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324 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
Farewell, dear babe, my heart's too much content,
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto eternity.
Blest babe, why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate,
Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state.
By nature trees do rot when they are grown,
And plums and apples throughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown to have so short a date,
Is by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.
Anne Bradstreet
"I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without working in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other wayes with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but his who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awfull dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon his wonderfull power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me; It is then hard work to perswade my self, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. “But now we are fed with the finest of the Wheat, and, as I may say, With honey out of the rock.”
Mary Rowlandson
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked."
John Edwards
“On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.”
James Fenimore Cooper
“We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes.”
James Fenimore Cooper
"Free! Body and soul free!"
Mrs. Millard, in "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin
"She died of the heart disease--the joy that kills."
Mrs. Millard, in "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin
"men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in meter, but of the true poet"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Poet"
"Wherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love,--there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Poet"
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
"Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
"Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain.
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,--
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness taints its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Two Rivers"
" If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They recon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Brahma"
"That government is best which governs least"
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
"The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.

We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility --

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring --
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun --

Or rather -- He passed Us --
The Dews drew quivering and chill --
For only Gossamer, my Gown --
My Tippet -- only Tulle --

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground --
The Roof was scarcely visible --
The Cornice -- in the Ground --

Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity – "
Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for Death"
"I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that?"
Emily Dickinson, "I reason earth is short"
"If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain."
Emily Dickinson, "If I can stop one heart from breaking"
"That after Horror -- that 'twas us --
That passed the mouldering Pier --
Just as the Granite Crumb let go --
Our Savior, by a Hair --

A second more, had dropped too deep
For Fisherman to plumb --
The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb --

The possibility -- to pass
Without a Moment's Bell --
Into Conjecture's presence --
Is like a Face of Steel --

That suddenly looks into ours
With a metallic grin --
The Cordiality of Death --
Who drills his Welcome in --"
Emily Dickinson, "That after Horror-that 'twas us"
"O Captain! My Captain!"
Walt Whitman
"I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy."
"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman
1
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 5
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

3
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

4
Have the elder races halted? 10
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

5
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! 15

6
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!
pioneers.
Walt Whitman, "Pioneers! O, Pioneers!"
"When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love."
Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
"We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c., as, substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, of deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history and man -- and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions of beauty,) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression of the objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and points of view -- and the deposit and record of the national mentality, character, appeals, heroism, wars, and even liberties -- where these, and all, culminate in native literary and artistic formulation, to be perpetuated; and not having which native, first-class formulation, she will flounder about, and her other, however imposing, eminent greatness, prove merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, she will understand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and, swinging, poised safely on herself, illumin'd and illuming, become a full-form'd world, and divine Mother not only of material but spiritual worlds, in ceaseless succession through time -- the main thing being the average, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, the popular, on which all the superstructures of the future are to permanently rest."
Walt Whitman, "Democratic Vistas," an essay
"The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
Was writ in water." And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
"The smoking flax before it burst to flame
Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Keats"
"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride"
"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from the prelude of "Evageline"
"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from the first part of "Evangeline"
"By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Song of Hiawatha"
"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar; —
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Old Ironsides," bin opposition to the scrapping of the USS Constitution
"This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Chambered Nautilus"
"Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."
"Chicago," by Carl Sandburg
"The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on."
"Fog," by Carl Sandburg
"a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse
Me whether it's president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn't
important whether it's millions of other punks
or just a handful doesn't
matter and whether it's in lonjewray

or shrouds is immaterial it stinks

a salesman is an it that stinks to please

but whether to please itself or someone else
makes no more difference than if it sells
hate condoms education snakeoil vac
uumcleaners terror strawberries democ
ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair

or Think We've Met subhuman rights Before"
"a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse," e.e.cummings
"anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain"
beginning of "anyone lived in a pretty how town," by e.e.cummings
"why must itself up every of a park
anus stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer "no"?"
beginning of ""why must itself up every of a park," by e.e.cummings
"in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the *****
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee"
"in Just-," by e.e.cummings
"1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness"
"a leaf falls on loneliness," by e.e.cummings
"the
sky
was
can dy lu
minous
edible
spry
pinks shy
lemons
greens coo l choc
olate
s.

