诗歌欣赏英文教程

Part one

What is Poetry

POETRY might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensively than does ordinary language.

POETRY is a kind of saying. A in addition to B a and b

POETRY is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose. It may use conde nsed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader‘s or listener‘s mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association and the musical qualities of the language used. Because of its nature of emphasizing linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is notoriously difficulty to translate from one language into another.

The Eagle

He claps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809--1892)

Red wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

William Carlos Williams (1883---1963)

Dust of Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost (1874--1963)

The Careful Angler

The careful angler chose his nook

At morning by the lilied brook,

And all the noon his rod he plied

By that romantic riverside.

Soon as the evening hours decline

Tranquilly he‘ll return to dine,

And, breathing forth a pious wish,

Will cram his belly with full of fish.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850--1849)

There is no Frigate like a Book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any courser like a page

Of prancing poetry:

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears the human soul!

Emily Dickinson (1830--1886)

Part two

Characteristics of poetry

Poetry as whole is concerned with all kinds of experience—beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary.

1. Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying most in the fewest number of words.

2. Poetry is a kind of multidimensional language.---intellectual, sensuous, emotional and imaginative.

A Man He Killed

Thomas Hardy (1840--1928)

Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because—

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That‘s clear enough；although

He thought he‘d ?list, perhaps,

Off-hand-like-just as I—

Was out of work—had sold his traps—No other reason why.

Yes, quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You‘d treat, if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown.

The Sick Rose

William Blake (1757--1827)

O Rose, that art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down as one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then take the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Has worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Meeting at night

Robert Browning (1812--1889)

The gray sea and the long black land:

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with the pushing prow,

And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields of cross till a farm appears;

Tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, thro‘s its joys and fears

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Parting at morning

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain‘s rim

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And (straight was) the need of world of men for me.

Part Three

How to experience poems

How to experience poems?

1. Read a poem more than once. (It‘s to be hung on the wall of one‘s mind )

2. Keep a dictionary by you and use it.

3. Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. (Poetry is written to be heard: its

meanings are conveyed through sound as well as through print. One should read a poem as slowly as possible. And you should lip-read it at least.)

4. Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying.(One should make the utmost effort to follow the thought continuously and to grasp the full implications and suggestions. And on the very first reading you should determine the SUBJECTs of the VERBs and the ANTECEDENTs of the PRONOUNS.)

5. Practice reading poems aloud. (a. Read it affectionately, but not affectedly. B. Reading too fast offers greater danger than reading slowly. Read it slowly enough so that each word is clear and distinct and so that the meaning has time to sink in. YOUR ORDINARY RATE OF READING WILL PROBABL Y BE TOO FAST. C. Read a poem so that the rhythmical pattern is felt but not exaggerated.)

6. Ask ourselves the following questions so as to aid us in the understanding of a poem.

a. Who is the speaker and what is the occasion?

b. What is the central purpose of the poem?

c. By what means is that purpose achieved?

d. What provokes the saying?

7. While reading a poem, always maintain the utmost mental alertness.

8. Try your utmost to accumulate your experience of life and the world, directly or indirectly, such as by reading, watching TV and seeing film.

William Shakespeare. 1564–1616

Sonnet XVIII.

―Shall I compare thee to a summer‘s day?‖

SHALL I |compare| thee to| a su |mmer‘s day?a

Thou art| more love|ly and |more tem|perate:b

Rough winds| do shake| the dar|ling buds| of May,a

And su|mmer‘s lease| hath all| too short| a date:b

Sometime| too hot| the eye| of hea|ven shines,c 5

And often is his gold complexion dimm‘d;d

And every fair from fair sometime declines,c

By chance, or nature‘s changing course untrimm‘d;d

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,e

Nor lose possession of that f air thou ow‘st,f10

Nor shall death brag thou wander‘st in his shade,e

When in eternal lines to time thou grow‘st;f

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,g

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.g

THOMAS GRAY

1716-1771

465

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o‘er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow‘r

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wand‘ring near her secret bow‘r,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree‘s shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould‘ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

The swallow twitt‘ring from the straw-built shed, The cock‘s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire‘s return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow‘d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of her aldry, the pomp of pow‘r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e‘er gave, Awaits alike th‘ inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault, If Memory o‘er their Tomb no Trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour‘s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flatt‘ry soothe the dull col d ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway‘d, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spo ils of time did ne‘er unroll; Chill Penury repress‘d their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom‘d caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton, here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country‘s blood. Th‘ applause of list‘ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o‘er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation‘s eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse‘s flame.

