16th & 17th Century: Metaphysical, Cavalier and Other Poets of the ...

16 th & 17 th Century:Metaphysical, Cavalier and Other Poets of the RenaissanceSpenserSidneyShakespeareDonneJonsonHerrickMiltonMarvellBradstreet*

Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599)One day I wrote her name upon the strandOne day I wrote her name upon the strand,But came the waves and washed it away:Again I wrote it with a second hand,But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assayA mortal thing so to immortalize!For I myself shall like to this decay,And eek my name be wiped out likewise.Not so (quoth I), let baser things deviseTo die in dust, but you shall live by fame:My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,And in the heavens write your glorious name;Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)Astrophel and Stella I1Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,2That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--3Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,4Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--5I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;6Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,7Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow8Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.9But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;10Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;11And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.12Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,13Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,14"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."Notes1] A sequence of songs and sonnets, three times printed in quarto in 1591, and revised and rearranged from a better text by Sidney'ssister, the Countess of Pembroke, in the folio edition of Sidney's Arcadia and other works, 1598 (on which our text is based). The bestmodern editions are those by A. W. Pollard (1888) and M. Wilson (1931). Astrophel, meaning star-lover, is the poet, and Stella, or star,represents Penelope Devereux. In 1576 there was talk of a marriage between Sidney and Penelope, daughter of the lately deceased Earl ofEssex. But though the proposed marriage had been urged by her father, her guardians allowed it to lapse, and Sidney's parents had otherprojects for him. In 1581 a marriage with Lord Rich, a man very much her senior, was forced upon Lady Penelope by her guardians. Itresulted in continual discord. It seems probable that Sidney composed Astrophel and Stella before his own marriage to FrancesWalsingham, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, in September 1583. The marriage was probably a happy one, and there is noindication that Sidney's wife took objection to the Sonnets.6] Inventio, consulting lists of acceptable figures of speech, as recommended by classical rhetoric manualsas an alternative for creatingsomething new.11] feet: a quibble on "metrical feet."

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)Astrophel and Stella LXIV1No more, my dear, no more these counsels try;2Oh, give my passions leave to run their race;3Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace;4Let folk o'ercharg'd with brain against me cry;5Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye;6Let me no steps but of lost labour trace;7Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,8But do not will me from my love to fly.9I do not envy Aristotle's wit,10Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame;11Nor aught do care though some above me sit;12Nor hope nor wish another course to frame,13But that which once may win thy cruel heart:14Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.Notes6] of lost labour: in vain.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Sonnet CXXIX: Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame1Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame2Is lust in action; and till action, lust3Is perjur'd, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,4Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;5Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;6Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,7Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,8On purpose laid to make the taker mad:9Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;10Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;11A bliss in proof, and prov'd, a very woe;12Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream.13All this the world well knows; yet none knows well14To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.Notes1-2] Th' expense ... action. The meaning will appear clearly if lust in action is regarded as the subject. expense: (1) spending, expenditure; (2) byimplication, "ejaculation." Spirit: Thomas Thomas (1587) translates Latin "spiritus" as "Spirite, breath, winde, sauour, the soule, life, smell, aire, noise,fiercenes, heart, stomack, hawtinesse of courage." Shakespeare's sense here may be "the spirit of life [that] doeth walke mixed with bloode," that is, the"pulse" (Thomas Thomas, "arteria"). waste: (1) squandering, useless consumption; and (2) by implication and punning, waist (a woman's middle),conventionally spelled "waste" in the period.2] lust in action: (1) enacted or fulfilled desire; (2) by implication, copulation. An example of rhetorical chiasmus, the reversal of the same grammaticalstructure ("lust in action ... till action, lust") in successive clauses.4] extreme: excessive. rude: brutal.5] Enjoy'd: used sexually for pleasure (OED "enjoy" v. 4b). straight: immediately.6] This line and the next exemplify rhetorical anaphora, the repetition of the same phrase ("Past reason") in successive clauses.7] as a swallow'd bait: a simile. The bait here ("lust in action" or copulation) is set out by the hunter to catch the animal but turns out to catch the hunter.8] laid: (1) set in place; (2) by implication, bedded. An example of rhetorical anadiplosis, the repetition of the last word of one clause ("mad") at thebeginning of the next clause.9] Mad in: "Made In" in Q1 (1609).10] Had: (1) experienced; and (2) by implication, taken sexually. An example of rhetorical polyptoton, the repetition of a word with altered inflections("Had, having ... to have').11] in proof: experienced. prov'd a: "proud and" in Q1 (1609). very: true.12] Cf. "Enjoy'd" (5). a dream: a metaphor. Shakespeare may have in mind dreams of sexual conquest, intensely imagined while they are going on butafterwards ill-remembered and of no consequence in the awake world because it is "despised" (5).13] An example of rhetorical antithesis (contrasted ideas in like grammatical structures).14] An example of rhetorical paradox. heaven: evidently elided as a single syllable, "heav'n." hell: "putting the devil into hell," an euphemism for thrustingthe penis into the vagina.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments (From “Sonnets”, LV)Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;But you shall shine more bright in these contentsThan unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.When wasteful war will statues overturn,And broils root out the work of masonry,Nor Mars’s his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory.‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmityShall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,Even in eyes of all posterityThat wear this word out to the ending doom.So, till the judgment that yourself arise,You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Sonnet 46 Mine eye and heart are at a mortal warMine eye and heart are at a mortal warHow to divide the conquest of thy sight;Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie--A closet never pierced with crystal eyes--But the defendant doth that plea denyAnd says in him thy fair appearance lies.To 'cide this title is impanneledA quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,And by their verdict is determinedThe clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part,And my heart's right thy inward love of heart.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Sonnet 138 When my love swears that she is made of truthWhen my love swears that she is made of truthI do believe her, though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutor'd youth,Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.But wherefore says she not she is unjust?And wherefore say not I that I am old?O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love loves not to have years told:Therefore I lie with her and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

Commentary by Ian Lancashire(2002/9/9)William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Sonnet CXXIX: Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of ShameThis sonnet horrifically describes three conventional stages of the sex act: the desire for it ("lust"), intercourseitself ("lust in action"), and the post-coital response. Until the very last line, Shakespeare conceals the gender heis describing. The word "men" comes as a shock. This dark poem does not misogynistically attack women aswhores, but what men do to and make of their sexual prey, whether it be male or female. Nothing in the poemexplicitly associates sexual desire or intercourse with women.Before intercourse, the instigating man is, by implication, a violent, crazed, irrational liar, single-mindedly intenton the hunt for a quarry. Desire for intercourse also reduces the victim here to an animal pursued and killed forfood. Shakespeare's phrase, "Past reason hunted" (6), puts the sex act into a context of killing and being eaten.The "murd'rous" act itself, as anticipated and executed, is "Enjoy'd" (5) as "A bliss" and "a joy" (11-12): it is"heaven" (14), the wished-for end of religious belief. For this reason, the consummation, the desire as enacted,requires an "expense of spirit" of the man. The word "spirit," in medical literature of the time, denotes a lifeforceassociated with the brain, the liver (the home of sexual desire), and the blood. Ejaculation expends it. Allthe same, "spirits" are also souls, the non-physical parts of a human being that the Renaissance believed went onto survive death and to be held responsible at the Last Judgment for the body's sins, which include lechery, thatis, lust pursued inside and outside marriage for purposes other than procreation. Last, the aftermath of sex leadsthe man to despise and hate the act, both physically and spiritually. The hunter becomes the hunted whenShakespeare likens the pleasure to "a swallow'd bait" (7) that physically captures, kills, and leads the man off tobe devoured. Spiritually, the man ends up in "hell," a word used to name God's prison for the eternally punishedand, obscenely, to denote the hole into which the penis (euphemistically "the devil") is thrust. Shakespeare fusesthe physical and spiritual agonies of rutting not only in the poem's last word but in its first line. The "waste ofshame" in which the man spends his "spirit" puns on "waste," useless squandering of something without gain,and on "waist," the middle of the human body.Rhythmically, the sonnet accentuates the rocking, two-beat motion of intercourse by using a caesura-like"pause" in the middle of all lines. Sometimes this pause is a pyrrhic metrical foot (two unaccented syllables),found mid-way through lines 1-2, 6-7, and 9-10, and other times is a conjunction, splitting lines 2, 5-6, and 9-10in two. Commas or syntactical breaks in fact divide every line in the sonnet into two halves. Perhaps moreimportant, this sound effect underscores the sonnet's argument, the union of opposites in a paradox. "Bliss" and"heaven," obviously, lead to "woe" and "hell" (11, 14). Other poles also come together as one: "lust in action"and "lust" before action (2), enjoying and despising (5), hunting for and taking or having (6, 8, 10), pursuit andpossession (9), proof and being proved (11), before and behind (12), and knowing and not knowing (13).Shakespeare pens a didactic poem that warns men to "shun" sex, pursued single-mindedly as sex, because itvictimizes the pleasure-seekers. Things appear what they are not in sonnet 129. He stimulates the emotions thesonnet describes by recreating them in the dominant poetic rhythm. He brings to bear various rhetorical figuresof speech, ones he would have learned in grammar school by studying Latin authors, that variously balancerepeated grammatical structures and words so as to imitate the relentless, pulsing intensity of the sex act.One of Shakespeare's poetic tours-de-force, sonnet 129 manages to be sexually explicit without using obscenewords or describing coition. Modern poets like Karl Jay Shapiro, who write for a society without a commonreligious bond, need a different strategy. Consider how his "Adult Bookstore" translates the obsessions depictedby sonnet 129 for a different audience.