un der,
a lo
co
mo
tive s pout
ing
vi
o
lets"
"the sky was candy luminous," by e.e.cummings
"E. P. ODE POUR L'ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait"
Beginning of “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” by Ezra Pound
" O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales
not too greasy,
And the votailles dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time."
"The Lake Isle," by Ezra Pound, parody of Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
"While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead."
"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter," by Ezra Pound
"In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."
"In a Station of the Metro," by Ezra Pound, mimics that style of a haiku
"The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."
Gertrude Stein
"Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle."
Gertrude Stein
"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
Gertrude Stein
"She may count three little saisies very well
By multiplying to either six nine or fourteen
Or she can be well mentioned as twelve
Which they may like which they can like soon
Or more than ever which they wish as a button
Just as much as they arrange which they wish
Or they can attire where they need as which say
Can they call a hat or a hat a day
Made merry because it is so."
Gertrude Stein, from "Stanzas in Meditation"
"Which I wish to say is this
There is no beginning to an end
But there is a beginning and an end
To beginning.
Why yes of course.
Any one can learn that north of course
Is not only north but north as north
Why were they worried.
What I wish to say is this.
Yes of course."
Gertrude Stein, from "Stanzas in Meditation"
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."
T.S.Eliot uses this quotation as a preface to The Waste Land.
Comes from the Satyricon, in which the Sibyl (a woman with prophetic powers who ages but never dies) looks at the future and proclaims that she only wants to die. The Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
T.S.Eliot. This is the name of the first section of The Waste Land. Takes its title from a line in the Anglican burial service.
"April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter."
T.S.Eliot. 1st stanza of the 1st section (The Burial of the Dead) of The Waste Land. "April is the cruellest month" is a reference to Chaucer. April is not the happy month of pilgrimages and storytelling here, however. It is instead the time when the land should be regenerating after a long winter. Regeneration is painful because it brings back reminders of a more fertile and happier past. In the modern world, winter, the time of forgetfulness and numbness, is preferable.
" What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
––Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer."
T.S.Eliot. 2nd stanza of the 1st section (The Burial of the Dead) of The Waste Land. The speaker describes a dessert (a true wasteland), and seems to promise the reader something different (shade, salvation). But "the truth" turns out to be a handful of dust. There is nothing besides the wasteland. His (and our) memory of a happy, fertile past are all that are left of that past.
"Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days."
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 3 from Section 1 of The Waste Land. That Madame Sosostris will prove to be right in her predictions of death and transformation is a direct commentary on the failed religious mysticism and prophecy of the preceding desert section.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 4 of Section 1 of The Waste Land. The speaker walks through a London populated by ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle that seems to conflate the clashes of World War I with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage (both futile and excessively destructive wars). The speaker asks the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a corpse planted in his garden. The episode concludes with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal (an important collection of Symbolist poetry), accusing the reader of sharing in the poet’s sins.
II. A Game of Chess
T.S.Eliot. Section 2 of The Waste Land. Name comes from a play by the early 17th-century playwright Thomas Middleton, in one of which the moves in a game of chess denote stages in a seduction. This section focuses on two opposing scenes, one of high society and one of the lower classes.
"The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still."
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 1 of Section 2 (A Game of Chess) of The Waste Land. portrays a wealthy, highly groomed woman surrounded by exquisite furnishings. As she waits for a lover, her neurotic thoughts become frantic, meaningless cries. Her day culminates with plans for an excursion and a game of chess.
""My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

"What is that noise?"
The wind under the door.
"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
Nothing again nothing.
"Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?"