Far from the madding crowd‘s ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learn‘d to stray;

Along the cool sequester‘d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev‘n these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

W ith uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck‘d, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th‘ unletter‘d muse, The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e‘er resign‘d,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling‘ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

E‘en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

E‘en in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th‘ unhonour‘d dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,

?Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

?There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

?Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Mutt‘ring his wayward fancies he would rove,

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross‘d in hopeless love.

?One morn I miss‘d him on the custom‘d hill,

Along the heath and near his fav‘rite tree;

Another came, nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

?The n ext with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.‘

Part Four

Dramatic Situation

ballad

in literature, short, narrative poem usually relating a single, dramatic event. Two forms of the ballad are often distinguished—the folk ballad, dating from about the 12th cent., and the literary ballad, dating from the late 18th cent. 1

The Folk Ballad

The anonymous folk ballad (or popular ballad), was composed to be sung. It was passed along orally from singer to singer, from generation to generation, and from one region to another. During this progression a particular ballad would undergo many changes in both words and tune. The medieval or Elizabethan ballad that appears in print today is probably only one version of many variant forms. 2

Primarily based on an older legend or romance, this type of ballad is usually a short, simple song that tells a dramatic story through dialogue and action, briefly alluding to what has gone before and devoting little attention to depth of character, setting, or moral commentary. It uses simple language, an economy of words, dramatic contrasts, epithets, set phrases, and frequently a stock refrain. The familiar stanza form is four lines, with four or three stresses alternating and with the second and fourth lines rhyming. 3

More than 300 English and Scottish folk ballads, dating from the 12th to the 16th cent., are extant. Five major classes of the ballad can be distinguished—the historical, such as ―Otterburn‖ and ―The Bonny Earl o‘ Moray‖; the romantic, such as ―Barbara Allan‖ and ―The Douglas Tragedy‖; the supernatural, such as ―The Wife of Usher‘s Well‖; the nautical, such as ―Henry Martin‖; and the deeds of folk heroes, such as the Robin Hood cycle. 5

The Literary Ballad The literary ballad is a narrative poem created by a poet in imitation of the old anonymous folk ballad. Usually the literary ballad is more elaborate and complex; the poet may retain only some of the devices and conventions of the older verse narrative. Literary ballads were quite popular in England during the 19th cent. Examples of the form are found in Keats‘s ―La Belle Dame sans Merci,‖ Coleridge‘s ―The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,‖ and Oscar Wilde‘s ―The Ballad of Reading Gaol.‖ In music a ballad refers to a simple, often sentimental, song, not usually a folk song.

ELEGY

in Greek and Roman poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse (i.e., couplets consisting of a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line). The form dates back to 7th cent. B.C. in Greece and poets such as Archilochus, Mimnermus, and Tytraeus. Later taken up and developed in Roman poetry, it was widely used by Catullus, Ovid, and other Latin poets. In English poetry, since the 16th cent., the term elegy designates a reflective poem of lamentation or regret, with no set metrical form, generally of melancholy tone, often on death. The elegy can mourn one person, such as Walt Whitman‘s ―When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d‖ on the death of Abraham Lincoln, or it can mourn humanity in general, as in Thomas Gray‘s ―Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.‖ In the pastoral elegy, modeled on the Greek poets Theocritus and Bion, the subject and friends are depicted as nymphs and shepherds inhabiting a pastoral world in classical times. Famous pastoral elegies are Milton‘s ―Lycidas,‖ on Edward King; Shelley‘s ―Adonais,‖ on John Keats; and Matthew Arnold‘s ―Thyrsis,‖ on Arthur Hugh Clough.

