B.A/B.Sc.

Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 93

ENG 201 POETRY

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 94
1. The Aim Was Song Robert Frost 99
2. Sound and Sense Alexander Pope 100
3. There Is No Frigate Emily Dickinson 101
4. Shall I Compare Thee William Shakespeare 102
5. The Demon Lover Anonymous 103
6. Written In Early Spring William Wordsworth 106
7. The Human Seasons John Keats 107
8. Crossing the Bar Alfred, Lord Tennyson 108
9. My Last Duchess Robert Browining 109
10. Dover Beach Matthew Arnold 112
11. God’s Grandeur G.M. Hopkins 114
12. Neutral Tones Thomas Hardy 115
13. The Second Coming W.B. Yeats 116
14. Preludes T.S. Elot 117
15. Mental Cases Wilfred Owen 119
16. Mother to Son Langston Hughes 120
17. Fern Hill Dylan Thomas 121
18. The Whipping Robert Hayden 123
19. Aubade Philip Larkin 124
20. The Thought Fox Ted Hughes 126
21. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers Adrienne Rich 127
22. Geography Lesson Zulfiker Ghose 128
23. Once Upon a Time Gabriel Okara 129
24. The Story We Know Martha Collins 131
25. Opening the Cage Edwin Morgan 132
26. Literary Terms 133
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 94

AN INTRODUCTIONT TO POETRY
Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive
peoples have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages and in all
countries, poetry has been written, and eagerly read or listened to, by all kinds and
conditions of people – by soldiers, statesmen, lawyers, farmers, doctors, scientists,
clergy, philosophers, kings, and queens. In all ages it has been especially the concern
of the educated the intelligent, and the sensitive, and it has appealed, in its simpler
forms, to the uneducated and to children. Why? First, because it has given pleasure.
People have read it, listened to it, or received it because they like it – because it gave
them enjoyment. But this is not the whole answer. Poetry in all ages has been regarded
as important, not simply as one of the several alternative forms of amusement, as one
person might choose bowling, chess, and poetry. Rather, it has been regarded as
something central to existence, something having unique value to the fully realized life,
something that we are better off for having and without which we are spiritually
impoverished. To understand the reasons for this, we need to have at least a provisional
understanding of what poetry is provisional, because people have always been more
successful at appreciating poetry than at defining it.

Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more
intensely than does ordinary language. To understand this fully, we need to understand
what poetry “says”. For language is employed on different occasions to say quite
different kinds of things; in other words, language has different uses.

Perhaps the commonest use of language is to communicate information. We say

that it is nine o’clock, that we like a certain movie, that bromine and iodine are members
of the halogen group of chemical elements. This we might call the practical use of
language; it helps us with the ordinary business of living.

But it is not primarily to communicate information that novels, short stories, plays
and poems are written. These exist to bring us a sense and a perception of life, to widen
and sharpen our contacts with existence. Their concern is with experience. We all have
an inner need to live more deeply and fully and wither greater awareness, to know the
experience of others, and to understand our own experience better. Poets, from their
own store of felt, observed, or imagined experiences, select, combine, and reorganize.
They create significant new experience for their readers – significant because focused
and formed – in which readers can participate and from which they may gain a greater
awareness and understanding of their world. Literature, in other words, can be used as
a gear for stepping up the intensity and increasing the range of our experience and as a
glass for clarifying it. This is the literary use of the language, for literature is not only an
aid to living but a means of living.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 95

Literature exists to communicate significant experience – significant because

concentrated and organized. Its function is not to tell us about experience but to allow
us imaginatively to participate in it. It is a means of allowing us, through the imagination,
to live more fully more deeply, more richly, and with greater awareness. It can do this in
two ways: by broadening our experience – that is, by making us acquainted with a
range of experience with which, in the ordinary course of events, we might have no
contact – more understandingly the every day experiences all of us have or by
deepening our experience that is, by making us feel.

We can avoid two mistaken approaches to poetry if we keep this conception of

literature firmly in mind. The first approach always looks for a lesson or a bit of moral
instruction. The second expects to find poetry always beautiful.

Poetry takes all life as its province. It primary concern is not with beauty, not with
philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience, beauty and philosophical
truth are aspects of experience, and the poet is often engaged with them. But poetry as
a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience – beautiful or ugly, strange or
common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary. One of the paradox of human existence
is that all experience – even painful experience – is, for the good reader, enjoyable
when transmitted through the medium of art. In real life, death and pain and suffering
are not pleasurable, but in poetry they may be. In real life getting soaked in a rainstorm
is not pleasurable, but in poetry they may be. In real life getting soaked in a rainstorm is
not pleasurable, but in poetry they may be. In real life getting soaked in a rainstorm is
not pleasurable, but in poetry it can be. In actual life, is we cry, usually we are unhappy;
but if we cry in a movie, we are manifestly enjoying it. We do not ordinarily like to be
terrified in real life, but we sometimes seek movies or books that will terrify us. We find
some value in all intense living. To be intensely alive is the opposite of being dead. To
be dull, to be bored, to be imperceptive is in one sense to be dead. Poetry comes to us
bringing life and therefore pleasure. Moreover, art focuses and organizes experience so
as to give us a better understanding of it. And to understand life is partly to be master of
it.

