Term
What will you Leave to your true love, Lord Rendal my son,
What will you leave to you true, my jolly young man?
"The tow and the halter, mother; make my bed soon,
For I'm wearied with hunting and fain would lie down." |
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Definition
Title: Lord Rendal (English Ballads)
Author: Anonymous
Speakers: Mother and Son
Kind of poem: Ballad (song)
What is the poem about: Son is sick from dinner with his gf. Mother begins to ask his will. At the end, he asks what his true love will get, He replies a rope and noose for her to be hanged. Suggests justice, betrayal, etc. |
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Term
She had not gone of miles but two
When she heard the dead bell ringing,
And every jow the dead bell gave
Cried: "Woe to Barbara Allen!" |
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Definition
Title: Barbara Allen (English Ballads)
Author: Anonymous
Speaker: Narrator, Barbara Allen. Speak to John Graham, Conscious, and audience.
Kind of Poem: Ballad (song)
What is it about: John Graham is love sick and wants Barbara. She turns him down, saying she wouldn't help him if he were dying, just because he did not include her in a toast (making her feel disrespected). She later hears the church bells ring of his death then says she will commit suicide tomorrow due to the guilt she has for John Grahams death. "since my love died for me today, i will die for him tomorrow. |
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Term
Not so, let baser things devize
to dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
my verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
and in the heavens wryte your glorious name. |
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Definition
Title: Sonnet LXXV (75)
Author: Edmund Spenser
Rhyme Scheme (ABAB, BCBC, CDCD)
Sonnet Type: Spenserian Sonnet
Themes: Time vs. Mortality, Life is too short so there is an idea to make love last forever.
What is the poem About: author’s attempts to immortalize his wife or the love of his life. She says that we are all victims to time, therefore mortal. He says she will be immortal through his poems. When death takes the world, their love shall live and renew. |
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Term
Shall I compare Thee to a summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of maie,
And sommers lease hath all to short a date: |
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Definition
Title: Sonnet 18
Author: William Shakespeare
Speaker: Male to a lady
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG
Sonnet Type: Elizabethan/shakespearean
Theme: Eternal Beauty / life. Hubris writing. Mutability (change)
What is the poem about: Man compares his love to nature. She is better than summer due to sun going behind clouds, too hot, and all beauty eventually declines. Death will not conquer her. As long as people read this poem, she will live forever. |
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Term
When wasteful wares shall statues over-turne,
and broiles roote out the worke of masonry,
Nor mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne:
The living record of your memory. |
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Definition
Title: Sonnet 55
Author: William Shakespeare
Speaker: Man to women
Theme: Immortality / love
What is the poem about: No statue shall out live this poem, even through war, your memory's record will exist. After judgement day, until you come from the dead, you will continue to live through this poem. |
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Term
I love to hear her speak, yet well i know
that musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:
i graunt i never saw a goddesse goe,
My mistress when shee walkes treads on the ground. |
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Definition
Title: Sonnet 130 (My mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,
Author: William Shakespeare
Theme: Reality vs. Elizabethean Convention (normal comparisons that exist in traditional poetry). The senses are used in this poem. (sight, sound, smell.)
What is the poem about: Consistantly shuts his love down from being compared to great things like most poets did at the time but in the final couplet, he says she is too great to be compared and lied to, unlike other women, |
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Term
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee,
Though knows't that this can not be said
A sinne, nor shame, now losse of maidenhead, |
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Definition
Title: The Flea
Author: John Donne
Speaker: Man to his lover
Type of Poem: Patrarcan sonnet
Poem is about: man compares love to a flea. talks how there blood is mingled in that flea so technically having sex wouldnt be so bad. Killing the flea is more a sin than sex (kills our love as well). Killing the flea had no negative effect in the end so do not fear consequences of sex. |
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Term
Labour To admit you, but oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue,
Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine. |
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Definition
Title: Sonnet 14 (Holy Sonnets)
Author: John Donne
Sonnet Topic: Orthodox Prayer
Speaker: John Donne Perhaps
Poem is about: admits he is a sinner and asks for redemption. pleading with Him for a violent, almost brutal overmastering. |
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Term
Gave thee clothing of delight,
softest clothing, wooly bright,
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice? |
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Definition
Title: The Lamb
Author: William Blake
Type of poem: Songs of Innocence
Themes: Individuality, Nature, Imagination. - Emphasis on the need for spontaneity of thought and action
“noble savage” = the notion that the savage is more noble than the structuralised/boundary held person.
