Siegfried Sassoon

ATTACK

The poet describes an attack. It is early morning and the sun rises. But the sun does not have
the usual colour, it is darker as if to foreshadow further unpleasant events. Spouts of smoke
make the slope hardly visible. The slope is “scarred” because of the heavy tanks that pass over
it. A terrible sound of guns and bombs is heard, soldiers go out of the trenches and start
climbing the ridge; their faces are pale because of fear. Their hope gradually dies out, it
“flounders in mud” (metaphor). The poem ends with a very strong message asking for help
from Jesus.
The poem is written in iambic pentameter. There’s a very interesting rhyme pattern: AABACB
CC CDEED. Alliteration is used: Smoldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud...”
Run-on lines are .....used:
“And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, flounders in mud.......”

THE GENERAL

The poet criticizes the general (the highest rank in the army). The general smiles at the soldiers,
pretends to be kind, but he is hypocritical indeed. He is not the one who puts his life to risk
during the war. The soldiers call him an incompetent swine. Harry and Jack are two soldiers,
two participants in the war. Most of the soldiers at whom the general smiled are dead. There is
a pause before the final line, which is a conclusion. It says that the destiny of the soldiers is
sealed by the general’s plan of attack.
The speaker of the poem is a soldier and he .......... the ..... all the time direct speech is used.
The rhyme pattern is ABABCCC. Alliteration is used.
“When we met him last week on our way to the line”.
All the lines are end-stopped.

GLORY OF WOMEN - a sonnet

The poet addresses women and criticizes them fro living in such a fantasy world. They are
proud when their men (husbands, fathers, brothers, sons) are heroes and have been wounded
at some place where an important battle has taken place. They have such a romantic belief in
chivalry that it seems to them that chivalry justifies/ redeems the disgrace of war. Many women
were employed in factories producing munition during the war, thus they produced shells for
their own men. Women listen with delight the stories about their men’s fighting and courage.
They are even proud when their men are killed because they died as heroes.
Women expect their men always to win and cannot understand when the British troops retreat.
They cannot understand the horror of trampling corpses covered with blood. The German
mothers, just like all the other mothers, are knitting socks for their sons not knowing that their
sons are dead.
The whole poem is written in direct speech, the poet directly addresses the women. The poem
is a sonnet. Alliteration is present in almost every line. The rhyme pattern is ABAB CDCD EFG
EFG

Ivor Gurney

THE SILENT ONE

“The silent one” is a soldier who died on the barbed wire and hung there. He was not alone,
there was another soldier who hung on the wire too. The poet enjoyed speaking with the first
soldier while he was alive, he liked his accent very much. He calls the soldier a “noble fool” who
died on the wire just to prove that he is faithful to his stripe. He was very brave, was not afraid
of the guns and when he was told to cross the wire he started without hesitating. But obeying
smb’s commands he lost his life. Then, as a contrast, the poet speaks about himself. He admits
that he is weak, not nearly as brave as the soldier. When he was told to crawl under the wire,
he refused to do it. He saw no hole in it, but only death and nothing else. He retreated, he was
afraid of the bullets and flashing.
The punctuation of this poem is very interesting: there are a lot of commas and dashes.
Direct speech is also used. The language is very simple, everyday speech, not poetical. The lines
are not rhymed.

Wilfred Owen

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

The title of the poem means “It is sweet and meet (prikladno) to die for one’s country.
Sweet! And Decorous!”.
The poem presents the reality of war. Comparison is made between the soldiers and “old
beggars under sacks”. The soldiers are pacing1 towards a distant place where they are supposed
to rest. All of them are very tired, trudging, they are all covered with blood. Some of the
soldiers have lost their boots and are walking barefoot. They are even too tired to hear the
hoots of gas-shells which are being dropped behind them. Then there is a dramatic moment:
they have to put their gas masks very quickly, but one of them doesn’t manage to put his mask
properly. He starts yelling, floundering and choking. The other soldiers are not able to help him
and eventually, he dies. They throw him in a wagon. At the end the poet says that one cannot
say that it is glorious to die for your country if he has seen what happened to the soldier. When
he saw the soldier’s disfigured face, his blood come gargling out of his mouth, he realised that
“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a lie. Dying for your country is not at all heroic. The reality is quite
different, soldiers suffer obscene and terrible deaths. People will encourage you to fight for
1
walking
your country , but, in reality, fighting for your country is simply sentencing yourself to an
unnecessary death.
By this way of expressing, Owen wanted to throw the war in the face of the reader, to
illustrate how vile and inhumane war really is. The title of the poem means “sweet and fitting it
is”, and then Owen continues his poem by ending that the title is, in fact, a lie. The poem
abounds with powerful irony.
All the lines have different lengths. The stanzas are not equal. The rhyme pattern is
ABAB CDCD. Occasional epithets, audible and visual images.

