the winter, so shall his love for her become bleak.

The metrics of Raleigh's poem are also in and of themselves a direct reply to Marlowe's. Raleigh uses the same iambic tetrameter that Marlowe uses, organizing the poem into four line stanzas composed of two rhyming couplets each. He achieves an oddly mocking tone with the meter because of the words involved. Although the words still flow because of the regular meter, they are decidedly less romantic and are juxtaposed with the meter. Examples of this are the harsh alliteration in "complains of cares to come" (8) or the rolling, soft sound that "wayward winter's reckoning yields" (10). Although the metrics are regular and fall soft on the ear, the subject matter is darker and uses the meter to make fun of Marlowe's pastoral love poem. Raleigh also uses metric substitution, like his alliteration, to make his poem rougher and less pleasing to the ear than Marlowe's. The first example of metric substitution comes in the second stanza. The two stressed feet in "Time drives" (5) are an abrupt break from the pleasing, flowing metrics that Marlowe established and Raleigh's first stanza adhered to. The spondee substitution has a forced sound that gives the reader the impression that time never ceases, relentlessly pressing on against the pleasures of which Marlowe's shepherd thinks so highly. It is also found in the second line where "rocks grow cold" (6). The substitution here is ironic because the verb "grow" is usually associated with natural things like trees and flowers, objects with which the shepherd tries to entice the nymph. The nymph, however, returns with an object that is rough and does not truly grow; she instead uses the word to mean "to turn", and the stresses indicate the harsh reality of the line. The second example of metrics is found in the fourth stanza, and it is an interesting thing indeed. Each line in the fourth stanza has nine syllables as opposed to eight, thus giving each line a feminine ending. This is interesting in that feminine endings are generally a weaker ending; however, it is clear in this stanza that the lines are powerful and reject the gifts the shepherd has offered. The third line of the stanza thunders into being, with four stressed syllables at the beginning and the bilabial plosive in "break" gives the line a very angry tone; Raleigh uses the metrics, then, to give his nymph an anger and irritation to the shepherd's foolhardy thoughts of love and paradise, knowing that time will come and destroy it all one day. he nymph's reply, however, becomes softer and softer as she begins to feel pity or compassion towards the shepherd. The last two stanzas are in regular iambic tetrameter with the exception of the first line of the last stanza; the nymph tells the shepherd that "could youth last" (25) they would be together. The three stresses on "could youth last" contribute to a sense of length; the reader expects the unstressed syllable to come naturally but it does not, instead waiting two syllables to appear. Both Marlowe and Raleigh were excellent poets and show it in both "The Passionate Shepherd" and "The Nymph's Reply". Raleigh's reply, however, cleverly bends Marlowe's images, ideas, and metrics into a more sober and mature outlook than the shepherd's dreamy infatuation. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Summary "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is a pastoral lyric, a poetic form that is used to create an idealized vision of rural life within the context of personal emotion. Pastoral poems had been in vogue among poets for at least seventeen hundred years when Marlowe wrote this one. The Greek poet Theocritis, in the third century B.C.E. (Shipley 300-1,) was the first pastoralist poet, and he, too, wrote about shepherds. All pastoral poetry, including Marlowe's, is to some degree influenced by this original practitioner. The poem is written in very regular iambic tetrameter. Each line contains exactly four heavy stresses, and the metrical feet are almost always iambic. Similarly, most lines contain eight syllables, and the few that don't create a specific poetic effect (such as lines 3 and 4), or have easily elided syllables which may be read as eight. This regular meter, sustained through the twenty-four lines, remarkably never descends into the sing-song quality so prevalent in tetrameter, primarily because Marlowe salts his lines with a variety of devices that complement the meter without drawing too much attention to its rigid regularity. Marlowe's use of soft consonants (such as W, M, Em, F) to start lines, with the

occasional "feminine" ending of an unstressed syllable (in the third stanza) lend a delightful variety to an essentially regular and completely conventional form. In the first stanza, the Shepherd invites his love to come with him and "pleasures prove" (line 2.) This immediate reference to pleasure gives a mildly sexual tone to this poem, but it is of the totally innocent, almost nave kind. The Shepherd makes no innuendo of a sordid type, but rather gently and directly calls to his love. He implies that the entire geography of the countryside of England "Valleys, groves, hills and fields/Woods or steepy mountains" will prove to contain pleasure of all kinds for the lovers. This vision of the bounteous earth (reminiscent of the New Testament's admonishment "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them." Matthew 6:26) is a very common theme in pastoral poetry. The idealization of rural life is essentially what separates pastoral poetry from simple rustic verse. Realism, which would not come into being as a poetic or literary style for many centuries after Marlowe, has little place in pastoral verse. The next stanza suggests that the lovers will take their entertainment not in a theatre or at a banquet, but sitting upon rocks or by rivers. They will watch shepherds (of which the titular speaker is ostensibly one, except here it is implied that he will have ample leisure) feeding their flocks, or listening to waterfalls and the songs of birds. The enticements of such auditory and visual pleasures can be seen as a marked contrast to the "hurlyburly" (a phrase Marlowe used in his later play, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Act IV, Scene 1) of the London stage plays which Marlowe would write. These are entirely bucolic, traditional entertainments; the idea of Marlowe, the young man about town who chose to live in London, actually enjoying these rustic pleasures exclusively and leaving the city behind is laughable. Again, these invitations are not to be taken literally. Marlowe may well have admired pastoral verse, and the ideals of it (such as Ovid's ideals of aggressive, adulterous heterosexual love) were not necessarily those he would espouse for himself. The third, fourth, and fifth stanzas are a kind of list of the "delights", mostly sartorial, that the Shepherd will make for his lady love. Here it becomes clearer that the "Shepherd" is really none of the same; indeed, he is more like a feudal landowner who employs shepherds. The list of the things he will make for his lady: "beds of roses" (a phrase, incidentally, first coined by Marlowe, which has survived to this day in common speech, though in the negative , "no bed of roses" meaning "not a pleasant situation") "thousand fragrant posies," "cap of flowers," "kirtle embroidered with leaves of myrtle," "gown made of the finest wool/Which from our pretty lambs we pull," "fair-lind slippers," "buckles of the purest gold," "belt of straw and ivy buds," "coral clasps," and "amber studs") reveal a great deal about the situation of the "Shepherd" and what he can offer his love. While certainly many of the adornments Marlowe lists would be within the power of a real shepherd to procure or make (the slippers, the belt, possibly the bed of roses (in season), the cap of flowers, and the many posies, and possibly even the kirtle embroidered with myrtle and the lambs wool gown,) but the gold buckles, the coral clasps, and the amber studs would not be easily available to the smallholder or tenant shepherds who actually did the work of sheepherding. This increasingly fanciful list of gifts could only come from a member of the gentry, or a merchant in a town. This is another convention of pastoral poetry. While the delights of the countryside and the rural life of manual labor are celebrated, the poet (and the reader) is assumed to be noble, or at least above manual labor. The fantasy of bucolic paradise is entirely idealized; Marlowe's Shepherd is not a real person, but merely a poetic device to celebrate an old poetic ideal in verse. Incidentally, the plants mentioned (roses, flowers, and myrtle) are conventional horticultural expressions of romance. The rose, especially, was sacred to the goddess Venus (and it is how roses have come to symbolize romantic love in some modern Western cultures.) The myrtle was associated with Venus, too, and especially with marriage rituals in Ancient Rome. This connotation would have been known to Marlowe's readers. The attribute of virginity should not necessarily be assumed here; it was not for a few more centuries that myrtle would come to symbolize sexual purity. Therefore the kirtle embroidered with myrtle is not just a pretty rhyme and a word-picture of a desirable garment. It was meant to

