Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

The Old Playhouse by Kamala Das- Summary and Analysis

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The Old Playhouse - Read the full Poem



In most of her poetry Kamala Das is seen to express her bitter feelings toward the loveless martial relationship where the husband always tries to internalize his ideologies to the woman. Her poetry depicts that marriage is no more than a way of learning about one’s self or the completion of one’s own personality where living in the same room the female gradually turns to a “Subaltern.” That’s why while reading the poetry of Kamala Das the readers can easily get the idea of “self and other” from the dictions, tone and the incident represented in the particular poem. In the same way, “The Old Playhouse” tells about the unsatisfactory and disappointing conjugal life of speaker with her husband. Kamala Das argues that from the very beginning of her conjugal life her husband tries to tame her that means the process of domesticating the women starts just after their marriage. It suggests that the women start to lose their identity at the beginning of their married life. That’s why in spite of their living together their souls never get connected which eventually portray two separated selves. Here the narrator compares her with a Swallow which refers to a long winged migratory bird. The migratory bird has its experience of flying the wide sky, it knows the endless pathways of the sky:

In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
Pathways of the sky. (The Old Playhouse: 2-5)

But in this poem the narrator’s husband has been found to apply the techniques of love so that it “would forget not the raw seasons alone” but also “the homes it left behind”. Just like this migratory bird after her marriage where the marriage has been compared with the migration of bird the narrator’s life has been caged. Now she has lost her spirit to fly and urge to find her old home which she left behind. Here the homes have been compared with the inner self of the poet which she starts to loss just after her marriage. And her searching for identity has been continued in different poetry like “My Grandmother’s House” where Kamala Das is seen to tell that she has lost her way and is trying to get back her identity by wandering at strangers’ doors:


There is no place of the exploitation and dehumanization of any partner in love. But opposite things happen in this poem where the narrator’s husband has been found to give her lesson only about himself. It suggests that after the marriage the husband tries to internalize his ideologies to her wife. On the contrary Kamala Das argues that she has not come to the life of her husband only to learn about the rules and regulations of patriarchal society rather she wants to learn how to fly and how to grow. In a nutshell the poetess wants to establish her identity with the help of her husband which never comes true. 

Here in this poem Kamala Das has tried to be a free agent of human being and tries to make her soul free but every time she has been imprisoned by the egotistical nature of her Husband. She is also seen to criticize the loveless relationship where every night men and women are seen to consume each other physically but not with the spirit of divine love. Kamala Das accuses that the physical relation without love is nothing but dribbling spittle into the mouth where her husband is also seen to pour himself in “every nook and cranny” of her body which shows the animalistic attitude of man during intercourse. Here the world “poured” has played a great role to display the identity of the poetess. When someone pours oil in water then normally the water losses its own characteristics where the mixed chemical neither can work like the water nor like oil. The life of the poetess has become like this mixed chemical where she is unable to act like her husband or regain her own self of woman. Thus, with the spiritless sexual relationship the women gradually loss their true identity.

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Sonnet 18 BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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The Maggots - Poem by Kamala Das

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At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna
Loved her for the last time and left...

That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt
So dead that he asked, What is wrong,
Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said,
No, not at all, but thought, What is
It to the corpse if the maggots nip?

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Design- Poem by Robert Frost

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I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

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The Sunshine Cat - Poem by Kamala Das

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They did this to her, the men who know her, the man
She loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish
And a coward, the husband who neither loved nor
Used her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band
Of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where
New hair sprouted like great-winged moths, burrowing her
Face into their smells and their young lusts to forget
To forget, oh, to forget, and, they said, each of
Them, I do not love, I cannot love, it is not
In my nature to love, but I can be kind to you.
They let her slide from pegs of sanity into
A bed made soft with tears, and she lay there weeping,
For sleep had lost its use. I shall build walls with tears,
She said, walls to shut me in. Her husband shut her
In, every morning, locked her in a room of books
With a streak of sunshine lying near the door like
A yellow cat to keep her company, but soon
Winter came, and one day while locking her in, he
Noticed that the cat of sunshine was only a
Line, a half-thin line, and in the evening when
He returned to take her out, she was a cold and
Half dead woman, now of no use at all to men.