I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
"What shall we ever do?"
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."
T.S.Eliot. The middle part of Secton 2 (A Game of Chess) of The Waste Land. As she waits for a lover, a well-to do woman's neurotic thoughts become frantic, meaningless cries. Her day culminates with plans for an excursion and a game of chess.
"When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said -
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot -
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night."
T.S.Eliot. Last stanza of Section 2 (A Game of Chess) of The Waste Land. Two women in a bar which is about to close are talking about their friend Lil. Lil almost died giving birth to her 5th child and wants no more children (or risks). She took medication to induce an abortion. The pills ravaged her looks. The speaker tells her to get false teeth to improve her appearance and warns her that her husband will seek the company of other women if she doesn't. Lil wants her husband to leave her alone.
III. The Fire Sermon
T.S.Eliot. Section 3 of the Waste Land. The title of this, comes from a sermon given by Buddha in which he encourages his followers to give up earthly passion (symbolized by fire) and seek freedom from earthly things. A turn away from the earthly takes place in this section: a series of sexual encounters fall flat and the section ends with a religious incantation.
"The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept. . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 1 of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. Opens with a desolate riverside scene: rats and garbage surround the speaker. Describe the ultimate “Waste Land” as Eliot sees it. The wasteland is cold, dry, and barren, covered in garbage. Unlike the desert, which at least burns with heat, this place is static, save for a few scurrying rats. Even the river, normally a symbol of renewal, has been reduced to a “dull canal.” The ugliness stands in implicit contrast to the “Sweet Thames” of Spenser’s time. The horns and motors in the distance represent the vulgarity of the contemporary world and foreshadow a sexual encounter.
"Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole."
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 2 and 3 from Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. The speaker is propositioned by Mr. Eugenides, the one-eyed merchant of Madame Sosostris’s tarot pack, who invites the speaker to go to a hotel known as a meeting place for homosexuals.
" At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire,
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. . ."
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 4 of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. The speaker proclaims himself to be Tiresias, a figure from classical mythology who has both male and female features. Tiresias observes a young typist, at home for tea, who awaits her lover, a dull and slightly arrogant clerk. The woman allows the clerk to have his way with her, and when he leaves she is glad that the encounter is over.
"This music crept by me upon the waters"
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold."
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 5 of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. Describes a fisherman's bar, the inside of a church, and the Thames in beautiful words. This is one of the only peaceful moments of the poem. A simple alternative to human lust and drama (as exemplified by the tense and unhappy sex scene between the typist and the clerk in the previous stanza).
"The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs,
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 6 of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. The river-song.
"Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

"Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. "Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe."

"My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised 'a new start.'
I made no comment. What should I resent?"

"On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing."
la la"
T.S.Eliot. Stanzas 7-10 of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. Depicts Queen Elizabeth I in an amorous encounter with the Earl of Leicester. The queen seems unmoved by her lover’s declarations, and thinks only of her “people humble people who expect / Nothing.” For political reasons, Elizabeth was required to represent herself as constantly available for marriage (to royalty from countries with whom England may have wanted an alliance); out of this need came the myth of the “Virgin Queen.”
"To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning"
T.S.Eliot. Last stanza of Section 3 (The Fire Sermon) of The Waste Land. The section comes to an abrupt spiritual end after the description of the three sexual encounters--representing a turn away from the earthly to the heavenly. Eliot deliberately conflated Augustine and the Buddha, as the representatives of Eastern and Western asceticism. Both seem, in the lines Eliot quotes, to be unable to transcend the world on their own: Augustine must call on God to “pluck [him] out,” while Buddha can only repeat the word “burning,” unable to break free of its monotonous fascination.
IV. Death by Water