T.S. Eliot

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

The title emplies an ironic contrast between the romantic suggestions of “love song” and the
dully prosaic name “J. Alfred Prufrock”. The poem begins with a quotation from Dante’s
Inferno. The words are spoken by the most famous warrior of the time - Count Guido da
Montefeltro - who is in Hell for false advice to Pope Boniface. He tells the shame of his evil life
to Dante because he believed that Dante will never return to earth to report it. The speaker of
the poem is obviously Prufrock, but who does he address? It can be the reader, but “you and I”
could also be 2 aspects of Prufrock - his thinking, self-addressing his public personality. In the
following two lines comparison is used, “the evening spread against the sky” is compared to “a
patient etherized upon a table”. Then we get a feeling of dirt, cheapness when he mentions the
one-night cheap hotels, the floors in the restaurants covered with sawdust, the half-deserted
streets. Just like Dante’s character (in Inferno) Prufrock is in a “hell” - in this case the hell of his
own feelings. He is a timid, middle-aged character, thinking and talking to himself. While
wandering through the sordid streets, he is bothered by a question, whether to declare his love
to one of the women mentioned in the refrain:
“In the room women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo”.
Growing more and more hesitant, he postpones the moment of his decision.
There is a very interesting metaphor, the fog is presented as a lazy cat. The fog is also
personified, it rubs its back upon the windowpanes, rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes, slips
by the terrace, leaps and then falls asleep. The fog presents the dirt and pollution of urban
areas. The objective correlative technique is used, the cat is not described, but evoked. Eliot
does not mention a cat in any line, but we get an image of it.
Then Prufrock once again asks himself whether to declare his love to the woman. He
asks himself “Do I dare”. And then once again he tries to console himself thinking that there is
still time, he postpones his decision. He is a very indecisive, hesitating person when it comes to
“the overwhelming question” - a proposal of marriage. But he realises that he is getting older,
thinner, his hair is falling.
Prufrock describes the eyes, the arms, the brown hair, the perfume of this woman, all of which
make him digress. There is a very powerful image used: when he sees her he feels like an insect
“pinned and wriggling on the wall”, he cannot say anything at that moment.
Prufrock says that he would have been better as a crab on the ocean bed. The crab is walking
backwards which suggests that Prufrock is growing old and emphasizes the futility of his life
once again. This sea imagery of escape seems suddenly liberating after all the images of futility
and feebleness.
Once again Prufrock remembers that he is growing old, he has seen “the eternal Footman”
holding his coat and snickering. The eternal Footman is probably death. So once again
metaphor is used.
Prufrock imagines how foolish he would feel if he were to make his proposal only to
discover that the woman had never thought of him as a possible lover. He imagines her brisk,
cruel response: “That is not what I meant, at all”. Finally Prufrock decides that he lacks the will
to make his declaration.
“I am not Prince Hamlet”, he says, he says, he will not shake off his doubts and “force
the moment to its crisis” like Shakespeare’s character did. He feels more like the aging foolish
Polonius (another character in Hamlet). He is able only to dream of romance. He has had a
romantic vision of mermaids singing an enchanting song, but assumes that they will not sing to
him. Prufrock is paralyzed, unable to act upon his impulses and desires. He will continue to live
in a world of romantic daydreams - “the chambers of the sea” - until he is awakened by the
“human voices” of real life in which he drowns.

GERONTION

The poem begins with a quotation from Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”. At the
beginning Gerontion says “Here I am” as if he is trying to persuade us to see/ notice his
presence. He is inventing a story about his own life: he never participated in the war, he never
fought against the enemy. He lives in a decayed house together with other tenants who are just
like him: passive and lacking energy. He adds that the owner of the house is a Jew and that
there is a woman who is working in the kitchen which is a part of her everyday work. Gerontion
is waiting for rain, which is a life-giving symbol. The wind is a symbol of the passing of time.
In the second stanza there is a biblical reference: according to the Bible, Christ is
supposed to come back to redeem people. But people don’t really believe in this, they don’t
have faith and want to see a sign that would foretell such a wonder. That’s why everything is
“swaddled with darkness”. Eliot relates the beginning of the Christian era (which is marked by
the birth of Christ) and the beginning of the world. Christ is called a tiger here just like in Blake’s
poetry where he is both a tiger and a lamb (two opposites). People have committed so many
sins that they don’t believe they can be redeemed. “Depraved May” is the time when Christ
was crucified and betrayed by Judas.
Then Gerontion mentions some of the tenants in the house, all those people are just like
him, their lives won’t be remembered, they have no history. They are like -acant Shuttles, only
wind can pass through them. All their names suggest decadence: Hakagawa (in Japanese:
haka=tomb; gawa=take the side of), Mr.Silvero )(silver - money), Madame de Tornquist (sth
torn & twisted), Black --ass (the candles as on an altar), Fraulein von Kulp (in Latin: culpa=guilt).
 Then he starts talking about history, the winners in a war always create history as they
like. History is personified (“she”) and is compared to a prostitute. She -- -n fall into anybody’s
hands. In a war the vices become virtues, if you kill smb in a war, then you are a hero. The
wrath-bearing tree” refers to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” which brought God’s
anger when Adam and Eve ate its forbidden fruit.
At the end Gerontion tries to persuade us that he is “a gull against the wind”, that he is
opposing the wind, but in fact he is driven by the wind. He ends up in a ..eepy corner together
with the rest of the tenants in the house.
The techniques used in this poem are:
- stream of consciousness technique
- dramatic personae
- dislocation of images (Antwerp, Brussels, London...)
- compression of images
- objective correlative
- methonin__ language (we don’t have proper syntactic sentences but only parts: rocks, moss,
stonecrop...)
It is not evident that the poet is hiding behind the dramatic personae. Eliot managed to
make poem very objective and impersonal, we can hardly find facts from Eliot’s life in it.

THE HOLLOW MAN

The poem begins with 2 epigraphs. The first one is taken from “Heart of Darkness” and is about
Kurtz, who was affected by the darkness of Africa. In a way he admits that his life was a failure
because he turned into an evil man. But at least Kurtz will be remembered for his evil deeds, as
contrasted with the hollow man who will not be remembered at all.
I - The first two lines represent a contrast but a very unusual one. “Hollow” means ‘empty’ and
“stuffed” means ‘full’, but the ironic thing is that these people are stuffed with nothingness.
Their voices are dry, they don’t speak aloud but whisper as if they are afraid to speak. Since the
people are mute and their voices dry, their environments also dry, parched and silent. They are
just like rats, they do the bare minimum in order to survive. The following 2 lines emphasize the
shapeless, colourless, paralyzed and motionless lives of these people. “Direct eyes” stand for
knowledge and power, the poet wants to say that people who acquire knowledge and are
powerful will go to Heaven. “Death’s other Kingdom” is Heaven, the place where the souls of
the blessed go after death. As a contrast to them we have the hollow men, empty, stuffed with
nothing.
II - Another kingdom is mentioned in this part. “Death’s dream kingdom” is heaven where
powerful & very well-read people will go. But the hollow man who is the speaker of this part
dares not meet their eyes, their eyes shine, his doesn’t. He once again identifies himself as a
rat. These people have no direction in life, they are carried by the wind. The hollow men are
stuck somewhere between Hell and Heaven, but they cannot move. Their only salvation is
death - “the twilight kingdom”, but they are still alive, which is even more tormenting.
III - The land on which they live is ‘dead’, cactuses grow in deserts. He aspires to death, to reach
death’s other kingdom and wonders what it is like there. He wonders whether in that kingdom
people wake alone, whether they are “broken” individuals (not together). The stone images
represent the modern civilization, the cactus land is the civilized world. The hollow men live in
this world but they are empty, almost invisible. They wish to die and thus save themselves, but
it only remains a vain wish.
IV - They live in a “hollow valley”, a valley of dying stars. The star is a symbol of hope, but the
stars are dying as there is no hope for the hollow men. The “broken jaw” stands for the lack of
communication, they are unable to communicate with one another, they avoid speech. “The
last of meeting places” is the place between Heaven and Hell. They are waiting for Acheron
there, he is supposed to take their souls across the “tumid river”, that’s why they are waiting on
the beach. They gradually lose their sight, are gradually covered with the darkness.
V-

