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LT202 Introduction to Literature II
COURSEPACK: POETRY
Focusing on the study of poetry by genres, including: • Ballad • Lyrics • Elegy • Ode • Sonnet • Epigram • Haiku • Villanelle
Second Semester, 2016 Academic Year Contents
Ballad………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Sir Patrick Spens………………………….…………….…………………………….………3 Lorn Randal……………………………………………………………….……….……….…5 Edward……………………………………………………………………………….…….…7 Frankie and Johnny…………………………………………………………………………..9 Lucy Gray……………………………………………………………………………………11 The Griesly Wife…………………………………………………………………………….13 Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?……………………………………………………….15 Is My Team Ploughing………………………………………………………………………16
Lyric….…..….……………………….……….……….…………………………………….18 Western Wind………………………………………………………………….………….…20 A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal……………………………….…………….…………….…20 Dust of Snow……………………………………………….…………….………….………20 Song: O Mistress Mine Where Are You Roaming?………………………….……….……21 Song: To Celia………………………………………………………………………………..22 Go, Lovely Rose……………………………………………………………………………..23 Ask Me No More Where Jove Bestows……………………………………………………24 One Perfect Rose……………………………………………………………………………25 Break, Break, Break…………………………………………………………………………26 Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount…………………………………………………………………….27 Loveliest of Trees…………………………………………………………………………….28 When We Two Parted……………………………………………………………………….29 After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes…………………………………………………30 The Sunlight on the Garden…………………………………………….……….……….…31 Scaffolding…………………………………………………………………………….……..32 Talking in Bed……………………………………………………………………………….33
Elegy…………………………………………………………………………………………34 To an Athlete Dying Young…………………………………………………………………36 O Captain! My Captain!……………………………………………………………………37 Elegy for Alfred Hubbard…………………………………………………………………..38
Ode………….……….………….………………………………………………….………..40 Ode on Solitude……………………………………………….………….…………….……41 To Autumn………………………………………………………….………….……….……42 Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat…………………………………….……….……….…44 Sonnet………………………………………………………………………………………..46 My Galley Charged with Forgetfulness……………………………………………….……48 Farewell, Love……………………………………………………………………………….49 Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace! (Astrophil and Stella 39)………………….50 One day I wrote her name upon the strand (Amoretti 75)………………………………….51 My Lady’s Presence Makes the Roses Red…………………….………….………….……52 Since There’s No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part………………….……………………53 A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted (Sonnet 20)………………………….…54 Not marble nor the gilded monuments (Sonnet 55)…………………….………….………55 When my love swears that she is made of truth (Sonnet 138)………………….……….…56 My love is as a fever, longing still (Sonnet 147)……………………………………………57 The World Is Too Much With Us…………………………………………………………..58 When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be………………………………………………..59 Thou Art Not Lovelier than Lilacs,—No…………………………………………….……..60
Epigram……………………………………………….……………….…………….………61
Haiku…………………………………………………………………………….…………..64
Villanelle………………………………………………..….………………………………..66 Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night…………………………………………………..66 One Art………………………………………………………………………………………67 Lonely Hearts………………………………………………………………………………..68 LT 202 - Introduction to Literature II Poetry
Ballad
A short definition of the popular ballad (also called the folk ballad or traditional ballad) is that it is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. Ballads are thus the narrative species of folk songs, which originate, and are communicated orally, among illiterate or only partly literate people. In all probability the initial version of a ballad was composed by a single author, but he or she is unknown; and since each singer who learns and repeats an oral ballad is apt to introduce changes in both the text and the tune, it exists in many variant forms. Typically, the popular ballad is dramatic, condensed, and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells the story tersely in action and dialogue (sometimes by means of dialogue alone), and tells it without self-reference or the expression of personal attitudes or feelings.
The most common stanza form—called the ballad stanza—is a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme. This is the form of “Sir Patrick Spens”; the first stanza also exemplifies the abrupt opening of the typical ballad, and the manner of proceeding by third-person narration, curtly sketched setting and action, sharp transition, and spare dialogue:
The king sits in Dumferling towne, Drinking the blude-red wine: “O whar will I get a guid sailor, To sail this schip of mine?”
Many ballads employ set formulas (which helped the singer remember the course of the song) including (1) stock descriptive phrases like “blood-red wine” and “milk-white steed,” (2) a refrain in each stanza (“Edward,” “Lord Randall”), and (3) incremental repetition, in which a line or stanza is repeated, but with an addition that advances the story (“Lord Randall,” “Child Waters”).
Although many traditional ballads probably originated in the later Middle Ages, they were not collected and printed until the eighteenth century, first in England, then in Germany. In 1765 Thomas Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry which, although most of the contents had been revised in the style of Percy’s era, did much to inaugurate widespread interest in folk literature. The basic modern collection is Francis J. Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98), which includes 305 ballads, many of them in variant versions. Bertrand H. Bronson has edited The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (4 vols., 1959–72). Popular ballads are still being sung—and collected, now with the help of a tape recorder—in the British Isles and remote rural areas of America. To the songs that early settlers brought with them from Great Britain, America has added native forms of the ballad, such as those sung by lumberjacks, cowboys, laborers, and social protesters. A number of recent folk singers, including Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, themselves compose ballads; most of these, however, such as “The Ballad of
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Bonnie and Clyde” (about a notorious gangster and his moll), are closer to the journalistic “broadside ballad” than to the archaic and heroic mode of the popular ballads in the Child collection.
A broadside ballad is a ballad that was printed on one side of a single sheet (called a “broadside”), dealt with a current event or person or issue, and was sung to a well- known tune. Beginning with the sixteenth century, these broadsides were hawked in the streets or at country fairs in Great Britain.
The traditional ballad has greatly influenced the form and style of lyric poetry in general. It has also engendered the literary ballad, which is a narrative poem written in deliberate imitation of the form, language, and spirit of the traditional ballad. In Germany, some major literary ballads were composed in the latter eighteenth century, including G. A. Bürger’s very popular “Lenore” (1774)—which soon became widely read and influential in an English translation—and Goethe’s “Erlkönig” (1782). In England, some of the best literary ballads were composed in the Romantic Period: Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (which, however, is much longer and has a much more elaborate plot than the folk ballad), Walter Scott’s “Proud Maisie,” and Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” In his Lyrical Ballads of 1798, Wordsworth begins “We Are Seven” by introducing a narrator as an agent and first-person teller of the story—“I met a little cottage girl”— which is probably one reason he called the collection “lyrical ballads.” Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner,” on the other hand, of which the first version also appeared in Lyrical Ballads, opens with the abrupt and impersonal third-person narration of the traditional ballad:
It is an ancient Mariner And he stoppeth one of three. . . .