John Donne (1572-1631)Holy Sonnets: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree1If poisonous minerals, and if that tree2Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,3If lecherous goats, if serpents envious4Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?5Why should intent or reason, born in me,6Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?7And mercy being easy, and glorious8To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?9But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,10O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood11And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,12And drown in it my sins' black memory.13That thou remember them, some claim as debt;14I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.Notes1] The problem of the order and date of the nineteen poems called the "Holy Sonnets'' is very complicated. They have usually beennumbered in sequence, but the traditional order has been convincingly questioned by Dame Helen Gardner in her edition of Donne'sDivine Poems and is here not indicated. The first two in this selection were first published in 1635, the next five in 1633, the final two,entirely unconnected, not until 1894 and 1899 respectively. Most of the sonnets were probably written about 1609, but "Since she whomI lov'd" was written after the death of Donne's wife in 1617, and "Show me dear Christ" perhaps even later.

John Donne (1572-1631)Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God1Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you2As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;3That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend4Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.5I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,6Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;7Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,8But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.9Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,10But am betroth'd unto your enemy;11Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,12Take me to you, imprison me, for I,13Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,14Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne (1572-1631)The FleaMARK but this flea, and mark in this,How little that which thou deniest me is ;It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.Thou know'st that this cannot be saidA sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;Yet this enjoys before it woo,And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;And this, alas ! is more than we would do.O stay, three lives in one flea spare,Where we almost, yea, more than married are.This flea is you and I, and thisOur marriage bed, and marriage temple is.Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.Though use make you apt to kill me,Let not to that self-murder added be,And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.Cruel and sudden, hast thou sincePurpled thy nail in blood of innocence?Wherein could this flea guilty be,Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thouFind'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne (1572-1631)The Broken HeartHe is stark mad, whoever says,That he hath been in love an hour,Yet not that love so soon decays,But that it can ten in less space devour ;Who will believe me, if I swearThat I have had the plague a year?Who would not laugh at me, if I should sayI saw a flash of powder burn a day?Ah, what a trifle is a heart,If once into love's hands it come !All other griefs allow a partTo other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;They come to us, but us love draws ;He swallows us and never chaws ;By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.If 'twere not so, what did becomeOf my heart when I first saw thee?I brought a heart into the room,But from the room I carried none with me.If it had gone to thee, I knowMine would have taught thine heart to showMore pity unto me ; but Love, alas !At one first blow did shiver it as glass.Yet nothing can to nothing fall,Nor any place be empty quite ;Therefore I think my breast hath allThose pieces still, though they be not unite ;And now, as broken glasses showA hundred lesser faces, soMy rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,But after one such love, can love no more.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)Volpone: Come my Celia, let us prove1Come my Celia, let us prove,2While we may, the sports of love.3Time will not be ours for ever:4He at length our good will sever.5Spend not then his gifts in vain;6Suns that set may rise again,7But if once we lose this light8'Tis, with us, perpetual night.9Why should we defer our joys?10Fame and rumour are but toys.11Cannot we delude the eyes12Of a few poor household spies?13Or his easier ears beguile,14So removed by our wile?15'Tis no sin love's fruit to steal,16But the sweet theft to reveal;17To be taken, to be seen,18These have crimes accounted been.Notes1] From Volpone, one of Jonson's greatest comedies, first produced in 1605 and printed in 1607. The song occurs in III, vii, 166-83,where Volpone is wooing Celia impudently but in vain. It was inspired by Catullus, V, and in turn inspired Herrick.

Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637)Still to Be NeatStill to be neat, still to be dressed,As you were going to a feast;Still to be powdered, still perfumed;Lady, it is to be presumed,Though art's hid causes are not found,All is not sweet, all is not sound.Give me a look, give me a faceThat makes simplicity a grace;Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;Such sweet neglect more taketh meThan all th' adulteries of art.They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.(Clerimont's song-- from "The Silent Woman," Act I, Scene i.)

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)Epigrams: On my First Son1Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;2My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.3Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,4Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.5O, could I lose all father now! For why6Will man lament the state he should envy?7To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,8And if no other misery, yet age?9Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie10Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."11For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,12As what he loves may never like too much.Notes1] The boy died of the plague in 1603, the same plague which delayed the coronation ceremonies of James I.child of my right hand: i.e., the Hebrew Benjamin, which meant "fortunate" or "dexterous.''3] lent: i.e., as a gift from heaven.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES.WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flowsThat liquefaction of her clothes.Next, when I cast mine eyes and seeThat brave vibration each way free ;O how that glittering taketh me !Robert Herrick (1591-1674)DELIGHT IN DISORDER.A SWEET disorder in the dressKindles in clothes a wantonness :A lawn about the shoulders thrownInto a fine distraction :An erring lace which here and thereEnthrals the crimson stomacher :A cuff neglectful, and therebyRibbons to flow confusedly :A winning wave (deserving note)In the tempestuous petticoat :A careless shoe-string, in whose tieI see a wild civility :Do more bewitch me than when artIs too precise in every part.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME.GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,Old time is still a-flying :And this same flower that smiles to-dayTo-morrow will be dying.The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,The higher he's a-getting,The sooner will his race be run,And nearer he's to setting.That age is best which is the first,When youth and blood are warmer ;But being spent, the worse, and worstTimes still succeed the former.Then be not coy, but use your time,And while ye may go marry :For having lost but once your primeYou may for ever tarry.

John Milton (1608-1674)On TimeFly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,Which is no more than what is false and vain,And merely mortal dross;So little is our loss,So little is thy gain.For when as each thing bad thou hast intombed,And last of all thy greedy self consumed,Then long Eternity shall greet our blissWith an individual kiss,And Joy shall overtake us as a flood;When every thing that is sincerely goodAnd perfectly divine,With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shineAbout the supreme throneOf Him, t' whose happy-making sight aloneWhen once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb,Then, all this earthly grossness quit,Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit,Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)To his Coy Mistress1Had we but world enough, and time,2This coyness, lady, were no crime.3We would sit down and think which way4To walk, and pass our long love's day;5Thou by the Indian Ganges' side6Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide7Of Humber would complain. I would8Love you ten years before the Flood;9And you should, if you please, refuse10Till the conversion of the Jews.11My vegetable love should grow12Vaster than empires, and more slow.13An hundred years should go to praise14Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;15Two hundred to adore each breast,16But thirty thousand to the rest;17An age at least to every part,18And the last age should show your heart.19For, lady, you deserve this state,20Nor would I love at lower rate.21 But at my back I always hear22Time's winged chariot hurrying near;23And yonder all before us lie24Deserts of vast eternity.25Thy beauty shall no more be found,26Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound27My echoing song; then worms shall try28That long preserv'd virginity,29And your quaint honour turn to dust,30And into ashes all my lust.31The grave's a fine and private place,32But none I think do there embrace.33 Now therefore, while the youthful hue34Sits on thy skin like morning dew,35And while thy willing soul transpires36At every pore with instant fires,37Now let us sport us while we may;38And now, like am'rous birds of prey,39Rather at once our time devour,40Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.41Let us roll all our strength, and all42Our sweetness, up into one ball;43And tear our pleasures with rough strife44Thorough the iron gates of life.45Thus, though we cannot make our sun46Stand still, yet we will make him run.Notes7] Humber: Hull, where Marvell lived as a boy, and which he represented as an M.P. fornearly twenty years from 1659, is on the river Humber.10] The conversion of the Jews was to take place just before the end of the world.11] vegetable love: that of his "vegetable" soul.29] quaint: elegant, artificial.34] dew. The original reading is "glew," which has been justified as meaning "glow."36] instant: immediate and urgent.40] slow-chapp'd: i.e., with slow-devouring jaws.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)On A Drop Of DewSee how the orient dew,Shed from the bosom of the mornInto the blowing roses,Yet careless of its mansion new,For the clear region where 'twas bornRound in its self incloses,And in its little globe's extentFrames as it can its native element.How it the purple flow'r does slight,Scarce touching where it lies,But gazing back upon the skies,Shines with a mournful light;Like its own tear,Because so long divided from the sphere.Restless it rolls and unsecure,Trembling lest it grow impure,Till the warm sun pity its pain,And to the skies exhale it back again.So the soul, that drop, that rayOf the clear fountain of eternal day,Could it within the human flow'r be seen,Rememb'ring still its former height,Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;And, recollecting its own light,Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, expressThe greater Heaven in an Heaven less.In how coy a figure woundEvery way it turns away:So the world excluding round,Yet receiving in the day.Dark beneath, but bright above:Here disdaining, there in love.How loose and easy hence to go:How girt and ready to ascend.Moving but on a point below,It all about does upwards bend.Such did the manna's sacred dew distil;White and intire, though congealed and chill.Congealed on earth: but does, dissolving, runInto the glories of th' Almighty Sun.

Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)To my Dear and Loving Husband1If ever two were one, then surely we.2If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.3If ever wife was happy in a man,4Compare with me, ye women, if you can.5I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold6Or all the riches that the East doth hold.7My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,8Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.9Thy love is such I can no way repay.10The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.11Then while we live, in love let's so persever12That when we live no more, we may live ever.Notes1] we: Anne's husband was Simon Bradstreet (1603-97). They were married in England in 1628.6] the east: East Indies.11] persever: likely accented on the second syllable.

Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)The Author to her Book1Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,2Who after birth did'st by my side remain,3Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,4Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,5Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,6Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).7At thy return my blushing was not small,8My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.9I cast thee by as one unfit for light,10Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,11Yet being mine own, at length affection would12Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.13I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,14And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.15I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,16Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.17In better dress to trim thee was my mind,18But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find.19In this array, 'mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.20In Critics' hands, beware thou dost not come,21And take thy way where yet thou art not known.22If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none;23And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,24Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.Notes7] by friends: Rev. John Woodbridge, her brother-in-the-law (White xiii), took her manuscript to the printer without her knowledge.

Some possible pairings of poems or passages• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94 and Marvell’s "On A Drop of Dew"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12 and Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and Marvell’s "The Definition of Love"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 and Pope’s "Epistle III"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 or 55 and the closing lines of Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 27 or 28 and Keats’s "To Sleep"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 and Keats’s "When I have thoughts that I may cease to be"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 and Browning’s "Now"• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138 or 140 and Browning’s "Andrea del Sarto"• Marvell’s "On a Drop of Dew" and Pope’s "Eloisa to Abelard"• Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" and Pope’s "Epistle to Mrs. Teresa Blount"• Marvell’s "The Garden," stanzas 6-7, and Keats’s "Ode to Psyche," ll. 50-67• Marvell’s "Damon the Mower" and Keats’s "To Autumn"• Marvell’s "The Mower’s Song" and Browning’s "My Last Duchess"• Belinda at her dressing table in Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock," and Keats’s "Ode to Psyche"• Pope’s "Epistle to Arbuthnot" and Keats’s "Sleep and Poetry"• The tale of Sir Balaam in Pope’s "Epistle III" and Browning’s "The Bishop Orders HisTomb..."• The "rape" scene in Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock" and Browning’s "Porphyria’s Lover"• Keats’s "Ode to a Nightingale" and Browning’s "A Toccata of Galuppi"• Keats’s "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Browning’s "Fra Lippo Lippi"• Keats’s "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Again" and Browning’s "Names"• Keats’s "The Eve of St. Agnes" and Browning’s "Porphyria’s Lover"

Late 17 th , 18 th & 19 th Centuries:Neoclassicism & RomanticismDrydenPopeSwiftBlakeWordsworthKeatsShelleyBrowningBarrett BrowningPoeTennysonWhitmanRossettiHardyThe Restoration era is ushered in with the return of Charles II in 1660. It is marked by anti-Puritanismand Francophilia, a tendency which encouraged its classcism. Both the Restoration era and the 18thcentury can be thought of a Neo-Classical period. This reacted against Renaissance enthusiasm forman's potential (and against religious strife) and sought to impose reason, order, and a decent sense oflimits on man. In art this favored humanistic, didactic, formal art, with the merits of grace, unity,harmony, and proportion. Wit was praised rather than feeling. Nature was seen as a source of naturallaw, and liked best when it had been reduced to order. The French were admired more than earlyEnglish writers, and the heroic couplet was especially popular.The English "romantic" movement emphasized the rule of imagination over formal rules and merereality. Characteristics included: the cult of sensibility (real men cry tears of sympathy) andfashionable melancholy; belief in noble savages, peasants, and children; love of (untamed) Nature;medievalism; mysticism; individualism; rejection of neo-classical forms like the heroic couplet andefforts to make poetic diction closer to everyday speech; fascination with the grotesque; politicalrebelion (more in England); revival of earlier figures, especially Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton.

John Dryden (1631-1700)You charm'd me not with that fair face1You charm'd me not with that fair face2 Though it was all divine:3To be another's is the grace,4 That makes me wish you mine.5 The Gods and Fortune take their part6 Who like young monarchs fight;7And boldly dare invade that heart8 Which is another's right.9 First mad with hope we undertake10 To pull up every bar;11But once possess'd, we faintly make12 A dull defensive war.13 Now every friend is turn'd a foe14 In hope to get our store:15And passion makes us cowards grow,16Which made us brave before.Notes 1]From An Evening's Love, Act II, scene i.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)SOLITUDEHOW happy he, who free from careThe rage of courts, and noise of towns;Contented breaths his native air,In his own grounds.Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,Whose flocks supply him with attire,Whose trees in summer yield him shade,In winter fire.Blest! who can unconcern'dly findHours, days, and years slide swift away,In health of body, peace of mind,Quiet by day,Sound sleep by night; study and easeTogether mix'd; sweet recreation,And innocence, which most does please,With meditation.Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;Thus unlamented let me dye;Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lye.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURTI KNOW a thing that's most uncommon;(Envy, be silent and attend!)I know a reasonable woman,Handsome and witty, yet a friend.Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour;Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly;An equal mixture of good-humourAnd sensible soft melancholy.'Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?'Yes, she has one, I must aver:When all the world conspires to praise her,The woman's deaf, and does not hear.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)A Description of the Morning1Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach2Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.3Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,4And softly stole to discompose her own.5The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door6Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.7Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,8Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.9The youth with broomy stumps began to trace10The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.11The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;12Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep."13Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;14And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.15The turnkey now his flock returning sees,16Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.17The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;18And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.Notes1] The poem is introduced as follows: "the town has, this half age, been tormented with insects called easy writers .... Such jaunty scribblers are so justlylaughed at for their sonnets on Phillis and Chloris, and fantastical descriptions in 'em, that an ingenious kinsman of mine, of the family of the Staffs, Mr.Humphrey Wagstaff by name, has, to avoid their strain, run into a way perfectly new, and described things exactly as they happen: he never forms trees, ornymphs, or groves, where they are not, but makes the incidents just as they really appear. For an example of it: I stole out of his manuscript the followinglines: they are a description of the morning, but of the morning in town; nay, of the morning at this end of the town, where my kinsman at present lodges."9] broomy stumps: worn-out broom.9-10. to trace/The kennel-edge: to sweep down the gutter.14] brickdust Moll: painted prostitute.16] In return for privileges, jailers demanded fees from their prisoners.

William Blake (1757-1827)The Tyger1Tyger! Tyger! burning bright2In the forests of the night,3What immortal hand or eye4Could frame thy fearful symmetry?5In what distant deeps or skies6Burnt the fire of thine eyes?7On what wings dare he aspire?8What the hand dare seize the fire?9And what shoulder, and what art,10Could twist the sinews of thy heart,11And when thy heart began to beat,12What dread hand? and what dread feet?13What the hammer? what the chain?14In what furnace was thy brain?15What the anvil? what dread grasp16Dare its deadly terrors clasp?17When the stars threw down their spears,18And water'd heaven with their tears,19Did he smile his work to see?20Did he who made the Lamb make thee?21Tyger! Tyger! burning bright22In the forests of the night,23What immortal hand or eye,24Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?Notes8] seize the fire: a reference to the myth of Prometheus.17] stars: i.e., angels, fighting in the original war in heaven.

William Blake (1757-1827)London1I wander thro' each charter'd street,2Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,3And mark in every face I meet4Marks of weakness, marks of woe.5In every cry of every Man,6In every Infant's cry of fear,7In every voice, in every ban,8The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.9How the Chimney-sweeper's cry10Every black'ning Church appalls;11And the hapless Soldier's sigh12Runs in blood down Palace walls.13But most thro' midnight streets I hear14How the youthful Harlot's curse15Blasts the new born Infant's tear,16And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.Notes1] charter'd. Blake first wrote "dirty", then "cheating"; the word may be an ironic allusion to "Rule Britannia."8] mind-forg'd manacles. Blake's original version, "German forged links", perhaps reflects popular resentment at the presence of Hessianand other German mercenaries in the city.

William Blake (1757-1827)The Sick Rose1O Rose, thou art sick!2The invisible worm3That flies in the night,4In the howling storm,5Has found out thy bed6Of crimson joy:7And his dark secret love8Does thy life destroy.