What is poem about: - He is called the lamb of god (jesus) he is a Sheppard who takes care of thee. |
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Term
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On the wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire? |
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Definition
Title: The Tyger
Author: William Blake
Poem Type: Songs of Experience
Theme:Its theme is the process of the tiger's creation and its endinnocence and experience.
Poem about: tiger symbolizes the tremendous forces of the human soul which are required to break free from the shackles of the worldly experiences like sorrow, disappointment and injustice which every human mind has to pass through. poet can hardly believe that the creator of the lamb could dare create such a creature as the tiger. |
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Term
And because I am happy & dance & sing,
they think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise god & his preist & king,
who make up a heaven of our misery. |
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Definition
Title: The chimney-Sweeper
Author: William Blake
Theme: oppression of child labour. Freedom. |
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Term
To serve therewith my maker, and present
my true account, lest he returning childe,
doth god exact day-labor, light denied,
i fondly ask; But patience to prevent |
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Definition
Title: When I consider how my light is spent
Author: John Milton
Speaker: John Milton
Type Of Poem: petrachan
Theme: Overcoming/prevailing lifes hardships. The Meaning of serving god. Overcoming Depression.
Poem is about: John milton went blind, scared that he could not use gods gift of writing. then he realises that god is self-efficient and doesnt need poetry. Therefore, to live under this burdon, without complaining, is serving god. |
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Term
If they be two, they are two so
as stiffe twin compasses are two,
thy soule the fizt foot, makes no show
to move, but oth, if the'other doe. |
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Definition
Title: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Author: John Donne
Type of poem: is a speech for farewell. In this speech, he is forbidding mourning.
Theme: Celebrating death of a loved one vs. Mourning. Can't Mourn because we are always together.
Poem is about: when men without sin pass away peacefully, don't mourn, cherish moments together. We will always be together in a sense in the heart and mind. Love is more than the senses, so without 1 sense, we will still love the same. metaphysical conceit – highly physical metaphor = , it is like a compass (the mathematical kind for drawing circles, etc). She be the stationary leg which will not budge, yet look closely and it does move with the leg swinging around it. The further away My leg is, the more you’ll lean towards me. But as I come back to you, you will become erect. |
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Term
The Hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands. |
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Definition
Title: Holy Thursday
Author: William Blake
Type of poem: Songs of innocence
Theme: innocence and caring for those around you. optimism/purity.
Poem/song is about: structure of how beadles (old folks) look after the younger children. take care of the charitys that give these children/angels happiness or it will be like you are turning down god. |
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Term
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty. |
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Definition
Title: Holy Thursday
Author: William Blake
Type of poem: Songs of experience
Theme: Moral and Spiritual Poverty. Uses Nature and poverty together.
Poem is about: Poverty of children. It is a land of poverty (moral / spiritual poverty). The people are filled with thorns (jesus Christ idea) and winter is constant (cold people) |
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Term
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? |
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Definition
Title: Leda and the Swan
Author: William Butler Yeats
Theme: . Common themes of how people deal godly encounters. How god reveals himself to humans
Poem is about: An old style of poetry about godly encounters. Leda is being raped by god in the form of a swan. She becomes pregnant which in early myths would be the the start of the fall of Troy. Yet through this experience, in the moment, she felt the knowledge and power of being a god-like figure. Has she become powerful and understanding? |
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Term
What is the flesh i purchased with my pains,
this fallen star my milk sustains,
this love that makes my heart's blood stop
or strikes a sudden chill into my bones |
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Definition
Title: Mother Of God
Author: William Butler Yeats
Theme: Mother of Greatness. Child of heavens.
