Dr. Mohanad Abu Sabha

Course Title :Appreciating Poetry

Course Number: Eng 231

Credit Hours; 2

Title :Sound and Sense :An Introduction to Poetry.

Author ; Laurence Perrine and Thomas R.Arp

Date :New York :Harcour,1992

Course Schedule

week Topics

1 Introduction: What is Poetry?“’The Eagle,’’ ‘’Winter’’

2 How to Read a Poem ?Poems Patterns

3 Stanza Forms , Imagery: “Meeting at Night”

4 Poetics Sanction: Metre, Iambic: “Virtue”

5 “The Man He Killed’’

6 Denotation and Connotation

7-10 Figurative Language 1, 2: “The Sick Rose’’

11 Figurative Language 3: Overstatement, Understatement, Paradox: “Success is Counted Sweetest”

12 “The Road Not Taken”

13-14 “To His Coy Mistress”

15 Periods of English Poetry

(John Wain) "Poetry is the best words in the best order." (S T Coleridge)"Poetry is not turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." ( T.S. Eliot)

What is a poem: A piece of writing in which the words are chosen for their sound and the images and ideas they suggest, not just their obvious meaning.

The Eagle

He class the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the Sun in lonely lauds,

Ring'd with the azure World he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath brim crawls :

He watches from his mountain walls,

And a like thunderbolt he falls.'

The Eagle : This short poem was first published in 1851.It is a mere fragment of a poem , consisting of only six lines .First it appeared in the seventh edition of Poems , then it was also included in Selections of 1885 .In the poem , there is an imaginative , but minute description of an eagle .

Paraphrase :With its twisted claws , the eagle holds the rugged rock firmly .The bird appears to be sitting very close to the sun in a lonely part of some regions , encircled with the blue sky .Below the rock where the eagle is sitting is the furrowed sea which appears to be heaving .The eagle looks upon the sea from the rocky mountain , and as soon as it finds some object of prey , it swoops downward like the flash of lightning .

Critical Appreciation :The Eagle is a small poem , but rich in pictorial Quality .The poet describes an eagle sitting on a high rocky-peak holding with its twisted claws firmly .It appears very near to the sun in the blue sky .Below there is furrowed sea .The eagle pounces upon its object of prey from the high rock like a flash of lightning .

The poem reveals the poet's power of minute observation and precise delineation .For example , there are such matches expressions as " The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls " , " And like a thunderbolt he falls " , etc .So the texture of the poem is highly imaginative.

A. Brooke has observed that the cliff " from which I looked down on the Atlantic was nine hundred feet in height . Beside me the giant slope of Slieve League plunged down from its summit for more than eighteenth hundred feet .

As I gazed on the sea below , which was calm in the shelter , for the wind blew off the land , the varying puffs that eddied in and out among the hollows and jutting of the cliffs , covered the quiet surface with an infinite network of involved ripples " . I t was exactly Tennyson's Wrinkled sea .

Then by huge good fortune an eagle , which built on one of the ledges of Slieve League , flew out of his eyrie and poised , barking on his wings but in a moment fell precipitate , as their manner is , straight down a thousand feet into the sea ;

and I could help crying out : The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls ; He watches……. And like …falls .

Poems Elements:

Poems Elements:1. Content 2.Form 3. Tone 4. Mood. 5.Poetic Voice 6.Rhyme 7. Rhythm 8.Imagery.

1.Content: In a simple term the content of a poem is what it is all about, the ideas, themes, and storyline that it contains. It is about the surface meaning of the poem.2.Form: can refer to the way that the poem is actually written down on the page or to the way that the lines are organized, grouped, or structured.

….Poetic Form:Two Forms:

1-Stichic poetry: is the kind of poetry where the lines follow on one from another continuously without breaks, such as in Wordsworth's The Prelude, Milton's Paradise Lost.2-Strophic poetry: is the kind of poetry where the lines are arranged in groups which are some times called verses, but are more correctly refered to as stanzas. Keats uses this form in The Eve of St. Agyes, as does Blake in The Tyge

Stanza Forms, Imagery

Stanza Forms 1.The Heroic Couplet: consists of two iambic pentameters ( lines of ten syllables) 2. The Terza Rima: is a tercet (a stanza of three lines) 3.The Chaucerian Stanza or Rhyme

Royal: is a stanza of seven lines in iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc 4. The Ottava Rima: is a stanza of eight lines in iambic pentameters. 5. The Spenserian stanza: is a stanza of nine lines . 6. The Quatrain Stanza:is a stanza of four lines. It is the most common stanza in English versification, and is employed with various meters and rhyme schmes.