1I was angry with my friend.William Blake (1757-1827)A Poison Tree2I told my wrath, my wrath did end.3I was angry with my foe.4I told it not, my wrath did grow;5And I water'd it in fears,6Night and morning with my tears;7And I sunned it with smiles,8And with soft deceitful wiles;9And it grew both day and night10Till it bore an apple bright,11And my foe beheld it shine,12And he knew that it was mine,13And into my garden stole14When the night had veil'd the pole.15In the morning glad I see16My foe outstretched beneath the tree.Notes14] the pole: the North Star.16] Blake's Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (from Genesis), by the eating of apples from which Eve and Adam fell and were cast by God out ofEden and punished with death. Here the speaker would seem to be God, not Satan, who tempted Eve to eat the fruit but did not plant the tree.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud1I wandered lonely as a cloud2That floats on high o'er vales and hills,3When all at once I saw a crowd,4A host, of golden daffodils;5Beside the lake, beneath the trees,6Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.7Continuous as the stars that shine8And twinkle on the milky way,9They stretched in never-ending line10Along the margin of a bay:11Ten thousand saw I at a glance,12Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.13The waves beside them danced; but they14Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:15A poet could not but be gay,16In such a jocund company:17I gazed--and gazed--but little thought18What wealth the show to me had brought:19For oft, when on my couch I lie20In vacant or in pensive mood,21They flash upon that inward eye22Which is the bliss of solitude;23And then my heart with pleasure fills,24And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US1The world is too much with us; late and soon,2Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:3Little we see in Nature that is ours;4We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!5This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;6The winds that will be howling at all hours,7And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;8For this, for everything, we are out of tune;9It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be10A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;11So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,12Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;13Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;14Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.Notes11-14] Cf. Spenser's Colin Clout's come Home againe, 283, "Yet seemed to be a goodly pleasant lea"; and line 245, "Triton, blowingloud his wreathed horne."

John Keats (1795-1821)To Autumn1Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,2 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;3Conspiring with him how to load and bless4 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;5To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,6 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;7 To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells8 With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,9And still more, later flowers for the bees,10Until they think warm days will never cease,11 For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.12Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?13 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find14Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,15 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;16Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,17 Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook18 Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:19And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep20 Steady thy laden head across a brook;21 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,22 Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.23Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?24 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--25While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,26 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;27Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn28 Among the river sallows, borne aloft29 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;30And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;31 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft32 The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;33 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.Notes1] The poem seems to have been just composed when Keats wrote to Reynolds from Winchester on September 22, 1819. He says: "How beautiful theseason is now--How fine the air--A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never lik'd stubble-fields so muchas now--Aye, better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow a stubble-plain looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm--This struckme so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it."28] sallows: willows.

John Keats (1795-1821)To Homer1Standing aloof in giant ignorance,2 Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,3As one who sits ashore and longs perchance4 To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.5So thou wast blind;--but then the veil was rent,6 For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,7And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,8 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;9Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,10 And precipices show untrodden green,11There is a budding morrow in midnight,12 There is a triple sight in blindness keen;13Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel14To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.Notes2] Cyclades: islands of the Ægean.4] dolphin-coral. This may be an allusion to the beautiful colouring of the dorado fish, popularly called the dolphin; cf. Childe Harold, IV, xxix.13-14] Homer viewed life as completely as did the goddess with the three names who, as Luna, Diana, and Hecate, ruled in Heaven, Earth, and Hell.

John Keats (1795-1821)Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art1Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--2 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night3And watching, with eternal lids apart,4 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,5The moving waters at their priestlike task6 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,7Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask8 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--9No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,10 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,11To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,12 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,13Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,14And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

John Keats (1795-1821)When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be1When I have fears that I may cease to be2 Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,3Before high-piled books, in charactery,4 Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;5When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,6 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,7And think that I may never live to trace8 Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;9And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,10 That I shall never look upon thee more,11Never have relish in the faery power12 Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore13Of the wide world I stand alone, and think14Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)Ode to the West WindI1O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,2Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead3Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,4Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,5Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,6Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed7The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,8Each like a corpse within its grave, until9Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow10Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill11(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)12With living hues and odours plain and hill:13Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;14Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!II15Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,16Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,17Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,18Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread19On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,20Like the bright hair uplifted from the head21Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge22Of the horizon to the zenith's height,23The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirgeNotes1] According to Shelley's note, "this poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a daywhen that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down theautumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder andlightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions" (188). Florence was the home of Dante Alighieri, creator of terza rima, the form of his DivineComedy. Zephyrus was the west wind, son of Astrœus and Aurora.4] The four colours of man. hectic red: the complexion of those suffering from consumption, tuberculosis.9] Thine azure sister of the spring: Latin ver, but not a formal mythological figure.10] clarion: piercing, war-like trumpet.14] Destroyer and preserver: Perhaps like the Hindu gods Siva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver, known to Shelley from EdwardMoor's Hindu Pantheon, introduction by Burton Feldman (London: J. Johnson by T. Bensley, 1810; reprinted New York: Garland, 1984)and the works of Sir William Jones (1746-1794).21] Maenad: a participant in the rites of Bacchus or Dionysus, Greek god of wine and fertility; a Bacchante.23] locks: cirrus clouds take their name from their likeness to curls of hair.

24Of the dying year, to which this closing night25Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,26Vaulted with all thy congregated might27Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere28Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!III29Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams30The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,31Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,32Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,33And saw in sleep old palaces and towers34Quivering within the wave's intenser day,35All overgrown with azure moss and flowers36So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou37For whose path the Atlantic's level powers38Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below39The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear40The sapless foliage of the ocean, know41Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,42And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!IV43If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;44If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;45A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share46The impulse of thy strength, only less free47Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even48I were as in my boyhood, and could be49The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,50As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed51Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven52As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.53Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!54I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!55A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd56One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.31] coil: encircling cables, or perhaps confused murmuring or noise.32-36] Having taken a boat trip from Naples west to the Bay of Baiae on December 8, 1818, Shelley wrote to T. L. Peacock about sailing over a sea "sotranslucent that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate weeds that pave theunequal bottom of the water," and about "passing the Bay of Baiae, and observing the ruins of its antique grandeur standing like rocks in the transparentsea under our boat" (Letters, II, 61). Baiae is the site of ruined underwater Roman villas. pumice: lava cooled into a porous, foam-like stone.39-42] "The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers,and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it" (188; Shelley'snote).

V57Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:58What if my leaves are falling like its own!59The tumult of thy mighty harmonies60Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,61Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,62My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!63Drive my dead thoughts over the universe64Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!65And, by the incantation of this verse,66Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth67Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!68Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth69The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,70If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?57] lyre: Aeolian or wind harp.69] trumpet of a prophecy: Shelley alludes to the opening of the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine in the Bible, 1.3-18:3 Blessed is hee that readeth, and they that heare the words of this prophesie, and keepe those things which are written therein: for thetime is at hand.4 Iohn to the seuen Churches in Asia, Grace be vnto you, & peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and fromthe seuen spirits which are before his throne:5 And from Iesus Christ, who is the faithful witnesse, and the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth: vnto himthat loued vs, and washed vs from our sinnes in his owne blood,6 And hath made vs Kings and Priests vnto God and his Father: to him be glory and dominion for euer and euer, Amen.7 Behold he commeth with clouds, and euery eye shal see him, and they also which pearced him: and all kinreds of the earth shall wailebecause of him: euen so. Amen.8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.9 I Iohn, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdome and patience of Iesus Christ, was in the Isle that iscalled Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimonie of Iesus Christ.10 I was in the spirit on the Lords day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,11 Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and what thou seest, write in a booke, and send it vnto the seuen Churches whichare in Asia, vnto Ephesus, and vnto Smyrna, and vnto Pergamos, and vnto Thyatira, and vnto Sardis, and Philadelphia, and vntoLaodicea.12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with mee. And being turned, I saw seuen golden Candlesticks,13 And in the midst of the seuen candlestickes, one like vnto the Sonne of man, clothed with a garment downe to the foot, and girt aboutthe paps with a golden girdle.14 His head, and his haires were white like wooll as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire,15 And his feet like vnto fine brasse, as if they burned in a furnace: and his voice as the sound of many waters.16 And hee had in his right hand seuen starres: and out of his mouth went a sharpe two edged sword: and his countenance was as theSunne shineth in his strength.17 And when I sawe him, I fell at his feete as dead: and hee laid his right hand vpon me, saying vnto mee, Feare not, I am the first, andthe last.18 I am hee that liueth, and was dead: and behold, I am aliue for euermore, Amen, and haue the keyes of hell and of death.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)Ozymandias1I met a traveller from an antique land,2Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone3Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,4Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,5And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,6Tell that its sculptor well those passions read7Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,8The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;9And on the pedestal these words appear:10My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,11Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!12Nothing beside remains. Round the decay13Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare14The lone and level sands stretch far away." –Notes1] Shelley evidently wrote this sonnet at Marlow in friendly competition with Horace Smith, whose own sonnet of the same name was published Feb. 1,1818, also in The Examiner, no. 527, p. 73:In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throwsThe only shadow that the Desart knows: --"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows"The wonders of my hand." -- The City's gone, --Nought but the Leg remaining to discloseThe site of this forgotten Babylon.We wonder, -- and some Hunter may expressWonder like ours, when thro' the wildernessWhere London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guessWhat powerful but unrecorded raceOnce dwelt in that annihilated place.5] lip Bod. Shelley MS e.4; lips 18196] Lines 6-8 pose some difficulty, but "survive" (7) must be a transitive verb whose object is "The hand" and "the heart" (8). The "passions" onOzymandias' face, that is, survive or live on after both hand and heart. "The hand that mocked them" seems to be the sculptor's hand, delineating thevainglory of his subject in "these lifeless things"; and "the heart that fed" must be Ozymandias' own, feeding on (perhaps) its own arrogance. KelvinEverest and Geoffrey Matthews suggest that line 8 ends with an ellipsis: "and the heart that fed [them]" (that is, those same passions that are the referent ofthe pronoun "them" governed by "mocked" (The Poems of Shelley, II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]: 311).9] these words appear: 1819; this legend clear Bodl. Shelley MS e.4.10] Ozymandias: Osymandias, Greek name for the Egyptian king Rameses II (1304-1237 BC). Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History (trans. C. H.Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 303 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I, 47), records the inscription on the pedestal of his statue(at the Ramesseum, on the other side of the Nile river from Luxor) as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and whereI lie, let him surpass one of my works."12] Nothing beside remains: 1819; No thing remains beside. Bodl. Shelley MS. e.4.

