Songs of Experience

Nurse's Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green,

And whisperings are in the dale,

The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,

My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;

Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

And your winter and night in disguise.

1. Are there any significant differences between the rhythm, rhyme scheme and stanza form of this and the first poem?

2. What effect does the use of monosyllables create in the last line of the first stanza?

3. Is the narrator the same as in the first poem? Are there any differences in the way the scene is described?

4. Despite many similarities between the two poems there are also some important differences. Find examples and describe in your own words the difference in atmosphere between the two poems.

5. Why do you think the children have no voice in this poem?

6. Explain the reaction of the narrator in the last line of the first stanza.

7. What is the meaning of the last two lines? How does it contrast with what occurs in the first poem? What do you think Blake is suggesting?

JOHN KEATS

"ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER".

Although Keats knew no Greek, he loved Greek mythology. When he was about twenty-one, he borrowed a translation of Homer by George Chapman, an Elizabethan poet, and he and a lifelong friend, Charles C. Clarke, sat up till daylight reading it - " Keats shouting with delight as some passages of energy struck his imagination." The next morning his friend found this sonnet on his breakfast table.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen:

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had 1 been told

That deep - browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He started at the Pacific - and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

1. What kinds of experiences are described in the first four lines? What is the imagery of the poem?

2. What is described as "realms of gold"? Why does the poet consider the area to be the domain of Apollo? Why Apollo?

3. Find the example of synecdoche and explain it.

4. Find the example of simile.

5. What is the central idea of the poem?

JOHN KEATS

“WHEN I HAVE FEARS”

When I have fears that I maycease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I maynever live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;- then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingless do sink.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

"LONDON, 1802".

Milton! Thou should 'st be living at this hour;

England hath need of thee; she is a fen

Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! Raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life 's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay

1.What aspects of English national life are suggested by the four examples of metonymy in the first stanza?

2.What lines elevate Milton to the exalted stature of one worthy of emulation?

3.What, judging by this sonnet, would you say is the kind of reform Wordsworth sees as possible?

4.Why does the sound of "dwelt apart " make these words better convey their meaning than would another phrase, for instance "lived alone", which would mean the same thing?

5.What sounds in line 10 aptly echo a "voice whose sound was like the sea"?

WILLIAM BLAKE

LONDON

I wander through each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,

In every infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper’s cry

Every black’ning church appalls,

And the hapless soldier’s sigh

Runs in blood down palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear

How the youthful harlot’s curse

Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,

And blights with plague the marriage hearse.

1. Where is the speaker in London walking?

2. What does he see?

3. What does he hear?

4. This mixing up of the senses, i.e., hearing sights or seeing sounds, etc. is common in Romantic poetry and helps to convey complicated mental states. The speaker of this poem hears many things, some are sounds and some are sights. What are they?

5. It is certainly possible for a city with its streets to be chartered, but not a river. What do rivers often symbolize? What might a chartered river symbolize?

6. What connection is there between the Chimney Sweeper's cry and the Church? See the poems about chimney­sweepers above.

7. What connection is there between an unfortunate solider and the palace where the king lives?

8. Why does Blake refer to the 'Marriage hearse'? What does this imply about weddings?

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

" 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, theatres, 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!

1. What time of day is it? Will this quiet scene last?

2. Explain the choice of the word "heart" in the last line. Why is the heart chosen (rather than brain, liver, etc.) for the synecdoche? Discuss how this synecdoche personifies the city.

3. How do the repealed enforced pauses of line 6 help too create the impression of size and diversity, which Wordsworth wants to give of London?

S.T.COLERIDGE

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1070