HYMN

song of praise, devotion, or thanksgiving, especially of a religious character 1

L YRIC

in ancient Greece, a poem accompanied by a musical instrument, usually a lyre. Although the word is still often used to refer to the songlike quality in poetry, it is more generally used to refer to any short poem that expresses a personal emotion, be it a sonnet, ode, song, or elegy. In early Greek poetry a distinction was made between the choral song and the monody sung by an individual. The monody was developed by Sappho and Alcaeus in the 6th cent. B.C., the choral lyric by Pindar later. Latin lyrics were written in the 1st cent. B.C. by Catullus and Horace. In the Middle Ages the lyric form was common in Christian hymns, in folk songs, and in the songs of

troubadours. In the Renaissance and later, lyric poetry achieved its most finished form in the sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, Spencer, and Sidney and in the short poems of Ronsard, Ben Jonson, John Donne, Herrick, and Milton. The romantic poets emphasized the expression of personal emotion and wrote innumerable lyrics. Among the best are those of Robert Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Lamartine, Hugo, Goethe, Heine, and Leopardi. American lyric poets of the 19th cent. include Emerson, Whitman, Longfellow, Lanier, and Emily Dickinson. Among lyric poets of the 20th cent. are W. B. Yeats, A. E. Housman, Rainer Maria Rilke, Federico García Lorca, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens, Elinor Wylie, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Lowell.

ODE

elaborate and stately lyric poem of some length. The ode dates back to the Greek choral songs that were sung and danced at public events and celebrations. The Greek odes of Pindar, which were modeled on the choral odes of Greek drama, were poems of praise or glorification. They were arranged in stanzas patterned in sets of three—a strophe and an antistrophe, which had an identical metrical scheme, and an epode, which had a structure of its own. The ode of the Roman poets Horace and Catullus employed the simpler and more personal lyric form of Sappho, Anacreon, and Alcaeus (see lyric). The ode in later European literature was conditioned by both the Pindaric and the Horatian forms. During the Renaissance the ode was revived in Italy by Gabriello Chiabrera and in France most successfully by Ronsard. Ronsard imitated Pindar in odes on public events and Horace in more personal odes. Horatian odes also influenced the 17th-century English poets, especially Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and Andrew Marvell. Milton‘s ode ―On the Morning of Christ‘s Nativity‖ (1629) shows the influence of Pindar, as do the poems written for public occasions by his contemporary Abraham Cowley. However, the Cowleyan (or irregular) ode, originated by Cowley, disregarded the complicated metrical and stanzaic structure of the Pindaric form and employed freely altering stanzas and varying lines. In general the odes of the 19th-century romantic poets—Keats, Shelley, Coleridge—and of such later poets as Swinburne and Hopkins tend to be much freer in form and subject matter than the classical ode. Notable examples of the three kinds of ode are: Pindaric ode, e.g., Thomas Gray‘s ―The Progress of Poesy‖; Horatian ode, e.g., Keats‘s ―To Autumn‖; Cowleyan ode, e.g., Wordsworth‘s ―Ode: Intimations of Immor tality.‖ Although the ode has been seldom used in the 20th cent., Allen Tate in ―Ode on the Confederate Dead‖ and Wallace Stevens in ―The Idea of Order at Key West‖ made successful, and highly personal, use of the form.

pastoral

literary work in which th e shepherd‘s life is presented in a conventionalized manner. In this convention the purity and simplicity of shepherd life is contrasted with the corruption and artificiality of the court or the city. The pastoral is found in poetry, drama, and fiction, and many subjects, such as love, death, religion, and politics, have been presented in pastoral settings.

1

In English literature the pastoral is a familiar feature of Renaissance poetry. Sir Philip Sidney‘s Arcadia (1590) is an epic story in pastoral dress, and in The Shepheardes Calender (1579) Edmund Spenser used the pastoral as a vehicle for political and religious discussion. Many of the love lyrics of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Michael Drayton have a pastoral setting. Christopher

Marlowe‘s ―The Passionate Shepherd to His Love‖ is one of the most famous pastoral lyrics, and Milton‘s philosophical and deeply felt ―Lycidas‖ is a great pastoral elegy. In drama well-known examples of the pastoral are Shakespeare‘s As You Like It, the shearers‘ feast in A Winter‘s Tale, and Milton‘s masque Comus.

Although poets, novelists, and dramatists of the 19th and 20th cent. have used pastoral settings to contrast simplicity and innocence with the artificiality of the city, they have seldom employed the pastoral conventions of Theocritus and V ergil. Outstanding exceptions are Shelley‘s Adonais and Matthew Arnold‘s Thyrsis, both splendid pastoral elegies. Poets such as Wordsworth and Robert Frost, because of their rural subject matter, have also been referred to a s ―pastoral‖ poets. In 1935 the English poet and critic William Empson published Some Versions of Pastoral, in which he defines the pastoral as the putting of the complex into the simple, treating the conventionalized bucolic setting as superficial; he the n designates various literary works, from Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland to the proletarian novel, as offshoots of the pastoral.