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
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Sir Patrick Spens
The king sits in Dumferling town, Drinking the blude-reid1 wine: “O whar2 will I get a guid sailor, To sail this ship of mine?”
5 Up and spak3 an eldern knicht,4 Sat at the king’s richt5 knee: “Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That sails upon the sea.”
The king has written a braid6 letter 10 And signed it wi’ his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the sand.
The first line that Sir Patrick read, A loud lauch7 lauched he; 15 The next line that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee.8
“O wha9 is this has done this deed, This ill deed done to me, To send me out this time o’ the year, 20 To sail upon the sea?
1 bluid-red - blood-red
2 whar - where
3 spak - spake (archaic form of ‘spoke’)
4 eldern knicht - elderly knight
5 richt - right
6 braid - broad, open
7 lauch - laugh
8 ee - eye
9 wha - who
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“Mak haste, mak haste, my mirry10 men all, Our guid11 ship sails the morn.” “O say na sae,12 my master dear, For I fear a deadly storm.”
25 “Late, late yestre’en13 I saw the new moon Wi’ the auld moon in hir14 arm, And I fear, I fear, my dear master, That we will come to harm.”
O our Scots nobles were richt laith15 30 To weet16 their cork-heeled shoon,17 But lang or a’18 the play were played Their hats they swam aboon.19
O lang,20 lang may their ladies sit, Wi’ their fans into their hand, 35 Or ere21 they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the land.
10 mirry - merry
11 guid - good
12 na sae - not so
13 yestre’en - yestereve, last evening
14 hir - her
15 laith - loath
16 weet - wet
17 shoon - shoes
18 lang or a’ - long before all
19 aboon - above
20 lang - long
21 ere - before
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O lang, lang may the ladies stand Wi’ their gold kems22 in their hair, Waiting for their ain23 dear lords, 40 For they’ll never see them mair.24
Half o’er, half o’er to Aberdour It’s fifty fadom25 deep, And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.
Anonymous (15th century)
Lord Randal
“O where ha’ you been, Lord Randal, my son? And where ha’ you been, my handsome young man?” “I ha’ been at the greenwood; mother, mak26 my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad27 lie down.”
5 “An wha28 met ye there, Lord Randal, my son? An wha met you there, my handsome young man?” “O I met wi’ my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
“And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son? 10 And what did she give you, my handsome young man?” “Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
22 kems - combs
23 ain - own
24 mair - more
25 fadom - fathoms
26 mak - make
27 wad - would
28 wha - who
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“And wha gat your leavin’s,29 Lord Randal, my son? And wha gat your leavin’s, my handsome young man?” 15 “My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
“And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son? And what becam of them, my handsome young man?” “They stretched their legs out an died; mother, mak my bed soon, 20 For I’m weary wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
“O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son! I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!” “O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
25 “What d’ ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son? What d’ ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?” “Four and twenty milk kye;30 mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
“What d’ ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son? 30 What d’ ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?” “My gold and my silver; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
“What d’ ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son? What d’ ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?” 35 “My house and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon, For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
“What d’ ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son? What d’ ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?” “I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon, 40 For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
Anonymous (15th century)
29 leavins - leftovers
30 kye - kine (cows)
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Edward
“Why does your brand31 sae32 drap33 wi’ bluid,34 Edward, Edward, Why does your brand sae drap wi’ bluid, And why sae sad gang35 ye, O?” 5 “O I ha’e killed my hawk sae guid,36 Mither,37 mither, O I ha’e killed my hawk sae guid, And I had nae mair38 but he, O.”
“Your hawke’s bluid was never sae reid,39 10 Edward, Edward, Your hawke’s bluid was never sae reid, My dear son I tell thee, O.” “O I ha’e killed my reid-roan40 steed, Mither, mither, 15 O I ha’e killed my reid-roan steed, That erst41 was sae fair and free, O.”
31 brand - sword
32 sae - so
33 drap - drip
34 bluid - blood
35 gang - go
36 guid - good
37 mither - mother
38 nae mair - no more
39 reid - red
40 reid-roan - red roan (having a coat of red mixed with another color)
41 erst - once
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“Your steed was auld42 and ye ha’e gat mair,43 Edward, Edward, Your steed was auld and ye ha’e gat mair, 20 Some other dule44 ye drie,45 O.” “O I ha’e killed my fader46 dear, Mither, mither, “O I ha’e killed my fader dear, Alas and wae47 is me, O!”
25 “And whatten48 penance wul ye drie for that, Edward, Edward? And whatten penance wul ye dree for that, My dear son, now tell me O?” “I’ll set my feet in yonder boat, 30 Mither, mither, I’ll set my feet in yonder boat, And I’ll fare over the sea, O.”
“And what wul ye do wi’ your towers and your ha’,49 Edward, Edward? 35 And what wul ye do wi’ your towers and your ha’, That were sae fair to see, O?” “I’ll let them stand til they down fa’,50 Mither, mither, I’ll let them stand til they down fa’, 40 For here never mair maun51 I be, O.”
42 auld - old
43 ha’e gat mair - have got more
44 dule - grief
45 drie - suffer
46 fader - father
47 wae - woe
48 whatten - what sort of
49 ha’ - halls
50 fa’ - fall
51 maun - must
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“And what wul ye leave to your bairns52 and your wife, Edward, Edward? And what wul ye leave to your bairns and your wife, Whan ye gang53 over the sea, O?” 45 “The warlde’s54 room, let them beg thrae55 life, Mither, mither, The warlde’s room, late them beg thrae life, For them never mair wul I see, O.”
“And what wul ye leave to your ain56 mither dear, 50 Edward, Edward? And what wul ye leave to your ain mither dear, My dear son, now tell me, O?” “The curse of hell frae57 me sall58 ye bear, Mither, mither, 55 The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear, Sic59 counsels ye gave to me, O.”
Anonymous (15th century)
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny were lovers, great God how they could love! Swore to be true to each other, true as the stars up above. He was her man, but he done her wrong.
Frankie, she was his woman, everybody knows. 5 She spent her forty dollars for Johnny a suit of clothes. He was her man, but he done her wrong.
52 bairns - children
53 gang - go
54 warlde’s - world’s (i.e. the world’s room enough or wide enough)
55 thrae - through
56 ain - own
57 frae - from
58 sall - shall
59 sic - such
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Frankie and Johnny went walking, Johnny in his brand new suit. “O good Lawd,”60 said Frankie, “but don’t my Johnny look cute?” He was her man, but he done her wrong.
10 Frankie went down to the corner, just for a bucket of beer. Frankie said, “Mr. bartender, has my loving Johnny been here? He is my man, he wouldn’t do me wrong.”