The difference between poetry and other literature is one only of degree. Poetry
is the most condensed and concentrated from of literature. It is language whose
individual lines, either because of their own brilliance or because they focus so
powerfully what has gone before, have a higher voltage than most language. It is
language that grows frequently incandescent, giving of both light and heat.

Poetry is a kind of multidimensional language. Ordinary language the kind that

we use to communicate information is one dimensional. It is directed at only part of the
listener, the understanding. Its one dimension is intellectual. Poetry, which is language
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 96

used to communicate experience, has at least four dimensions. If it is to communicate

experience, it must be directed at the whole person, not just at your understanding. It
must involve not only your intelligence but also your senses, emotions, and imagination.
To the intellectual dimension poetry adds a sensuous dimension, an emotional
dimension, and an imaginative dimension.

Poetry achieves its extra dimensions – its greater pressure per word and its
greater tension per poem – by drawing more fully and more consistently than does
ordinary language on a number of language resources, none of which is peculiar to
poetry. These various resources are connotation, imagery, metaphor, symbol, paradox,
irony, allusion, sound repetition, rhythm, and pattern. Using these resources and the
materials of life, the poet shapes and makes a poem. Successful poetry is never
effusive language. If it is to come alive it must be as cunningly put together and
efficiently organized as a tree. It must be an organism whose every part serves a useful
purpose and cooperates with every other part to preserve and express the life that is
within it….

Read a poem more than once. A good poem will not yield its full meaning on a
single reading. One should make the utmost effort to follow the thought continuously
and to grasp the full implications and suggestions. Because a poem says so much,
several readings may be necessary.

One starting point for understanding a poem at the simplest level, and for
clearing up misunderstanding, is to paraphrase its content or part of its content. To
paraphrase a poem means to restate it in different language, so as to make its prose
sense as plain as possible. The paraphrase may be longer or shorter than the poem,
but it should contain all the ideas in the poem in such a way as to make them clear to a
puzzled reader, and to make the central idea, or theme, of the poem more accessible.

In a paraphrase, figurative language gives way to literal language; similes

replace metaphors and normal work order supplants inverted syntax. But a paraphrase
retains the speaker’s use of first, second, and third person, and the tenses of verbs.
Though it is neither necessary nor possible to avoid using some of the words found in
the original, a paraphrase should strive for plain, direct diction.

To aid us in the understanding of a poem, we may ask ourselves a number of

questions about it. Two of the most important are Who is the speaker? And What is the
occasion? A cardinal error of some readers is to assume that a speaker who uses the
first person pronouns (I, my, mine, me) is always the poet. A less risky course would be
to assume always that the speaker is someone other than the poet. Poems, like short
stories, novels and plays, belong to the world of fiction, an imaginatively conceived
world that at its best is “truer” than the factually “real” world that it reflects. When poets
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 97

put themselves or their thoughts into a poem, they present a version of themselves; that
is, they present a person who in many ways is like themselves but who, consciously or
unconsciously, is shaped to fit the needs of the poem. We must be very careful,
therefore, about identifying anything in a poem with the biography of the poet. However,
caution is not prohibition. Sometimes events or ideas in a poem will help us to
understand some episodes in the poet’s life. More importantly for us knowledge of the
poet’s life may help us understand a poem. We may well think of every poem, therefore,
as a being to some degree dramatic – that is, the utterance of a fictional character
rather than of the person who wrote the poem.

A third important question that we should ask ourselves upon reading any poem
is What is the central purpose of the poem? The purpose may be to tell a story, to reveal
human character, to impart a vivid impression of scene, to express a mood or an
emotion, or to convey vividly some idea or attitude. Whatever the purpose is, we must
determine it for ourselves and define it mentally as precisely as possible. Only by
relating the various details in the poem to the central purpose or theme can we fully
understand their function and meaning. Only then can we begin to assess the value of
the poem and determine whether it is a good one or poor one.

Guide for Studying Poetry

The following guide will help you to recognize the types of poetry and the
techniques a poet uses to join form and meaning.

Speaker and Tone

1. Who or what is the poem’s speaker? In what ways are the poet’s word
choices appropriate to that speaker?

2. What tone does the speaker use throughout the poem?

Sound of Poetry

1. What pattern can you find in the poem’s rhythm? Does it have a regular
meter?

2. What rhymes can you find in the poem? If the poem contains end rhymes,
what is its rhyme scheme? If the poem not rhyme, is it written in blank verse
or free verse?

3. Does the poem contain repetition or parallelism?

Imagery and Figurative Language

1. What vivid images does the poem contain?

2. What examples can you find of personification?

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3. What similes directly compare dissimilar items?

4. What metaphors equate dissimilar items? Which of these metaphors are

implied? Which, if any are extended?

5. What symbols can you find?

Types of Poetry

1. What events in the poem form a narrative?

2. What personal emotions does the poet express in a lyric?

3. What character or character speak within the poem to make it dramatic?

What situation makes the character or characters speak?

Patterns in Poetry

1. What pattern dos the poem follow in its length, stanzas, line length, meter,
and rhyme scheme? Is the poem’s pattern a traditional one, such as the
Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnet?