Sir Patrick Spence

Anonymous

The king sits in Dumferling toune(town),

Drinking the blude-reid (blood-red)wine:

―O whar(wh ere) will I get guid (good)sailor,

To sail this schip(ship) of mine?‖

Up and spak(spoke) an eldern knicht(eld knight),

Sat at the kings richt kne(right knee):

―Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,

That sails upon the se(sea).‖

The king| has wri|tten a |braid(broad) letter.

And signd| it wi|(with) his hand,

And sent| it to| Sir Pa|trick Spence,

Was wal|king on| the sand.

The first line that Sir Patrick red(read),

A loud lauch(laugh) lauched he;

The next line that Sir Patrick red,

The teir(tear) blinded his ee(eye).

―O wha(who) is this has don(done) this deid(deed),/This ill deid don to me,/To send me out this time o‘(of) the yeir(year),/To sail upon the se!

―Mak hast, make haste, my mirry(merry) men all

Out guid schip sails the morne(morning):‖

―O say na sae(sir), my master deir(dear),

For I feir(fear) a deadlie storme.

―Late, late yestreen(yesterday) I saw the new moone,

Wi the auld(old) moone in hir(her) arme,

And I feir, I feir, my deir master,

That we will cum(come) to harme.‖

O our Scots nobles wer(were) rich(very) laith(loath)

To weet(wet) their cork-heild(heeled) schooner(shoes); Bot(but) lang owre a‘(before) play wer played,

Thair(their)hats they swam aboone(ab ove).

O lang, lang may their ladies sit,

Wi thair(their) fans into their hand,

Or eir(there) they se Sir Patrick Spence

Cum sailing to the land.

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,

Wit hair gold kems(combs) in their hair

Waiting for thar ain(own) deir lords,

For they‘ll se thame(them) na mair(no more).

Half-over Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,

It‘s fiftie fadom(fathom) deip (deep),

And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,

Wi the Scots lords at his feit.(feet)

Mama and Daughter

Langston Hughes (1902--1967)

Mama, please brush off my coat,

I‘m going down the str eet.

Where‘re you going, daughter?

To see my sugar-sweet.

Who is your sugar, honey?

(Turn around-I‘ll brush behind).

He is that young man, mama,

I can‘t get off my mind.

Daughter, once upon a time-

(Let me brush the hem—)

Your father, yes he was the one!

I felt like about him.

But it was a long time ago

He up and went his way.

I hope that wild young son-of-a-gun

Rots in hell today!

Mama, dad couldn‘t still be young.

He was young yesterday.

He was young when he-

(Turn around!

So I can brush your back, I say!)

12. The Three Ravens

THERE were three rauens sat on a tree,

Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe

There were three rauens sat on a tree,

With a downe

There were three rauens sat on a tree,

They were as blacke as they might be.

With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

The one of them said to his mate,

―Where shall we our breakefast take?‖

―Downe in yonder greene field,

There lies a knight slain vnder his shield.

―His hounds they lie downe at his feete,

So well they can their master keepe.

―His haukes they flie so eagerly,

There‘s no fowle dare him come nie.‖

Downe there comes a fallow doe,

As great with yong as she might goe.

She lift vp his bloudy hed,

And kist his wounds that were so red.

She got him vp vpon her backe,

And carried him to earthen lake.

She buried him before the prime,

She was dead herselfe ere euen-song time.

May God send euery gentleman,

Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.

Note 1. Pit. [back]

Note 2. Sweetheart. [back]

Note 3. Crows. [back]

Part Five

Description: Images, Moods and Attitudes

Poetry is a kind of experience.

What is experience?

1. certain emotions

2. some thoughts

3. a cluster of impressions:

a. what we have seen

b. what we have heard

c. what we have smelled

d. what we have felt

e. what we have tasted

Poetic language must be full of IMAGERY

IMAGERY: may be defined as the representation through the sense experience. It is achieved by stirring our imagination through dramatic presentation of objects, persons, and events.

Image suggests a mental picture.

How to show a sharp and vivid image:

1. Use the more concrete or image-bearing words rather than the abstract or non-image-bearing words

2. Choose one or two sharp and representative details: cartoon, sketch

3. figurative language

MOOD: scene

ATTITUDES always are suggested

Written in March 26, 2006

William Wordworth (1770--1850)

The cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter,

The green field sleeps in the sun;

The oldest and youngest

Are at work with the strongest;

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top of the bare hill;

The plowboy is whooping-anon-anon:

There‘s joy in the mountains;

There‘s life in the fountains;

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing;

The rain is over and gone!