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The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope- Summary and Analysis

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The Rape of the Lock opens with a brief letter from Pope to the poem's real-life subject, Arabella ("Belle") Fermor. In the letter, he explains why he wrote the poem in the first place, the circumstances that led him to publish it, and why he dedicates it to Arabella.
With Canto I, the official story begins. Here we meet Belinda, the poem's beautiful, rich, young society heroine, cuddled up with her dog in her sumptuous bedroom, just barely awake in the late morning/early afternoon. She's been having a sexy dream in which a handsome, well-dressed young man whispers sweet nothings into her ear. We're off to a rather pleasant start.

We learn that the dream has come from the sylph, Ariel, the airy spirit who watches over her. In the dream, Ariel explains the entire spirit-world of the poem, and introduces the sylphs and gnomes who will play important roles in the action later on. Belinda wakes up fully and rings for her maid, who helps her get dressed and put on her makeup for the day. Invisible to the humans, Belinda's army of attendant sylphs help with her face, hair, and outfit. As Canto II opens, a resplendent Belinda is in a barge, sailing down the River Thames on her way to a fancy party at Hampton Court, one of the country residences of the royal family. We learn here that her hairstyle features two curling locks that hang down the back of her neck. Ariel the sylph makes a speech to all of the other sylphs, telling them he's had a premonition that something terrible is about to happen, and that they should all be on their guard during the party.

The "something terrible" happens in Canto III, which finds Belinda at the party with all of her friends, sipping coffee (a novelty refreshment in the early 1700s, believe it or not) and playing a card game called Ombre, which is very similar to Hearts. The card game itself is described as a metaphorical battle between Belinda and her opponent, the Baron, who unbeknownst to Belinda is also scheming to steal one of her two locks of hair. After Belinda wins the game, the Baron borrows a pair of scissors from her frenemy, Clarissa. He sneaks up behind her and, despite all of the efforts of Ariel and the Sylphs, snips off the lock.
Canto IV opens with Belinda having a complete hysterical fit about the theft. Pope gives her rage a supernatural source, telling us that Umbriel, a resentful gnome, goes down to the underworld to pick up a bag full of tears, sobs, and anger, which he then empties over Belinda's head.

After this, there's no way that Belinda will laugh off the Baron's prank, even though Canto V begins with Clarissa trying to tell her to be a good sport about it. Belinda ignores this advice, and starts a fight between herself and her friends, and the Baron and his friends. It's more of a battle of insults and mean looks than a physical throwdown, but a ton of social damage gets done all the same.

Just when it looks like Belinda's side is winning, we discover that the lock of hair itself has gone missing. Has all of the drama been for nothing? Nope. The poem concludes with the poet himself claiming the overall victory, as he has written this beautiful poem commemorating the loss of the lock—and his own poetry chops—for all eternity. Poetry and Alexander Pope, rather than vanity and petty quarrelling, win in the end.
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Paradise Lost by John Milton- Summary and Analysis

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INTRODUCTION

Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve--how they came to be created and how they came to lose their place in the Garden of Eden, also called Paradise. It's the same story you find in the first pages of Genesis, expanded by Milton into a very long, detailed, narrative poem. It also includes the story of the origin of Satan. Originally, he was called Lucifer, an angel in heaven who led his followers in a war against God, and was ultimately sent with them to hell. Thirst for revenge led him to cause man's downfall by turning into a serpent and tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