symbolize that this was a nuptial invitation, and that the Shepherd's lady was not strictly defined (though she may well have been meant to be) a virgin bride. Myrtle was an appropriate nature symbol from the Greek and Roman mythologies (from which the first pastoral poems come) to insert into a love-poem. The image of the Shepherd as a member of the gentry becomes complete when, in the last stanza, it is said "The shepherd swains shall dance and sing/For thy delight each May-morning." The picture here is of other shepherds doing the speaker's bidding. A rustic form of performance in the open air and not on a stage is again in marked contrast to the kind of formal performance of plays on the Renaissance stage, which would make Marlowe famous at a very young age. The poem ends with an "if" statement, and contains a slightly somber note. There is no guarantee that the lady will find these country enticements enough to follow the Shepherd, and since the construction of them is preposterous and fantastical to begin with, the reader is left with the very real possibility that the Shepherd will be disappointed. Analysis The Passionate Shepherd to His Love was composed sometime in Marlowes early years, (between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three) around the same time he translated Ovids Amores. This is to say, Marlowe wrote this poem before he went to London to become a playwright. Thornton suggests that Marlowes poetic and dramatic career follows an Ovidian career model (xiv), with his amatory poems belonging to his youth, followed later by epic poems (such as Hero and Leander) and Lucans First Book). The energy and fanciful nature of youth is evident in Passionate Shepherd, which has been called an extended invitation to rustic retirement (xv). It is headlong in its rush of sentiment, though, upon examination, it reveals itself to be a particularly wellbalanced piece of poetry. This poem is justly famous: though it may not be immediately identifiable as Marlowe's (it is often mistakenly thought to be a sonnet of Shakespeare, though that is incorrect in both authorship and poetic form) it has a place in most anthologies of love-poetry. It may well be the most widely recognized piece that Marlowe ever wrote, despite the popularity of certain of his plays. The meter, though seemingly regular, gives a great deal of meaning and music to this poem. In line 10 the iambic pattern, so far unbroken, reverses to trochaic (stressed, unstressed). The line is innocuous "And a thousand fragrant posies" there is no special meaning in this line that requires a complete reversal of the meter. But it is a completely complementary line to the one above it (which contains an almost perfect match of nine iambic syllables), and creates movement and motion in the poem. This kind of temporary shift of meter makes the poem lighter to read, and, while preserving regularity, lessens any sing-song quality that might occur if too many regular lines appear in sequence. This skillful change is one of the reasons this poem is so often read aloud. It is musical and regular to the ear, but it is never rigid or predictable. Line endings, too, can create variety within regularity, and also call attention to the subject matter of the lines. The only stanza which contains the line ending termed "feminine" (that is, an additional unstressed syllable following the final stressed syllable while it may not have been called "feminine" in Marlowe's day, the softer consonant at the end of a disyllabic word such as those in this stanza definitely can convey femininity) is the third. "There will I make thee beds of roses" This is done by using disyllabic words at the end of the line. The second syllable of most two-syllable words is usually an unstressed one. These lines all end with particularly feminine objects, too roses, posies, kirtle (a woman's garment), and myrtle. It should be noted that every other line-terminating word in the entire poem is a monosyllabic one, with the lone exception of line 22, in which the "masculine" stressed ending is forced by the hyphenated construction "Maymorn ing". Marlowe chose his words with very great care. Scansion of poetry is never exact; while lines 1 and 20 are often read as iambic, the beginning (especially line 20) can easily be read as a spondee (two long syllables Come live with me and be my love/ rather than Come live with me and be my love/). A skillful and expressive reader might read this repeated line thusly, upon its second occurrence. The different stress would add pleading to the tone of the line (the emphases on the verbs "come