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This city now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;

Ne‘er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Walt Whitman (1819--1892)

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,

They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun hark to The musical clank,

Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the Negligent rest on the saddles,

Some emerge on the opposite, others are just entering the ford- While,

Scarlet and blue and snow white,

The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.

A narrow fellow in the grass

Emily Dickinson

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides—

You may have met Him—did you not

His notice(appearance) sudden is—

The Grass divides as with a Comb—

A spotted shaft is seen—

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on—\\

He likes a Boggy Acre

A Floor too cool for Corn—

Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot—

I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought , a Whip lash Unbraiding in the Sun

When stooping to secure it

It wrinkled, and was gone—\\

Several of Nature‘s People

I know, and they know me—

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality—\\

But never met this Fellow

Attended, or alone

Without a tighter breathing

And Zero at Bone--

The wild swans at coole

William butler Yeats (1865--1939)

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is score.

All‘s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams of climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lakes‘s edge or pool

Delight men‘s eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

To Autumn John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Qestions:

1. Who is the observer in Keats‘s poem? I

2. In this poem, Autumn is personified. What personality is indicated? What does descriptive detail in each of three stanzas contribute to the definition of that personality? How is this personality related to the mood of the poem?

3. Note that after the predominantly visual imagery of the first two stanzas, the last stanza emphasizes auditory imagery. Why is this shift of imagery especially appreciate?

4. Compare ―To Autumn‖ with shakespeare‘s ―Spring‖ and ―Winter‖. Obviously, Keats‘ poem offers a much more massive and complex experience in its account of the autumnal season that shakespeare‘s songs about the other seasons. But do these slighter poems have anything in common with Keats‘s great ode?

5. This poem has been admire for its richness and appropriateness of rhythm. Get full soaked in the poem and then discuss this topic.

Part Six

Tone

Definition: T one, in a poem, may be defined as the speaker‘s attitude toward his subject, his audience, or himself.

Speaker: poet himself or a persona(character of a person as presented to others or as others perceive it, e.g. fictious ―I‖)

Audience: a. the poet himself (a lyric or a meditative poem) b. a real person c. an object or abstractions

Subject:

Significance of it: It is the emotional coloring, or the emotional meaning, of the work and is an extremely important part of the full meaning. (We have not really understood a poem unless we have accurately sensed whether the attitude it manifest is playful or solemn, mocking or reverent, calm or excited.)

Determining factors: Almost all the elements of poetry go into indicating tone: connotation, imagery, metaphor, irony and understatement; rhythm, sentence construction, and form pattern.

Method: differences in tone, and their importance, can perhaps be studied best in poems with similar content.

Others: A poem may show a complex development of tone or abrupt shifts in tone. Homework：1. Spring (Shakespeare) / Spring(Hopkins)

2. Winter(Shakespeare) /The Owl

3. A Red, Red Rose/ Love Poem

The Villain

W.H.Davies(1871-1940)

While joy gave clouds the light of stars,

That beamed where‘s they looked;

And calves and lambs which had tottering knees,

Excited, while they sucked;

While every bird enjoyed his song,

Without one thought of harm or wrong—

I turned my head and saw the wind,

Not far from where I stood,

Dragging the corn by her golden hair,

Into a dark and lonely wood.

Apparently with no surprise

Emily Dickinson(1830--1886)

Apparently with no surprise

To any happy flower,

The frost beheads it at its play

In accidental power.//

The blond assassin passes on,

The sun proceeds unmoved (continues to rotate without being moved)

To measure off (mark)another day

For an approving God.

PART SEVEN

Spring

William Shakespeare (1564--1616)

When daisies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he—

―Cuckoo;

cuckoo, cuckoo‖-O, word of fear,

unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughtmen‘s clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

Then cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he-

―Cuckoo;

cuckoo, cuckoo‖—O, word of fear,

unpleasing to a married ear!

9. Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush‘s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightings to hear him sing; 5

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth‘s sweet being in the beginning10 In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid‘s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Winter

William Shakespeare

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipped and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl—

―O‖To-who;

Tu-whit, to who!‖a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot

When all aloud the wind doth blow,