Ode to the West WindCommentary by Ian Lancashire(2002/9/9)In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley invokes Zephirus, the west wind, to free his "dead thoughts" and words, "as from anunextinguished hearth / Ashes and sparks" (63, 66-67), in order to prophesy a renaissance among humanity, "to quicken anew birth" (64). This ode, one of a few personal lyrics published with his great verse drama, "Prometheus Unbound,"identifies Shelley with his heroic, tormented Titan. By stealing fire from heaven, Prometheus enabled humanity to foundcivilization. In punishment, according to Hesiod's account, Zeus chained Prometheus on a mountain and gave him unendingtorment, as an eagle fed from his constantly restored liver. Shelley completed both his dramatic poem and "Ode to the WestWind" in autumn 1819 in Florence, home of the great Italian medieval poet, Dante. The autumn wind Shelley celebrates inthis ode came on him, standing in the Arno forest near Florence, just as he was finishing "Prometheus Unbound." Dante'sDivine Comedy had told an epic story of his ascent from Hell into Heaven to find his lost love Beatrice. Shelley's odeinvokes a like ascent from death to life for his own spark-like, potentially firy thoughts and words. Like Prometheus,Shelley hopes that his fire, a free-thinking, reformist philosophy, will enlighten humanity and liberate it from intellectualand moral imprisonment. He writes about his hopes for the future.A revolutionary, Shelley believed that poets exercise the same creative mental powers that make civilization itself. Theclose of his "Defence of Poetry" underlies the thought of "Ode to the West Wind":Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts uponthe present, the words which express what they understand not, the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what theyinspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.The trumpeting poetic imagination, inspired by sources -- spirits -- unknown to the poet himself, actually reverses time.Poets prophesy, not by consciously extrapolating from past to present, and from present to future, with instrumental reason,but by capitulating to the mind's intuition, by freeing the imagination. Poets influence what the future will bring byunknowingly reflecting or "mirroring" future's "shadows" on the present. For Shelley, a living entity or spirit, not amechanism, drives the world. By surrendering to the creative powers of the mind, the poet unites his spirit with the world'sspirit across time. The west wind, Zephirus, represents that animate universe in Shelley's ode.Shelley implores the West Wind to make him its "lyre" (57), that is, its wind-harp. "The Defence of Poetry" begins with thissame metaphor: Shelley writes that "Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions aredriven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Æolian lyre; which move it, by their motion, to everchangingmelody" (§7). This is not just a pretty figure of speech from nature. We now recognize that poetic inspirationitself arises from a "wild," "uncontrollable," and "tameless" source like the wind, buffeting the mind's unconscious. Longbefore cognitive psychology taught us this fact, Shelley clearly saw that no one could watch her or his own languageprocess as it worked. Like all procedural memories, it is recalled only in the doing. We are unconscious of its workings,what contributes both content and form, semantics and syntax, to our utterances. He writes that "the mind in creation is as afading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arisesfrom within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of ournatures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure" (§285). This epic metaphor goes beyond the action of thewind on the lyre, the world on the mind. The wind's tumultuous "mighty harmonies" (59) imprint their power and patternson the "leaves" they drive, both ones that fall from trees, and ones we call `pages,' the leaves on which poems are written.Inspiration gives the poet a melody, a sequence of simple notes, resembling the wind's "stream" (15), but his creative mindimposes a new harmony of this melody, by adding chords and by repeating and varying the main motifs. The humanimagination actively works with this "wind" to impose "harmony" on its melody. The lyre "accomodate[s] its chords to themotions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voiceto the sound of the lyre" (§8). In this way, the poet's mind and the inspiration it receives co-create the poem.In "Ode on the West Wind," the `melody' delivered to Shelley is unconsciously expressed in the poem's epic metaphor, andthe chords that his mind generates in response are, first, the repetitions and variations of that melody -- for example, thevariation of the "leaves" metaphor -- and secondly, the formal order: the sonnet sequence imposed on terza rima, as if thetradition of Western sonneteering were imposed on Dante's transcendental vision. That Shelley echoes the metaphormelody'spoints of comparison throughout "The Defence of Poetry" shows how deeply ingrained it was in his mind. ToShelley, metaphors like this, comparing a human being and the universe, characterize the prophetic powers of all poets.

Their conscious, rational mind, in routine deliberation, observes and describes, taking care not to impose on the thingsunder scrutiny anything from the observer, but comparisons, fusing different things, depart from observation. They imposeon experience something that the mind supplies or that is in turn supplied to it by inspiration. In "The Defence of Poetry,"Shelley explains that poets' "language is vitally metaphorical; that is it marks the before unapprehended relations of things"(§22). Shelley builds "Ode to the West Wind" on "unapprehended relations" between the poetic mind and the west wind.The experience in the Arno forest, presumably (why else would he have footnoted the incident?), awoke his mind to theserelations.If we believe that the unselfconscious mind is susceptible to the same chaotic forces as the weather, and if we trust thoseforces as fundamentally good, then Shelley's ode will ring true. Trusting instead in man-made categories like honour, fame,and friendship, Thomas Gray would have been bewildered by Shelley's faith. The country graveyard has spirits, to be sure,but they are ghosts of dead friends. No natural power inspires elegies or epitaphs. These writings reflect the traditionalorder by which melancholy, sentimental minds put order to nature. Gray quotes from many poets, as if asserting humanity'sstrength in numbers. Like Wordsworth's solitary reaper, Shelley stands alone, singing in a strange voice that inspires butperplexes traditional listeners. He cries out to a wind-storm, "Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit!" Eighteenth-century poetslike Pope would have laughed this audaciousness to scorn, but then they would never have had the courage to go out intothe storm and, like Shakespeare's Lear in the mad scene, shout down the elements.Even should we not empathize with Shelley, his ode has a good claim to being one of the very greatest works of art in theRomantic period. Its heroic grandeur attains a crescendo in the fifth and last part with a hope that English speakerseverywhere for nearly two centuries have committed to memory and still utter, often unaware of its source: "If Wintercomes, can Spring be far behind?" Annotating editors have looked in vain for signs that Shelley resuscitated old phrasesand other men's flowers in this ode. What he writes is his own. It emerges, not in Gray's often quoted end-stopped phrases,lines, and couplets, but in passionate, flowing sentences. The first part, all 14 lines, invokes the West Wind's attention inone magnificent sentence. Five lines in the first part, two of which come at the end of a stanza, enjamb with the followinglines. Few poets have fused such diverging poetic forms as terza rima, built on triplets with interwoven rhymes, and thesonnet, contrived with couplets, quatrains, sestets, and octaves. Yet even this compelling utterance, unifying so muchcomplexity in an onward rush, can be summarized and analyzed.The opening three stanzas invoke the West Wind (in order) as a driving force over land, in the sky, and under the ocean,and beg it to "hear" the poet (14, 28, 42). In the first stanza, the wind as "Destroyer and preserver" (14) drives "dead leaves"and "winged seeds" to the former's burial and the latter's spring rebirth. The second and third stanzas extend the leaf image.The sky's clouds in the second stanza are like "earth's decaying leaves" (17) and "Angels of rain and lightning" (18), aphrase that fuses the guardian and the killer. In the third stanza, the wind penetrates to the Atlantic's depths and causes thesea flowers and "oozy woods" to "despoil themselves" (40, 42), that is, to shed the "sapless foliage of the ocean," sealeaves.The forests implicit in the opening stanza, in this way, become "the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean" in thesecond, and "oozy woods" in the third. The last two stanzas shift from nature's forests to Shelley's. In the fourth stanza, heidentifies himself with the leaves of the first three stanzas: "dead leaf," "swift cloud," and "wave." If the wind can lift thesethings into flight, why can it not also lift Shelley "as a wave, a leaf, a cloud" (43-45, 53)? The fifth stanza completes themetaphor by identifying Shelley's "falling" and "withered" leaves (58, 64) as his "dead thoughts" and "words" (63, 67). Atlast Shelley -- in longing to be the West Wind's lyre -- becomes one with "the forest" (57). The last two stanzas also bringShelley's commands to the invoked West Wind to a climax. The fourth, transitional stanza converts the threefold command"hear" to "lift" (53), and the last multiplies the commands sixfold: "Make me thy lyre" (57), "Be thou, Spirit fierce, / MySpirit" and "Be thou me" (61-62), "Drive my dead thoughts" (63), "Scatter ... / Ashes and sparks" (66), and "Be ... / Thetrumpet of a prophecy" (68).Reading fine poems and listening attentively to classical music both give pleasure, but it comes for several reasons. Wecarry away a piece of music's theme or "melody," rehearse it silently, and recognize the piece from that brief tune. One ormore lines from a poem give a like pleasure. Some are first lines: young lovers recall Elizabeth Barrett's "How do I lovethee. Let me count the ways"; and older married couples her husband Robert Browning's "Grow old with me. / The best isyet to be" (from "Rabbi Ben Ezra"). Some are last lines: John Milton's "They also serve who only stand and wait," DorothyParker's "You might as well live," and Shelley's "If Winter comes ..." As often, lines from the middle of poems persist,detached: where doThe heights by great men reached and keptWere not attained by sudden flight,But they, while their companions slept,Were toiling upward in the night.