live" and "and be") and bespeak a slight desperation on the part of the Shepherd. If read the opposite way from the first line (spondaic rather than iambic) the meaning of the line changes just enough to create a development of emotion. This is no mean feat in a poem only twenty-four lines in length. (Note that there is disputed stanza (second from the last) "Thy silver dishes for thy meat" which appears in some older editions the latest critical editions do not include it.) At first glance "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love" can seem to be a nice piece of pastoral frippery. Considering that it was written, probably, in Marlowe's late adolescence, and if read as a superficial exercise in the practice of a very old form of poetry, it can seem to be light and insubstantial. But any studied analysis of the poem reveals its depth; the poem can be read as containing irony (as written by an urbane man who longed for the city rather than the country, and thus constructed impossible rustic scenarios), serious and heartfelt emotion, a slight political commentary, a gentle sadness, and a transcendent love of nature. Good poetry is often many things to different readers, and Marlowe was able to create, within a codified (and one might say ossified) form of poetry a piece of clever and flexible Elizabethan verse. The Shepherd may not have been real, but the emotions and effects created by this poem have their own reality. Ozymandias Summary The speaker describes a meeting with someone who has traveled to a place where ancient civilizations once existed. We know from the title that hes talking about Egypt. The traveler told the speaker a story about an old, fragmented statue in the middle of the desert. The statue is broken apart, but you can still make out the face of a person. The face looks stern and powerful, like a ruler. The sculptor did a good job at expressing the rulers personality. The ruler was a wicked guy, but he took care of his people. On the pedestal near the face, the traveler reads an inscription in which the ruler Ozymandias tells anyone who might happen to pass by, basically, Look around and see how awesome I am! But there is no other evidence of his awesomeness in the vicinity of his giant, broken statue. There is just a lot of sand, as far as the eye can see. The traveler ends his story. Lines 1-2 I met a traveller from an antique land Who said...

The poem begins immediately with an encounter between the speaker and a traveler that comes from an "antique land." We're not sure about this traveler. He could be a native of this "antique" land, or just a tourist returning from his latest trip. We don't know where this encounter is taking place; is it on the highway? On a road somewhere? In London? Maybe if we keep reading we'll find out.

"Antique" means something really old, like that couch at your grandmother's or the bunny ears on top of your television. The traveler could be coming from a place that is ancient, almost as if he were time-traveling. Or he could just be coming from a place that has an older history, like Greece, Rome, or ancient Egypt. Lines 2-4 Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies

Here the traveler begins his speech. He tells the speaker about a pair of stone legs that are somehow still standing in the middle of the desert. Those legs are huge ("vast") and "trunkless." "Trunkless" means "without a torso," so it's a pair of legs with no body. "Visage" means face; a face implies a head, so we are being told that the head belonging to this sculpture is partially buried in the sand, near the legs. It is also, like the whole statue, "shatter'd."

The image described is very strange: a pair of legs, with a head nearby. What happened to the rest of the statue? War? Natural disaster? Napoleon? Lines 4-6 whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

The traveler tells us about an inscription at the foot of statue which finally reveals to us whom this statue represents. It is "Ozymandias," the figure named in the title. "Ozymandias" was one of several Greek names for Ramses II of Egypt. For more, see "What's Up with the Title." The inscription suggests that Ozymandias is arrogant, or at least that he has grand ideas about his own power: he calls himself the "king of kings." Ozymandias also brags about his "works." Maybe he's referring to the famous temples he constructed at Abu Simbel or Thebes. He could also be calling attention to the numerous colossal statues of him, such as the one described in this poem. Ozymandias's speech is ambiguous here. On the one hand he tells the "mighty" to "despair" because their achievements will never equal his "works." On the other hand, he might be telling the "mighty" to "despair" as a kind of warning, saying something like "Don't get your hopes up guys because your statues, works, political regimes, etc. will eventually be destroyed or fade away, with nothing to recall them but a dilapidated statue halfburied in the sand."

The traveler now gives a fuller description of the "shatter'd visage" lying in the sand. As it turns out, the "visage" (or face) isn't completely "shatter'd" because one can still see a "frown," a "wrinkled lip," and a "sneer." We still don't know whom this statue represents, but we do know that he was upset about something because he's frowning and sneering. Maybe he thinks that the sneering makes him look powerful. It conveys the "cold command" of an absolute ruler. He can do what he wants without thinking of other people. Heck, he probably commanded the sculptor to make the statue. After briefly describing the "visage" (3), the lines shift our attention away from the statue to the guy who made the statue, the "sculptor." "Read" here means "understood" or "copied" well. The sculptor was pretty good because he was able to understand and reproduce exactly to "read" the facial features and "passions" of our angry man. The sculptor might even grasp things about the ruler that the ruler himself doesn't understand. The poem suggests that artists have the ability to perceive the true nature of other people in the present and not just in the past, with the benefit of hindsight.

12-14 Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

After the traveler recites the inscription, he resumes his description of the statue and the surrounding area. We are reminded again that "nothing" remains besides the head, legs, and pedestal; as if we didn't know the statue has been destroyed, the traveler tells us again that it is a "colossal wreck." The very size of the statue "colossal" emphasizes the scope of Ozymandias's ambitions as well; it's almost as if because he thinks he's the "king of kings" (10), he also has to build a really big statue. To complement the "decay" of the statue, the traveler describes a desolate and barren desert that seems to go on forever: the "sands stretch far away." The statue is the only thing in this barren, flat desert. There was probably once a temple or something nearby, but it's long gone. The "sands" are "lone," which means whatever else used to be "beside" the statue has been destroyed or buried. Several words in these lines start with the same letter; for example "besides," "boundless," and "bare"; "remains" and "round"; "lone" and "level"; "sands" and "stretch." Using multiple words with the same initial letter is called alliteration.