SUMMARY

The story opens in hell, where Satan and his followers are recovering from defeat in a war they waged against God. They build a palace, called Pandemonium, where they hold council to determine whether or not to return to battle. Instead they decide to explore a new world prophecied to be created, where a safer course of revenge can be planned. Satan undertakes the mission alone. At the gate of hell, he meets his offspring, Sin and Death, who unbar the gates for him. He journeys across chaos till he sees the new universe floating near the larger globe which is heaven. God sees Satan flying towards this world and foretells the fall of man. His Son, who sits at his right hand, offers to sacrifice himself for man's salvation. Meanwhile, Satan enters the new universe. He flies to the sun, where he tricks an angel, Uriel, into showing him the way to man's home.
Satan gains entrance into the Garden of Eden, where he finds Adam and Eve and becomes jealous of them. He overhears them speak of God's commandment that they should not eat the forbidden fruit. Uriel warns Gabriel and his angels, who are guarding the gate of Paradise, of Satan's presence. Satan is apprehended by them and banished from Eden. God sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve about Satan. Raphael recounts to them how jealousy against the Son of God led a once favored angel to wage war against God in heaven, and how the Son, Messiah, cast him and his followers into hell. He relates how the world was created so mankind could one day replace the fallen angels in heaven.
Satan returns to earth, and enters a serpent. Finding Eve alone he induces her to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Adam, resigned to join in her fate, eats also. Their innocence is lost and they become aware of their nakedness. In shame and despair, they become hostile to each other. The Son of God descends to earth to judge the sinners, mercifully delaying their sentence of death. Sin and Death, sensing Satan's success, build a highway to earth, their new home. Upon his return to hell, instead of a celebration of victory, Satan and his crew are turned into serpents as punishment. Adam reconciles with Eve. God sends Michael to expel the pair from Paradise, but first to reveal to Adam future events resulting from his sin. Adam is saddened by these visions, but ultimately revived by revelations of the future coming of the Savior of mankind. In sadness, mitigated with hope, Adam and Eve are sent away from the Garden of Paradise.

