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English poetry with reading along. More channels to ckeck out: https://telegra.ph/Channels-01-03 Admin - @gh0s1
Sonnet 29
By William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Letter to N.Y.
by Elizabeth Bishop
(For Louise Crane)
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
On The Balcony
By D.H. Lawrence
In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow;
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below in the green wheat, the labourers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.
You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals,
And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the limber
Lightning falls from heaven.
Adown the pale-green glacier river floats
A dark boat through the gloom — and whither?
The thunder roars. But still we have each other!
The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
And disappear — what have we but each other?
The boat has gone.
Summary:
‘The Fisherman’ by W.B. Yeats depicts the author’s conception of an ideal reader. W.B.Yeats imagines a simple, but wise, man as a reader. When he wrote this, he despised the middle class but, at the same time, he didn’t want to write for the upper classes either. Therefore, Yeats portrays his ideal reader in the figure of the fisherman. This ideal reader is pictured by the lyrical voice as a traditional Irish man, who represents a heroic figure. Consequently, ‘The Fisherman’ creates the image of a perfect man and this image is embodied in the fisherman as a symbol.
https://poemanalysis.com/william-butler-yeats/the-fisherman/
Structure of the poem:
Lines 1-8: describe the fisherman
Lines 9-24: expression of contempt for the contemporary Ireland
Last stanza: Turns back to the idea of the fisherman, dedicates his poetry to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHTNxRro7o
Dutch Coastal Scene (1850)
By Hermann Ottomar Herzog
If everything happens that can't be done
By E.E. Cummings
if everything happens that can’t be done
(and anything’s righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there’s nothing as something as one
one hasn’t a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don’t grow)
one’s anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we go who)
one’s everyanything so
so world is a leaf is a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now
now i love you and you love me
(and books are shutter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there’s somebody calling who’s we
we’re everything brighter than even the sun
(we’re everything greater
than books
might mean)
we’re everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we’re alive)
we’re wonderful one times one
1944
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
1850
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
1867
Summary
This poem draws a contrast between this world, in which nature is red in tooth and claw, and a “New World” in which distinctions between predator and prey cease to exist. The angels arrive at night to spread blessings upon the natural world, as demonstrated by their visit to every nest and den to bring sleep and comfort to all the creatures. When predators such as “wolves and tygers” hunt for prey, the angels intervene to keep the erstwhile victims safe until the New World can come. When this New World is arrives, the bloodiness of nature changes, as the lion’s former predatory nature becomes that of protector. The lion weeps “tears of gold,” and its heart becomes tender toward the herd animals it would have hunted in the old world.
The lion speaks, declaring its newfound understanding that the meekness of Jesus Christ has driven out wrath, while his health has driven out sickness “from our immortal day.” This immortal day, everlasting life in a New Earth, contrasts with the night of the poem, which represents the moral darkness of our world and possibly the nighttime of life, death. The lion itself can now rest beside the lamb and sleep or meditate on “him who bore thy name,” who is Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, in a reference to Blake’s earlier poem “The Lamb.” The lion will be washed in the river and its mane will turn to gold, indicating his new immortal nature. After that, the lion will guard over the flock forever.
Source:
https://www.gradesaver.com/songs-of-innocence-and-of-experience/study-guide/summary-night
Joseph Wright of Derby: A View of Vesuvius from Posillipo, Naples
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Love’s Philosophy
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
1819
Period: Victorian
Summary:
Throughout this poem, the speaker poses several different scenarios about what’s going to happen after he dies. He is less interested in the afterlife than he is in the way that those still living will continue on with their lives. Hardy’s speaker poses a number of questions about the world, wondering if his friends will remember him in a favorable light. Will they, he wonders, recall his kind nature, care for the earth, and frequent contemplations of the night sky?
https://poemanalysis.com/thomas-hardy/afterwards/
Lane in the Poppy Fields, Ile Saint-Martin
Artist: Claude Monet
Created: 1880
Genre: Pastoral
Johan Christian Dahl - View of Dresden by Moonlight
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Summary:
‘Sonnet 29’ focuses on the redeeming power of love. The speaker begins by mourning his own situation. He is lost, outcast, and separate from those he would like to know. Even if he spoke, no one would hear or listen to him. The speaker believes that he is not a lucky man. But, perhaps he is. He has a love that comes to him, in his mind, and improves his outlook. In the last lines, Shakespeare creates an image of a rising bird, escaping from his earthly troubles and singing to God.
Source:
https://poemanalysis.com/william-shakespeare/best-love-sonnets/
Third Avenue, New York, 1937
By Andre Kertesz
The Fisherman
By William Butler Yeats
Although I can see him still—
The freckled man who goes
To a gray place on a hill
In gray Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies—
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped it would be
To write for my own race
And the reality:
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved—
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer—
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelve-month since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face
And gray Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark with froth,
And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream—
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, “Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”
1916
Summary:
‘if everything happens that can’t be done’ by E.E. Cummings is a very complex, yet strikingly powerful love poem that plays with the English language.
Throughout the stanzas of this piece, Cummings repeats a general pattern of lines with parentheses, repeated structures, and words. It takes quite a while, at least four stanzas, to get into this pattern and start to understand what Cummings, or at least his speaker, was wanting to convey. He emphasizes throughout the stanzas the nature of “one” and how it is a representative of the strength and importance of his relationship with the intended listener of the poem. He uses bird and book-related images to convey his opinion that knowledge is better gained from love and nature than it is from the written word.
https://poemanalysis.com/ee-cummings/if-everything-happens-that-cant-be-done/
Sunlight (1909)
By Frank Weston Benson
Medium: Oil on canvas
Shrimpers at Lyme Regis
imitator of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1832)
Night by William Blake
The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm.
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.
When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.
And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying, 'Wrath, by His meekness,
And, by His health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day.
'And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on Him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee and weep.
For, washed in life's river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold
As I guard o'er the fold.'
Form:
regular ABAB rhyme scheme, but tweo lines in each stanza don't fully rhyme - this reflects the way that all of nature is in harmony except for the narrator and his loved one.
Language about nature:
The narrator uses personification to show the natural world fiving, receiving andn benefitting from love - this empasises his point that love itself is natural and necessary.
Key themes:
longing, nature
Afterwards
By Thomas Hardy
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves
like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the
neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's
soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades
to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer
may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."
If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that
winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?
And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new
bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice
such things"?
So We'll Go No More a Roving
By Lord Byron
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
Style: ode
Analysis:
The poem praises autumn, describing its abundance, harvest, and transition into winter, and uses intense, sensuous imagery to elevate the fleeting beauty of the moment.
https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/john-keats/to-autumn