"Tell" is a cool word. The statue doesn't literally speak, but the frown and sneer are so perfectly rendered that they give the impression that they are speaking, telling us how great the sculptor was. Lines 7-8 Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed

The poem now tells us more about the "passions" of the face depicted on the statue. Weirdly, the "passions" still survive because they are "stamp'd on these lifeless things." The "lifeless things" are the fragments of the statue in the desert. "Stamp'd" doesn't refer to an ink-stamp, but rather to the artistic process by which the sculptor inscribed the "frown" and "sneer" on his statue's face. The word could also make you think of the ruler's power. Had he wanted to, he could have stamped out any of his subjects who offended him. "Mock'd" has two meanings in this passage. It means both "made fun of" and "copied," or "imitated." "Hand" is a stand-in for the sculptor. So the sculptor both belittled and copied this man's passions. "The heart that fed" is a tricky phrase; it refers to the heart that "fed" or nourished the passions of the man that the statue represents. But if you think these lines are unclear, you're right. Even scholars have trouble figuring out what they mean. The passions not only "survive"; they have also outlived both the sculptor ("the hand that mock'd") and the heart of the man depicted by the statue.

Note the contrast between life and death. The fragments of the statue are called "lifeless things," the sculptor is dead, and so is the statue's subject. The "passions" though, still "survive." Lines 9-11 And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Ozymandias Questions Bring on the tough stuff - theres not just one right answer. 1. Where do you think the encounter between the speaker and the traveler takes place? Is it on the street? Is it in the speaker's head? What does this vagueness contribute to the poem? 2. In this poem three different people speak (the speaker, the traveler, and Ozymandias). What do you make of this? Does it make the poem seem more like a novel or a play, where different voices are permitted to speak? 3. There's a lot of alliteration in this poem. There's also plenty of rhyming. What do you make of all this repetition? Does it suggest some kind of cyclical, historyrepeats-itself, idea? 4. What do you think Ozymandias would say if he could see what has happened to his crumbling statue? Would he be humbled or would he find some other way to boast? 5. Are there political leaders today that you consider to be similar to Ozymandias, or is he a different case because he had absolute power? Which leaders would you want to read this poem?

6.

Have you ever had a strange encounter with somebody from another country? Did it involve a tale about a destroyed statue or something similarly bizarre? SONNET 29 PARAPHRASE

against the cold, against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late Bare ruins of church choirs the sweet birds sang. where lately the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of In me you can see only the dim such day light that remains As after sunset fadeth in the After the sun sets in the west, west, Which by and by black night Which is soon extinguished by doth take away, black night, Death's second self, that seals The image of death that up all in rest. envelops all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of I am like a glowing ember such fire That on the ashes of his youth Lying on the dying flame of my doth lie, youth, As the death-bed whereon it As on the death bed where it must expire, must finally expire, Consum'd with that which it was Consumed by that which once nourish'd by. fed it. This thou perceivest, which This you sense, and it makes makes thy love more strong, your love more determined To love that well which thou Causing you to love that which must leave ere long. you must give up before long. ANALYSIS that time of year (1): i.e., being late autumn or early winter. When yellow leaves... (2): compare Macbeth (5.3.23) "my way of life/is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf." Bare ruin'd choirs (4): a reference to the remains of a church or, more specifically, a chancel, stripped of its roof and exposed to the elements. The choirs formerly rang with the sounds of 'sweet birds'. Some argue that lines 3 and 4 should be read without pause -- the 'yellow leaves' shake against the 'cold/Bare ruin'd choirs' . If we assume the adjective 'cold' modifies 'Bare ruin'd choirs', then the image becomes more concrete -- those boughs are sweeping against the ruins of the church. Some editors, however, choose to insert 'like' into the opening of line 4, thus changing the passage to mean 'the boughs of the yellow leaves shake against the cold like the jagged arches of the choir stand exposed to the cold'. Noted 18th-century scholar George Steevens commented that this image "was probably suggested to Shakespeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle [sic] and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch overhead, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes more solemn and picturesque" (Smith 148). black night (7): a metaphor for death itself. As 'black night' closes in around the remaining light of the day, so too does death close in around the poet. Death's second self (8): i.e. 'black night' or 'sleep.' Macbeth refers to sleep as "The death of each day's life" (2.2.49). In me thou see'st...was nourish'd by (9-12): The following is a brilliant paraphrase by early 20th-century scholar Kellner: "As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past." (See Sonnets, ed. Rollins, p.191) that (12): i.e., the poet's desires. This (14): i.e., the demise of the poet's youth and passion. To love that well (12): The meaning of this phrase and of the concluding couplet has aroused much debate. Is the poet saying that the young man now understands that he will lose his own youth and passion, after listening to the lamentations in the three preceding quatrains? Or is the poet saying that the young man now is aware of the poet's imminent demise, and this knowledge makes the young man's love for the poet stronger because he might soon lose him? What must the young man give up before long -- his youth or his friend? For more on this dilemma please see the commentary below. Sonnets 71-74 are typically analyzed as a group, linked by the poet's thoughts of his own mortality. However, Sonnet 73 contains many of the themes common throughout the entire body of sonnets, including