2. Where does the poem depart from traditional patterns is stanza arrangement,
line length, capitalization, and punctuation?

Reminders for active Reading of Poetry

1. The title will point out the poet’s main idea or concern.

2. Every poem is presented through a speaker of some kind. Thespeaker may

or may not be a human being and may or may not be the poet. The poem’s
Choice of words should be appropriate to the speaker.

3. The sound of a poem – its use of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, consonance,

repetition, parallelism, and onomatopoeia – should suit the poem’s subject
and contribute to its effect.

4. Imagery should make the poem appeal to the senses of the reader. Figures
of speech – such as personification, simile, metaphor, and symbol – should
add new levels of meaning to the poem.

5. A narrative poem tells a story. A lyric poem expresses an emotion. A

dramatic poem presents a character in a specific situation.

6. Poems can follow tradition patterns or can be experimental in format.

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 99

THE AIM WAS SONG

Robert Frost

Before man came to blow it right

The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:

It hadn’t found the place to blow;
It blew too hard – the aim was song.
And listen – how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,

And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,

The wind the wind had meant to be –
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song – the wind could see.

QUESTIONS:

1. Frost invents a myth about the origin of poetry. What implications does it
suggest about the relation of man to nature and of poetry to nature?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 100

SOUND AND SENSE

Alexander Pope

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’ er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

QUESTIONS:

1. This excerpt is from a long poem (called An Essay on Criticism) on the arts of
writing and judging poetry. Which line states the thesis of the passage?

2. There are four classical allusions: Zephyr (5) was god of the west wind; Ajax
(9), a Greek warrior noted for his strength; Camilla (11), a lengendary queen
reputedly so fleet of foot that she could run over a field of grain without
bending the blades or over the sea without wetting her feet; Timotheus (13), a
famous Greek rhapsodic poet. Does the use of these allusions enable Pope
to achieve greater economy?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 101

THERE IS NO FRIGATE LIKE A BOOK

Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Or prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll.
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul!

QUESTIONS:

1. What is lost if miles is substituted for “lands” (2) or cheap for “frugal” (7)?

2. How is “prancing” (4) peculiarly appropriate to poetry as well as to coursers?

Could the poet without loss have compared a book to coursers and poetry to
a frigate?

3. Is this account appropriate to all kinds of poetry or just to certain kinds?

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 102

SHALL I COMPARE THEE

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every faire from faire some time declines,
By chance, or natures changing course untrim’d:
But thy eternal Sommer shall not fade,
Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breath or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

QUESTIONS:

1. What figures of speech are used in this sonnet?

2. What will make the speaker’s love eternal?

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 103

THE DEMON LOVER

Anonymous

“O where have you been my long, long love,

This long seven years and mair?”
“O I’m come to seek my former vows
Ye granted me before.”

“O hold your tongue of your former vows,

For they will breed sad strife;
O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For I am become a wife,”

He turned him right and round about,

And the tear blinded his ee:
“I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground,
If it had not been for thee.

“I might hae had a king’s daughter,

Far, far beyond the sea;
I might have had a king’s daughter
Had it not been for love o thee.”

“If ye might have had king’s daughter,

Yer sel ye had to blame;
Ye might have taken the king’s daughter.
For ye kend that I was nane.

“If I was to leave my husband dear,

And my two babes also,
O what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go?”

“I hae seven ships upon the sea ___

The eighth brought me to land ___
With four and twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand.”
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She has taken up her two little babes,

Kissed them baith cheek and chin:
“O fair ye weel, my ain two babes,
For I’ll never see you again.”

She set her foot upon the ship,

No mariners could she behold;
But the sails were o the taffetie,
And the masts o the beaten gold.

They had not sailed a league, a league,

A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,
And drumlie grew his ee.

They had not sailed a league, a league,

A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,
And she wept right bitterlie.

“O hold your tongue of your weeping,” says he,

“Of your weeping now let me be;
I will show you how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.”

“O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills,

That the sun shines sweetly on?”
“O yon are the hills of heaven,” he said,
“Where you will never win.”

“O whaten mountain is yon,” she said,

“All so dreary wi frost and snow?”
“O yon is the mountain of hell,” he cried,
“Where you and I will go.”

He strack the tap-mast wi his hand,

The fore-mast wi his knee
And he brake that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.
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QUESTIONS:

1. What takes place between lines 28 and 29.

2. What is the first hint that supernatural forces are at work?

3. What does the “cloven foot” (line 43) signify? Is the spirit motivated by
malice? By love? Big both?

4. What are the characteristics of a ballad.

5. Vocabulary: drumlie – gloomy.

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 106

WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING

William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes

While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran:
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ‘tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp’d and play’d,

Their thoughts I cannot measure, ___
But the least motion which they made
It seem’d a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan

To catch the breezy air:
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What Man has made of Man?

QUESTIONS:

1. Wordsworth has been called the priest of nature. What evidence of this do
you find in this poem?
2. Is this poem narrative, descriptive, dramatic or lyrical? Give reasons for your
choice.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 107

THE HUMAN SEASONS

John Keats

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness – to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature.