"Home is the sailor, home from sea," and "Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed" comefrom? (Longfellow's "The Ladder of St. Augustine," Stevenson's "Requium," and Henley's "Invictus.") Yet a pleasure justas keen comes from appreciating how a piece of music or a poem harmonizes its melodies. The longer we read a poem, themore perfected become its variations of those lines that live in our memory. "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?",in this way, perfects what came before.The West Wind is the breath of personified Autumn. When Shelley invokes this breath, "dirge" (21), and "voice" (41), hehas in mind a fellow traveller, a "comrade" (49) like himself, no less a human being for being a season of the year, no lessan individual than the "close bosom-friend" in Keats' "To Autumn." Two other figures recur to Shelley in the Arno forestthat day. The stormy cirrus clouds driven by the wind remind him of the "bright hair" and "locks" of "some fierce Mænad"(20-23). He imagines the wind waking a male and dreaming "blue Mediterranean" (29-30). Like Shelley the boy, theseminor fellow travellers help humanize Autumn and his speaking power. In the first section, Shelley characterizes him as "anenchanter" (3) and a charioteer (6) to make that personification vivid. Then, by repeatedly addressing the West Wind in thesecond person as "thou" and "thee," Shelley works towards achieving his purpose, his "sore need" (52). That would identifyhimself, not just with the leaves of the forest, the wind's victims, but as "One too like thee" (56), like Autumn, music maker,composer of "mighty harmonies." Shelley imagines himself first as Autumn's lyre but, made bolder by the moment, claimsthe composer's own voice with "Be thou me, impetuous one!" (62). He associates himself with Autumn, the "enchanter," inthe phrase, "by the incantation of this verse" (65). "Ode to the West Wind," in Shelley's mind, possesses the wind's owndriving power at its close.Shelley's overreaching is not quite done. The Autumn wind does not create, but only destroys and preserves. It drivesghosts and "Pestilence-stricken multitudes" (5), causes "Angels of rain and lightning" (18) to fall from heaven, releases"Black rain, and fire, and hail" (28), and brings fear to the oceans. It is not enough to be "a wave, a leaf, a cloud," at themercy of Autumn's means in the "dying year" (24). The last stanza disregards Autumn and its successor season, Winter, forthe last of the poem's characters, Autumn's "azure sister of the spring" (9). Shelley anticipates that spring will "blow / Herclarion" (8-10) for a good reason. At the most poignant moment of recognition of the poem, in the last two lines we allremember and do not know why, Spring's life-giving clarion becomes "The trumpet of a prophecy" Shelley determines toblow. Though "dead" and "withered," though reduced to scattered "Ashes," he will return, his "lips" blowing the trumpet,like the voice of the Spring. In shifting from clarion to trumpet, he brings the poem's harmonies to a climax. "Ode to theWest Wind" ends with faith in a poet's resurrection, not with a weather forecast.Bibliography• Anderson, Phillip B. "Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' and Hardy's 'The Darkling Thrush.'" Publications of theArkansas Philological Association 8.1 (Spring 1982): 10-14.• Blank, G. K. "Shelley's Wind of Influence." Philological Quarterly 64.4 (Fall 1985): 475-91.• Chernaik, Judith. The Lyrics of Shelley. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1972.• Duffy, Edward. "Where Shelley Wrote and What He Wrote For: The Example of 'The Ode to the West Wind.'"Studies in Romanticism 23.3 (Fall 1984): 351-77.• Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. "Lucretius, Shelley and 'Ode to the West Wind.'" Keats Shelley Review 13 (1999):134.• Leyda, Seraphia D. "Windows of Meaning in 'Ode to the West Wind.'" In Hall, Spencer, ed. Approaches toTeaching Shelley's Poetry. New York: Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer., 1990. 79-82.• Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Letters. Ed. Frederick L. Jones. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.• Wasserman, Earl R. Shelley: A Critical Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971.Wilcox, Stewart C. Imagery, ideas and design in Shelley's Ode to the west wind. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1950. PR 5422 O44 W5Erindale

Robert Browning (1812-1889)My Last DuchessFERRARA1That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,2Looking as if she were alive. I call3That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands4Worked busily a day, and there she stands.5Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said6"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read7Strangers like you that pictured countenance,8The depth and passion of its earnest glance,9But to myself they turned (since none puts by10The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)11And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,12How such a glance came there; so, not the first13Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not14Her husband's presence only, called that spot15Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps16Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps17Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint18Must never hope to reproduce the faint19Half-flush that dies along her throat"; such stuff20Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough21For calling up that spot of joy. She had22A heart . . . how shall I say? . . . too soon made glad,23Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er24She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.25Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,Notes1] First published in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842; given its present title in 1849 (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics).The emphasis in the title is on last, as the ending of the poem makes clear; the Duke is now negotiating for his next Duchess. Fra Pandolf (line 3) andClaus of Innsbruck (line 54) are artists of Browning's own invention. Title: emphasizing the word Last as the ending of the poem implies; the Duke,identified as "Ferrara" in the poem's speech prefix, is negotiating for his next Duchess. In 1842 the title was "Italy and France. I. -- Italy" (then the poemwas paired with "Count Gismond: Aix in Provence," which followed). Ferrara: most likely, Browning intended Alfonso II (1533-1598), fifth duke ofFerrara, in northern Italy, from 1559 to 1597, and the last member of the Este family. He married his first wife, 14-year-old Lucrezia, a daughter of theCosimo I de' Medici, in 1558 and three days later left her for a two-year period. She died, 17 years old, in what some thought suspicious circumstances.Alfonso contrived to meet his second to-be spouse, Barbara of Austria, in Innsbruck in July 1565. Nikolaus Mardruz, who took orders from Ferdinand II,count of Tyrol, led Barbara's entourage then. This source was discovered by Louis S. Friedland and published in "Ferrara and My Last Duchess," Studiesin Philology 33 (1936): 656-84.3] Frà Pandolf: a painter not recorded in history, a member of religious orders and so, on the surface of things, unlikely to have seduced the Duchess. Noknown painting has been linked to Browning's poem.6] by design: when put the query, "By what design?", Browning answered: "To have some occasion for telling the story, and illustrating part of it" (A.Allen Brockington, "Robert Browning's Answers to Questions concerning some of his Poems," Cornhill Magazine [March 1914]: 316).13] you: presumably Browning had in mind Nikolaus Mardruz.16] mantle: loose cloak without sleeves.22] When questioned, "Was she in fact shallow and easily and equally well pleased with any favour or did the Duke so describe her as a supercilious coverto real and well justified jealousy?" Browning answered: "As an excuse -- mainly to himself -- for taking revenge on one who had unwittingly woundedhis absurdly pretentious vanity, by failing to recognise his superiority in even the most trifling matters" (Brockington).25] My favour: a love-gift such as a ribbon.

26The dropping of the daylight in the West,27The bough of cherries some officious fool28Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule29She rode with round the terrace--all and each30Would draw from her alike the approving speech,31Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good; but thanked32Somehow . . . I know not how . . . as if she ranked33My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name34With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame35This sort of trifling? Even had you skill36In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will37Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this38Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,39Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let40Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set41Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,42--E'en then would be some stooping; and I chuse43Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,44Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without45Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;46Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands47As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet48The company below, then. I repeat,49The Count your Master's known munificence50Is ample warrant that no just pretence51Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;52Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed53At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go54Together down, Sir! Notice Neptune, though,55Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,56Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.30] approving: "forward" in 1842.33] a nine-hundred-years-old name: Lucruzia's family, the Medici, had their recent origin in merchants, but the Este family went back 650 years(Complete Works, III [1971]: 372).36] to make: "could make" in 1842.39] exceed the mark: overshoot the target (from archery).40] lessoned: put to school, instructed; possibly punning on "lessened," `diminished.'45] I gave commands: when asked what this meant, Browning said first, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death," but thencontinued, "with a characteristic dash of expression, and as if the thought had just started in his mind, `Or he might have had her shut up in a convent"'(Hiram Corson, An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry, 3rd edn. [Boston, 1899]: viii).49] The Count: presumably Ferdinand II, count of Tyrol, who led the negotiations for the marriage of Alfonso II and Barbara of Austria.54] Neptune: the Roman god of the sea, whose chariot is often shown pulled by sea-horses.56] Claus of Innsbruck: a painter not recorded historically, from an Italian city, renowned for its sculpture, that Browning visited in 1838.