"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."
T.S.Eliot. Section IV of The Waste Land. The major point of this short section is to rebut ideas of renewal and regeneration. Phlebas just dies; that’s it. this section fulfills one of the prophecies of Madame Sosostris in the poem’s first section: “Fear death by water.” This section is made up of four rhyming couplets and is extremely formal, it features alliteration and deliberately archaic language. This makes it seem like other literary forms (parables, biblical stories, etc.) that are usually rich in meaning. These two features suggest that something of great significance lies here. In reality, though, the only lesson is that Phlebas offers is that the physical reality of death and decay triumphs over all. Phlebas is not resurrected or transfigured. Eliot further emphasizes Phlebas’s dried-up antiquity and irrelevance by placing this event in the distant past (by making Phlebas a Phoenician).
V. What the Thunder Said
T.S.Eliot. Section 5 of The Waste Land.
"If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 2 of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. This section describes the wasteland of modern society and is building up to an apocalyptic climax. The repetitive language and harsh imagery of this section suggest that the end is perhaps near, that not only will there be no renewal but that there will be no survival either.
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 1 of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. This section is building up to an apocalyptic climax. The initial imagery associated with the apocalypse at this section’s opening is taken from the crucifixion of Christ. Significantly, though, Christ is not resurrected here: we are told, “He who was living is now dead.” The rest of the first part, while making reference to contemporary events in Eastern Europe and other more traditional apocalypse narratives, continues to draw on Biblical imagery and symbolism associated with the quest for the Holy Grail. The repetitive language and harsh imagery of this section suggest that the end is perhaps near, that not only will there be no renewal but that there will be no survival either.
"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 3 of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. The mystery of the unidentified figure builds suspense. The section is building up to an apocalyptic climax.
"What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal"
T.S.Eliot. Stanza 4 of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. The apocalyptic climax. Cities are destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed, mirroring the cyclical downfall of cultures: Jerusalem, Greece, Egypt, and Austria—among the major empires of the past two millennia—all see their capitals fall.
"A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain"
T.S.Eliot. Stanzas 5 & 6 of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. The terrors of the apocalypse continue. Atop the chapel, a cock crows, and the rains come, relieving the drought and bringing life back to the land. Curiously, no heroic figure has appeared to claim the Grail; the renewal has come seemingly at random, gratuitously.
"Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence,
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands"
T.S.Eliot. Second major part of Section 5 (What the Thunder Said) of The Waste Land. After the apocalypse, the scene moves to the Ganges River, half a world away from Europe, where thunder rumbles. Eliot draws on the traditional interpretation of “what the thunder says,” as taken from the Upanishads (Hindu fables). According to these fables, the thunder “gives,” “sympathizes,” and “controls” through its “speech”; Eliot launches into a meditation on each of these aspects of the thunder’s power. The meditations seem to bring about some sort of reconciliation, as a Fisher King-type figure is shown preparing to put his lands in order (and die) in the next stanza.
"I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih"
T.S.Eliot. The last stanza of The Waste Land. a Fisher King-type figure is shown sitting on the shore preparing to put his lands in order, a sign of his imminent death or at least abdication. he poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant of “Shantih shantih shantih”—the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats,
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 1 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle upon the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 2 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 3 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin,
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 4 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
For I have known them already, known them all-
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall,
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all-
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 5 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And I have known the arms already, known them all,
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare,
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie around a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And how should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 6 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 7 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep... tired... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 8 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball,
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all," --
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant, at all."
"That is not it, at all."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 9 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worthwhile,
After the sunsets and dooryards and sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning towards the window, should say:
"That is not it, at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 10 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous,
Almost, at times, the Fool.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 11 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves,
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea,
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown,
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt # 12 from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
T.S.Eliot. "Journey of the Magi." The speaker laments outliving his world. The birth of the Christ was the death of his world of magic, astrology, and paganism. The speaker, recalling his journey in old age, says that after that birth his world had died, and he had little left to do but wait for his own end. He describes Eliot's conversion to Christianity not as a celebration of the wonders of the journey but a complaint about a journey that was painful, tedious, and seemingly pointless. The speaker says that a voice was always whispering in their ears as they went that "this was all folly".
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."
T.S.Eliot. Beginning of "Burnt Norton," #1 of the Four Quartets.
"Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "Burnt Norton," #1 of the Four Quartets.
"Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "Burnt Norton," #1 of the Four Quartets.
"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place"
T.S.Eliot. Beginning of "East Coker," #2 of the Four Quartets.
"You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know"
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "East Coker," #2 of the Four Quartets.
"I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting."
T.S.Eliot. Beginning of "The Dry Salvages," #3 of the Four Quartets.
"It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "The Dry Salvages," #3 of the Four Quartets.
"If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning"
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "Little Gidding," #4 of the Four Quartets.
"We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration."
T.S.Eliot. Excerpt from "Little Gidding," #4 of the Four Quartets.
"All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."
T.S.Eliot. End of "Little Gidding," #4 of the Four Quartets.
Whirl up, sea—
"Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us—
Cover us with your pools of fir."
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) "Oread."
"Never more will the wind
cherish you again,
never more will the rain.

Never more
shall we find you bright
in the snow and wind.