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

QUESTIONS:

1. Is this a Shakespearean sonnet or Petrarchan? What is the difference

between the two?
2. Is there any difference between an Elizabetham and a Shakespearean
sonnet?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 108

CROSSING THE BAR

Alfred. Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

QUESTIONS:

1. What two sets of figures does Tennyson use for approaching death? What is
the precise moment of each in each set?
2. In troubled weather the wind and waves above the sandbar across a harbor’s
mouth make a moaning sound. What metaphorical meaning has the “moaning
of the bar” here (3)? For what kind of death is the speaker wishing? Why does
he want “no sadness of farewell” (II)?
3. What is “that which drew from out the boundless deep”? What is “the
boundless deep”? to what is it opposed in the poem? Why is “Pilot” (15)
capitalized?
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MY LAST DUCHESS
Robert Browning
Ferrara

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her. I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The Curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not

Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek, perhaps

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “her mantle laps

Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or, “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

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

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

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Sir, ‘twas all one! My favor at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace – all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men – good! But thanked

Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked

My gift of a nine – hundred – years – old name

With anyboyd’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech – which I have not – to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark” – and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse

E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

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

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

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

The company below, then. I repeat,

The count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

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Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea – horse, thought a rarity,

Which Clause of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

QUESTIONS:

1. Vocabulary: officious (27) munificence (49)

2. Ferrara is in Italy. The time is during the Renaissance, probably the sixteenth
century. To whom is the Duke speaking? What is the occasion? Are the Duke’s
remarks about his last Duchess a digression, or do they have some relation to
the business at hand?

3. Characterize the Duke as fully as you can. How does your characterization differ
from the Duke’s opinion of himself? What kind of irony is this?

4. Why was the Duke dissatisfied with his last Duchess? What opinion do you get of
the Duchess’s personality, and how does it differ from the Duke’s opinion?

5. What characteristics of the Italian Renaissance appear in the poem (marriage

customs, social classes, art)? What is the Duke’s attitude toward art? Is it
insincere?

6. What happened to the Duchess? Should Browning have told us?

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 112

DOVER BEACH
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 the again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, 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.
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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 darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

QUESTIONS:

1. Vocabulary: strand (11), girdle (23) darkling (35). Identify the physical locale of
the cliffs of Dover and their relation to the French coasts; identify the Aegean and
Sophocles.

2. As precisely as possible, define the implied scene: What is the speaker’s

physical location? Whom is he addressing? What is the time of day and the state
of the weather?

3. Discuss the visual and auditory images of the poem and their relation to illusion
and reality.

4. The speaker is lamenting the decline of religious faith in his time. Is he himself a
believer? Does he see any medicine for the world’s maladies?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 114

GOD’S GRANDEUR
Gerard Manely Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs ___
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

QUESTIONS:

1. What is the theme of this sonnet?

2. The image in line 3-4 possibly refers to olive oil being collected in great vats from
crushed olives, but the image is much disputed. Explain the simile in line 2 and
the symbols in lines 7-8 and 11-12.

3. Explain “reck his rod” (4), “spent’ (9), “bent” (13).

4. Using different-colored pencils, encircle and connect examples of alliteration,

assonance, consonance and internal rime. Do these help to carry the meaning?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 115

NEUTRAL TONES
Thomas Hardy

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
- - They had fallen from an ash, and were gray,

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro - - -
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a – wing . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God – curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

QUESTIONS:

1. Comment on Hardy’s choice of title.

B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 116

THE SECOND COMING

William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel Shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
The twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

QUESTIONS:
1. “Things fall apart”; what is the context here? Is it political, social or religions?
2. Do you agree with the view expressed in lines 7 – 8?
3. What event does the title refer to?
4. VOCABULARY: SPIRITUS MUNDI – the racial memory or collective unconscious
mind of mankind. (literally world spirit).
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 117

PRELUDES
T.S. Eliot

I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney – pots
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 118

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the beds edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet.
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six O’ clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street,
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gently
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant at lots.

QUESTIONS:

1. Modernist poetry centered around the city. List the images and symbols used to
evoke the atmosphere of a metropolitan city.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 119

MENTAL CASES
Wilfred Owen

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

QUESTIONS:

1. Are wars necessary or can they be dispensed with?

2. Can this be called a “PROTEST” poem?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 120

MOTHER TO SON
Langston Hughes

“Well, son, I’ll tel you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It had tacks in it:
And splinters,
And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor-

Bare.
But all the time,
I’ se been a’ climbin’ on,
And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So, boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps
’cause you find it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now-
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’ see still climbin’
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

QUESTIONS:

1. What is the central thought of this poem?

2. What symbolic meaning is attached to “crystal stair”?
3. List the admirable human qualities which you think the mother possess.
4. Does the mother’s counsel have universal application? Explain.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 121

FERN HILL
Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barely
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the Sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder; it was all
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Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising.
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like they sea.

QUESTIONS:

1. Comment on Thomas’ selection and arrangement of words, phrase and images.

2. How do you understand “and the Sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of the holy
streams.”

3. Substantiate the claim that this poem is an elegy as also in “Dover Beach”.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 123

THE WHIPPING
Robert Hayden

The old woman across the way

is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant-ears

pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling

boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to wound like memories:

My head gripped in bony vise

of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I

no longer knew or loved…
well, it is lover now, its is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against

a tree, exhausted, purged –
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.