Robert Browning (1812-1889)Meeting at NightI1The grey sea and the long black land;2And the yellow half-moon large and low;3And the startled little waves that leap4In fiery ringlets from their sleep,5As I gain the cove with pushing prow,6And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.II7Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;8Three fields to cross till a farm appears;9A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch10And blue spurt of a lighted match,11And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,12Than the two hearts beating each to each!Notes1] First published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845, as "I Night, II Morning," and given the present titles in 1849.Him (line 3 of Parting) refers to the sun.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)Sonnets from the Portuguese 14: If Thou1If thou must love me, let it be for nought2Except for love's sake only. Do not say3`I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way4Of speaking gently, ... for a trick of thought5That falls in well with mine, and certes brought6A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--7For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may8Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,9May be unwrought so. Neither love me for10Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--11A creature might forget to weep, who bore12Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!13But love me for love's sake, that evermore14Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Commentary by Ian Lancashire(2002/9/9)We always drop unprepared into a Browning dramatic monologue, into several lives about which we know nothing.Soliloquies or speeches in a play have a context that orients the audience. Browning's readers have only a title and, in "MyLast Duchess," a speech prefix, "Ferrara." Yet these are transfixing clues to a drama that we observe, helplessly, unable tospeak or to act, as if we turned on a radio and, having selected a frequency, overhear a very private conversation, already inprocess and, as we may come very gradually to appreciate, about a murder and the maybe-killer's search for the next victim.Readers familiar with Browning's writing and sensitive to nuance perceive the speaker's pride and cold-bloodedness. Manymiss the point and are astonished. "You say what? there's nothing in the poem about him killing her! where do you findthat?" A century and more ago, when Browning still lived, readers presented him with questions about this poem. Heanswered them cautiously, almost as if he had not written the poem but was seeing it himself, attentively, after a very longtime and was trying to understand what had happened.Thanks to Louis S. Friedland, a critic who published an article on "My Last Duchess" in 1936, we know something abouthow young Browning found the story. Fascinated with the Renaissance period, he visited Italy in 1838 and clearly had doneconsiderable reading about its history. He must have come across a biography of Alfonso II (1533-1598), fifth duke ofFerrara, who married Lucrezia, the 14-year-old daughter of the upstart merchant princes, the Medici, in 1558. Three daysafter the wedding, Alfonso left her -- for two years. She died barely 17 years old, and people talked, and four years later inInnsbruck, Alfonso began negotiating for a new wife with a servant of the then count of Tyrol, one Nikolaus Mardruz. Thepoem's duke of Ferrara, his last duchess, the "Count" with whose servant (Mardruz) Ferrara is here discussing re-marriageand a dowry, and the new "fair daughter" are historical, but the interpretation of what actually took place among them isBrowning's own. He first published the poem in 1842, four years after his visit to Italy. The painter Frà Pandolf and thesculptor Claus of Innsbruck are fictitious, as far as we know, but Browning must have meant his readers to associate thepoem with these shadowy historical figures because he changed the title in 1849, from "Italy and France. I. -- Italy." to ...what we see today.The title evidently refers to a wall painting that Ferrara reveals to someone yet unidentified in the first fourteen words of thepoem. "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall," he says. However a reader utters this line, it sounds odd. Stress"That's" and Ferrara reduces a woman, once his spouse, to something he casually points out, a thing on a wall. Emphasize"my" and Ferrara reveals his sense of owning her. Pause over "last" and we might infer that duchesses, to him, come insequence, like collectibles that, if necessary, having become obsolescent, are to be replaced. If "Duchess" gets the stress, heimplies -- or maybe we infer -- that he acquires, not just works of art, but persons; and that Duchesses are no different frompaintings. The line suggests self-satisfaction. Finding ourselves being given a tour of a grand home for the first time, by theowner himself, and being told, "That's my last wife painted on the wall," how would we react? We might think, "How oddhe didn't say her name. I wonder what happened ...", or at least we might wonder until he finished his sentence with"Looking as if she were alive." This clause, also sounding peculiar, tells us two things. The Duchess looks out at us, theviewers, directly from the painting; and her depiction there is life-like, that is, we might be looking at a living person ratherthan a work of art. Yet wouldn't Ferrara say "life-like" or "true to life," if that was simply what he meant? His choice ofwords may suggest that, while she, the Duchess herself (rather than her image in the painting), looks alive, she may bedead; and the phrase "last Duchess" echoes in our working memory. Do we know for sure? Does "she" mean the Duchessor her painting?Ferrara continues, cheerfully, describing the painting, not the Duchess (so possibly we are being silly): "I call / That piece awonder, now." The phrase "That piece" must mean "that portrait," surely, though there is something intangibly common,almost vulgar, in his expression. That sense of "piece," as "portrait," is archaic now and may have been so when Browningwrote the poem (OED "piece" sb. 17b). This context, a man speaking of pictures of women, connotes something quitedifferent, what the term has meant for centuries, and still means now, "Applied to a woman or girl. In recent use, mostlydepreciatory, of a woman or girl regarded as a sexual object" (OED sb. 9b). Is "That piece" a portrait or a sl-t, a b-tch, a c-nt? Ferrara's next remark keeps us off-balance. "Frà Pandolf's hands / Worked busily a day, and there she stands."Obviously the "piece" is something hand-made, a painting, a wondrous good one, not a person, not someone contemptible -- a relief; and yet Ferrara continues, "there she stands." The painting cannot stand because it is on the wall. Is he speakingabout the woman? Ferrara then invites his listener, standing beside him, to sit down "and look at her." As readers, Ferraraalso speaks to us, as if we too were there, because Browning, who as a lyric poet would address us directly, has disappearedbehind this character. We may want to sit down. Mid-way through line 5, Ferrara has not yet done with us. We have to lookat the Duchess, through his words, being just as silent as the "you" to whom Ferrara refers. We have to "read" (6) her face.

As "Strangers" (7), knowing nothing about this place and its people, we must be told (and Ferrara will explain) why henamed, "by design," the painter, giving him the honorific, "Frà" ('brother'), due a member of religious orders and a celibateman. The Duchess's look -- her "pictured countenance,/ The depth and passion of its earnest glance", and that "glance"(again) -- causes ignorant observers, if they dare (11), to look as if they would ask Ferrara, and only Ferrara, because (as hetells us pointedly) the portrait is curtained off, and only he can pull back the curtain to reveal it, just what elicited that"passion" in her. His listener does not ask this question, though he may look as if he would like to ask. He just sits where heis told to sit and hears what others, of his type, would sometimes want to ask (but in fact seldom do ask) and, more, hearswhat Ferrara would say in answer to that rare question. Was she looking at a lover, at sometime who desired her? That isone question her look suggests, but of course that is impossible, for Frà Pandolf, a celibate religious, could never bring forththat "passion." No, her look did not rise, Ferrara implies, from sexual passion, but from a more general emotion. "Sir, 't wasnot / Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek." If "presence" meant just "the state ofbeing in the same place", it would be redundant here. Ferrara uses the term to allude to the importance of his decision to bewith her, the stateliness and majesty that a duke confers, as a gift, on anyone by just turning up; and add to that, possibly,the way he, as her sexual partner, ought to arouse her, nature being what it is, to colour in this way.Yet any "courtesy," Ferrara asserts, any court compliment owing to the Duchess merely by virtue of her position, arousedthat look, that "spot of joy," that "blush" (31). Frà Pandolf, for example, might have observed that the Duchess should shifther mantle up her arm somewhat to show more of her wrist, its skin being attractive; or he might have complained that hisart was not up to capturing the "faint / Half-flush that dies along" her throat. If it died in the throat, where did it live? FràPandolf alludes here to the "spot of joy," spreading downwards from her cheeks (15) as he was painting her. Herembarrassed, but not at all displeased, awareness that someone likes her reveals itself in a blush, a colouring in a smallpatch ("a spot") as blood flows to the face. That, Ferrara says, reveals a "joy" felt by the Duchess in herself, at being herself,at being looked at approvingly, no matter who -- whether a celibate painter, or her husband the duke -- did the looking.Now, standing before her portrait, where she stands, by the side of a listener made to sit, Ferrara obsessively reviews thereasons why that joy was "a spot," a contaminant that should not have been on his last Duchess' cheek. The more he talks,the more his contempt and self-justifying anger show, and the more he endears the Duchess to us. Unable to recognize"courtesy" as insincere, she was made happy by it, in fact, took joy in "whate'er /She looked on, and her looks wenteverywhere." A sprig of flowers from the duke for her bosom (25) and his ancestral name itself (33) meant joy to her, noless than a sunset, a courtier's gift of some cherries from the tree, and the white mule whom she rode "round the terrace"(29). She smiled on him, whenever he "passed" her (44), though sharing the same smile with anyone else. Her humility andgeneral good nature, however, disgusted (38) Ferrara for the way they seemed to trifle (35) with, or understate the value ofhis own gift, a place in a noble family 900 years old. Lacking the cunning to discriminate publicly, to flatter Ferrara, shealso could not detect his outrage; and he said nothing to her about what he felt. She wore her feelings openly, in her face,but to the standing Duke any outward expression of his concern would have meant "stooping" (34, 43), that is, loweringhimself to her level. He attributes this silence to his lack of "skill / In speech", an excuse that the poem itself disproves.When he describes her as missing or exceeding the "mark" (38-39), Ferrara develops his metaphor from archery, as if shewas one of his soldiers, competing in a competition for prizes (his name), rather than a Duchess who was herself the prize."This grew; I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands / As if alive." This elliptical chain offour curt, bleak sentences brings Ferrara back to where he started. If the Duchess smiled everywhere, could her smiles bestopped by anything short of death by execution? What Ferrara's commands were, he does not say, but "As if alive", thesecond time he uses the phrase, has a much more ominous sound. At the beginning, Ferrara could indeed be speakingmainly about the "life-like" portrait, but as his anger grew, he shifted to the Duchess herself. She cannot be "life-like." Evenhad he just divorced her and put her in a convent, as Browning thought possible late in his life -- as if the poem somehowlived independent from him -- Ferrara killed the joy that defined the "depth and passion" of her being. He finally controlledbefore whom she could "blush." He alone draws back the curtain on the portrait.Then Ferrara invites his listener and us to rise from being seated and "meet / The company below" (47-48). Whennegotiating with the listener's master the Count for a dowry, Ferrara "stoops." He not only lowers himself to the level of amere count but generously offers to "go / Together down" with the listener, a servant, side by side, instead of following himand so maintaining symbolically a duke's superior level and rank. For all his obsession with his noble lineage, Ferrarabargains with it openly.Will Ferrara "repeat" (48) in marriage as he does in his speech? He claims the Count's "fair daughter's self" is his "object."Will she too, an objective achieved, become a thing, found on a wall like his last Duchess? Ferrara hints at his intentions bypointing out a second work of art, this time a sculpture, as he reaches the staircase. Neptune, the sea-god, is "Taming a seahorse"(55), as Ferrara tamed his last Duchess.