The snow is melted,
the snow is gone,
and you are flown:

Like a bird out of our hand,
like a light out of our heart,
you are gone."
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) "Never more will the wind."
"All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the luster as of olives
where she stands,
And the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the main,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses."
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) "Helen."
"Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;

stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;

yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast."
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) "Stars wheel in purple."
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wallace Stevens. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Wallace Stevens. "Anecdote of the Jar."
"Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
Wallace Stevens. "The Emperor of Ice-Cream."
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens. "The Snow Man."
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams. "The Red Wheelbarrow."
"I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral--
for you have it over a troop
of artists--
unless one should scour the world--
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black--
nor white either--and not polished!
Let it be weathered--like a farm wagon--
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground."
William Carlos Williams. Excerpt from "Tract."
"According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning"
William Carlos Williams. "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus." (Also see Auden's poem on this painting.)
"Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell."
William Carlos Williams. Beginning of "Asphodel, that greeny flower."
"By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
William Carlos Williams. "Spring and All."
"imaginary gardens with real toads in them."
Marianne Moore, modernist American poet
"These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday."
Robert Frost, "Spring Pools"
"There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound--
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make."
Robert Frost, "Mowing"
As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less that two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.
Robert Frost, "Meeting and Passing"
"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."
Robert Frost, Part 2, "Design"
"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."
Robert Frost, Part 1, "Design"
"I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry."
Marianne Moore, modernist American poet
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
Robert Frost, modernist American poet, Part 1 of "Mending Wall"
"We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows."
Robert Frost, modernist American poet, Part 2 of "Mending Wall"
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Robert Frost, modernist American poet, Part 4 of "Mending Wall"
"Brutus, where the sun sets beyond the kingdoms of Gaul is an isle in the ocean, closed all around by the sea. Once on a time giants lived on that isle in the ocean, but now it stands empty and fit to receive your people. Seek it out, for it shall be your homeland forever; it shall be a second Troy for your descendants. There kings shall be born of your seed and to them all nations of the round earth shall be subject."
The History of the Kings of Britain, the mythic history of England, by Geoffrey of Monmouth. This part is called The Story of Brutus and Diana's Prophecy.
"I don't think you will dare to face me on this side of the Channel. And even if you stay over there, you will never await my coming. You won't know a place to hide where I won't flush you out. I'll lead you to Rome in Chains and you over to the Senate."
History of the Kings of England. This part is by Wace. It is called Le Roman de Brut, or The Roman Challenge. A messenger reads a message to King Arthur from the sitting caesar.
"Should the Romans find it in themselves to carry out what they say in that letter, the Britons will still retain their reputation for valor and strength. I never like peace for long, nor shall I love a peace that lasts a long time."
Section of the History of the Kings of Briton, by Wace, called Le Roman de Brut, or The Roman Challenge. King Arthur says this in response to the letter from Rome, telling the Britons to submit to the Empire. Wace's feudal audience would have thought this was very clever.
"They claim Briton, and I claim Rome. This is the gist of my counsel: that they may have the land and tribute who can take it away from another....He defies me, and I defy him: may he possess the lands who is able to take them!"
Section of the History of the Kings of Briton, by Wace, called Le Roman de Brut, or The Roman Challenge. King Arthur says this in response to the letter from Rome, telling the Britons to submit to the Empire. Wace's feudal audience would have thought this was very clever.
"For as long as is for ever, I have no fear whatever,
That Modred who is my relative, the man I love best,
Would betray all my trust, not for all of my realm,
Nor would Guinevere, my queen, weaken in her alligiance
She will not begin to, for any man in the world!"
Section of the History of the Kings of England, as told by Layamon, called Brut (or Arthur's Dream). Summary of this section: Arthur dreams that he sees Mordred, the traitor, as a rat, chopping away at the foundations of his mead-hall. Later, Mordred betrays him and tells the Anglo-Saxons how to beat him.
"Another lay to you I'll tell
Of the adventure that befell
A noble vassal whom they call
In the Breton tongue Lanval
Arthur, the brave and courtly king,
At Carlisle was soujourning
Because the Scots and Picts allied