“I don’t want to tell you no story, I don’t want to tell you no lie, But your Johnny left here an hour ago with that lousy Nellie Blye, 15 He is your man, but he’s doing you wrong.”
Frankie went back to the hotel, she didn’t go there for fun, For under her red kimono she toted61 a forty-four gun. He was her man, but he done her wrong.
Frankie went down to the hotel and looked in the window so high, 20 And there was her loving Johnny, a-loving up62 Nellie Blye He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie threw back her kimono, took out that old forty-four. Root-a-toot-toot, three times she shot, right through the hardwood door. He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
25 Johnny grabbed off his Stetson,63 crying, “O Frankie don’t shoot!” Frankie pulled that forty-four, went root-a-toot-toot-toot-toot. He was her man, but he done her wrong.
“Roll me over gently, roll me over slow, Roll me on my right side, for my left side hurts me so, 30 I was her man, but I done her wrong.”
With the first shot Johnny staggered, with the second shot he fell; When the last bullet got him, there was a new man’s face in hell. He was her man, but he done her wrong.
60 Lawd - Lord
61 toted - carried
62 a-loving up - making love to
63 Stetson - cowboy hat
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“O, bring out your rubber-tired hearses, bring out your rubber-tired hacks;64 35 Gonna take Johnny to the graveyard, and ain’t gonna bring him back. He was my man, but he done me wrong.”
“O put me in that dungeon, put me in that cell Put me where the northeast wind blows from the southeast corner of hell. I shot my man, cause he done me wrong.”
Anonymous (early 20th century)
Lucy Gray or Solitude
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray: And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child.
5 No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor, —The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the fawn65 at play, 10 The hare66 upon the green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen.
“Tonight will be a stormy night— You to the town must go; 15 And take a lantern, Child, to light Your mother through the snow.”
64 hacks - horses
65 fawn - young deer
66 hare - rabbit
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“That, Father! will I gladly do: ’Tis scarcely afternoon— The minster67 clock has just struck two, 20 And yonder is the moon!”
At this the Father raised his hook, And snapped a faggot band;68 He plied his work—and Lucy took The lantern in her hand.
25 Not blither is the mountain roe;69 With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time; 30 She wandered up and down; And many a hill did Lucy climb: But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; 35 But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide.
At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the moor; And thence they saw the bridge of wood, 40 A furlong70 from their door.
They wept—and, turning homeward, cried, “In heaven we all shall meet”; —When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy’s feet.
67 minster - church
68 faggot band - cord binding a bundle of sticks to be used for fuels
69 roe - small deer
70 furlong - one eighth of a mile
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45 Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn hedge, And by the long stone-wall;
And then an open field they crossed: 50 The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost; And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank Those footmarks, one by one, 55 Into the middle of the plank; And further there were none!
—Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray 60 Upon the lonesome wild.
O’er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
The Griesly Wife
“Lie still, my newly married wife, Lie easy as you can. You’re young, and ill accustomed yet To sleeping with a man.”
5 The snow lay thick, the moon was full And shone across the floor. The young wife went with never a word Barefooted to the door.
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He up71 and followed sure and fast, 10 The moon shone clear and white. But before his coat was on his back His wife was out of sight.
He trod the trail wherever it turned By many a mound and scree,72 15 And still the barefoot track led on, And an angry man was he.
He followed fast, he followed slow, And still he called her name, But only the dingoes73 of the hills 20 Yowled back at him again.
His hair stood up along his neck, His angry mind was gone, For the track of the two bare feet gave out And a four-foot track went on.
25 Her nightgown lay upon the snow As it might upon the sheet, But the track that led from where it lay Was never of human feet.
His heart turned over in his chest, 30 He looked from side to side, And he thought more of his gumwood fire Than he did of his griesly bride.
And first he started walking back And then began to run, 35 And his quarry74 wheeled at the end of her track And hunted him in turn.
71 up - got up
72 scree - stony slope
73 dingoes - wild dogs
74 quarry - object, target
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Oh, long the fire may burn for him And open stand the door, And long the bed may wait empty: 40 He’ll not be back any more.
John Manifold (1915-1985)
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
“Ah, are you digging on my grave My loved one?—planting rue?”75 —“No: yesterday he76 went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. 5 ‘It cannot hurt her77 now,’ he said, ‘That I should not be true.’ ”
“Then who is digging on my grave? My nearest dearest kin?” —“Ah, no: they sit and think, ‘What use! 10 What good will planting flowers produce? No tendance78 of her mound can loose Her spirit from Death’s gin.’ ”79
“But someone digs upon my grave? My enemy?—prodding sly?” 15 —“Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate That shuts on all flesh soon or late,80 She thought you no more worth her hate, And cares not where you lie.”
75 rue - grief, sadness (i.e. plating flowers as signs of grief for the loss of loved one)
76 he - i.e. the speaker’s “loved one” (l. 2)
77 her - i.e. the speaker
78 tendance - tending, looking after
79 gin - trap, snare
80 soon or late - sooner or later
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“Then, who is digging on my grave? 20 Say—since I have not guessed!” —“O it is I, my mistress dear, Your little dog, who still lives near, And much I hope my movements here Have not disturbed your rest?”
25 “Ah, yes! You dig upon my grave… Why flashed it not on me81 That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find To equal among human kind 30 A dog’s fidelity!”
“Mistress, I dug upon your grave To bury a bone, in case I should be hungry near this spot When passing on my daily trot.82 35 I am sorry, but I quite forgot It was your resting place.”
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Is My Team Ploughing
“Is my team83 ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?”
5Ay,84 the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The land you used to plough.
81 why flashed it not on me - why haven’t I thought of that
82 trot - run
83 team - harnessed animals
84 ay - yes
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“Is football playing 10 Along the river shore, With lads to chase the leather, Now I stand up no more?”
Ay the ball is flying, The lads play heart and soul; 15 The goal stands up, the keeper Stands up to keep the goal.
“Is my girl happy, That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping 20 As she lies down at eve?”
Ay, she lies down lightly, She lies not down to weep: Your girl is well contented. Be still, my lad, and sleep.
25 “Is my friend hearty, Now I am thin and pine, And has he found to sleep in A better bed than mine?”
Yes, lad, I lie easy, 30 I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart, Never ask me whose.
A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
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Lyric
In the most common use of the term, a lyric is any fairly short poem, uttered by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought, and feeling. Many lyric speakers are represented as musing in solitude. In dramatic lyrics, however, the lyric speaker is represented as addressing another person in a specific situation; instances are John Donne’s “Canonization” and William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.”