Poem is about: Woman is told she bares the child of the heavens in her womb. She had been satisfied with ordinary yet she is the one chosen. She is afraid because she knows that her son perhaps will have to die for the world's sins and greatness. |
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Term
Th blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convication, while the worst
Are of passionate intensity. |
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Definition
Title: The Second Coming
Author: William Butler Yeats
Theme: Post apocalypse (referring to WWI) Loss of traditional value/belief/religion.
What is poem about: About chaos,end of the world as we know it, in a post WWI era. - People begin to lose all conviction for government, god, structure and anything that gave them stability. |
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Term
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. |
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Definition
Title: Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Author: Adrienne Rich
Theme: Freedom vs. patriarchal. Feminism = equal rights between men and women
Speaker: Adrienne Rich
Poem is about: Feminism, oppression, and comparing male to a tiger. - The ring on her hand with all the duties makes her tired and weighed down. Showing the marriage is more a burden. The tigers (male) has a confident, free strut. |
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Term
And a head in the freakish atlantic
Where it ours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you. |
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Definition
Title: Daddy
Author: Sylvia Plath
Theme: Oppression, suicidal thoughts, conflates father and husband.
Poem is about: presents dualities in writing. Compares her life to a white foot covered by a big boot. Her dad was seen as hubris and having a hold on her always. compares him to a nazi, and her a jew. tried committing suicide at age twenty under floor boards. Tried to marry a man like her father to get back what she lost. Divorced due to suicidal thoughts. Ends saying "daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" |
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Term
Pushing the distance infront of you
like a metal cart on wheels
wit hits barriers and horizontals. |
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Definition
Title: Girl Without Hands
Author: Margaret Atwood
Theme: circle of loneliness that she created for herself. image of girl with no hands (helpless). Oppression, patriarchal world.
Poem is about: 1st stanza – narrator, in a circle of loneliness that she created for herself.
2nd stanza – image of girl with no hands
3rd stanza – combination of the girl and the narrator.
- A cage and a shopping cart. All her emotional goods are in this cart (this circle) just like a homeless does with a cart. We make our own prison’s in our mind.
- Suggestion of clean circle of dead space: She is comfortable there because though she can’t get out, nobody can get in. Clean is a duality: clean presents nice and homely yet loneliness because clean can be viewed as empty. She feels powerless, excluded from society, absolute quiet, showing absence of colour, hearing, breath, and other senses.
Only a girl in this situation who has gone through this torture, could understand you/know whats happened to you.
If she were here, she’s touch you with her absent hands (girl without hands) and you’d be touched all the same through emotion. It talks about solidarity of oppression.
Notion that her father had sexually abused her. |
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Term
Tied by their feet theu hung in rows,
long necks drooping above pools
of blood, feathers streaked by red
like the flesh of her inner thigh. |
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Definition
Title: The Swan Girl
Author: Lorna Crozier
Theme: Fear to speak of rape. fear of judgment. Sexual abuse by a males.
Poem is about: Woman is raped (perhaps Lorna) and has problems expressing herself. fear that nobody will believe her. compares a swan in the lake to a man in society. He looks like a regular man. |
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Term
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. |
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Definition
Title: My Last Dutchess
Author: Robert Browning
Speaker: Duke of Ferrara. Speaking to an emissary of the count (he came to negotiate the dowry he will receive upon her marriage)
Theme: Ownership of past wife. Control over his wife. Perfection/need for unrealistic actions.
Poem is about: show picture of his last dutchess, she has a look of fear. Duke resented how she found joy in everything, he wanted to be her only source of joy. Her heart was too easily impressed, too easily pleased. This is what he resents. He felt his 900 yr old name was not appreciated by her. He wanted to tell her not to be so happy yet couldnt cause he felt it would be wrong to do so, even with the perfect words. He gave commands to halt the smiles. This means that he KILLED HER! All smiles stopped together. Neptune taming a wild seahorse = god of the sea. Represents how he tried to tame his last dutchess. He wanted to be the master like Neptune. Dowry for his next wife did not matter. |
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