QUESTIONS:

1. What similarities connect the old woman, the boy, and the speaker? Can you say
that one of them is the main subject of the poem?
2. Does this poem express, any beauty? What human truth does it embody? Could
you argue against the claim that “it is over now, it is over” (19)?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 124

AUBADE
Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused, nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel not seeing
That this is what we fear-no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 125

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realization of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthen’s, and the room takes shape;

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world beings to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

QUESTIONS:

1. What is an aubade?
2. Is there any irony involved in the choice of title?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 126

THE THOUGHT FOX

Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks;
The page is printed.

QUESTIONS:

1. What hints are given in the poem that it is about literary creativity?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 127

AUNT JENNIFER’S TIGERS

Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

QUESTIONS:

1. List the items in this poem which denote confinement and Freedom.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 128

GEOGRAPHY
Zulfiker Ghose

When the jet sprang into the sky,

it was clear why the city
had developed the way it had,
seeing it scaled six inches to the mile.
There seemed an inevitability
about what on ground had looked haphazard,
unplanned and without style
when the jet sprang into the sky.

When the jet reached ten thousand feet,

it was clear why the country
had cities where rivers ran
and why the valleys were populated.
The logic of geography-
that land and water attracted man-
was clearly delineated
when the jet reached ten thousand feet.

When the jet rose six miles high,

it was clear that the earth was round
and that it has more sea than land.
But it was difficult to understand
that the men on the earth found
causes to hate each other, to build
walls across cities and to kill.
From that height, it was not clear why.

QUESTIONS:

1. Each stanza represents a different level of seeing. What is the view of each
stanza?
2. How would you describe the main thought of the poem?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 129

ONCE UPON A TIME

Gabriel Okara

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son,
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home’! ‘Come again’:

they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be not thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.

I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their comforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 130

I have also learned to say, “Goodbye”

when I mean ‘Good-riddance”:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘it’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,

how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

QUESTIONS:

1. Who is talking in this poem?

2. What can you gather about his circumstances?
3. What kind of person do you imagine him to be?
4. What has he learnt to do with his own feelings? How can you tell? Who is the
person addressing?
5. What does he hope to learn from him?
6. What does he mean by wanting ‘to unlearn all these muting things’?
7. Why do you think the poet has given it the title, ‘Once Upon a Time’?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 131

THE STORY WE KNOW

Martha Collins

The way to begin is always the same. Hello,

Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, just fine,
and Good-bye at the end. That’s every story we know,

and why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No?

Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine?
The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello,

and then it’s Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow

day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine
and Good-bye. In the end, this is a story we know

So well don’t turn the page, or look below

the picture, or follow the words to the next line:
The way to begin is always the same Hello.

But one night, through the latticed window, snow

beings to whiten the air and the tall white pine.
Good bye is the end of every story we know

that night, and when we close the curtains, oh

we hold each other against that cold white sign
of the way we all begin and end. Hello,
Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know.

QUESTIONS:

1. What have lines 1,6,12 and 18 in common. What have lines 3,9,15, and 19 in
common.
2. Show now the words “Hello” and “Good-bye” acquire deeper meaning as the
poem progress. What do they refer to or symbolize in the last two lines?
3. This poem is a villanelle. How closely does it conform to the definition of a
villanelle?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 132

OPENING THE CAGE

Edwin Morgan

14 variations on 14 words
I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
John Cage.
I have to say poetry and is that nothing and am I saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
I that am saying poetry have nothing and it is I and to say
And I say that I am to have poetry and saying it is nothing
I am poetry and nothing and saying it is to say that I have
To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and say it
Poetry is saying I have nothing and I am to say that and it
Saying nothing I am poetry and I have to say that and it is
It is and I am and I have poetry saying say that to nothing
It is saying poetry to nothing and I say I have and am that
Poetry is saying I have it and I am nothing and to say that.
And that nothing is poetry I am saying and I have to say it
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it

QUESTION:

1. What is the significance of the title?

2. What does this poem tell about the nature of poetry?
B.A/B.Sc. Hons-II (Poetry) Eng-201 133

LITERARY TERMS
ALLITERATION The repetition of sounds, most often consonant sounds, at the
beginning for words.

ALLUSION A reference in a work of literature to a well-known character, place, or

situation from another work of literature , music, or art or from history.

ANALOGY A comparison made between two things to show how one is like the other.

ANECDOTE A brief account of an event, usually intended to entertain, to explain an

idea, and to reveal personality through a person’s actions,

ANTAGONIST A person or force that opposes the protagonist, or central character in

a story or drama.

ARGUMENT That kind of writing in which reason in used to influence people’s ideas or
actions.
ASIDE In a play a comment made by a character who is heard by the audience but not
by the other characters on stage. Because other characters are on stage at the time,
the speaker turns to one side, “aside.” Asides reveal what a character is thinking and
feeling.
ASSONANCE The repetition of vowel sounds, especially in a line of poetry. For
example, the I sound is repeated in this line from “Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’s
Day?”
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
ATMOSPHERE The emotional quality, or mood, of a story.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY The story of a person’s life written by that person.
BALLAD a short, musical narrative poem. Folk ballads, or popular ballads, were
passed on by word of mouth of generations before being written down. Literary ballads
are written in imitation of folk ballads.