Although the lyric is uttered in the first person, the “I” in the poem need not be the poet who wrote it. In some lyrics, such as John Milton’s sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight,” the references to the known circumstances of the author’s life make it clear that we are to read the poem as a personal expression. Even in such personal lyrics, however, both the character and utterance of the speaker may be formalized and altered by the author in a way that is conducive to the desired artistic effect. In a number of lyrics, the speaker is a conventional period-figure, such as the long-suffering suitor in the Petrarchan sonnet, or the courtly, witty lover of the Cavalier poems. And in some types of lyrics, the speaker is obviously an invented figure (or persona) remote from the poet in character and circumstance.
The lyric genre comprehends a great variety of utterances. Some, like Ben Jonson’s “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” and Walt Whitman’s ode on the death of Abraham Lincoln, “O Captain, My Captain,” are ceremonial poems uttered in a public voice on a public occasion. Among the lyrics in a more private mode, some are simply a brief, intense expression of a mood or state of feeling; for example, Shelley’s “To Night,” or Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights, Wild Nights,” or this fine medieval song:
Fowles in the frith, The fisshes in the flood, And I mon waxe wood: Much sorwe I walke with For best of bone and blood.
But the genre also includes extended expressions of a complex evolution of feelingful thought, as in the long elegy and the meditative ode. And within a lyric, the process of observation, thought, memory, and feeling is organized in a variety of ways. For example, in “love lyrics” the speaker may simply express an enamored state of mind in an ordered form, as in Robert Burns’ “O my love’s like a red, red rose,” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”; or may gallantly elaborate a compliment (Ben Jonson’s “Drink to me only with thine eyes”); or may deploy an argument to take advantage of fleeting youth and opportunity (Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” or Shakespeare’s first seventeen sonnets addressed to a male youth); or
- 18 - Lyric LT 202 - Introduction to Literature II Poetry may express a cool response to an importunate lover (Christina Rossetti’s “No, thank you, John”). In other kinds of lyrics the speaker manifests and celebrates a particular disposition and set of values (John Milton’s “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”); or expresses a sustained process of observation and meditation in the attempt to resolve an emotional problem (Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” Arnold’s “Dover Beach”); or is exhibited as making and justifying the choice of a way of life (Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”).
In the original Greek, “lyric” signified a song rendered to the accompaniment of a lyre. In some current usages, lyric still retains the sense of a poem written to be set to music; the hymn, for example, is a lyric on a religious subject that is intended to be sung. The adjectival form “lyrical” is sometimes applied to an expressive, song-like passage in a narrative poem, such as Eve’s declaration of love to Adam, “With thee conversing I forget all time,” in Milton’s Paradise Lost, IV, 639–56.
Subclasses of the lyric include aubade, dramatic monologue, elegy, epithalamion, hymn, ode, and sonnet.
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
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Western Wind
Western wind, when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain? Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!
Anonymous (15th century)
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.
5 No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal85 course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Dust of Snow
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree
5 Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
85 diurnal - daily
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Song: O Mistress Mine Where Are You Roaming?86
O Mistress mine where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming, That can sing both high and low.87 Trip88 no further pretty sweeting. 5 Journeys end in lovers’ meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love, ’tis not hereafter, Present mirth, hath present laughter: What’s to come, is still unsure. 10 In delay there lies no plenty, Then come kiss me sweet and twenty:89 Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
86 From Twelfth Night (2.3).
87 sing both high and low - sing all sorts of tunes
88 trip - travel
89 twenty - twenty times
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Song: To Celia90
Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine. 5 The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine: But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 10 Not so much honoring thee, As giving it a hope, that there It could not withered be. But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent’st it back to me; 15 Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
90 These famous lines are a patchwork of five separate prose passages by Philostratus, a Greek sophist (3rd century A.D.). Jonson very carefully reworded the phrases (there are several early manuscript versions of the poem) into this classic lyric. This song also features in Jonson’s play Volpone. The speaker of these lines is Volpone, a greedy and lustful old man, who is trying to seduce the young and beautiful Celia.
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Go, Lovely Rose
Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble91 her to thee, 5 How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young, And shuns92 to have her graces spied,93 That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, 10 Thou must have uncommended94 died.
Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired;95 Bid96 her come forth, Suffer97 herself to be desired, 15 And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee; How small a part of time they share 20 That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
91 resemble - compare
92 shuns - refuses
93 spied - seen
94 uncommended - unpraised
95 retired - withdrawn
96 bid - ask
97 suffer - allow
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Ask Me No More Where Jove Bestows
Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty’s orient98 deep, These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.99
5 Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste 10 The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing100 throat She winters,101 and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars light, That downwards fall in dead of night; 15 For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become, as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west The phoenix builds her spicy nest;102 For unto you at last she flies, 20 And in your fragrant bosom dies.
Thomas Carew (1595-1640)
98 orient - lustrous
99 Aristotelian philosophy suggested that objects often lay latent in their causes. The mistress is the cause of summer flowers.
100 dividing - harmonious (from ‘division,’ or rapid melodic passage)
101 winters - spends the winter (as in hibernation)
102 The phoenix, a mythical Arabian bird, builds her nest from spicy shrubs.
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One Perfect Rose
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet— One perfect rose.
5 I knew the language of the floweret;103 “My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.” Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet 10 One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get One perfect rose.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
103 floweret - small flower
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Break, Break, Break
Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would104 that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.
5 O, well105 for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on 10 To their haven106 under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! 15 But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
104 would - wish
105 O, well - it is well
106 haven - harbor
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Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount107
Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with108 my salt tears; Yet slower, yet, O faintly, gentle springs! List109 to the heavy part the music bears: Woe weeps out her division,110 when she sings. 5 Droop herbs and flowers; Fall grief in showers; Our beauties are not ours. O, I could still, Like melting snow upon some craggy hill, 10 Drop, drop, drop, drop, Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil.111
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
107 From the play Cynthia’s Revels (1.2). This lyric is a lament sung by Echo for Narcissus, who was entranced by his own reflection and who was ultimately transformed into a flower.
108 keep time with - keep pace with
109 list - listen
110 division - grief at parting; also a rapid melodic passage of music
111 Daffodil is a member of a narcissus (plant) genus.
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Loveliest of Trees
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride112 Wearing white for Eastertide.113
5 Now, of my threescore114 years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom 10 Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.
A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
112 ride - path, road
113 Eastertide - Easter period
114 threescore - sixty (a score is a group or set of twenty)
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When We Two Parted
When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, 5 Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning 10 Sunk chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame:115 15 I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.
They name thee before me, A knell116 to mine ear; A shudder comes o’er me— 20 Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well— Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell.