When, in disgrace with fortune When Ive fallen out of favor and men's eyes, with fortune and men, I all alone beweep my outcast All alone I weep over my state position as a social outcast, And trouble deaf heaven with And pray to heaven, but my my bootless cries cries go unheard, And look upon myself and curse And I look at myself, cursing my fate, my fate, Wishing me like to one more Wishing I were like one who rich in hope, had more hope, Featured like him, like him with Wishing I looked like him; friends possess'd, wishing I were surrounded by friends, Desiring this man's art and that Wishing I had this man's skill man's scope, and that man's freedom. With what I most enjoy I am least contented with what contented least; I used to enjoy most. Yet in these thoughts myself But, with these thoughts almost despising, almost despising myself, Haply I think on thee, and then I, by chance, think of you and my state, then my melancholy Like to the lark at break of day Like the lark at the break of arising day, rises From sullen earth, sings hymns From the dark earth and (I) sing at heaven's gate; hymns to heaven; For thy sweet love remember'd For thinking of your love brings such wealth brings such happiness That then I scorn to change my That then I would not change state with kings. my position in life with kings. ANALYSIS in disgrace (1): out of favor. beweep (2): weep over (my outcast state). outcast state (2): The poet's "outcast state" is possibly an allusion to his lack of work as an actor due to the closing of the theatres in 1592 (during an outbreak of plague). It also could be a reference to the attack on Shakespeare at the hands of Robert Greene. Please see the commentary below for more on Shakespeare and Greene. bootless (3): useless. Shakespeare uses the word seventeen times in the plays. Compare Othello: The robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief. (1.3.225) Compare also Titus Andronicus: For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain; And they have nursed this woe, in feeding life; In bootless prayer have they been held up, And they have served me to effectless use: Now all the service I require of them Is that the one will help to cut the other. (3.1.75) Interestingly, the phrase "bootless cries" appears in Edward III, an anonymous play that many now believe Shakespeare wrote. look upon myself (4): i.e., I become occupied with selfreflection. Featured like him (6): i.e., the features (physical beauty) of some other more attractive man. SONNET 73 PARAPHRASE That time of year thou mayst in In me you can see that time of me behold year When yellow leaves, or none, or When a few yellow leaves or few, do hang none at all hang Upon those boughs which shake On the branches, shaking

the ravages of time on one's physical well-being and the mental anguish associated with moving further from youth and closer to death. Time's destruction of great monuments juxtaposed with the effects of age on human beings is a convention seen before, most notably in Sonnet 55. SONNET 116 PARAPHRASE Let me not to the Let me not declare marriage of true any reasons why two minds Admit impediments. True-minded people Love is not love should not be married. Love is not love Which alters when it Which changes when alteration finds, it finds a change in circumstances, Or bends with the Or bends from its firm remover to remove: stand even when a lover is unfaithful: O no! it is an ever- Oh no! it is a fixed mark lighthouse That looks on That sees storms but tempests and is never it never shaken; shaken; It is the star to every Love is the guiding wandering bark, north star to every lost ship, Whose worth's Whose value cannot unknown, although his be calculated, height be taken. although its altitude can be measured. Love's not Time's fool, Love is not at the though rosy lips and mercy of Time, cheeks though physical beauty Within his bending Comes within the sickle's compass compass of his sickle. come: Love alters not with Love does not alter his brief hours and with hours and weeks, weeks, But bears it out even But, rather, it endures to the edge of doom. until the last day of life. If this be error and If I am proved wrong upon me proved, about these thoughts on love I never writ, nor no Then I recant all that I man ever loved. have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved. ANALYSIS marriage...impediments (1-2): T.G. Tucker explains that the first two lines are a "manifest allusion to the words of the Marriage Service: 'If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony'; cf. Much Ado 4.1.12. 'If either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined.' Where minds are true - in possessing love in the real sense dwelt upon in the following lines - there can be no 'impediments' through change of circumstances, outward appearance, or temporary lapses in conduct." (Tucker, 192). bends with the remover to remove (4): i.e., deviates ("bends") to alter its course ("remove") with the departure of the lover. ever-fixed mark (5): i.e., a lighthouse (mark = sea-mark). Compare Othello (5.2.305-7):

Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd; Here is my journey's end, here is my butt, And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. the star to every wandering bark (7): i.e., the star that guides every lost ship (guiding star = Polaris). Shakespeare again mentions Polaris (also known as "the north star") in Much Ado About Nothing (2.1.222) and Julius Caesar (3.1.65). Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken (8): The subject here is still the north star. The star's true value can never truly be calculated, although its height can be measured. Love's not Time's fool (9): i.e., love is not at the mercy of Time. Within his bending sickle's compass come (10): i.e., physical beauty falls within the range ("compass") of Time's curved blade. Note the comparison of Time to the Grim Reaper, the scythe-wielding personification of death. edge of doom (12): i.e., Doomsday. Compare 1 Henry IV (4.1.141): Come, let us take a muster speedily: Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily. Sonnet 116 is about love in its most ideal form. It is praising the glories of lovers who have come to each other freely, and enter into a relationship based on trust and understanding. The first four lines reveal the poet's pleasure in love that is constant and strong, and will not "alter when it alteration finds." The following lines proclaim that true love is indeed an "ever-fix'd mark" which will survive any crisis. In lines 7-8, the poet claims that we may be able to measure love to some degree, but this does not mean we fully understand it. Love's actual worth cannot be known it remains a mystery. The remaining lines of the third quatrain (9-12), reaffirm the perfect nature of love that is unshakeable throughout time and remains so "ev'n to the edge of doom", or death. In the final couplet, the poet declares that, if he is mistaken about the constant, unmovable nature of perfect love, then he must take back all his writings on love, truth, and faith. Moreover, he adds that, if he has in fact judged love inappropriately, no man has ever really loved, in the ideal sense that the poet professes. The details of Sonnet 116 are best described by Tucker Brooke in his acclaimed edition of Shakespeare's poems: [In Sonnet 116] the chief pause in sense is after the twelfth line. Seventy-five per cent of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two; none belong in any degree to the vocabulary of 'poetic' diction. There is nothing recondite, exotic, or metaphysical in the thought. There are three run-on lines, one pair of double-endings. There is nothing to remark about the rhyming except the happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops; nothing to say about the harmony except to point out how the fluttering accents in the quatrains give place in the couplet to the emphatic march of the almost unrelieved iambic feet. In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. (Brooke, 234) Spenser's Sonnet 75 and Explanation/Analysis One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize, For I myself shall like to this decay, And eek my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, Out love shall live, and later life renew. Title: Spensers Sonnet 75 Author: Edmund Spenser Rhyme scheme/sonnet type: Spenserian sonnet (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE) Meter check: iambic pentameter Topic:

This sonnet seems to be about the authors attempts to immortalize his wife or the love of his life. Spenser starts the poem with a quatrain recalling an incident that could have happened any summer day at the seaside. He writes his loves name in the sand at the beach, but the oceans waves wipe it away, just as time will destroy all manmade things. The next quatrain describes the womans reaction to the mans charming attempt to immortalize her. She claims that the mans attempts were in vain and that no mortal being can be immortalized due to the cruelness of time. The next quatrain represents a turning point in the poem and the author reveals that his wife will be eternally remembered in his poems and his verse. The final couplet at the end, Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, Out love shall live, and later life renew, summarizes the theme of the poem by comparing the eternalness of love and death to the brevity of life and humanity. Spenser uses the rhyme scheme of this poem to create a contrast between earthly ideas and objects that will eventually be destroyed and heavenly ones that will last forever. The first two quatrains focus on the authors vain attempts to write his wifes name. Time and nature are shown to destroy the authors manmade works and his attempts are thwarted. The author then switches gears and shows how he immortalized his wife in the very poem he is writing. Spenser uses a very melodic rhythm and iambic pentameter to create a calm and pleasant sounding poem. His frequent use of alliteration such as, die in dust and, verse in virtue helps to paint the complete picture of the poem and tie the themes of the poem together. Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14) Summary The speaker begins by asking God (along with Jesus and the Holy Ghost; together, they are the Trinity that makes up the Christian "three-personed God") to attack his heart as if it were the gates of a fortress town. The speaker wants God to enter his heart aggressively and violently, instead of gently. Then, in line 5, the speaker explicitly likens himself to a captured town. He tries to let God enter, but has trouble because the speaker's rational side seems to be in control. At the "turn" of the poem (see the "Form and Meter" section for more on the importance of the sonnet form and, specifically, the "turn"), the speaker admits that he loves God, and wants to be loved, but is tied down to God's unspecified "enemy" instead, whom we can think of as Satan, or possibly "reason." The speaker asks God to break the speaker's ties with the enemy, and to bring the speaker to Him, not letting him go free. He then explains why he wants all of this, reasoning with double meanings: he can't really be free unless God enslaves and excites him, and he can't refrain from sex unless God carries him away and delights him. Lines 1-2 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

The "mending" seems nice, but note that Donne says "seek to mend," and not just "mend." Does God really "seek to" do anything? Doesn't He just do it, if he's allpowerful? So, what about the specific actions? Are they particularly significant? Well lots of scholars think that the three verbs mirror the set-up of a "three-personed God" (the Christian notion of the Trinity). Thus, they associate the Father with power as he knocks but ought to break, the Holy Ghost with breath as he breathes but ought to blow like a strong wind, and the Son with light as he shines but ought to burn like fire. These actions make some sense as representative actions of each part of God, but other scholars argue that, based on the Bible, it isn't clear which member of the Trinity should be understood to do which of the actions. The confusion about which aspect of God does what appears to be purposeful. If the speaker wants to make things easier, he can very well put the verbs in the traditional order in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are normally described.

But, the Trinity isn't the only way to read those verbs. Some scholars point out that these terms (especially when combined with the other series of three verbs in line 4) all make sense in the context of metal- or glassblowing (the process of shaping glass and metal objects). In this way, scholars see the speaker as making God into a craftsman who can, like a glassblower, "blow" life into the object (the speaker). Lines 3-4 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Lines 3-4 continue much like lines 1-2, with the speaker asking God to treat him violently. He asks God to "bend your force," which may mean to "make use of your power." More importantly, even though it takes him four full lines, the speaker finally gets to the point of why he's telling God to do all this. His goal, as he puts it, is to "rise" and "stand" and become "new." This can work in two ways. First, there's the born-again angle, where the speaker asks to have a moment of religious epiphany. He wants to recognize God's power, but he worries that the only way God will get through to him is by doing something violent and completely overthrowing his life. On the other hand, "make me new" is probably a reference to the Christian idea that true happiness and salvation come only after death, and that, in order to get into Heaven, earthly life must be a continual act of suffering. That may be why our speaker wants to be abused and broken in the earthly world so that he will be worthy for the afterlife.

The speaker begins by asking God (along with Jesus and the Holy Ghost; together, they make up the "threepersoned God") to attack his heart as if it were the gates of a fortress town. If you are caught up on the word "batter," note that back in medieval times, in order to break down the door of a fortress or castle, you'd have to use a battering ram. It's a huge pole of wood, possibly with a ram carving on the front. He asks God to "batter" his heart, as opposed to what God has been doing so far: just knocking, breathing, shining, and trying to help the speaker heal. Those actions are nice and all, but Donne wants something a little more intense. Scholars focus a lot on these verbs, and the words are certainly stressed in the line (notice how you accent these verbs and pause between them when you read the poem out loud), so let's break them down a bit. First of all, none of the verbs are particularly active. God asks to come in by knocking, which is nice, but he also just breathes and shines, two things that he might do out of necessity not choice. When we breathe, it's normally not because we choose to, and the same applies to things that shine.

A quick note on the language here: read these lines aloud, and notice how the word "o'erthrow" makes you take a big pause and change the rhythm of your speaking, and how violent and intense those alliterated bwords are ("break, blow, burn"). These words get a lot of attention verbally, and it's a cool example of words' sounds reflecting their meaning. Onomatopoeia anyone? Lines 5-6 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.

Here comes the explanation of that whole "battering" business. The speaker compares himself to a town that is captured or "usurped." The phrase "to another due" suggests that the town belongs to someone else, but it's tricky because we don't know who this "someone" could be. Whose was it originally, and who took over? The likely possibility is that it was originally God's, and it was

subsequently taken over by another, but that doesn't help us figure out who the "other" is.