BIOGRAPHY The account of a person’s life written by someone other than the subject.
Biographies can be short or can be book-length.

BLANK VERSE Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, which is a meter

made up of five iambic feet to a line of verse, each foot containing one unstressed and
one stressed (‘) syllable. Shakespeare wrote his plays in blank verse.
See also FOOT, METER, RHYTHM.
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CHARACTER A person in a literary work; Characters who reveal only one personality
trait are called flat.
A static character remains primarily the same throughout the story.
See also CHARACTERIZATION

CHARACTERIZATION The methods a writer uses to develop the personality of a

character. In direct characterization the writer makes direct statements about a
character” personality. In indirect characterization the writer reveals a character’s
personality through the character’s words and actions and through what other
characters say and think about the character.
See also CHARACTER

CLIMAX The point of greatest emotional intensity, interest, or suspense in a narrative.

Usually the climax comes at the turning point in a story or drama, the point at which the
resolution of the conflict becomes clear.

COMEDY A type of drama that is humours and has a happy ending. A Heroic comedy
focuses on the exploits of a larger than life hero.
See also RAGEDY

CONFLICT The struggle between two opposing forces that lies at the center of a plot in
a story or drama. An external conflict exists when a character struggles against some
outside force, such as another person, nature, society, or fate.
See also PLOT

CONNOTATION The unspoken or unwritten meanings associated with a word beyond

its dictionary definition, or denotation.
See also FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

COUPLET Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. For example, these two lines
from Pope’s “Sound and Sense” form a couplet:
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
See also RHYME, SONNHET

DENOTATION The literal or dictionary meaning of word. Literal language seeks to

convey denotation, or exact meaning.
See also CONNOTATION

DESCRIPTION Any carefully detailed portrayal of a person, place, thing, or event. While
description is the writer’s primary aim in the descriptive essay, this kind of writing is also
used in stories, biography, and other forms of essays.
See also EXPOSITION
NARRATION, PERSUASION
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DIALECT A variation of language spoken by a particular group, often, within a particular

region. Dialects differ from standard language because they contain different sounds,
forms, and meanings.

DIALOGUE Conversation between characters in a literary work.

DRAMA A play performed before an audience by actors and actresses on a stage. Most
drama before the modern period can be divided into two basic types: tragedy, such as
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and comedy, such as Cyrano de Bergerac. The two
basic parts of a drama are its script, which includes dialogue and stage directions,
and the staging, which prepares the play to be performed.
See also COMEDY, TRAGEDY

DRAMATIC CONVENTION A device that a playwright uses to present a story on stage

and that the audience accepts as realistic. Shakespeare’s audience, for example,
accepted the convention of boys playing the roles of women.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE A form of dramatic poetry that presents only one speaker,
who address a silent listener. “MY LAST DUCHESS” is a dramatic monologue.
See also DRAMATIC POETRY

DRAMATIC POETRY Poetry in which one or more characters speak to other

characters, themselves, or the reader.
See also DRAMATIC
MONOLOGUE, SPEAKER

EPIC A long narrative poem that traces the adventures of a hero. Epics intertwine
myths, legends, and history, reflecting the values of the societies in which they originate.
In epics gods and goddesses often intervene in the affairs of humans. Homer’s lliad and
Odyssey, two of the most famous epics, were first recited or sung before they were
collected and written down.
See also EPIC HERO

EPIC HERO A legendary, larger-than-life figure whose adventures form the core of the
epic poem. The hero embodies the goals and virtues of an entire nation or culture. For
example, King Arthur in Malory’s Morte d’ Arthuri functions as an epic hero because he
personifies his society’s ideals of courage, nobility, and justice.

ESSAY A short piece of nonfiction writing on any topic. The purpose of the essay is to
communicate an idea or opinion. The formal essay is serious and impersonal. The
informal essay entertains while it informs; it usually takes a light approach to its subject
and uses a conversational style. The personality of the author often shines through the
informal.
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NARRATIVE ESSAYS Relate true events, usually in chronological order. Descriptive

essays, describe actual people, places, or things. Persuasive essays, aim to convince
the reader of an opinion. Expository essays, present information and explain ideas.

EXPOSITION An author’s introduction to the characters, setting, and situation at the

beginning of a story, novel, or play. The term exposition also refers to the expository
essay, in which the writer’s purpose is to present facts or explain ideas.
See also PLOT

FABLE A very brief story told to teach a lesson. Themes are usually stated explicitly, as
in Aesop’s fables.
See also MORAL, PARABLE, THEME

FALLING ACTION In a play or story the action that follows the climax.
See also PLOT

FICTION A prose narrative in which situations and characters are invented by the writer.
Some aspects of a fictional work may be based on fact or experience.
See also NOVEL, SHORT STORY

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Language used for descriptive effect, often to imply ideas
indirectly. Expressions of figurative language are not literally true but express some truth
beyond the literal level. Although it appears in all kinds of writing, figurative language is
especially prominent in poetry.
See also FIGURE OF SPEECH, LITERAL
LANGUAGE, METAPHOR, PERSONIFICATION,
SIMLE, SYMBOL

FIGURE OF SPEECH A specific device or kind figurative language such as metaphor,

personification, simile, or symbol.
See also METAPHOR,
PERSONIFICATION, SIMILE
SYMBOL

FOIL A character who is used to contrast with another character.