25 In secret we met— In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee 30 After long years, How should I greet thee?— With silence and tears.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
115 light is thy fame - i.e., you are known for your fickleness or unfaithfulness
116 knell - the sound of a bell, especially when rung solemnly for a death or funeral
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After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes
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?
5 The Feet, mechanical, go round— Of Ground, or Air, or Ought117— A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
10 This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow— First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
117 ought - aught; anything at all
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The Sunlight on the Garden
The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold, 5 When all is told We cannot beg for pardon. Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it 10 Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells 15 And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying118
And not expecting pardon, 20 Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden.
Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
118 From William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, IV.xv.41, Anthony’s speech to Cleopatra, “I am dying, Egypt, dying.”
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Scaffolding
Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
5 And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall 10 Confident that we have built our wall.
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
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Talking in Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently. 5 Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation
10 It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
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Elegy
In Greek and Roman times, “elegy” denoted any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). The term was also used, however, to refer to the subject matter of change and loss frequently expressed in the elegiac verse form, especially in complaints about love. In accordance with this latter usage, “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and other poems in Old English on the transience of all worldly things are even now called elegies. In Europe and England the word continued to have a variable application through the Renaissance. John Donne’s elegies, written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, are love poems, although they relate to the sense of elegy as lament, in that many of them emphasize mutability and loss. In the seventeenth century the term elegy began to be limited to its most common present usage: a formal and sustained lament in verse for the death of a particular person, usually ending in a consolation. Examples are the medieval poem Pearl and Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (elegies in the mode of dream allegory); Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), on the death of Arthur Hallam; and W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1940). Occasionally the term is used in its older and broader sense, for somber meditations on mortality such as Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1757), and the Duino Elegies (1912–22) of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke on the transience both of poets and of the earthly objects they write poems about.
The dirge is also a versified expression of grief on the occasion of a particular person’s death, but differs from the elegy in that it is short, is less formal, and is usually represented as a text to be sung; examples are Shakespeare’s “Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies” and William Collins’ “A Song from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline” (1749). Threnody is now used mainly as an equivalent for “dirge,” and monody for an elegy or dirge which is presented as the utterance of a single person. John Milton describes his “Lycidas” (1638) in the subtitle as a “monody” in which “the Author bewails a learned Friend,” and Matthew Arnold called his elegy on A. H. Clough “Thyrsis: A Monody” (1866).
An important subtype of the elegy is the pastoral elegy, which represents both the poet and the one he mourns—who is usually also a poet—as shepherds (the Latin word for shepherd is “pastor”). This poetic form was originated by the Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus, was continued by the Roman Virgil, was developed in various European countries during the Renaissance, and remained current in English poetry through the nineteenth century. Notable English pastoral elegies are Spenser’s “Astrophel,” on the death of Sir Philip Sidney (1595); Milton’s “Lycidas” (1638); Shelley’s “Adonais” (1821); and in the Victorian age, Arnold’s “Thyrsis.” The pastoral elegists, from the Greeks through the Renaissance, developed a set of elaborate conventions, which are illustrated here by reference to “Lycidas.” In addition to the fictional representation of both mourner
- 34 - Elegy LT 202 - Introduction to Literature II Poetry and subject as shepherds tending their flocks (lines 23–36 and elsewhere), we often find the following conventional features:
1. The lyric speaker begins by invoking the muses, and goes on to make frequent reference to other figures from classical mythology (lines 15–22, and later).
2. All nature joins in mourning the shepherd’s death (lines 37–49). (Recent critics who stress the mythic and ritual origins of poetic genres claim that this feature is a survival from primitive laments for the death of Thammuz, Adonis, or other vegetational deities who died in the autumn to be reborn in the spring.)
3. The mourner charges with negligence the nymphs or other guardians of the dead shepherd (lines 50–63).
4. There is a procession of appropriate mourners (lines 88–111).
5. The poet raises questions about the justice of fate, or else of Providence, and adverts to the corrupt conditions of his own times (lines 64–84, 113–31). Such passages, though sometimes called “digressions,” are integral to the evolution of the mourner’s thought in “Lycidas.”
6. Post-Renaissance elegies often include an elaborate passage in which appropri- ate flowers are brought to deck the hearse (lines 133–51).
7. There is a closing consolation. In Christian elegies, the lyric reversal from grief and despair to joy and assurance typically occurs when the elegist comes to realize that death in this world is the entry to a higher life (lines 165–85).
In his Life of Milton (1779) Samuel Johnson, who disapproved both of pastoralism and mythology in modern poetry, decried “Lycidas” for “its inherent improbability,” but in the elegies by Milton and other major poets the ancient rituals provide a structural frame on which they play variations with originality and power. Some of the pastoral conventions, although adapted to an industrial age and a non-Christian worldview, survive still in Walt Whitman’s elegy on Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1866).
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
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To an Athlete Dying Young
The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.
5 Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes119 away 10 From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel120 grows It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, 15 And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout121 Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran 20 And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup.
25 And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s. A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
119 betimes - early
120 Laurel is a symbol of victory, especially of the athletic or poetic achievement.
121 swell the rout - become one of the crowd
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O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack,122 the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 5 But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 10 Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! 15 It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 20 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
122 rack - wrack or stormy clouds
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Elegy for Alfred Hubbard
Hubbard is dead, the old plumber: who will mend our burst pipes now, the tap that has dripped all the summer, testing the sink’s overflow?
5 No other like him. Young men with knowledge of new techniques, theories from books, may better his work, straight from college, but who will challenge his squint-eyed looks
in kitchen, bathroom, under floorboards, 10 rules of thumb which were often wrong; seek as erringly stopcocks in cupboards, or make a job last half as long?
He was a man who knew the ginnels, alleyways, streets—the whole district, 15 family secrets, minor annals, time-honoured fictions fused to fact.
Seventy years of gossip muttered under his cap, his tufty thatch, so that his talk was slow and clotted, 20 hard to follow, and too much.
As though nothing fell, none vanished, and time were the maze of Cheetham Hill, in which the dead—with jobs unfinished— waited to hear him ring the bell.
25 For much he never got round to doing, but meant to, when weather bucked up, or worsened, or when his pipe was drawing, or when he’d finished this cup.
I thought time, he forgot so often, 30 had forgotten him; but here’s Death’s pomp over his house, and by the coffin the son who will inherit his blowlamp,
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tools, workshop, cart, and cornet (pride of Cheetham Prize Brass Band), 35 and there’s his mourning widow, Janet, stood at the gate he’d promised to mend.
Soon he will make his final journey; shaved and silent, strangely trim, with never a pause to talk to any- 40 body: how arrow-like, for him!