Paradise Lost Detail Summary

Milton's epic poem opens on the fiery lake of hell, where Satan and his army of fallen angels find themselves chained. Satan and his leutenant Beelzebub get up from the lake and yell to the others to rise and join them. Music plays and banners fly as the army of rebel angels comes to attention, tormented and defeated but faithful to their general. They create a great and terrible temple, perched on a volcano top, and Satan calls a council there to decide on their course of action.
The fallen angels give various suggestions. Finally, Beelzebub suggests that they take the battle to a new battlefield, a place called earth where, it is rumoured, God has created a new being called man. Man is not as powerful as the angels, but he is God's chosen favorite among his creations. Beelzebub suggests that they seek revenge against God by seducing man to their corrupted side. Satan volunteers to explore this new place himself and find out more about man so that he may corrupt him. His fallen army unanimously agrees by banging on their swords.
Satan takes off to the gates of hell, guarded by his daughter, Sin, and their horrible son, Death. Sin agrees to open the gates for her creator (and rapist), knowing that she will follow him and reign with him in whatever kingdom he conquers. Satan then travels through chaos, and finally arrives at earth, connected to heaven by a golden chain.
God witnesses all of this and points out Satan's journey to his Son. God tells his Son that, indeed, Satan will corrupt God's favorite creation, man. His Son offers to die a mortal death to bring man back into the grace and light of God. God agrees and tells how his Son will be born to a virgin. God then makes his Son the king of man, son of both man and God.
Meanwhile, Satan disguises himself as a handsome cherub in order to get by the angel Uriel who is guarding earth. Uriel is impressed that an angel would come all the way from heaven to witness God's creation, and points the Garden of Eden out to Satan. Satan makes his way into the Garden and is in awe at the beauty of Eden and of the handsome couple of Adam and Eve. For a moment, he deeply regrets his fall from grace. This feeling soon turns, however, to hatred.
Uriel, however, has realized that he has been fooled by Satan and tells the angel Gabriel as much. Gabriel finds Satan in the Garden and sends him away.
God, seeing how things are going, sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve about Satan. Raphael goes down to the Garden and is invited for dinner by Adam and Eve. While there, he narrates how Satan came to fall and the subsequent battle that was held in heaven. Satan first sin was pride, when he took issue with the fact that he had to bow down to the Son. Satan was one of the top angels in heaven and did not understand why he should bow. Satan called a council and convinced many of the angels who were beneath him to join in fighting God.
A tremendous, cosmic three-day battle ensued between Satan's forces and God's forces. On the first day, Satan's forces were beaten back by the army led by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. On the second day, Satan seemed to gain ground by constructing artillery, literally cannons, and turning them against the good forces. On the third day, however, the Son faced Satan's army alone and they quickly retreat, falling through a hole in heaven's fabric and cascading down to hell.
This is the reason, Raphael explains, that God created man: to replace the empty space that the fallen angels have left in heaven. Raphael then tells of how God created man and all the universe in seven days. Adam himself remembers the moment he was created and, as well, how he came to ask God for a companion, Eve. Raphael leaves.
 The next morning, Eve insists on working separately from Adam. Satan, in the form of serpent, finds her working alone and starts to flatter her. Eve asks where he learned to speak, and Satan shows her the Tree of Knowledge. Although Eve knows that this was the one tree God had forbidden that they eat from, she is told by Satan that this is only because God knows she will become a goddess herself. Eve eats the fruit and then decides to share it with Adam.
Adam, clearly, is upset that Eve disobeyed God, but he cannot imagine a life without her so he eats the apple as well. They both, then, satiate their new-born lust in the bushes and wake up ashamed, knowing now the difference from good and evil (and, therefore, being able to choose evil). They spend the afternoon blaming each other for their fall.
God sends the Son down to judge the two disobediant creatures. The Son condemns Eve, and all of womankind, to painful childbirths and submission to her husband. He condemns Adam to a life of a painful battle with nature and hard work at getting food from the ground. He condemns the serpent to always crawl on the ground on its belly, always at the heel of Eve's sons.
Satan, in the meantime, returns to hell victorious. On the way, he meets Sin and Death, who have built a bridge from hell to earth, to mankind, whom they will now reign over. When Satan arrives in hell, however, he finds his fallen compatriots not cheering as he had wished, but hissing. The reason behind the horrible hissing soon becomes clear: all of the fallen angels are being transformed into ugly monsters and terrible reptiles. Even Satan finds himself turning into a horrible snake.
Adam and Eve, after bitterly blaming each other, finally decide to turn to God and ask for forgiveness. God hears them and agrees with his Son that he will not lose mankind completely to Sin, Death and Satan. Instead, he will send his son as a man to earth to sacrifice himself and, in so doing, conquer the evil trinity.
Michael is sent by God to escort Adam and Eve out of the Garden. Before he does, however, he tells Adam what will become of mankind unitl the Son comes down to earth. The history of mankind (actually the history of the Jewish people as narrated in the Hebrew Bible) will be a series of falls from grace and acceptance back by God, from Noah and the Flood to the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people.
Adam is thankful that the Son will come down and right what he and Eve have done wrong. He holds Eve's hand as they are escorted out of the Garden.
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Matthew Arnold: Poems Summary and Analysis of "The Scholar-Gipsy

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The speaker of "The Scholar-Gipsy" describes a beautiful rural setting in the pastures, with the town of Oxford lying in the distance. He watches the shepherd and reapers working amongst the field, and then tells the shepherd that he will remain out there until sundown, enjoying the scenery and studying the towers of Oxford. All the while, he will keep his book beside him.
His book tells the famous story by Joseph Glanvill, about an impoverished Oxford student who leaves his studies to join a band of gypsies. Once he was immersed within their community, he learned the secrets of their trade.
After a while, two of the Scholar-Gipsy's Oxford associates found him, and he told them about the traditional gypsy style of learning, which emphasizes powerful imagination. His plan was to remain with the gypsies until he learned everything he could, and then to tell their secrets to the world.
Regularly interjecting his own wonder into the telling, the speaker continues the scholar-gipsy's story. Every once in a while, people would claim to have seen him in the Berkshire moors. The speaker imagines him as a shadowy figure who is waiting for the "spark from heaven," just like everyone else on Earth is. The speaker even claims to have seen the scholar-gipsy himself once, even though it has been over two hundred years since his story first resonated through the halls of Oxford.
Despite that length of time, the speaker does not believe the scholar-gipsy could have died, since he had renounced the life of mortal man, including those things that wear men out to death: "repeated shocks, again, again/exhaust the energy of strongest souls." Having chosen to repudiate this style of life, the scholar-gipsy does not suffer from such "shocks," but instead is "free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt." He has escaped the perils of modern life, which are slowly creeping up and destroying men like a "strange disease."
The speaker finishes by imploring that the scholar-gipsy avoid everyone who suffers from this "disease," lest he become infected as well.