BURNT NORTON

The poem begins with a paradox: what we have been (the past) and what we are now (the
present) determines what we are going to be in future. In a way, what we do throughout our
life predetermines our future. When we think about the past we understand that there are 2
versions: what really happened and what might have happened. “What might have happened”
remains only a possibility, a speculation. The “rose-garden” in Christian iconography is
associated with truth or the place where Virgin Mary was. But here it also represents the
“might-have-been world. “The passage which we did not take” and “the door we never
opened” are things that might have been, but they didn’t happen. The poet wonders why
people always turn to their memory, “dust” is a symbol of the past. When we “disturb the
dust”, we actually remember our past. Then he is commanded by a bird, a messenger from
God, who wants to lead him to the first world (Heaven). He wonders whether he should follow
this bird, he thinks that it is a deceptive bird. The music was never heard because it existed in
the might-have-been world. The pool is suddenly empty and dry.
“The lotus” is a symbol of love and sex. “Heart of light” is the word of God. “Children” are a
symbol of innocence, purity, optimistic & life giving symbol. “The cloud” symbolizes the present
moment. What might have been and what has been is already gone, and the present moment is
the moment we live in.
In the 2nd part of the poem, Eliot talks about the moment of illumination - it is the
moment when eternity intersects with the time continuum. Eliot also talks about reconciliation
of opposites: garlic & sapphires, flesh & fleshless, boar & boarhound. He focuses on the finite
centre uniting all moments, this centre represents reconciliation of opposites. It is a still point,
but we should not understand stillness as fixity.
up
still point

before after down

The moment of illumination is both in & outside time. This has a biblical connotation: the
moment of illumination is the moment of incarnation of Christ through God. He analyzes this
moment from a philosophical point of view.
In the 3rd part, Eliot gets back to the urban theme. The faces of men in the tube are
mentioned, these people think of sth., but we don’t know what. This section is a reference to
“the Hollow men”. People are waiting to be saved, but there is no salvation for them. These
people are hopeless, don’t have faith, they are empty of senses and emotions. They will go to
neither Heaven nor Hell, they will be stuck somewhere in between. There’s an ironic reference
to the darkness of the soul. “Metalled ways” refers to Dante’s “Hell”.
In the 4th part, Eliot develops symbolism through several plants, each plant symbolizes
something. “The sunflower” is an important Christian symbol, it symbolizes “birth & life” =
Christ. “The sun” symbolizes God. “Clonatis” symbolizes Virgin Mary, “yew” symbolizes God.
“The kingfisher” symbolizes fertility.
The 5th part is like a summary of the whole poem. He focuses on the word, just like Ezra Paund.
Words move, the written words carry objects through the time, they remain, on the other hand
spoken words disappear as soon as the silence comes. Only through the pure form words can
reach the stillness (which is the moment of illumination). Opposites are again mentioned:
desire (moving) vs. love (static).
This is a religious poem, the moment of illumination is associated with Eliot’s
acceptance of religion.

W.A. Auden

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

The title of the poem “Museum of Fine Arts” and refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels,
which contains Brueghel’s Icarus.
The “Old Masters” refers to people like Brueghell, artists. Artists have understood the
phenomenon of suffering in people’s lives. They have noticed that other people remain
indifferent when somebody is suffering, they don’t try to help him at all. While a man is
suffering, other people are eating, opening their windows or simply walking, they see him but
don’t try to help him. Even animals suffer (dogs, horses), they are living beings too.
The second stanza is the actual description of Brueghell picture. Everything described in
the first stanza is presented on the picture. Icarus tried to fly using wings made of feathers and
wax, but he came too near the sun, the wax melted and he fell with a splash in the sea below
(this is the myth about Icarus). Only Icarus’ legs disappearing in the sea are presented in the
corner of a picture, the rest of the picture has nothing to do with him. The ploughman painted
on the picture heard and saw when Icarus fell, but remained indifferent and continued
ploughing. An expensive ship painted on the picture also remained indifferent, the passengers
saw this accident, but the ship didn’t stop.The idea of the poem is that people are too selfish
and egoistic. They should try to help each other.
Edith Sitwell

THE KING OF CHINA’S DAUGHTER

The theme of the poem is unrequited2 love. The speaker of the poem fell in love with the
daughter of China’s King. She is beautiful, her face is so smooth and yellow like yellow water.
She kissed her skipping rope3 and gave it to him. This was like a music to his ears, as if he heard
birds singing. The Moon is a symbol of reason (he is a reasonable, intelligent person) and the
Sun is a symbol of passion (he is passionately in love with her). But she doesn’t care about him.
Nursery rhyme is used, every second line is rhymed. This is a kind of a ballad stanza.
Jamb is used (unaccented + accented syllable). There is a contrast between the form and the
content of the poem: elaborate form vs. simple content.