FOOT The basic unit in the measurement of rhythm. A foot usually contains one
accented syllable (~) and one or more unaccented syllables.

FORESHADOWING The use of clues by the author to prepare readers for events that
will happen in a story.
See also PLOT
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FRAME STORY A plot structure that includes the telling of a story within a story. The
frame is the outer story, which usually precedes and follows the inner and more
important story.

FREE VERSE Poetry that has no fixed patter of meter, rhyme, line length, or stanza
arrangement.

IAMBIC PENTAMETER A specific meter in a line of poetry comprised of five feet

(pentameter) most of which are iambs. The iamb consists of one Unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable. This line from “Puritan Sonnet” exemplifies iambic
pentameter:

I love/those skies/thin blue/or snow/y gray

See also BLANK VERSE,
FOOT, METER

IMAGE A reference to something that can be experienced through one of the five
senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. Note the images of sight and touch in
these lines.

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear.

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
See also FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE, IMAGERY

IMAGERY The collection of sense images that helps the reader of a literary work to
visualize scenes, hear sounds, feel textures, smell aromas, and taste foods that are
described in the work.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, IMAGE

IRONY A contrast between reality and what seems to be real. Situational Irony exists
when the actual outcome of a situation is the opposite of some one’s expectations.

Verbal irony exists when a person says one thing and means another.

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience has important information that characters in
a literary work do not have. In Julus Caesar, for example, when Caesar’s wife warns
him not to go to the Senate, the audience knows of the murder plot, although those two
characters do not.

LITERAL LANGUAGE Language that means nothing more than exactly what it says.
See FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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LOCAL COLOR A technique of writing that uses specific details to evoke a particular
region. Local color re-creates the language, customs, geography, and habits of the
area.

LYRIC POETRY Poetry that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings.
Lyric poems are usually short and musical.

METAPHOR A type of figurative language used to compare or equate seemingly ulike

things. In these lines from “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” for instance, life is
equated with three different things

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
See also FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE, SIMILE

METER A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that gives a line of
poetry a predictable rhythm.
See also FOOT
RHYTHM

MONOLOGUE A long speech by a character in a play.

See also SOLILOQUY

MOOD The emotional quality or atmosphere of a story.

See also ATMOSPHERE
SETTING

MORAL A practical lesson about right and wrong conduct, often in an instructive story
such as a fable or parable.

NARRATION The kind of writing or speech that tells a story. Narration is used in novels,
short stories, and narrative poetry. Narration can also be an important element in
biographies and essays.
See also DESCRIPTION,
EXPOSITION, PERSUASION

NARRATIVE POETRY Verse that tells a story. The narrative poem is generally more
selective and concentrated than the prose story.
See also BALLAD
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NARRATOR The person who tells a story in a work of fiction. In some cases the
narrator is a character in the story.
See also POINT OF VIEW

NONFICTION Factual prose writing. Nonfiction deals with real people and experiences.
Among the categories of nonfiction are biographies, autobiog, raphies, and essays.
See also AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY, ESSAY,
FICTION

NOVEL An extended fictional prose narrative. The novel has more scope than a short
story in its presentation of plot, character, setting, and theme. Because novels are not
subject to any limits in their presentation of these elements, they encompass a wide
range of narratives.
See also SHORT STORY,
FICTION

ONOMATOPOEIA The use of a word or phrase that actually limitates or suggests the
sound of what it describes. For example, the following lines imitate the sound of a
windstorm:

The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare

A night of gnashing and enormous moan
See also SENSORY
LANGUAGE

PARABLE A simple story from which a lesson should be drawn.

See also FABLE, MORAL

PARALLELISM The use of a series of words, phrases, or sentences that have similar
grammatical form, Parallelism emphasizes the items that are arranged in the similar
structures, Notice the parallel form, for example, of the clauses in this sentence. “It
came from the past and it looked to the past.” The subject of each clause is it, followed
by a verb and prepositional phrase ending in the word past, Parallelism adds to the
sense of unity in a place of writing.
See also REPETITION

PERSONIFICATION A figure of speech in which an animal, object, or idea is given

human form or characteristics.
See also FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
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PERSUASION The type of writing that aims to make the audience accept an opinion.
See also ARGUMENT, DESCRIPTION,
EXPOSITION, NARRATION

PLOT The sequence of events in a story, novel, or play, each event causing or leading
to the next. The plot begins with exposition, which introduces the story’s characters,
setting, and situation. The plot catches the reader’s attention with the narrative hook.
The rising action adds complications to the story’s conflicts, or problems, leading to the
climax, or point of highest emotional pitch. The falling action is the logical result of the
climax, and the resolution presents the final outcome.

POETRY A concentrated kind of writing in which imagery, figurative language, rhythm,

and often rhyme combine to create a special emotional effect. Poetry is usually
arranged in lines and groups of lines known as stanzas. Types of poetry include
narrative poetry, which tells a story, lyric poetry, which expresses emotion, and dramatic
poetry, which presents a character.

