Thomas Hardy(1840-1928)
"The Ruined Maid"
*Verbal irony, Sarcasm

The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes of the third and fourth lines are identical throughout the poem: prosperi-ty and she in the first quatrain,

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"--
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

--"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"--
"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

--"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,'
And 'thik oon' and 'theäs oon' and 't'other'; but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compan-ny!"--
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice 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 child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -- I keep it, staying at Home -- With a Bobolink for a Chorister -- And an Orchard, for a Dome -- Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -- I just wear my Wings -- And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton -- sings.

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then 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 there Had worn them really about the same,

Shakespeare
"Sonnet 73That time of year thou mayst in me behold"

*Sonnet (14 lines, 4 quatraint, couplet, rhyme 1&3 2&4, 10 syllables to a line [stronger accent on  even # lines)
*about dying love affair

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

Andrew Marvel (one of the poems on the exam)
"To His Coy Mistress"

*Poem about seduction, poet trying to seduce his girlfriend

*Personification about time, which has wings (time flies)

*Coy, meaning not being completely honest, deceptive, playfully pretending one thing but believing another

Robert Browning
"My Last Dutchess"

*Dramatic monolog- one person speaking and the result has an emotional impact on the man who’s listening even though the man doesn’t say anything

* In the end of the poem he had her killed, didn’t get divorced because the Pope wouldn’t have allowed it…easier to use his authority as a Duke to have her killed “All the smiles stopped.”

Edgar Allen Poe

"The Raven"

*A lot of literation
*Rhyming
* Techniques of sound effects
*Lore meaning magic, reading a book of old magic, mainly incantations (prayers summoning up the dead) more pagan

Wisdom cannot make you happy, often the reverse, this is Poe’s idea in this poem
* Can never take back knowledge
*He denies when the bird says nevermore
• Raises the question of the whole human race and what happens after death

lizabeth Bishop
"The Fish"

*Narrative poem-that tells a story
* Free verse, no stanzas or rhyme
* Imagery-appeal to the senses (strong

• Raises the question, why do we kill animals for fun?
• We are not good neighbors to these creatures

James Dickey
"The Heaven of Animals"

Do animals have a concept of death?
• Says they have no souls, but have instincts
• Humans don’t really have instincts, but understanding and reasoning

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
Thr richest wood,
The deepest field.

Russell Edson
"Ape"

*Surrealistic
• Whimsical; jokester, goof on things

*We are way above the animal, but at the same tine way below; like we commit crimes they do not commit

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Aresenal at Springfield"
*Anti-war message, opportunity for heroism
* Final stanza imagines a world of peace, led by Christ, known as the prince of Peace

*Anti-war message, opportunity for heroism

*Can we make peace with our enemys?

Wilfred Owen

"Ducle et Decorum Est"

*About a poison gas attack in WWI

* Ecstasy really meaning sheer terror, gas masks were not yet invented

*Someone didn’t get his gas mask on in time

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

*(Last two lines)speaker is saying to himself is that he lacked understanding of how his father was showing him (the speaker) his deep and abiding love through all the things he did for him as a boy

*The focus of this poem is about the speaker looking back on his childhood, realizing that he did not give his father as much respect as he deserved. Though he feels regret about this, he does not lay the guilt or blame upon himself, for he accepts that he was only a child and did not know any better. 

William Blake
"The chimney sweeper" 
*Metaphor, repition , 

*tells readers to assist in preventing the moral decay of lower class painful existince/

* 

Lucille Clifton
"Homage to my hips"

*She uses a figurative metaphor “Hips” to represent her personal characteristics.

*She has powerful, mighty, and magic hips.

*She is proud of her body.

*She is an independent woman not to enslave to anyone even her husband

Gwendolyn Brooks
"The Mother"'

*this is a more nontraditional poem, varying in form, theme, tone, and style.
*One of the reasons why this poem is so modern is because of its difference in rhyme scheme from more traditional poems. 

William Blake
"The Tiger" 

* 8 syllables to a line
*  Who created the tiger? Was it the kind and loving God who made the lamb? Or was it Satan?