In this poem Browning develops an idiolect for Ferrara. Unlike poets like Gray and Keats, Browning does not write ashimself, for example, by echoing the work of other poets, because to do so would be untrue to the Duke's character. Ferrarabetrays his obsessions by nervous mannerisms. He repeats words associated with the Duchess: the phrases `as if ... alive"(2, 47), `there she stands' (4, 46), `Will 't please you' (5, 47), and `called/calling ... that spot of joy' (14-15, 21), `look,'variously inflected (2, 5, 24), `glance' (8, 12), `thanked' (31), `gift' (33-34), `stoop' (34, 42-43), `smile' (43, 45-46), and`pass' (44). These tics define his idiolect but also his mind, circling back to the same topic again and again. He takes pridein saying, "I repeat" (48). He also obsesses about his height, relative to others. He stands because the Duchess stands on thewall, and he requires his listener to sit, to rise, and to walk downstairs with him side-by-side. He abhors stooping becausehe would lose face. Last, Ferrara needs to control the eyes of others. He curtains off the Duchess' portrait to prevent herfrom looking "everywhere." He tells his listener to look at her and to "Notice Neptune."

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)To Helen1Helen, thy beauty is to me2 Like those Nicéan barks of yore,3That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,4 The weary, way-worn wanderer bore5 To his own native shore.6On desperate seas long wont to roam,7 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,8Thy Naiad airs have brought me home9 To the glory that was Greece,10 And the grandeur that was Rome.11Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche12 How statue-like I see thee stand,13The agate lamp within thy hand!14 Ah, Psyche, from the regions which15 Are Holy-Land!Notes1] Helen: Poe was thinking of the mother of his school friend Robert Stanard, Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard of Richmond, Mass. (CollectedWorks of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969], I, 164).2] Nicéan: of Nicaea, a city of the Byzantine empire (within present-day Turkey)8] Naiad: classical nymph of lake or stream14] Psyche: a Greek word meaning "soul" and the name of Cupid's spouseEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

A Dream within a Dream1Take this kiss upon the brow!2And, in parting from you now,3Thus much let me avow--4You are not wrong, who deem5That my days have been a dream;6Yet if hope has flown away7In a night, or in a day,8In a vision, or in none,9Is it therefore the less gone?10All that we see or seem11Is but a dream within a dream.12I stand amid the roar13Of a surf-tormented shore,14And I hold within my hand15Grains of the golden sand--16How few! yet how they creep17Through my fingers to the deep,18While I weep--while I weep!19O God! can I not grasp20Them with a tighter clasp?21O God! can I not save22One from the pitiless wave?23Is all that we see or seem24But a dream within a dream?Notes1] Thomas Ollive Mabbott finds Poe's title "in Graham's for October 1848, as the title of a sentimental story by C. A. Washburn whichends, `It was but a dream within a dream'" (Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1969]: I, 451).

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)Ulysses1It little profits that an idle king,2By this still hearth, among these barren crags,3Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole4Unequal laws unto a savage race,5That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.6I cannot rest from travel: I will drink7Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd8Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those9That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when10Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades11Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;12For always roaming with a hungry heart13Much have I seen and known; cities of men14And manners, climates, councils, governments,15Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;16And drunk delight of battle with my peers,17Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.18I am a part of all that I have met;19Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'20Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades21For ever and forever when I move.22How dull it is to pause, to make an end,23To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!24As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life25Were all too little, and of one to me26Little remains: but every hour is saved27From that eternal silence, something more,28A bringer of new things; and vile it were29For some three suns to store and hoard myself,30And this gray spirit yearning in desire31To follow knowledge like a sinking star,32Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.Notes1] "Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhapsmore simply than anything in In Memoriam" (Tennyson). Based on a passage in Dante's Inferno, canto XXVI. Hallam had drawn Tennyson to a study ofDante. Tennyson exalts his hero's eternally restless aspiration, whereas Dante condemned his curiosity and presumption. Both poets recalled Odyssey, XI,100-37, where the ghost foretold Ulysses' fortune.10] Rainy Hyades: a group of stars which rise with the sun in spring at the rainy season.

33 This is my son, mine own Telemachus,34To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--35Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil36This labour, by slow prudence to make mild37A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees38Subdue them to the useful and the good.39Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere40Of common duties, decent not to fail41In offices of tenderness, and pay42Meet adoration to my household gods,43When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.44 There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:45There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,46Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--47That ever with a frolic welcome took48The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed49Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;50Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;51Death closes all: but something ere the end,52Some work of noble note, may yet be done,53Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.54The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:55The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep56Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,57'T is not too late to seek a newer world.58Push off, and sitting well in order smite59The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds60To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths61Of all the western stars, until I die.62It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:63It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,64And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.65Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'66We are not now that strength which in old days67Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;68One equal temper of heroic hearts,69Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will70To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.34] the isle: Ithaca, of which Ulysses was king.60-61] the baths: the place where the stars seem to plunge into the ocean.62] wash us down: Homer imagined ocean was as a river encompassing the earth, on the west plunging down a chasm where was the entrance of Hades.63] the Happy Isles: the islands of the blessed, supposed to lie to the west of the Pillars of Hercules, i.e., in the Atlantic.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer1When I heard the learn'd astronomer,2When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,3When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,4When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause inthelecture-room,5How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,6Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,7In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,8Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)O Captain! My Captain!1O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,2The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,3The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,4While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;5 But O heart! heart! heart!6 O the bleeding drops of red,7Where on the deck my Captain lies,8 Fallen cold and dead.9O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;10Rise up -- for you the flag is flung -- for you the bugle trills,11For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores a-crowding,12For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;13 Here Captain! dear father!14 This arm beneath your head!15It is some dream that on the deck,16 You've fallen cold and dead.17My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,18My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,19The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,20From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;21 Exult O shores, and ring O bells!22 But I with mournful tread,23Walk the deck my Captain lies,24 Fallen cold and dead.1] President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated April 14, 1865, in the Ford Theatre, Washington, D.C.

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)In an Artist's StudioOne face looks out from all his canvases,One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:We found her hidden just behind those screens,That mirror gave back all her loveliness.A queen in opal or in ruby dress,A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,A saint, an angel -- every canvas meansThe same one meaning, neither more nor less.He feeds upon her face by day and night,And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)NEUTRAL TONESWE 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 roveOver 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 thingAlive enough to have strength to die;And a grin of bitterness swept therebyLike an ominous bird a-wing….Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,And wrings with wrong, have shaped to meYour face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,And a pond edged with grayish leaves.