7. A Sestet Stanza: is a stanza of six lines 8. Aquintette: five-lines stanza. 9.Septette: sevenlines stanza.3.Tone: the author's attitude towards the subject matter. Tone can revealed through literary elements such as setting, dialogue, conflict, and plot.4.Mood: the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage. The mood maybe suggested by the writer's choice of words, by events in the work, or by physical setting.

Poetic Voice: the speaker of the poem. In many cases the poetic voice may be the speaker poet's, but it may be that the words of the poem are 'spoken' through a character that the poet has created or a narrator figure other than the poet.

Rhyme: repetition of an identical or similarly accented sound or sounds in a work. Or exact repetition of sounds in at

least the final accented syllables of two or more words.

Rhythm: the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech or writing.

Rhythm or Meter may be regular, ta Dum, ta Dum, ta Dum, or it may

varywithin a line or work. The four most common meters are (IAMB) or iambus (-/), Trochee (/ -), Anapest (-- /), and

Dactyl (/ --).

Most images tend to be visual, though many writers will also use words that suggest the way things sound, smell, taste, or feel to the touch.

Imagery: Words and phrases that describe something in a way that creates pictures, or images, that appeal to the reader's senses.

Meeting at NightAs I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sandThe 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 Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp And blue spurt of a lighted match

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each

The poem:“Meeting at Night” is a poem about love. It makes, one say, a number of statements about love: being in love is a sweet and exciting experience; when one is in love everything seems beautiful, and the most trivial things become significant; when one is in love one’s beloved seems the most important thing in the world. But the poet actually tells us none of these things directly. He does not even use the word love in his poem. His business is to communicate experience, not information. He does this largely in two ways. First, he presents us with specific situation, in which a lover’s journey so vividly in terms of sense impressions that the reader virtually sees and hears what the lover saw and heard and seems to share his anticipation and excitement.

Every line in the poem contains some image, some appeal to the senses: the Gray sea, the long black land, the yellow half-moon, the startled little waves with their fiery ringlets, the blue spurt of the lighted match- all appeal to our sense of sight and convey not only shape but also colour and motion. The warm sea- scented beach appeals to the senses of both smell and touch. The pushing prow of the boat on the slushy sand, the tap at the pane, the quick scratch of the match, the low speech of the lovers, and the sound of their hearts beating- all appeal to sense of hearing.

In general, the poet will seek concrete or image-bearing words in preference to abstract or non image- bearing words.

Poetics Sanction: Metre, Iambic: “Virtue”

Scansion: is the process of identifying the metre.

Example:

* When I\ have fears\ that I\ may cease\ to be . -/,-/,-/,-/,-/ Before\ my pen\ hath gleaned\ my team\ ing brain.( -/, -/, -/, -/, -/.) (Iambic pentametre)

1-Is this\ a fast\ to keep\( Iambic Trimetre) (-/, -/, -/.)

2-The lard\ er lean (Iambic Dimetre) (-/, -/)

3-And clean? (Iambic Monmetre) (- /)

4-The po\ et to\ the end\ of time, (Iambic Tetrametre) ( -/, -/, -/,-/)

5- Wak ing\ ech oes (Trochaic Dimetre) ( / -).

Here are the types of feet: -(unstressed); / (stressed syllable): Iambic: - / Trochhe: / - Anapest: - - / Dactyl: / - - Spondee: / / Pyrrhic: - -

Iambic: (of rhythm in poetry) in which one short or weak syllable is followed by one long or strong syllable- in lines of ten syllables, five are short and five are long.

Foot: the metrical unit in which a line of poetry is measured : a foot usually conists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables.

Metre: is the arrangment of syllables in such an order to form verse. So a meter of a poem depends on the number of feet to the line and the pattern of the stanzas as well as the kind of feet used.