STILL FALLS THE RAIN

The whole poem is full of Biblical references. In the first stanza we find a very ironical line: “still
falls the rain”. The rain is a life-giving symbol, but here it implies death because it refers to rain
of bombs (air-raids on London in 1940). “Rain” can also mean a rain of tears on people’s faces.
This rain is “dark as the world of men”, men are too sinful. Christ was sent to Earth to redeem 4
men from their sins, but people haven’t understood his sacrifice and have continued
committing sins. Every committed sin is like another nail stabbed in Christ’s body. “Our loss”
refers to the loss of purity when Adam and Eve committed the first sin.
In the second stanza “Potter’s field” is the place where the unbelievers = people who
don’t believe in God, are buried. There one can hear the sound of their “impious feet”, they are
impious = do not respect God. Greed, sins, murders are all negative features of mankind. As a
representative of the murders Cain is mentioned (another Biblical reference). Cain is the first
murderer who killed his own brother Avel. The “Starved Man” upon whose feet the black rain
drops fall is Christ himself. He is already crucified, “hung upon the cross”. The theme of
suffering is present; he has mercy on us=sinful people. “Under the Rain the sore and the gold
are as one”: “the sore” refers to the poor, “the gold” refers to the rich. When the Judgment day
comes Christ will judge who will go to Heaven and who to Hell. The wealth is irrelevant in this
case, both rich & poor can go to Hell or Heaven. What is important here are the good and evil
deeds they have done during their lifetime.
Christ bears all the wounds, his heart is wounded by people’s sins. He is bleeding
because every sin is like a nail on his helpless flesh. “The Tree” is the cross on which Christ was
crucified.
The last line is probably uttered by Christ himself. At the end (when the Judgment day
comes) Christ’s voice will be heard (“the voice of One”). Christ was also a small child once, just
like all other men. The “beasts” are probably the men who crucified him. But the final line
suggests that he still has mercy, he still bleeds and wants to redeem mankind.
2
nevozvratena
3
ja`ezaskokawe
4
release
 The whole poem is pessimistic, the theme of pail and suffering is present in every single
line. But the last stanza is an optimistic one, Christ is still willing to redeem mankind. There is
still hope for those who believe in him and Christianity.
“Still Falls the Rain” is a refrain used in almost every stanza (although we cannot distinguish
stanzas clearly). Many sound effects are used.
e.g. “baited bear”
“hunted hare” alliteration
“deep to the dying”
e.g. “those of the light that died” inner rhyme
Some run-on lines are also used:
e.g. The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh...

Thom Gunn

BLACK JACKETS

The main character in the poem is a red-haired boy who is a van driver. He wears his weekday
overalls six days & week, but on Sundays he changes his clothes. Every Sunday he sits in a bar
with his friends, all of them dressed in leather jackets and black boots. His jacket was probably
bought second hand, it is not brand-new, but he removed the insignia from the sleeve. The
jacket probably belonged to a pilot who participated in the war and was killed. By removing the
insignia, the red-haired boy actually rebels against the past of the soldier, the war, he
participated in. In this way he rebels against the society. The bar in which they are sitting, is
dark and dim. Suddenly, through the darkness, there is some light reflected on his jacket.
“Light” is a symbol of hope, but it dies away very quickly. The other people are talking about
their kit, telling jokes, talking about motorbikes, jackets, boots, drinking beer. They all wear the
same outfit, talk about the same things, drink beer. In a way, they become uniformed. “It was
only loss he wore” - refers to the lost life of the pilot during the war. He didn’t want to wear this
jacket because he disapproved of the war, but he wore it because he belonged to the Knights.
All members of this group (Knights) wore same clothes, and had tattoos on their shoulders. On
the left shoulder the group’s name - “The Knights” was written and on the right shoulder they
had the slogan “Born to Lose”. These people are born to lose, they have no past or future. They
only live in the present, but even their present lives are boring, monotonous.
There are 3 topics elaborated in the poem: search for the boy’s identity; alienation;
rebellion against society. The poem is composed of 8 stanzas each containing 4 lines. There is a
very strict rhyme pattern - abab. There is also a strict rhythm (meter), iamb pentameter is used.
The form of the poem supports its content = they are restricted. The rhymed words are mostly
monosyllabic. Run-on lines are used:
“In weekday overalls but, like his friends,
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -
Wore cycle boots….”

MY SAD CAPTAINS

The “Sad Captains” are the people from the “Lost Generation”. These are the people affected
by the consequences of the war, not physically but spiritually. They have lost their ideal, their
lives are meaningless, complete failure. They start to gain meaning now that they are dead,
they try to reach their identity now that they are dead. But they start to shine very late.
However, in a way they are forgiven for those failures and their life after death acquires certain
meaning.
The poem is composed of 3 stanzas containing 6 lines. The lines are not rhymed. Run-on
lines are used.

Philip Larkin

CHURCH GOING

The persona in this poem goes to church on a working day, not on Sunday when all people who
believe in religion go. It is important to treat the setting of the poem: a traditional, somewhat
old church, probably a small one, with traditional rooms and fixtures. It is most likely an
Anglican church building because of the design and features. The church is empty, because it is
not Sunday but presumably the middle of the week. Different objects inside the church are
mentioned:
“matting, seats and stone,
And little books, sprawling of flowers,…”
The persona wonders about the purpose of this building, he wonders whether it was built in
order to express thoughts about marriage, birth and death. This persona is an unbeliever, he
doesn’t go to church with some great religious belief. He goes there on a working day because
he wants to enjoy the silence.
Then the persona wants to lectern and reads aloud some of the Bible and then says: “Here
endeth” - the traditional phrase used to signify that the priest has finished reading from the
sacred text. But he doesn’t believe in those words from the Bible. He is only attempting to show
himself and his readers, that there is no mystical power in these ‘magic words’ used by the
priests. He notes that from where he stands the roof looks almost new - “cleared or restored?”
This “cleaned or restored” is similar to the terminology used inside the church for people who
have been ‘born again’. His observations are very sarcastic. Then he signs the book, leaves
some money next to an icon and going out of the church concludes that it was not worth
stopping in such a place.
He is questioning the function of the church, whether there is some point in church
going. He wonders what will become of churches when they “fall completely out of use”. The
church objects will be taken to museum and the churches themselves will be ruined, the only
visitors of the ruins being the sheep. The persona concludes that believers go to this place, he
considers not worthy of the time, and they believe in things he presumes powerless. Then he
mentions women teaching their children to touch a certain stone as if it is cure for cancer. The
word “simples” is a significant one, one which holds two meanings in the poem. A ‘simple’ is a
medical herb, according to the text, but it is also possible to hear the more common meaning of
“simple-minded or even stupid, implied here in reference to these tradition(s).
At the end, the persona contemplates the way in which the practice of church going will
die. He wonders who will be the last visitors of the church: historians, treasure-hunters and
people who attend only Christmas services or someone like himself. Although “bored,
uniformed” he is not stupid like the people who go to church every Sunday Nor is he a treasure
hunter or a historian. He is interested in the church for a deeper and better reason: there is sth
in it which help him to understand his life. There is sth worth his stopping, because it provides a
way to understand the deeper meaning behind his existence.
The language is paratactic (not syntactic): there are not many conjunctions, no relations
between the words. Metonymy is used: larger objects are described by their smaller parts.
There is a strict ….