In St. Mark’s church, whose dismal tower he pointed and painted when a lad, they will sing his praises amidst flowers while, somewhere, a cellar starts to flood,
45 and the housewife banging his front-door knocker is not surprised to find him gone, and runs for Thwaite, who’s a better worker, and sticks at a job until it’s done.
Tony Connor (b. 1930)
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Ode
In its traditional application, “ode” denotes a long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure. Norman Maclean said that the term now calls to mind a lyric which is “massive, public in its proclamations, and Pindaric in its classical prototype” (“From Action to Image,” in Critics and Criticism, ed. R. S. Crane, 1952). The prototype was established by the Greek poet Pindar, whose odes were modeled on the songs by the chorus in Greek drama. His complex stanzas were patterned in sets of three: moving in a dance rhythm to the left, the chorus chanted the strophe; moving to the right, the antistrophe; then, standing still, the epode.
The regular or Pindaric ode in English is a close imitation of Pindar’s form, with all the strophes and antistrophes written in one stanza pattern, and all the epodes in another. This form was introduced into England by Ben Jonson’s ode “To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison” (1629); the typical construction can be conveniently studied in this poem or in Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of Poesy” (1757). The irregular ode was introduced in 1656 by Abraham Cowley, who imitated the Pindaric style and matter but disregarded the recurrent stanzaic pattern in each strophic triad; instead, he allowed each stanza to establish its own pattern of varying line lengths, number of lines, and rhyme scheme. This type of irregular stanzaic structure, which is free to alter in accordance with shifts in subject and mood, has been the most common for the English ode ever since; Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (1807) is representative.
Pindar’s odes were encomiastic; that is, they were written to praise and glorify someone—in the instance of Pindar, the ode celebrated a victorious athlete in the Olympic games. The earlier English odes, and many later ones, were also written to eulogize something, such as a person (John Dryden’s “Anne Killigrew”), or the arts of music or poetry (Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast”), or a time of day (Collins’ “Ode to Evening”), or abstract concepts (Gray’s “Hymn to Adversity” and Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty”). Romantic poets perfected the personal ode of description and passionate meditation, which is stimulated by (and sometimes at its close reverts to) an aspect of the outer scene and turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional problem or a generally human one (Wordsworth’s “Intimations” ode, Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode,” Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”). Recent examples of this latter type are Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” and Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order at Key West.”
The Horatian ode was originally modeled on the matter, tone, and form of the odes of the Roman Horace. In contrast to the passion, visionary boldness, and formal language of Pindar’s odes, many Horatian odes are calm, meditative, and colloquial; they are also usually homostrophic (that is, written in a single repeated stanza form), and shorter than
- 40 - Ode LT 202 - Introduction to Literature II Poetry the Pindaric ode. Examples are Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (1650) and Keats’ ode “To Autumn” (1820).
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
Ode on Solitude
Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air, In his own ground.
5 Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find 10 Hours, days, and years slide soft away, In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease, Together mixed; sweet recreation; 15 And innocence, which most does please, With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone 20 Tell where I lie.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
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To Autumn
1 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-eves run; 5 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, 10 Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
2 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 15 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing123 wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook124 Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 20 Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
123 winnowing - blowing the grain clear of the lighter chaff
124 hook - sickle
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3 Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too— 25 While barréd 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,125 borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 30 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;126 Hedge crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;127 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
September 19, 1989 John Keats (1795-1821)
125 sallows - willows
126 bourn - field
127 garden-croft - small field or garden near a house
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Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat128 Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
’Twas on a lofty vase’s side, Where China’s gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow;129 Demurest of the tabby kind, 5 The pensive Selima reclined, Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, 10 Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, 15 The genii of the stream; Their scaly armor’s Tyrian130 hue Through richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam.
The hapless nymph with wonder saw: 20 A whisker first and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize. What female heart can gold despise? What cat’s averse to fish?
25 Presumptuous maid! with looks intent Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. (Malignant Fate sat by and smiled) The slippery verge her feet beguiled, 30 She tumbled headlong in.
128 Selima, one of Horace Walpole’s cats, had recently drowned in a china cistern. Gray Wrote this memorial at Walpole’s request.
129 blow - bloom
130 tyrian - purple
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Eight times emerging from the flood She mewed to every watery god, Some speedy aid to send. No dolphin came, no nereid131 stirred: 35 Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard; A favorite has no friend!
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived, Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved, And be with caution bold. 40 Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters gold.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
131 nereid - sea nymphs
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Sonnet
A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns of rhyme in sonnets written in the English language:
1. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (named after the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch) falls into two main parts: an octave (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet (six lines) rhyming cdecde or some variant, such as cdccdc. Petrarch’s sonnets were first imitated in England, both in their stanza form and their subject—the hopes and pains of an adoring male lover—by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the early sixteenth century. The Petrarchan form was later used, and for a variety of subjects, by Milton, Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, D. G. Rossetti, and other sonneteers, who sometimes made it technically easier in English (which does not have as many rhyming possibilities as Italian) by introducing a new pair of rhymes in the second four lines of the octave.
2. The Earl of Surrey and other English experimenters in the sixteenth century also developed a stanza form called the English sonnet, or else the Shakespearean sonnet, after its greatest practitioner. This sonnet falls into three quatrains and a concluding couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. There was a notable variant, the Spenserian sonnet, in which Spenser linked each quatrain to the next by a continuing rhyme: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
John Donne shifted from the hitherto primary subject, sexual love, to a variety of religious themes in his Holy Sonnets, written early in the seventeenth century; and Milton, in the latter part of that century, expanded the range of the sonnet to other matters of serious concern. Except for a lapse in the English Neoclassic Period, the sonnet has remained a popular form to the present day and includes among its distinguished practitioners, in the nineteenth century, Wordsworth, Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in the twentieth century, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, and Dylan Thomas. The stanza is just long enough to permit a fairly complex lyric development, yet so short and so exigent in its rhymes as to pose a standing challenge to the ingenuity and artistry of the poet. The rhyme pattern of the Petrarchan sonnet has on the whole favored a statement of a problem, situation, or incident in the octave, with a resolution in the sestet. The English form sometimes uses a similar division of material, but often presents instead a repetition-with-variation of a statement in each of the three quatrains; in either case, the final couplet in the English sonnet usually imposes an epigrammatic turn at the end. In Drayton’s fine Elizabethan sonnet in the English form “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,” the lover brusquely declares in the first quatrain, then reiterates in the second, that he is glad that the affair is cleanly ended, then hesitates at the finality of the
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Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath, When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes; Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
Following Petrarch’s early example, a number of Elizabethan authors arranged their poems into sonnet sequences, or sonnet cycles, in which a series of sonnets are linked together by exploring the varied aspects of a relationship between lovers, or else by indicating a development in the relationship that constitutes a kind of implicit plot. Shakespeare ordered his sonnets in a sequence, as did Sidney in Astrophel and Stella (1580) and Spenser in Amoretti (1595). Later examples of the sonnet sequence on various subjects are Wordsworth’s The River Duddon, D. G. Rossetti’s House of Life, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, and the American poet William Ellery Leonard’s Two Lives. Dylan Thomas’ Altarwise by Owl-light (1936) is a sequence of ten sonnets which are abstruse meditations on the poet’s own life. George Meredith’s Modern Love (1862), which concerns a bitterly unhappy marriage, is sometimes called a sonnet sequence, even though its component poems consist not of fourteen but of sixteen lines.