The number of feet in aline can vary: Her are the main:One foot: monometreTwo feet: dimetreThree feet: trimetreFour feet: tetrametreFive feet: pentametreSix feet: hexametreSeven feet: heptametreEight feet: octametre

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so brightThe bridal of the earth and sky;

The dew shall weep thy fall to night,For though must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eyes;The root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.Sweet spring, full of sweet days and

roses,And box where sweets compacted lie;My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.Only a sweet and virtues soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;But though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

George Herbert(1593-1633)

Scansion of the poem:The first step in scanning a poem is to read it normally, according to its prose meaning, listening to where the accents fall naturally, and perhaps beating time with the hand.In “Virtue” lines 3, 10, and 14 clearly fall into this category, as do the short lines 4, 8, and 12. Lines 3, 10, and 14 may be marked as follows.The dew| shall weep |thy fall |to night,|| - / | - / | - / |- / |- /|A box |where sweets| com-pact|-ed lie;|| - / | - / | - / |- / |- /|Like sea|-sound tim|-ber, nev|-er gives|| - / | - / | - / |- / |- /|Lines 4, 8, and 12 are so identical that we may use line 4 to represent all three.For thou| must die|. | - / | - / |( - ): unstressed ; (/ ) streesed.

Poetical Types:1-The Lyric2-The Ode 3-The Sonnet4-The Elegy5-The Idyil6-The Epic7-The Balled8-The Satire

“The Man He Killed”

(Thomas Hardy 1840-1928)

The Man He Killed

Had he and I but metBy 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; althoughHe thought he'd 'list,. perhaps,

Off-hand-like-just as 1 Was out of work-had sold his traps-O

No other reason why.Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow downYou'd treat, if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928

“The Man He Killed”

“The Man He Killed” The Poem:In "The Man He Killed" the speaker is a soldier, the occasionis his having been in battle and killed a man- obviously for the first time in his life. We can tell a good deal about him.

He is not a career soldier: he enlisted only because he was out of work. He is a workingman: he speaks a simple and colloquial language ("nipperkin," "list," "off-hand-like," "traps").

He is a friendly, kindly sort who enjoys a neighborly drink of ale in a bar and will gladly lend a friend a half-a-crown when he has it. He has known what it is to be poor. In any other circumstances he would have been horrified at taking a human life. It gives him pause even now. He is trying to figure it out. But he is not a deep thinker and thinks he has supplied a reason when he has only supplied a name: " I killed the man….because he was my foe."

The critical question, of course, is why the man his "foe". Even the speaker is left unsatisfied by his answer, though he is not analytical enough to know what is wrong with it. Obviously this poem is expressly dramatic. We need know nothing about Thomas Hardy's life (he was never a soldier and never killed a man) to realize that the poem is dramatic. The internal evidence of the poem tells us so.

In "The Man He Killed" the central purpose is quite clear: it is to make us realize more keenly the irrationality of war. The puzzlement of the speaker may be our puzzlement. But even if we are able to give a more sophisticated answer than his as to why men kill each other, we ought still to have a greater awareness, after reading the poem, of the fundamental irrationality in war that makes men kill who have no grudge against each other and who might under different circumstances show each other considerable kindness.

Denotation and Connotation:

Denotation and Connotation:Denotation: the exact meaning of a word, without the feeling or suggestions that the word may imply .It is the opposite of "connotation" in that it is the "dictionary" meaning of a word, without attached feelings or associations. Some examples of denotations are:1. Heart: an organ that circulates blood throughout the body .Here the word "heart" denotes the actual organ , while on another context , the word "heart" may connote feelings of love or heartache .

2. Sweater: a knitted garment for the upper body .The word "sweater" may denote pullover sweater or cardigans, while "sweater" may also connote feelings of warmness or security.Denotation allows the reader to know the exact meaning of a word so that he or she will better understand the work of literature. It is the literal meaning of a word.

Connotation : Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word , which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it .For example , the word 'eagle' connotes ideas of liberty and freedom that have little to do with the word's literal meaning.

Connotations relate not to a word's actual meaning , or denotation , but rather to the ideas or qualities that are implied by that word .A good example is the word " gold" .The denotation of gold is a malleable , ductile , yellow element .The connotations , however , are the ideas associated with gold , such as greed , luxury , or avarice . …connotations. Connotation is the range of secondary or associated significances and feelings which it commonly suggests or implies.

Thus 'home' denotes the house where one lives, but connotes privacy and intimacy.

Figurative language: Symbol

Symbol: is an object or event that represents something other than itself, frequently an abstract idea

or concept. The use in literature of objects or events to represent

something other than them selves is called symbolism .It usually

refers to a concrete image used to designate an abstract quality or

concept.

A symbol may be roughly defined as something that means more than what it is. Image , metaphor , and symbol shade into each other and are sometimes difficult to distinguish .In general , however , an image means only what it is ; the figurative term in a metaphor means something other than what it is ; and a symbol means what it is and something more , too .A symbol, that is, functions literally and figuratively of the same time.