Seamus Heaney

DIGGING

The poet is talking about himself. He is sitting in his room, holding the pen between his fingers
and trying to find inspiration to write a song. His pen is “snug as a gun”, he is a professional
writer. At that moment he is attracted by the sounds in the yard. He sees his father digging
among the flowerbeds in the garden. As his father bends down, there is a flashback in the
poet’s mind. He remembers his father 20 years ago digging among the potatoes’ drills.
In the following stanza the process of digging is depicted and the process of scattering
seeds for new potatoes is mentioned. His father was digging in order to provide food for his
family. Then there is another flashback in the poet’s mind. He remembers his grandfather now.
He depicts his grandfather’s digging. Both his father and grandfather were very skilful and
professional in digging, but he will not follow them. He says that he will dig with his pen and
become a skilful and professional writer.
In the final stanza he repeats the first and second line.
The title is a metaphor, it points to the creative process of writing. He will explore, dig in
literature. He will become as skilful in writings his father and grandfather were in digging.
The poem abounds with professional words for digging, some of them are even
onomatopoeic (“squelch and slap” = remind of the sound when smb is digging). The sound
effects of the poem are very important: alliteration (tall tops; squelch and slap) and assonance.
There is no regular rhyme pattern, occasionally some inner rhymes.

PUNISHMENT
The poet reproduces an event which happened a long time ago. He reproduces the event in his
own imagination. A 14-year-old girl was killed by drowning because she committed adultery.
The Irish women were considered to be adulterous because they accompanied the British
soldiers. This girl was Irish. The poet reproduces an image of her: the tug of the rope around her
neck, her naked breast, her frail ribs shaking; he creates an image of the girl drowned in the big
bog with a very heavy stone so that her body could not flow up on the surface. Her hair was
shaved on the left side and it looked like “a stubble of black horn”, her eyes were covered with
a piece of cloth. The poet presumes that she was a beautiful girl before she was drowned, she
had “flaxen hair”, “tar-black face”. In the following stanzas we can notice that he is torn
between the approval and disapproval of her behaviour. If the scene of drowning had
happened in front of his eyes, he would have remained silent. But he still feels sorry for this girl.
All that remains from her body after her death are her bones and webbing from the muscles.
The whole poem consists of 4-line stanzas; both the lines and the words are very short;
no rhyme. The sound effects are very important: alliteration (oak-bone, brain-firkin) and
assonance.

CLEARANCES

The poet talks about his relationship with his mother. While all the other members of the family
are at Church the mother and son are peeling potatoes. There’s silence between them, they do
not talk. The potato peels fall with a splash in the bucket full of dropping of solder from a
soldering iron. Although the potato peels are removed from the potatoes, they are connection
between the mother and son, the close and pure relationship between the two. That’s why the
falling of potato peels is compared to the dropping of solder, the solder is used to connect
things, to stick them together.
The second stanza is written much later. His mother is dying, the priest is by her
bedside. He remembers her bending her head towards her son’s head, he felt her

William Butler Yeats

NO SECOND TROY

The poet talks about his beloved Maud Gonne. He doesn’t blame her for making him unhappy
and miserable, he doesn’t blame her for teaching ignorant men to be violent or classifying
people into rich and poor. Maud Gonne was a passionate Irish nationalist preaching violence to
achieve Irish independence. In the fourth line metaphor is used: the little streets stand for the
poor people; the great streets are the streets where rich people live. There is a contrast
between these two classes of people. Then he mentions her nobleness and her beauty. There is
a comparison between her beauty and a “tightened bow”; the poet probably meant to say that
she had a beautiful figure as tight as a bow. Her beauty was almost unusual and unnatural in an
age like that. But although she is beautiful, her beauty is dangerous and destructive, just like
that of Helen Of Troy. She is compared to “a tightened bow” and “fire”. So Maud Gonne is here
presented as Helen of Troy who was the cause of the long Trojan War, therefore she is a figure
of dangerous, beauty. Destructiveness is Maud Gonne’s primary attribute in the poem and it is
not only personal, but also national and political destructiveness. But although her beauty is
destructive, there is no second Troy for her to burn. The first and only Troy was burnt and there
is no second Troy to be burnt because of Maud Gonne.
Reality and myth intermingle in this poem: Maud Gonne is a real character, whereat the
mythological Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda. the poem contains several rhetoric
questions. It is not divided into stanzas. The rhyme pattern is: ababcdcaefef.

THE SECOND COMING

The poem expresses Yeats’s sense of the dissolution of the civilization of his time. He imagines a
falconer losing control of his falcon and uses it to explain that everything is falling apart,
nothing functions as it should. There is a state of anarchy all over the world, the established
order is gradually being broken. The evil people are doing evil deeds all the time, whereas the
good ones are passive, don’t act, don’t try to prevent them from destroying what has already
been established.
In the second part we feel the “Second coming”, the beginning of a new civilization. But
although we expect it to be a pleasant new beginning, the poet describes it using words which
leave an unpleasant impression. There’s an image of a creature with a lion body and human
head, with a weird expression on the face, moving slowly through the desert, the darkness is
dropping again and the desert birds are reeling above. The beginning of the new civilization
would be marked by the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. “A rocking cradle” refers to Christ’s cradle
when he was an infant. It is shocking that Christ is presented as a savage god (not innocent &
holy) born out of an hallucinatory desert at the point in time (according to Yeats’s system of the
gyres) when once cycle intersects with another.
“Spiritus Mundi” refers to the universal sub-conscience that we all share, thus we are all
connected.
The poem doesn’t follow any strict rhyme pattern, there is no rhyme. Alliteration is used: “story
sleep”, surely the second coming is at hand”.