Analysis

Though this poem explores one of Arnold's signature themes - the depressing monotony and toil of modern life - it is unique in that it works through a narrative. There are in fact two levels of storytelling at work in the poem: that of the scholar-gipsy, and that of the speaker who is grappling with the ideas poised by that singular figure.
Both levels of story relay the same message: the scholar-gipsy has transcended life by escaping modern life. As he usually does, Arnold here criticizes modern life as wearing down even the strongest of men. His choice of the word "disease" is telling, since it implies that this lifestyle is contagious. Even those who try to avoid modern life will eventually become infected.
In this way, the poem makes a comment on the perils of conformity, as other poems in this collection do. What make the scholar-gipsy so powerful is not only that he wishes to avoid modern life - many wish to do that. More importantly, he is willing to entirely repudiate normal society for the sake of his transcendence. There is a slightly pessimistic worldview implicit in that idea, since it is clearly not possible to revel in true individuality and still be a part of society. The scholar-gipsy has had to turn his back entirely on Oxford, which represents learning and modernity here, in order to become this great figure. And yet the poem overall is much more optimistic than many of Arnold's works, precisely because it suggests that we can transcend if we are willing to pay that cost. This makes it different from a poem like "A Summer Night," which explores the same theme but laments the cost of separation that individuality requires.
For all his admiration, the speaker clearly has not yet mustered the strength to repudiate the world. The setting helps establish his contradictory feelings. The poem begins with images of peaceful, serene rural life, a place where men act as they always have. They have been untouched by the perils of modernity. Pastoral imagery has always been associated in poetry with a type of innocence and purity, unfiltered humanity in touch with nature. The speaker is out in the field contemplating this type of life, the possibility of acting as the scholar-gipsy did.
And yet he is also studying the towers of Oxford, which (as mentioned above) represents the rapidly changing, strictly structured world that the scholar-gipsy renounced. Arnold deftly expresses the speaker's split priorities through this juxtaposition. At the same time that he admires the scholar-gipsy, he cannot fully turn his back on the modern world. It is the same contradiction that plagues the speaker of "A Summer Night."
Thus, the poem overall represents Arnold's inner conflict, his desire to live a transcendent life but inability to totally eschew society. At this point in his life, Arnold felt pulled in different directions by the world's demands. He was trying to resist the infection of modernization, but it was creeping up on him nevertheless, and the pressure to conform was negatively affecting his poetry. Undoubtedly, Arnold wished he could escape in the way the scholar-gipsy did; however, he was too tied down by responsibilities to ever dream of doing so.


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The Scholar-Gipsy by Matthew Arnold

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Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; 
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! 
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, 
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, 
Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head. 
But when the fields are still, 
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, 
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen 
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd green. 
Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest! 

Here, where the reaper was at work of late— 
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves 
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, 
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, 
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use— 
Here will I sit and wait, 
While to my ear from uplands far away 
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, 
With distant cries of reapers in the corn— 
All the live murmur of a summer's day. 

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, 
And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be. 
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, 
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see 
Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep; 
And air-swept lindens yield 
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers 
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, 
And bower me from the August sun with shade; 
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. 

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book— 
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again! 
The story of the Oxford scholar poor, 
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, 
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, 
One summer-morn forsook 
His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore, 
And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood, 
And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, 
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 

But once, years after, in the country-lanes, 
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, 
Met him, and of his way of life enquired; 
Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, 
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired 
The workings of men's brains, 
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. 
"And I," he said, "the secret of their art, 
When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; 
But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill." 