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
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My Galley Charged with Forgetfulness
My galley132 chargéd with forgetfulness133 Thorough134 sharp seas, in winter nights doth pass ’Tween rock and rock; and eke135 mine enemy, alas, That is my lord,136 steereth with cruelness. 5 And every oar a thought in readiness, As though that death were light in such a case.137 An endless wind doth tear the sail apace Of forcéd sighs and trusty fearfulness.138 A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain, 10 Hath done the wearied cords great hinderance, Wreathéd with error and eke with ignorance. The stars be hid that led me to this pain, Drownéd is reason that should me consort,139 And I remain despairing of the port.
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542)
132 galley - ancient ship propelled by oars
133 charged with forgetfulness - laden with neglect
134 thorough - through
135 eke - also
136 mine enemy, alas, / that is my lord - i.e. the mistress
137 as though that death were light in such a case - as though my destruction would not matter much
138 trusty fearfulness - fear to trust
139 consort - accompany
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Farewell, Love
Farewell, Love, and all thy laws forever, Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more; Senec and Plato call me from thy lore To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavor.140 5 In blind error when I did persever,141 Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh142 ay143 so sore, Hath taught me to set in trifles no store144 And ’scape145 forth since liberty is lever.146 Therefore farewell, go trouble younger hearts, 10 And in me claim no more authority; With idle youth go use thy property,147 And thereon spend thy many brittle darts,148 For hitherto though I have lost all my time, Me lusteth149 no longer rotten boughs to climb.
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542)
140 Senec and Plato…to endeavor - i.e. Seneca (the Roman moral philosopher and tragedian) and Plato call him to educate his mind to perfect well-being (“wealth”).
141 perserver - persevere
142 pricketh - pricked, caused pain
143 ay - aye, yes, very
144 to set in trifles no store - to take ‘trifles’ (“Love”) for no worth, take no notice of trifles
145 ’scape - escape
146 lever - more pleasing, dearer
147 go use thy property - go do what you do best
148 brittle darts - weak arrows of Cupid (personification of Love)
149 me lusteth - I care
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Astrophil and Stella 39
Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace! The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, The indifferent judge between the high and low. 5 With shield of proof shield me from out the press150 Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw. O make in me those civil wars to cease; I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 10 A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland and a weary head; And if these things, as being thine by right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
150 press - throng
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Amoretti 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,151 But came the waves and washèd it away: Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,152 But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.153 5 “Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay, A mortall thing so to immortalize, For I my selve shall lyke to this decay, And eek154 my name bee wypèd out lykewize.” “Not so,” quod155 I, “let baser things devize156 10 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. Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,157 Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
151 strand - beach
152 with a second hand - for a second time
153 made my paynes his pray - made my pains his prey
154 eek - also
155 quod - quoth, said
156 devize - contrive
157 subdew - subdue, conquer
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My Lady’s Presence Makes the Roses Red
My Lady’s presence makes the Roses red, Because to see her lips they blush for shame. The Lily’s leaves, for envy, pale became, For her white hands in them this envy bred. 5 The Marigold the leaves abroad158 doth spread, Because the sun’s and her power is the same. The Violet of purple colour came, Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed. In brief all flowers from her their virtue take; 10 From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed; The living heat which her eyebeams doth make Warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed. The rain, wherewith she watereth the flowers, Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
Henry Constable (1562–1613)
158 abroad - around, broadly
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Since There’s No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part; Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart That thus so cleanly159 I myself can free; 5 Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen160 in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath, 10 When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,161 From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
159 cleanly - completely
160 be it not seen - let it not be seen
161 all have given him over - all have given up on him
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Sonnet 20
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion, A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change as is false women’s fashion, 5 An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding162 the object whereupon it gazeth: A man in hue,163 all hues in his controlling, Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created, 10 Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she pricked164 thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
162 gilding - adding shine to, coating with a superficial layer of gold
163 hue - appearance
164 pricked - selected; also ‘prick’ or a male organ
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Sonnet 55
Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish165 time. 5 When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils166 root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. ’Gainst death and all oblivious enmity167 10 Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,168 You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
165 sluttish - slovenly; messy and dirty
166 broils - turmoil, war
167 all oblivious enmity - the enmity of oblivion, of being forgotten
168 till the Judgement that yourself arise - until you rise from the dead on Judgment Day
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Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies,169 That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties. 5 Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit170 her false-speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. But wherefore171 says she not she is unjust?172 10 And wherefore say not I that I am old? Oh, love’s best habit173 is in seeming174 trust, And age in love loves not to have years told.175 Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered176 be.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
169 lies - speak falsely; also sleep or have sex with other men
170 credit - give credit to, believe
171 wherefore - why
172 unjust - unfaithful
173 habit - usual behavior; also dress or guise
174 seeming - apparent
175 told - counted
176 flattered - pleasantly deceived
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Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still177 For that which longer nurseth178 the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please. 5 My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,179 Hath left me, and I desperate now approve180 Desire is death, which physic did except.181 Past182 cure I am, now reason is past care;183 10 And frantic-mad with evermore184 unrest, My thoughts and my discourse185 as madmen’s are, At random from the truth186 vainly expressed. For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
177 still - continually
178 nurseth - sustains, nurtures
179 kept - followed
180 approve - [I] am proof of; [I] discover by experience
181 which physic did except - which desire medicine forbade (“physic” means medicine)
182 past - beyond
183 past care - past caring, no longer cares
184 evermore - continual
185 discourse - speech
186 at random from the truth - [my discourse is] wandering haphazardly from the truth
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The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,187 Getting and spending,188 we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 5 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be 10 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,189 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
187 late and soon - recently
188 getting and spending - earning money and buying
189 lea - meadow
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When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be190 Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry,191 Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; 5 When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,192 10 That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the fairy power Of unreflecting193 love;—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
John Keats (1795-1821)
190 cease to be - die
191 charactry - characters, printed letters
192 fair creature of an hour - beautiful yet mortal being; i.e. the mistress
193 unreflecting - unrequited
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Thou Art Not Lovelier than Lilacs,—No
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no, Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair Than small white single poppies,—I can bear Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though 5 From left to right, not knowing where to go, I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so. Like him who day by day unto his draught 10 Of delicate poison adds him one drop more Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed194 Each hour more deeply than the hour before, I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
194 quaffed - gulped, drunk deeply
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Epigram
The term is now used for a statement, whether in verse or prose, which is terse, pointed, and witty. The epigram may be on any subject and in any mode: amatory, elegiac, meditative, complimentary, anecdotal, or (most often) satiric. Martial, the Roman epigrammatist, established the enduring model for the caustically satiric epigram in verse.