LEDA AND THE SWAN

Each of Yeats’s cycles (gyre) of history has a destructive beginning: both the classical and the
Christian civilization begin by an act of rape. God, who is immortal, is always transformed into a
bird and rapes a beautiful mortal woman. God transformed into a dove raped Virgin Mary; the
result of it was her pregnancy and the birth of Christ = This marks the beginning of the Christian
civilization. Zeus transformed into a swan raped Leda; the result of it was the birth of Helen of
Troy = This marks the beginning of the classical civilization.
The poem begins with the act of raping. The “sudden blow” is a result of the
accumulated passion of the swan (Zeus). The word “still” tells us that what happens in the
poem has begun earlier, before the beginning of the poem. Zeus has fallen in love with Leda,
but this past moment is not depicted in the poem. We immediately feel the brutal, violent
attack of the swan and the gradual loosening of Leda’s helpless body. She is unable to move,
the only movement on her part is the loosening of her body. Then follows a series of rhetoric
questions in which the poet suggests that Leda cannot release herself from the strong body of
the swan.
In the third stanza the moment of the swan’s orgasm is mentioned and then there is a sudden
leap of thought. the birth of Helen of Troy is not mentioned, but we directly connect the act of
rape with the Trojan war. The structure of the lines: “The broken wall, the burning roof and
tower/ And Agamemnon dead”, is very interesting because 3 participles are used. The poem
ends with a very ironic question: “Did she put on his knowledge with his power/ Before the
indifferent beak could let her drop? The answer is of course negative. Leda didn’t gain Zeus’s
knowledge or immortality, she only felt his brutal force.
The words “feathered glory” and “white rush” refer to the swan and denote the two
forces that Leda felt: the glory/ beauty and the movement.
The poem is not divided into equal stanzas. It is a kind of a sonnet. the rhyme pattern is:
ababcdcdefgefg. Alliteration is used: “brute blood”, “the broken wall, the burning roof”.

EASTER 1916

On Easter 1916 Irish nationalists launched a heroic but unsuccessful revolt against the British
government. The rebellion lasted for 1 week before it was brutally suppressed by the British
forces. Yeats knew the chief rebels personally. Some of them were killed during the rebellion,
some executed afterwards.
The poet begins by telling us that he has met personally most of those chide rebels and
exchanged some “polite, meaningless words” with them. Their faces were vivid because they
were determined to stand up for their ideals and wishes. Their greatest wish was to stop
Britain’s abuse and misuse of Ireland for good. Motley is some kind of a dress/ costume which is
worn in Ireland. That’s why poet says: “…. they and I/ But lived where motley is worn”.
In the second stanza a woman is mentioned, her name is Constance Gore-Booth; she
was an aristocrat and was doing nothing but sitting all day long. She became a nationalist as
well. Then Yeats mentions a man, both a teacher and a poet. His name is Patrick Pearse and he
was a leader in the movement to restore the Gaelic lg in Ireland. The words “rode our winged
horse” refer to Pedasus (the flying horse), meaning that P. Pearse was a poet. Then “his helper”
is mentioned, Major John MacBride whom Yeats strongly disliked because he married Maud
Gonne only to be separated from her 2 years later. He did wrong to the woman Yeats loved, but
he still mentions him in his poem because he was a leader in the Irish national movement.
In the third stanza he explains that everything changes, nothing lasts forever. The stone
is the only thing that remains constant and doesn’t change. People are devoted to just one
purpose in life, therefore they become numb/ senseless, they are like a stone in the middle of a
stream. All the lines in this stanza suggest movement & change: the horse galloping, the rider,
the birds, the clouds, the moorhens = all of them perform some kind of movement. All of them
are mortal and are different every following minute (pantarei), the stone is the only thing that is
not touched by time.
“Sacrifice” is the key word in the fourth stanza. It is crucial both to the theme of Easter
and to the rebels themselves. The question is whether the people sacrificed their lives in vain,
was it right or wrong to die for the country. They died for their dream/ ideal, but Britons will
continue oppressing them. Green is the colour of Ireland.
The last 2 lines of each stanza are a very powerful refrain: “All changed, changed utterly/
A terrible beauty is born”. Yeats wanted to say that these rebels were transformed into tragic
heroes. There is a paradox in the final line “terrible beauty” (both terrible and beautiful at the
same time).

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

The poet expresses his determination to leave Ireland because it is not a “country for old men”.
There is a new life there: young people, birds singing, fish in the sea. He points out that all these
creatures are mortal and will not live forever. Everything that is born must die sooner or later.
He mentions the “monuments of un-aging intellect” - works of art, which are not mortal but
eternal.
Among all young and beautiful things/ creatures an old man is worthless, he is like a
“tattered coat upon a stick”. Then he visits Byzantium (modern Istanbul) in his imagination, it is
regarded as a holy city and a city where art is highly appreciated.
In the third stanza he addresses the sages (mudreci) and asks them to teach him to sing.
He wants them to take his soul away and carry it into the world of eternity (world of art).
He doesn’t want to be a biological creature, but a work of art made by the Grecian
goldsmiths. In this way he would be immortal, eternal. Yeats had read somewhere that in the
Emperor’s palace in Byzantium there was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that
sing “to keep the drowsy Emperor away”. He wants to be such an immortal bird which would
sing to the people in Byzantium of the past, present and future (if he is immortal he will be a
witness of past, present & future).
The poem is divided into 4 stanzas, each containing 8 lines. The rhyme pattern is:
abababcc. Alliteration is used: “fish, flesh or fowl”. Eye-rhyme is also present: me & eternity,
young & song.

BYZANTIUM

In the 1st stanza the night images prevail, the day recedes and the emperor’s soldiers go to bed.
The receding of the day symbolically represents life coming to an end. After the cathedral gong
at midnight (which symbolizes summons to death) there is no noise on the streets, people are
in their homes sleeping. The only light then is the light of the moon and the stars. Night is the
realm of spirits.
 The second stanza gives an occult description of the soul as part image, part man, part
ghost. Shades and ghosts stand for death. The unwinding of the mummy-cloth symbolizes
purification of the soul. The soul is being led to the world of changelessness and purity; its guide
is the meditating figure between man, image & shade.
In the 3rd stanza the golden bird from the previous poem is mentioned. the poet is in the
world of artifice and eternity: the golden bird on the golden bough is made of changeless metal,
it is itself changeless and eternal. That’s why it feels superior over the earthy creatures which
are mortal. The cocks of flades are the birds standing outside time, they are timeless & eternal
too. There is an opposition between the real world (mortal) and the world of art (eternal).
In the 4th stanza the poet sees the purgatorial flames burning away the complexities of
bodily life; but unlike earthy flame which consumes as it burns, this one is not so dangerous, it
cannot burn anything. All these images die into a kind of ecstasy.
The dolphin is a symbol of the soul in transit from one state to another. But the ironic
thing is that the dolphin is itself made of blood and mire. The poet at the end realises that art is
nourished by life and in the end leads back to it. The gong is calling the poet back to life.
The poem is divided into 5 stanzas, each containing 8 lines. The rhyme pattern is:
aabbcddc. Eye-rhyme is used. Alliteration is also present.