In any case, the speaker wants to let God in, but he's unsuccessful so far. These lines are interesting in part because, unlike anywhere else in the rest of the poem, Donne actually uses a simile here instead of a metaphor. Instead of saying, "I am a usurped town," he leaves more room between himself and the town by only saying that they're similar. What's the big deal? Well, it suggests that the speaker is conscious of how unrealistic his requests are. Where, in the first few lines he directs God to overthrow, break, blow, and burn him, it's not until this line that we know he's being metaphorical (instead of actually wanting to be broken, burned, and so forth). The "oh" in line 6 is another linguistic choice worth mentioning. There are two ways we might see this: First, we can read it as the only moment of truly honest self-expression in the poem, where the speaker lets his words go without careful control. In other words, the "oh" is the only word in the poem that isn't actually a word it's more of a sound, a sigh, or an exclamation. It's a different kind of language, and one we don't see elsewhere in the poem. If we read it as a sigh, it might lend this line some extra emotional pull if he seems sad that he can't let God in.

He hints at no solution, but the line does mark a shift in tone. The speaker seems to be a bit more candid and personal here, and he abandons some of the similes and metaphors that he uses before. "Yet dearly I love you" is the most straightforward line we've had so far. "And would be loved fain," though, is a continuation of the kind of self-centeredness we see in lines 7-8. He's saying "I'd be happy to be loved," just like you'd tell a friend "I'd be happy to help" he makes it sound a little like he's doing God a favor. What's more, the speaker quickly drops the straight-talk, and goes back into another metaphor: he says he's "betroth'd," or engaged to marry, the "enemy." This word "enemy" is troublesome, because we don't know who it is. There's no one right answer here, but our speaker may be referring to Satan. The question is, why did the speaker choose the metaphor of a wedding engagement? Why didn't he just say, "I'm under the Devil's control, so help free me?"

On the other hand, you might think the "oh" is theatrical and overly dramatic, like a "woe-is-me!" moment. Lines 7-8 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Perhaps an engagement implies that the speaker is cool with the whole thing and isn't forced into this relationship with the enemy. Unlike in lines 5-8, where the speaker blamed Reason for losing touch with God, here he seems to suggest that it is actually kind of his fault, since he agrees to an engagement with the "enemy." Lines 11-12 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Our bet is that these are the trickiest lines in the poem for you. Us too. They're weird, but it helps to put them into simple English: "Reason, my local ruler who works for you, should be defending me, but he was captured, and revealed himself to be weak or unfaithful." We assume that the "you" to whom Reason is supposed to report is God. The whole idea guiding these lines is that God gave us reason (rationality) to defend ourselves from evil, but now the speaker's reason seems to have turned on God (or is just incapable of warding off evil), so the speaker is having trouble showing his faith in God. As we discuss in the "Speaker" section, the sense of entitlement is interesting. Check out the back-to-back "me's" and the "should" in "Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend." It's all about the speaker's selfinterest, and he sounds like a spoiled little kid: "Me! Me! You should defend me!" And, if we zoom out a bit, why on earth is he treating his ability to reason as if it were a real person? The answer may be: so that he can pass the buck and blame this other person (who's really God's responsibility, according to the speaker).

Line 11 continues the train of thought in line 10, asking God to help him get out of this close engagement with the enemy. He wants God to help him break the wedding "knot" he tied when he was "betroth'd," and take him away from the enemy. What's absolutely key here is the word "again" does it mean this isn't the first time the speaker needed to ask God for help in getting away from the Devil? All of a sudden, we learn that these pleas to God may be a frequent occurrence. This can have a major impact on our understanding of the poem. The speaker begins to look less like a poor guy who's all-of-a-sudden blurting out his love for God the only way he knows how -- and more like a con-artist who makes it seem like he's desperately in need, when, in fact, he's been down this road a number of times. But, instead of thinking that the speaker has wanted a wedding knot broken before, we might read "again" as referring to another time when God had to break a knot. (As if the speaker were saying, "Sorry, God, you have to go through that whole knot-breaking thing again.") By this logic, "again" could be a reference to the moment in Genesis (in the Old Testament) when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because they follow Satans advice. This way, when the speaker says, "Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again," he seems to say "either divorce/untie me from Satan, or you'll have to break the knot between us, just as you did with Adam." In line 12 (and on into line 13), the speaker seems to bring back the castle siege metaphor one last time with "imprison," and rekindles the earlier debate about who had captured (or imprisoned) the town in the first place.

If you think about it, the speaker actually blames God, through his representative (Reason) for the speaker turning over to the enemy's side. Lines 9-10 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

When you get to line 9 of a sonnet, you know that you have to do a little extra work, since the ninth line of a sonnet traditionally marks the "turn" in the poem, where the problem set up in the first 8 lines begins to move towards a solution. To be honest, though, this line doesn't make for much of a turn at all. The simile of the fortress ends here (until it's picked up again at "imprison"), but this line, like those before it, mainly furthers the development of the speaker's desired relationship with God.

Here, again, the speaker refuses to make things clear, first asking God to imprison him, but only so that he can be free. This all goes back to the Christian idea that a human must to suffer in order to get to Heaven, and reminds us again that violence and aggressive behavior aren't necessarily bad things in this poem, so long as God is in the drivers seat. Lines 13-14 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

These last two lines make it clear that the speaker loves those paradoxes and double meanings that we struggle

with all along. Both lines take the form of "If you don't ______, I can't be ______," but the speaker fills in that first blank with double entendres (words or phrases with two possible meanings).