POINT OF VIEW The relationship of the narrator, or storyteller, to the story. In a story
with first person point of view, the story is told by one of the characters, referred to as
“I”. The reader generally sees everything through that character’s eyes. “Quality”, for
instance, has a first person narrator.

In a story with a limited third-person point of view, the narrator reveals the
thoughts of only one character but refers to that character as “he” or “she”.

In a story with an omniscient point of view, the narrator reveals the thoughts of
several characters.
See also NARRATOR, TONE

PROTAGONIST The central character in a story or drama. Generally the audience is

meant to sympathize with the protagonist.
See ANTAGONIST, CONFLICT

PUN A play on words, or a joke based on words with several meanings or words that
sound alike but have different meanings. Shakespeare uses puns frequently.

REPETITION The recurrence of sounds, words, phrases, lines, or stanzas in a speech

or piece of writing. Repetition increases the feeling of unity in a work. When a line or
stanza is repeated in a poem, it is called a refrain.
See also PARALLELISM

RESOLUTION The part of a plot that concludes the falling action by revealing or
suggesting the outcome of the conflict.
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RHYME The repetition of sounds in words that appear close to each other in a poem.
End rhymes occur at the ends of lines.

RHYME SCHEME The pattern of rhymes formed by the end rhyme in a poem. Rhyme
scheme is designated by the assignment of a different letter of the alphabet to each new
rhyme. For instance, the rhyme scheme in the first part of “Puritan Sonnet” is abba:

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones a

There’s something in this richness that I hate b
I love the look, austere, immaculate b
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones a
See also SONNET

RHYTHM The pattern of beats created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed
syllables, particularly in poetry. Rhythm gives poetry a musical quality that helps convey
its meaning. Rhythm can be regular, with a predictable pattern or meter, or irregular.

RISING ACTION The part of a plot that adds complications to the plot’s problems and
increases reader interest.

ROMANCE A story concerning a knightly hero. His exciting adventures, and pursuit of
love.

SATIRE A form of writing that ridicules abuses for the sake of remedying them.

SCANSION The analysis of the rhythm of a line of verse. To scan a line of poetry
means to note stressed and unstressed syllables and to divide the line into its feet, or
rhythmical units.
See also FOOT, RHYTHM

SETTING The time and place in which the events of a story, novel, or play occur. The
setting often helps create an atmosphere, or mood.
See also ATMOSPHERE, MOOD

SHORT STORY A brief fictional narrative in prose. Elements of the short story include
plot, character, setting, point of view, theme, and sometimes symbol and irony.

SIMILE A figure of speech using like or as to compare seemingly unlike things.

See also FIGURATIVE
LANGUAE, METAPHOR

SOLILOQUY A long speech spoken by a character who is alone on stage. This speech
usually reveals the private thoughts and emotions of the character.
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SONNET A lyric poem of fourteen lines, almost always written in iambic pentameter and
usually following strict pattern of stanza divisions and rhymes.

The Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of three quartrains, or four-

fine stanzas, followed by a couplet, or pair of rhyming fines. The rhyme scheme is
usually abab, cdcd, erer, gg. The rhyme couplet often presents a conclusion to the
issues or questions presented in the three quatrains. “Shall Compare Thee to a
Summer’s Day?” is a Shakespearean sonnet.

In the Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet fourteen lines are divided into two stanzas.
The first eight lines, called an octave, usually present a situation, idea, or question. The
remaining six lines, or sestet, provide a resolution, comment, or answer. The rhyme
scheme for the octave is usually abbaabba; for the sestet the rhyme scheme is usually
cdecde. “Puritan Sonnet” is a Petrarchan sonnet.
See also COUPLET, RHYME
SCHEME, STANZA

SPEAKER The voice of a poem sometimes that of the poet, sometimes that of a
fictional person or even a thing. The speaker’s words communicate a particular tone, or
attitude toward the subject of the poem.

STAGE DIRECTIONS Instructions written by the dramatist to describe the appearance

and action of characters, as well as sets, costumes, and lighting.

STANZA A group of lines forming a unit in a poem.

STYLE The author’s choice and arrangement of words. In a literary work. Style can
reveal an author’s purpose in writing and attitude toward his or her subject and
audience.

SYMBOL Any object, person, place, or experience that means more than what it is.

THEME The main idea of a story, poem, novel, or play, usually expressed as a general
statement. Some works have a state theme; which is expressed directly and explicitly.
More frequently works have an implied theme, which is revealed gradually through such
other elements as plot, character, setting, point of view, symbol, and irony. For example,
in “Quality” the implied theme is that devotion to an ideal can make a small life heroic.

TONE The attitude taken by the author or speaker toward the subject of a work. The
tone conveys an emotion or several emotions. For example, in John Galsworthy’s
“Quality” the tone is somber, almost.
See also NARRATOR,
POINT OF VIEW, SPEAKER
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TRAGEDY A play in which a main character suffers a downfall. That character often is a
person of dignified or heroic stature. The downfall may result from outside forces or
from a weakness within the character, which is known as a tragic flaw.

WORD CHOICE The selection of words in a piece of literature to convey meaning,

suggest attitude, and create images.
See also CONNOTATION