Allegory: is a narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface .Although the surface story or description may have its own interest, the author's major interest is in the ulterior meaning.It has a moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy .Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

Paradox: is an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true .It may be either a situation or a statement .As a figure of speech, paradox is a statement. For example: "In death there is life " is a paradox .…………………..

Simile : A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike .The comparison is made explicit by the use of some such word or phrase as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike.

It may take one of four forms (1) that in which the literal term and the figurative term are both named ;(2)

that in which the literal term is named and the figurative term implied ;(3)

that in which the literal term is implied and the figurative terms are

named;(4)that in which both the literal and the figurative terms are

implied .

Personification: A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to an animal, an object, or a concept. Apostrophe :A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply .

Metonymy: A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience.

In this book the single term metonymy is used for what are

sometimes distinguished as two separate figures: Synecdoche

(the use of the part for the whole) and metonymy (the use of something closely related for the

thing actually meant).

The Sick Rose Rose, thou 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 Sick Rose”: In 'The Sick Rose' no meanings are explicitly indicated for the rose and the worm. Indeed, we are not forced to appoint them specific meanings. The poem might literally be read as being about a rose that has been attacked on a strong night by a cankerworm.

The organization of 'The Sick Rose' is so rich, however, and its language so powerful that the rose and the worm refuse to remain merely a flower and an insect. The rose, apostrophized and personified in the first line, has traditionally been a symbol of feminine beauty and love, as well as of sensual pleasures. 'Bed' can refer to a woman's bed as well as to a flower bed. 'Crimson joy' suggests the intense pleasure of passionate lovemaking as well as the brilliant beauty of a red flower. The 'dark secret love' of the 'invisible worm' is more strongly suggestive of a hidden or illicit love affair than of the feeding of a cankerworm on a plant, though it fits that too.

For all these reasons the rose almost immediately suggests a woman and the worm her secret lover-and the poem suggests the corruption of innocent but physical love by concealment and deceit. But the possibilities do not stop there. The worm is a common symbol or metonymy for death ; and for readers steeped in Milton (as Blake was ) it recalls the ' undying worm ' of Paradise Lost , Milton's metaphor for the snake ( or Satan in the form of a snake ) that tempted Eve .Meanings multiply also for the reader who is familiar with Blake's other writings .

Thus 'The Sick Rose' has been variously interpreted as referring to the destruction of joyous physical love by jealousy , deceit, concealment , or the possessive instinct ; of innocence by experience ; of humanity by Satan ; of imagination and joy by analytic reason ; of life by death .

We can not say what specifically the poet had in mind , nor need we do so .In Blake's poem the 'rose ' stands for something beautiful , or desirable , or good .The worm stands for some thing agent. Within these limits , the meaning is largely open .And because the meaning is open , the reader is justified in bringing personal experience to its interpretation . Blake's poem ' for instance , might remind someone of a gifted friend whose promise has been destroyed by drug addiction .

Overstatement, or hyperbole, Paradox

Overstatement: or hyperbole: is simply exaggeration, but exaggeration

in the service of truth .It is not the same as a fish story .If you say, " I'm

starved!" or " You could have knocked me over with a feather!" or " I'll die if I

don't pass this course!" you don't expect to be taken literally; you are

merely adding emphasis to what you really mean.

(And if you say, "There were literally millions of people at the beach ". You are merely piling one overstatement on top of another , for you really mean, " There were figuratively millions at the beach , " or , literally , " The beach was very crowded .") Like all figures of speech, overstatement may be used with a variety of effects .It may be humors or grave, fanciful or restrained, convincing or unconvincing.

When Tennyson says of his eagle that it is "Close to the sun in lovely hands," he says what appears to be literally true, though we know from our study of astronomy that it is not.When Frost says, at the conclusion of 'The Road Not Taken' I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence We are scarcely aware of the overstatement , so quietly is the assertion made .

Unskillfully used however , overstatement may seem strained and ridiculous , lending us to react as Gertrude does to the player-queen's speeches in Hamlet : "The lady doth protest too much ". Overstatement /Hyperbole: is a figure of speech involving great exaggeration .The effect may be satiric, sentimental, or comic.

Understatement : or saying less than one means , may exist in what one says or merely in how one says it .If , for instance , upon sitting down to a loaded dinner plate , you say , " This looks like a nice snake , " you are actually stating less than the truth ; but if you say , with the humorist Atriums Ward , that a man who holds his hand for half an hour in a lighted fire will experience " a sensation of excessive and disagreeable warmth , " you are stating what is literally true but with a good deal less force than the situation warrants .