The first can be read as "If you don't excite me, I can't be free." If we read it that way, it's possible that "excite" has sexual connotations, and this makes sense in light of the following line. But, we can also read line 13 as, "If you don't enslave me, I can't be free." Back in the day, "enthrall" would also mean "enslave," so we should be aware of that possibility. We can read line 14 as, "If you don't fill me with delight, I will never be able to refrain from sex." Like "excite" in line 13, "fill me with delight" in this reading might carry some sexual connotations. Confusing, right? These lines leave us with some major paradoxes, refusing to pin down exactly what the speaker wants from God. As we see it, it seems that the speaker wants better access to God, and having been unsuccessful in the past, demands that God reveal himself forcefully and powerfully. In other words, the only way the speaker and his stubborn "reason" will be convinced of God's power is to see an epic example of it. What's more, the speaker desperately wants to be convinced, so he can be saved. Still, it's hard to make the last line fit, mainly because you can't really become chaste. Either the speaker is and always has been chaste, in which case he wouldn't have to worry about it, or he's had sex but now wants to abstain. But, if he wants to abstain, is more sex really the prescription? And, if he wants this divine sexual encounter so much, then wouldn't that contradict the idea that it is "rape"?

In the end, then, we might come to the conclusion that talking about God in human terms and metaphors actually doesn't make sense. The kinds of rewards and interactions that God can provide simply can't be described properly in human language, and that's why the speaker gets so caught up in paradox and mixed metaphors. Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14) Questions Bring on the tough stuff - theres not just one right answer. 1. What's up with all the contradictions and stark oppositions? 2. Does the speaker think that God is omnipotent, or allpowerful? 3. Why does our speaker use other metaphors, like a wedding engagement, instead of just sticking with the fortress town? 4. What does our speaker actually want God to do in simple, practical terms? Can we even answer this question? In Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson uses irony, simplicity, and perfect rhyme to depict the theme of the poem. The rhyme in Richard Cory is almost song-like, and it continues throughout the whole poem. The theme of the poem is that appearances are deceiving. The poem is about a man who everyone thinks is a gentleman from sole to crown, who then commits suicide. Irony is used in the poem very skillfully to show that appearances may be deceiving. When reading the poem, you get caught up in the song-like rhythm and it intensifies the effect of the tragedy. You think that everything is going perfectly, and that the poem is going to have a happy ending until you get to the last two lines, which are, And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/ Went home and put a bullet through his head. When Richard Cory kills himself at the end of the poem, it is as shocking to the reader as it is to everyone else in the poem who assumed him to be the all around perfect guy. It is ironical that the man who everyone else thought was perfect, was missing something, and took his life Why does everyone want to be like someone else? It is human

nature to want to be admired and honored. This is not right, though. Each and everyone person should be happy with who they are because just imagine if everyone were perfect and the same. The world would be quite boring. Edwin Robinson clearly shows us in his poem "Richard Cory" that the life of someone else may not be all what it is cracked up... Richard Corey is a poem of the narcissist. Caught in a double-bind in which he must present with exaggerated dignity and mastery in order to feel adequate, and having so sold himself, can never allow himself to be truly known for the inferior he secretly feels himself to be. His ability to mimic the superior status he must maintain in order to feel justified results from his having sold it to himself almost completely-the better convince others... but at the expense of his true emotions, which are toxic with shame, and which he began repressing so long ago in order to receive the success he hoped would prove them wrong, that he has on most levels forgotten that long-past decision, become willfully ignorant of his corrosive interior life, and become doomed to a treadmill which he has slowly realized is not only leading nowhere, but which ensures through its repeated success that he will become less able to free himself from emotional torture, and self-actualize through selfexpression, as his continued upward socioeconomic trajectory only makes it more impossible that his 'weakness' might be acceptable in the eyes of those who have grown to admire him. Rather than ruin the false self he's created, and end up a despised imposter in the eyes of those whose admiration has become his one small solace, he opts for a last stroke of honesty-his admission of abject helplessness..and through suicide ensures that he will not remain to face the jeers of the admirers who have placed him on a pedestal, secretly hoping to see him fall. He reduces the gulf between his emotional self and public self with one fell-swoop-anhilating both in what seems the only possible means of resolving the no longer tolerable stresses of subterfuge in the face of a problem only growing, rather than receding, at his lifelong efforts. \"Richard Cory\" is a tragic poem. While others looked on with envy at what appeared to be a perfect life, Richard Cory was drowning from a lack of contentment, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and love. He had it all, yet happiness was still out of his reach. What is it to gain the world, yet forfit your soul? Wealth, status, and success cannot satisfy. Health, friendships, and intimate relationships cannot bring satisfaction. Only true and unconditional love can bring purpose, meaning, and fulfillment. This great love is only found in Jesus Christ. If we are truly honest with ourselves then we will realize that no matter how much wealth and achievements we have sought after and aquired, a feeling of emptiness still lingers. Only Jesus Christ can fill this void and replace the hopelessness, despair, and emptiness with unending joy, peace, hope, and love. A man who wanted more out of life than just money---after he thought that money would buy him \"everything\". Money cannot buy a person love, friendship or respect. Those are things that must be earned. My father always taught me that true friendship is more valuable than anything. He said that if you have just this many TRUE friends (holding up one finger), then consider yourself blessed. Because a true friend will never leave you; that friend will always be at your side, no matter what, defending you. And you will do the same for that friend, all throughout your lives. I remember reading this poem in school and feeling such sadness for Richard Cory--the man that others perceive as having \"everything\". I remember crying for Richard Cory and his inward struggle which I believe was depression. One can put on a pretty solid performance to others, particularly when you are a living legend as Richard Cory was to the townspeople. He was wealthy, refined and well turned out. He bore quite a burden of fame and success. The poem speaks more of the townspeople\'s desire to be like Richard Cory for all his outward displays of perfection. It interests me to note that most comments here assume that Richard Cory was unattached. He may have been married and/or had children or even grandchildren. It is possible that when you slice down the reality of it all, he had a life that appeared meaningful and rich to others but was more than he could bare. It is easier to imagine that he was lonely and that is what made him unhappy but depression selects people from every income bracket and marital

status. When I cried for Richard Cory I cried for a desperate man who had lost the will to live.