This said, he left them, and return'd no more.— 
But rumours hung about the country-side, 
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, 
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, 
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, 
The same the gipsies wore. 
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; 
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, 
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors 
Had found him seated at their entering, 

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly. 
And I myself seem half to know thy looks, 
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace; 
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks 
I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place; 
Or in my boat I lie 
Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats, 
'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, 
And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills, 
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. 

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! 
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, 
Returning home on summer-nights, have met 
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, 
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 
As the punt's rope chops round; 
And leaning backward in a pensive dream, 
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers 
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, 
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!— 
Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come 
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, 
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, 
Or cross a stile into the public way. 
Oft thou hast given them store 
Of flowers—the frail-leaf'd, white anemony, 
Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves, 
And purple orchises with spotted leaves— 
But none hath words she can report of thee. 

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here 
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, 
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass 
Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, 
To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass, 
Have often pass'd thee near 
Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown; 
Mark'd thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, 
Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air— 
But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone! 

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills, 
Where at her open door the housewife darns, 
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate 
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. 
Children, who early range these slopes and late 
For cresses from the rills, 
Have known thee eyeing, all an April-day, 
The springing pasture and the feeding kine; 
And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine, 
Through the long dewy grass move slow away. 

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood— 
Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way 
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see 
With scarlet patches tagg'd and shreds of grey, 
Above the forest-ground called Thessaly— 
The blackbird, picking food, 
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; 
So often has he known thee past him stray, 
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray, 
And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall. 

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill 
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, 
Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge, 
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, 
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge? 
And thou has climb'd the hill, 
And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range; 
Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, 
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall— 
Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange. 

But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flown 
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, 
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe 
That thou wert wander'd from the studious walls 
To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe; 
And thou from earth art gone 
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid— 
Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown grave 
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave, 
Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade. 

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! 
For what wears out the life of mortal men? 
'Tis that from change to change their being rolls; 
'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, 
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls 
And numb the elastic powers. 
Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, 
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, 
To the just-pausing Genius we remit 
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been. 

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so? 
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire; 
Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead! 
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire! 
The generations of thy peers are fled, 
And we ourselves shall go; 
But thou possessest an immortal lot, 
And we imagine thee exempt from age 
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page, 
Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not. 

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers 
Fresh, undiverted to the world without, 
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; 
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, 
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. 
O life unlike to ours! 
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, 
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, 
And each half lives a hundred different lives; 
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. 

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, 
Light half-believers of our casual creeds, 
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, 
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, 
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; 
For whom each year we see 
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; 
Who hesitate and falter life away, 
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— 
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too? 

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays, 
And then we suffer! and amongst us one, 
Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly 
His seat upon the intellectual throne; 
And all his store of sad experience he 
Lays bare of wretched days; 
Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, 
And how the dying spark of hope was fed, 
And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, 
And all his hourly varied anodynes. 

This for our wisest! and we others pine, 
And wish the long unhappy dream would end, 
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear; 
With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend, 
Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair— 
But none has hope like thine! 
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, 
Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, 
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, 
And every doubt long blown by time away. 

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, 
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; 
Before this strange disease of modern life, 
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 
Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife— 
Fly hence, our contact fear! 
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! 
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern 
From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, 
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude! 

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, 
Still clutching the inviolable shade, 
With a free, onward impulse brushing through, 
By night, the silver'd branches of the glade— 
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, 
On some mild pastoral slope 
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales 
Freshen thy flowers as in former years 
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, 
From the dark tingles, to the nightingales! 

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! 
For strong the infection of our mental strife, 
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; 
And we should win thee from thy own fair life, 
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. 
Soon, soon thy cheer would die, 
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, 
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; 
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, 
Fade and grow old at last, and die like ours. 

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! 
—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, 
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow 
Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily, 
The fringes of a southward-facing brow 
Among the Ægæan Isles; 
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, 
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, 
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine— 
And knew the intruders on his ancient home, 

The young light-hearted masters of the waves— 
And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail; 
And day and night held on indignantly 
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, 
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, 
To where the Atlantic raves 
Outside the western straits; and unbent sails 
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, 
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; 
And on the beach undid his corded bales. 
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