Paradox: is an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true .It may be either a situation or a statement .As a figure of speech, paradox is a statement.

For example: "In death there is life " is a paradox.

“Success is Counted Sweetest” Success is Counted Sweetest

By Those who ne’er succeedTo comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the flag todayCan tell the definition

So clear of VictoryAs he defeated- dying

On whose forbidden earThe distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear! Emily Dickinson

The poem:The first two lines of this poem make a statement that appears contradictory and , on the surface, impossible . Yet, through the rest of the poem. Dickinson illustrates that to understand success most profoundly, one must be denied it. A statement that seems self- contradictory yet has valid meaning is called a paradox. Paradox can serve to emphasize a point or to create a sense of irony.

“The Road Not Taken”

The Road Not TakenTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowthIn 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 backThen took 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 thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layI shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and 1

I took the one less traveled bAnd that has made all the difference

'The Road Not Taken ',The poem:It concerns some choice in life, but what choice? Was it a choice of profession? A choice of residence? A choice of mate? It might be any, all, or none of these. We cannot determine what particular choice the poet had in mind , if any , and it is not important that we do so .It is enough if we see in the poem an expression of regret that the possibilities of life experience are so sharply limited

The speaker in the poem would have liked to explore both roads , but he could explore only

one .The person with a craving for life , whether satisfied or dissatisfied with the choices he has

made , will always long for the realms of experience that he had to forgo .Because the

symbol is a rich one , the poem suggests other meanings too .It affirms a belief in the possibility

of choice and says something about the nature of choice - how each choice narrows the range of

possible future choices , so that we make our lives as we go , both freely choosing and being

determined by past choices .Though not a philosophical poem , it obliquely comments on

the issue of free will and determinism and indicates the poet's own position . It can do all these things, concretely and compactly, by its

use of an effective symbol.

Symbols very in the degree of identification and definition given them by their authors. In this poem Frost forces us to interpret the choice of roads symbolically by the degree of importance he gives it in the last stanza. Sometimes poets are much more specific in identifying their symbols. Sometimes they do not identify them at all.

“TO His COY MISTRESS”

TO His COY MISTRESSHad we but world enough, and time,This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day

. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood :

And you should, if you please, refuseTill the conversion of the Jews.My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast:

But thirty thousand. to the rest.. An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart. For, Lady, you deserve this state~ .

. Nor Would I love at lower rateBut at my back I always hear

Time's. winged chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lie

:Deserts of vast eternity.Thy beauty shall no more be found~ Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song : then worms shall try That long preserved virginity :

And your quaint \honour. turn to dust And into ashes all my lust.

The grave' s a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits On thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we mayAnd now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour, ...

Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll. all our strength, and all .

Our sweetness, up into one ball:And tear our pleasures with rough strite,

Thorough the iron gates .of life.Thus, though we cannot make our sun. Stand still, yet we will make him run.

“To His Coy Mistress”The poem: It is the best known poem of Andrew Marvell .It is one of the most scrupulously love-poems .It is a dramatic poem , in which Marvell achieves one of the supreme lyrics on the recurrent theme of love .

The poem can be considered dramatic because the woman is imagined to be present and the poem is marked with mounting tension .The speaker offers a strong plea for the beloved to soften towards him and to relax her rigid attitude of Puritanical reluctance to grant him sexual favor . She refuse to do that because of her modesty and her sense of honor .

But the lover tells that her coyness would have been alright if they had enough time at their disposal .If they had enough time , he would have started loving her ten years before the great flood ( mentioned in the Bible ) while she could refuse to satisfy his desire till the day of judgment when the Jews might agree to converted to Christianity .If they really had time , he would spend hundred years in praising her eyes and gazing on her forehead ; and he would spend thirty thousands years in praising the remaining parts of her body .

The lover says that his beloved really deserves so much praise . But all this not quite possible .The lover tells that the time is passing at a very fast pace , and eventually they have to face the deserts of the vast eternity .After some years her beauty will no longer exist on this earth .She will lie in her marble tomb , and he would no longer be in a position to sing songs in her praise .In the grave , the worm will attach her virginity .All her nice sense of honor will turn into dust and all his desire to love her will then turn to ashes .