THE CIRCUS ANIMALS’ DESERTATION

Yeats begins his poem by saying that he was looking for an inspiration, a theme to write about.
He sought it for 6 weeks, but in vain. Then he decided to write about his own poems which he
calls “circus animals” because they were accessible to all people, everyone could read them
(just like the circus animals). In the 2nd stanza he starts enumerating some of his earlier poems.
First he mentions Oisin (a hero of an old Irish legend) who was bewitched 5 by a fairy, entered
that enchanted world and returned from it 150 years later to find out all his friends have died
and Ireland has become Christian. Yeats jokingly says that he didn’t care about Oisin. But about
his beautiful fairy woman.
In the 3rd stanza he mentions a play of his - “The Countess Cathleen” - which was dedicated to
Maud Gonne. “My dear” refers to Maud Gonne. She sold her soul to the devil in order to
provide food for the starving people, but God sent her to Heaven (not to Hell) because she was
doing good deeds.
In the 4th stanza he talks about another play: - “On Baile’sStrand” and its characters, it
was a play for which he found inspiration in Irish mythology. He admits that he is fond of the
theatre, of the plays performed and the players.
In the last, 5th stanza he admits that all his inspirations came from the heart.
The poem is divided into 5 stanzas. the rhyme pattern is: ababcbd

Edward Thomas
5
beguiled
AS THE TEAM’S HEAD BRASS

The poet is sitting among the boughs6 of a fallen tree. He sees two lovers who disappear in the
wood and watches the ploughman while ploughing. He begins a conversation with him: first
they talk about the weather and then about the war. The poet sits among the boughs of the
tree which fell because of the blizzard. The ploughman asks him when they will take it away and
the poet answers “When the war is over”. That’s how the conversation about the war begins.
They say that many people decided to participate in the war and many of them were killed. One
of the ploughman’s mates was killed too. If he hadn’t gone on the battlefield, everything would
have been different. If it hadn’t been for the war, the world would have been beautiful.
This is a very simple narrative poem. It is a typical Georgian poem - fields, countryside
are described. the verses are not rhymed.

Lois MacNeice

SUNDAY MORNING

This poem is a sonnet, but a very different one from the usual sonnets in terms of content.
Sonnets are usually expressions of the poets’ feelings of love, but this one deals with people’s
life in society.
The poem begins with music, but a very monotonous one, it is very boring when
somebody is “practicing scales” all the time. It is Sunday morning and instead of doing
something more interesting people still do the usual things, things that they do every day. Men
come out to tinker with their cars and women probably stay at home to do their housework.
Then the poet employs instructive attitude as if he is ordering them to do sth. He suggests going
for a picnic in Hindhead, driving the car very fast, even driving it on 2 wheels. These are things
that should be done on Sundays to break the monotony & routine. Sundays should be like a
small eternity which would give people something to enjoy in.
The second stanza is just the opposite of the first one: it implies rules and limits. Sunday
mornings are reserved for church masses and people should attend them. Religion has very
strict rules and people should obey them. The main point from the everyday routine of life, and
the established rules & principles.
The sonnet has a very strict rhyme pattern: words are rhymed in couplets.

BAGPIPE MUSIC

6
branches
A group of people from a higher social class is presented. These people are already well-off,
don’t have to work all day to earn their living. That’s why they try to enjoy life as much as
possible. They can afford a limousine, go to peepshows and watch the girls dressed in knickers
and shoes made of python leather. Many names are mentioned, those are names of these
wealthy people. John MacDonald found a lifeless body, waited until it came back to life and
then killed him with a poker again. He sold his eyes as souvenirs, he sold his blood as whiskey,
and kept his bones to make dumbbells. These people are so bored that they start doing weird
things, sometimes even violent things. They want only a lot of money on their bank account and
sex with prostitutes. The puncture on the tyre suggests loss of innocence. Then another man
(Laird o’Phelps) drank a lot and then wanted to prove that he was sober by counting his feet. In
his calculations he had one extra foot. Mrs. Carmichael gave birth to her fifth child and told the
midwife to take it away because she had already too many children (she regards it as
overproduction). Mothers don’t even have time to look for their babies, they want to employ
babysitters to take care for their babies. Willie Murray cut his thumb and used a piece of the
cow’s hide as a bandage. His brother caught many fish and threw them back in the sea. These
people want to smoke cigarettes just to have sth to do with their hands.
“It’s no go” is a kind of a refrain used in almost every stanza.

Dylan Thomas

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER

In this poem Dylan Thomas celebrates the unity of nature and man. Both nature and man are
changing, they are not constant. Man is a part of nature. All natural forces, both creative and
destructive, function in the same way in nature and in a human being.
In the 1st stanza he says that the creative force which makes the flower grow and bloom
makes him (as a representative of human beings) grow as well. He uses the green cold as a
symbol of growing: the grass, the flowers and all other plants are alive when they are green,
when they fade the green colour disappears. The poet immediately contrasts the destructive
force which destroys the flora but also mankind. But he doesn’t tell the “crooked rose” that
both of them are destroyed by the same force.
The 2nd stanza begins with the creative force which “drives the water through the rocks”
and drives his blood through his veins. But the destructive force which dries the streams makes
his blood turn into wax. But he doesn’t tell his veins that the force which sucks his blood sucks
the water from the streams too.
In the 3rd stanza the creative force is the one which whirls the water in the pool. The
running of the water is again a symbol of life. The force that hauls 7 his shroud sail is the
destructive one. But he doesn’t tell the hangman that the two of them have sth in common =
the forces of nature.

7
tegne, vle~e
 Time passes and everything changes, grows old. The poet grows old too. But he is
unable to tell his beloved in the tomb that he himself has died, and that the same worm is
eating their bodies.
Alliteration is used.