The verse epigram was much cultivated in England in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by such poets as John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Robert Herrick. The form flourished especially in the eighteenth century, the time that Austin Dobson described as the age “of wit, of polish, and of Pope.” Matthew Prior is a highly accomplished writer of epigrams, and many closed couplets by Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are detachable epigrams. In the same century, when the exiled Stuarts were still pretenders to the English throne, John Byrom proposed this epigrammatic toast:
God bless the King—I mean the Faith’s defender! God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender! But who pretender is or who is king— God bless us all! that’s quite another thing.
And here is one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epigrams, to show that Romanticism did not preclude wit:
On a Volunteer Singer Swans sing before they die—’twere no bad thing Should certain people die before they sing!
Many of the short poems of Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) were fine examples of the nonsatirical epigram. Boileau and Voltaire excelled in the epigram in France, as did Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller in Germany; and in America, a number of the short poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson may be accounted epigrams. The form continued to be cultivated by Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Ogden Nash, Phyllis McGinley, Dorothy Parker, A. R. Ammons, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and other poets in the twentieth century.
“Epigram” came to be applied, after the eighteenth century, to neat and witty statements in prose as well as verse; an alternative name for the prose epigram is the apothegm. Such terse and witty prose statements are to be distinguished from the aphorism: a pithy and pointed statement of a serious maxim, opinion, or general truth. One of the best known aphorisms is also one of the shortest: ars longa, vita brevis est —“art is long, life is short.” It occurs first in a work attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates entitled Aphorisms, which consisted of tersely worded precepts on the practice of medicine.
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
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What Is an Epigram?
What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife
He first deceased: she for a little tried To live without him: liked it not, and died.
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)
Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness
I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
This Englishwoman
This English Woman is so refined She has no bosom and no behind.
Stevie Smith (1902-1971)
Fatigue
I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1956)
En
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from To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison
It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: 5 A lily of a day Is fairer far in May; Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, 10 And in short measures life may perfect be.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
from Auguries of Innocence
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.
William Blake (1757-1827)
from Endymion
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 5 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats (1795-1821)
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Haiku
Sometimes spelled hokku. Haiku is a Japanese poetic form that represents— in seventeen syllables that are ordered into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables—the poet’s emotional or spiritual response to a natural object, scene, or season of the year. The strict form, which relies on the short, uniform, and unstressed syllabic structure of the Japanese language, is extremely difficult in English; most poets who attempt the haiku loosen the rule for the number and pattern of the syllables. The haiku greatly influenced Ezra Pound and other Imagists, who set out to reproduce both the brevity and the precision of the image in the Japanese original. Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” is a well-known instance of the haiku in the loosened English form.
M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd : Petals on a wet, black bough . Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
They didn’t hire him so he ate his lunch alone: the noon whistle Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
midday heat soldiers on both sides roll up their sleeves Lenard D Moore (b. 1958)
The falling flower I saw drift back to the branch Was a butterfly. Arakida Moritake (1473-1549) Translated by Babette Deutsch
Fallen petals rise back to the branch—I watch oh…butterflies! Arakida Moritake (1473-1549) Translated by Harold G. Henderson
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The Japanese consider the poems of the “Three Masters”—Basho, Buson, and Issa —to be the pinnacle of classical haiku. Each poet had his own personality: Basho, the ascetic seeker of Zen enlightenment; Buson, the worldly artist; and Issa, the sensitive master of wit and pathos.
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) Taniguchi Buson (1716-1783)
First day of spring— The piercing chill I feel: I keep thinking about my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom, the end of autumn. under my heel. Translated by Robert Hass Translated by Harold G. Henderson
This darkening autumn: I go, my neighbor, you stay; how does he continue? two autumns. Translated by Michael R. Burch Translated by Robert Hass soon to die, Spring means plum blossoms yet no sign of it: and spotless new kimonos a cicada’s cry for holiday whores. Translated by David Landis Barnhill Translated by Philip Appleman
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
O snail Climb Mount Fuji, But slowly, slowly! Translated by R.H. Blyth
On a branch floating downriver a cricket, singing. Translated by Jane Hirshfield
Asked how old he was the boy in the new kimono stretched out all five fingers. Translated by Robert Hass
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Villanelle
A poem composed of an uneven number (usually five) of tercets (a unit of three verse lines) rhyming aba, with a final quatrain (a verse stanza of four lines) rhyming abaa. In this French fixed form, the first and the third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the third lines of the succeeding tercets, and together as the final couplet of the quatrain. Representing these repeated lines in capitals, with the second of them given in underlined, the rhyme scheme may be displayed thus: AbA abA abA abA abA abAA. The form was established in France in the 16th century, and used chiefly for pastoral songs. In English, it was used for light vers de société (‘society verse’ or light verse dealing with frivolous concerns of upper-class social life) by some minor poets of the late 19th century; but it has been adopted for more serious use by W. H. Auden, William Empson, and Derek Mahon. The best known villanelle in English, however, is Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1952).
Chris Baldick. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 5 Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
10 Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 15 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
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One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster195 5 of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
10 I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 15 I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
195 fluster - panic, nuisance
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Lonely Hearts
Can someone make my simple wish come true? Male biker seeks female for touring fun. Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Gay vegetarian whose friends are few, 5 I’m into music, Shakespeare and the sun. Can someone make my simple wish come true?
Executive in search of something new— Perhaps bisexual woman, arty, young. Do you live in North London? Is it you?
10 Successful, straight and solvent?196 I am too— Attractive Jewish lady with a son. Can someone make my simple wish come true?
I’m Libran, inexperienced and blue— Need slim, non-smoker, under twenty-one. 15 Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Please write (with photo) to Box 152. Who knows where it may lead once we’ve begun? Can someone make my simple wish come true? Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Wendy Cope (b. 1945)
196 solvent - financially secure, able to pay one’s own debts
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