The lover tells that the grave is a fine private place, but nobody can have the experience of physical relation there. Therefore, the lover says that it will be proper for them to enjoy the pleasures of love while there is still time, when her skin is youthful and fresh. They should roll their strength and all their sweetness into one cannon-ball and shoot it through the iron gates of life.

If they cannot arrest the passage time, they can at least quicken time's speed of passing. Marvell's love-poems are inspired both by human love and divine love. Joan Bennet places him in the metaphysical tradition. In this poem a lover addresses his beloved who refuses to grant him sexual favors on account of her modesty and her sense of honor.

In this poem, passion is allowed to take its most natural path. As a love-poem it is unique. For sheer power, this poem ranks higher than anything Marvell ever wrote. The poem has what is known as a carpe diem theme. It is written in the form of syllogism, i.e., an argument developed in a strictly logical form and leading to a definite conclusion.

But the poet succeeds in investing the old classical commonplace subject with an intensity and nobility to affirm the triumph of love over time. In this poem the passion of love is ardent. While the lover adopts a witty and somewhat sarcastic manner of speaking in the first two stanzas, he becomes truly ardent and fervid in his passion in the last stanza.

In this stanza, he becomes almost fierce in his passion when he argues: " Let us roll al our strength and all Our sweetness, up into one ball;……" The Daffodils by Words

Overall Survey of

English Literature

Overall Survey of English Literature1-Anglo-Saxons or Old English Period (670-1100)2-Middle English or Anglo Norman Period (1100-1500)(Langland Gower Chaucer)Geoffery Chaucer(1340?-1400)Occcleve, Lydgate, Skelton, Henryson, Dunbar, Doglas3-Renaissance Period or Elizabethan Period(1500-1600)

Drama : [University Wits( Lyly, Peele, Kyd, Greene, Marlowe

(1564-93)] Shakespeare (1564-1616) Ben Jonson

Poetry: Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, Sidney, Spenser.Prose: Lyly, Sidney

5-The Puritan Age (1600-1660)Drama : Jacobean and Caroline Drama: Marston, Dekker, Heywood, MiddietonPoetry: School of Spencer: Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Browne, Wither, Drummond

Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herrick,Carew, Crashaw. Vaghan. Herbert. Cowley. Marwel Cavalier Poets: Suckling, LovelaceProse: Bacon, Burton, Browne, Taylor

5-Restoration Period (1660-1700)Drama : Dryden, Etherege, CongrevePoetry: John DrydenProse: Dryden, Bunyan

6-Eighteenth Century Literature (1700-1798)Drama : Addison, Johnson, Cibber, Kelly, Cumberland, Brinsley SheridanPoetry: Age of Pope: Pope, Prior, Gay, Young, Oarbekkm Winehelsea

Age of Johnson Johnson, Goldsmith, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Blake,CowperProse: Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, Novel: Daniel Dafoe, Richerdson Henry fielding, Goldsmith

7-Romantic Age (1798-1824)

Poetry: Lake Poets: William Wordsworth, S T Coleridge, Robert Southe

Scott Group: Scott, Campbell, Moore

Younger Group:Byron, Shelly, Keats

Prose: Lamb, Hazlitte, Quincy

Novel: Jane Austen, Walter Scott

8-Victorian Age (1832-1900)A-Early Victorian Period (1832-1870)

Poetry: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, CloughProse: Carlyle, Ruskin, Macaulay, Arnold, Novel: Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, Charlotte Bronte, Kingslay, Reade. Collins, Trollope

B-Late Victorian Period (1870-1900)Poetry: Pre-Raphaelite Movement: Rossetti, Morris, Swineburn

Decadent And Aesthetic Movement: Oscar wild, Dowson, L P JohnsonProse: Newman, Walter Peter.Novel: George Eliot, George Meredith, Hardy, Stevenson, Gissing

9-Modern Age (1901 to date)Drama G B Shaw, Oscar Wild, Galsworthy, Granville Barker, Masefield, Barrie, WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, Sean O’Casey, T S Eliot, Drinkwater, Bax, Dukes, BeslerPoetry: Robert Bridges, Hopkins, Houseman, Walter de La Mare, William Henry Davies, Binyon, Masefield, Ezra Pound, D H Lawrance, Wilferd Owen, Sassoon, W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Auden, Spender.

Prose:Novel: H G Wells, Arnold Bennett, Henery James, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, John Galsworthy, E M Forster, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, D H Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, J B Priestley, Charles Morgan, C S Lewis, Bates, F L Greene, Graham GreeneFrank SWinnerton, Richard Church The end