Ezra Pound

HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLY

Ezra Pound uses “dramatic personae” in this poem. It is one of his contributions to the modern
poetry by which he aimed to make his poetry more objective and impersonal. He doesn’t
impose his personality (as a poet) through the poem, but stays impersonal. there are some
biographic details in the poem. We should not concentrate on who is speaking in the poem, but
what is actually being said.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is an imaginary young poet who is trying to write poetry and
become famous. He wants to revive the classical works of art, to write classical poetry in a new
way and to retain the sublimity8 of the classical literature (a reference to E. Pound). But then he
realises that this is impossible because he was born in “a half savage country” which provided
no inspiration for him (reference to Pound’s life, he hated America because it had no culture
and tradition). He found it impossible to create a beautiful work of art in such simple
circumstances, without a proper inspiration. No sublimity could be thus produced. Odysseus
had a great goal to return to his beautiful wife Penelope. Similarly E. Pound, or in the poem H.S.
Mauberley himself, had a goal towrite poetry. The conclusion is that the classical sublimity is
not applicable to the new age. He didn’t find what he was looking for on the British Isles =
inspiration. “The march of the events” probably refers to the beginning of WWI, but he
remained unaffected by the war.
The 2nd section has to do with the innovations he introduced. “Accelerated grimace”
stands for the new age, it moves (“obscure reveries”), against their way of writing poetry and
the themes employed. He criticizes Victorian poetry as well. He is also against literal translation:
E. Pound introduced the slogan “Translator, traitor”, by which he meant that translators should
not translate literally but add a bit of creativity. E. Pound believed that the free verse was most
appropriate for the modern age, he was against strict rules.
In the 3rd section Pound contrasts originality with artificiality, original with market value,
natural with mechanical culture. Instead of the highly valued classical poetry, the modern
poetry with no values is present. Christ and Dionysus both resurrected (Dionysus = revival of
spring) but Christ represents the spiritual whereas Dionysus represents the physical. Instead of
religion, in the modern age there are religious sects, even religion is not what it is supposed to
be. Instead of the traditional mousseline9 of los ordinary gowns are used. Faun is a person from
Greek mythology, but it has no value for the modern age. We are destroying the real values of

8
1) the state or quality of being sublime; 2) a sublime person or thing.
9
muslin
Christianity. Strong leaders should produce an environment for writing poetry. Modern age is
connected to laureal wreath. Apollo is the god of beauty.
So far E. Pound talked about spiritual decay but in the 4th section he talks about physical
decay/ destruction. Many people fought for their country in WWI, but nothing changes, the
world didn’t become better. The generation after the war is known as the “lost generation”
because the war caused spiritual decadence in these people. It only caused disillusion.
In the 5th section Pound says that many young and beautiful people died defending their
country, a country that doesn’t appreciate their values. They wanted to create a better world,
but the result was nothing.

T.S. Eliot

JOURNEY OF THE MAGI

The Magi are the three wise men from the east who came to Jerusalem with gifts for the newly-
born Jesus. According to the Bible (gospel according to Matthew) the Magi set out on a journey
following the star which was to stop above home where Christ would be born. They left their
gifts for the newly-born child and came back to the East. This is the point where Eliot’s poem
begins: the old Magus (one of the three) retells their exhausting journey.
In the 1st part of the poem the emphasis is on the bad weather conditions during their
journey. It was “the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey, it was very
cold and there was a lot of snow. The camels on which they travelled were also affected by the
wealth conditions, they were “sore-footed”. The old Magus also mentions the dirty cities and
villages, the high prices they were charged for sleeping there. At times they remembered the
palaces where girls dressed in silk bring sherbet and wished to be there.
But then eventually they reached the place they were supposed to reach. The 2 nd stanza
is full of references to the Bible (i.e. Christ): the “three trees” stand for the three crosses on
which Christ and the two thieves were to be crucified; the “white horse” is the horse that Christ
rides in glory (in the Bible); the “six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver” are the
Roman soldiers who diced for the clothes of the crucified Christ, who was betrayed by Judas for
30 pcs of silver.
What the old Magus says in the 3rd stanza may well surprise us. He says that their
journey was related to both birth and death. “Birth” is, of course, the birth of Christ, and
“death” is their own death, the death of the Magi. It is very strange that the old Magus is
looking forward to his second death: he died once and came back, but this time he is supposed
to go into the eternal life. “I should be glad of another death” means that the Magi died with
the birth of Christ, but this death is pleasant because it results in a birth. They are satisfied with
their dying, as if they have given their power and teaching to Christ who is supposed to
continue with it. They will experience physical death, but their wisdom and teaching will be
continued by Christ.
The whole poem is like a narrative. The lines are not rhymed. Alliteration is used. In the
2nd stanza a number of images presenting the bad weather conditions & other difficulties during
the journey are used (camels galled, sore footed, refractory/ Lying down in the melting snow;
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces; silken girls bringing sherbet; images of dirty cities
and villages). Internal rhyme is occasionally used: “The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces..” Methonimy is also used: “six hands…”, “feet-kicking…”.

TO A SHADE - Yeats

The poem is devoted to Charles Stewart Parnell - an Irish nationalist leader who is dead. The
poet addresses Parnell’s shade, or spirit, which has come to visit the place once again. The poet
wonders whether he has come to visit his monument, a monument which was built in his
honour, and mentions that the builder was probably never paid. Or perhaps he has come to
visit the sea and admire the gulls. However, the poet asks the shade to return to its tomb.
In the second stanza the poet talks about Hugh Lane’s donation. This man was very
generous, open-handed and gave sth to “their children’s children”, to make them happy and
satisfied. However, the third man who was Parnell’s enemy became H. Lane’s enemy too. The
poet considers the act of driving. H. Lane out at Dublin, a real disgrace.
In the third stanza the poet calls Parnell an “unquiet wanderer” because he has come
out of his grave (i.e. his shadow). He asks him to go back to his tomb, Glasnevin is the cemetery
where Parnell was buried. He tells him to stay in the tomb because he is safer there, it is not the
proper time for him to go out. Nothing has changed, Irishmen still have the same opinion about
him and other heroes like him. The heroic figures and values were characterized as outsiders,
wanderers, exiles from the society.
The poem is divided into 3 stanzas. the rhyme pattern is: ababcdcd e.

A COAT
an embroidery - vez, ukras
The title is a metaphor. He made his song a coat and ornamented it with embroideries.
He refers to his own poetry, his verses are rich, decorative, he uses many epithets. In his poetry
he also employs mythical elements. But the “fools” i.e. other poets tried to imitate him, tried to
imitate his style of writing. But they did not admit that they had stolen the verses and appeared
in front of the world’s eyes as they had written them themselves. The poet says “let them take
it” because it is much funnier to “walk naked” i.e. not literally naked but without the verses &
style of writing which the other poets stole from him. He is rather ironic here, he wants to see
how they will show off with other people’s verse.
The rhyme pattern is: abbacdccdc.