Were ravaging the countryside;
Of Logres they had crossedthe border
Where often they caused great disorder."
Marie de France, 12th century noblewoman, originally written in French for Anglo-Norman rulers. This is the beginning of her "Lais" poem "Lanval."
Sithen the sege and the assault was sesed at Troye
The borgh brittened and brent to brondes and askes
The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroght
Was tried for his tricheries, the trewest on erthe
His was Ennias the athel and his highe kynde
That sithen depreced provinces, and patrouenes bicome
Welneghe of al the wele in the west iles
For riche Romulus to Rome richhies hym swythe
With gret bobbaunce that burghe he biges upon fyrst
And nevenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat
Ticius to Tuskan and teldes bigynnes
Landaberde in Lumbardie lyftes up homes
And fer over the French flod, Felix Brutus
On money bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settes
Wyth wynne
Where werre and wrake and wonder By sythes has wont wont therinne
And oft othe blyss and blunder
Ful skete has skyfted synne
These are the opening lines of Sire Gawain and the Green Knight, written by "the Gawain poet." Translation: Since the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy, the walls breached and burnt down to brands and ashes, the knight that had knotted the nets of deciet was impeached for his perfidy, proven most true, it was high-born Aeneas and his haughty race that since prevailed over provinces, and proudly reigned over well-night all the wealth of the West Isles. Great Romulus to Rome repairs in haste; with boast and with bravery builds he that city and names it with his own name, that it now bears. Ticius to Tuscany, and towers raises, Langobard in Lombardy lays out homes, and far over the French Sea, Felix Brutus on many broad hills and high Britain he sets, most fair." The Gawain poet has framed Gawain's adeventure with references in the first and last stanzas to the "Brutus Books" by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Gawain Poet traces the destruction of Troy to the founding of Rome and Britain. He gives Brutus a first name--"Felix," which means "happy."
Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne,
Hath in the Ram his halve course yronne,
And smale fowles maken meloyde
That sleepen al the night open yë--
So priketh hem Nature in his corages--
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
Geoffrey Chaucer. The beginning of the Canterbury Tales, minus the famous line "When in April."
Now praye I to hem alle that herken this litel trtis or rede, that if ther be any thing in it that liketh hem, that therof they thanken oure Lord Jesu Crist, of whom proceedeth al wit and al goodnesse. And if ther be any thing that displese hem, I praye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unconning, and nat to my wil, that wolde ful fain have said bettre if I hadd had conning. For oure book saith, "Al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine," and that is myn entente."
Geoffrey Chaucer, at the beginning of the Canterbury Tales. He says, "If you like what you see, it came from God. And don't blame me if you don't like it. I was just trying to serve God." Satirical, of course.
"And when I was thirty year old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness....I felt a great loathsomeness to die, but for nothing that was on earth that me liketh to live for, ne for no pain that I was afraid of, for I trusted God of his mercy. But it was for I would have liked to have loved God better and longer time, that I might be the grace of that living have the more knowing and loving of God in the bliss of heaven."
Julian of Norwhich. 1342-1416. Had 16 revelations (called them "showings") of God.
"I, God, that all this world hath wrought,
Heaven and earth, and all of nought,
I see my people in deed and thought
Are set foully in sin.
My ghost shall not leng in mon,
That through flesh-liking is my fon,
But till six score years be comen and gone,
To look if they will blin."
Chester Mystery Play called "Noah's Flood." God says he is disappointed in man's sinful tendencies and will give them 160 years to improve (before sending a flood).
"I know I have the body of but a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too."
Queen Elizabeth, before a regiment of soldiers.
"We princes are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world."
Queen Elizabeth (she was always balancing masculinity and femininity)
The long love that in my thought doth harbor
And in mine heart doth keep his residence
Into my face presseth with bold pretense
And therein campeth, spreading his banner.
She that me learneth to love and suffer
And will that my trust and lust's negligence
Be reigned by reason, shame, and reverence,
With his hardiness taketh displeasure."
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, the beginning of "The long love that in my thought doth harbor." You can tell by the abba rhyme scheme-- remember, he invented the English sonnet. *Shame, here, means "modesty."
"Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more,
The vain travial hath wearied me so sore.
I am of them that farthest cometh behind."
Sir Thomas Wyatt, the beginning of "Whoso list to hunt." You can tell by the abba rhyme scheme. You can tell it's from the Renaissance because of the French "travail," the Middle English carry-overs, and the grammar (i.e. "cometh"). *List=cares, wishes, wants to, likes to. Hind=doe, female deer.
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand' and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, the beginning of "They flee from me." You can tell its from the Rennaisance by the abba rhyme scheme (which suggests that it's Wyatt in particular) and the archaic use of the word "stalking" (which means "walking softly" here).
My lute, awake! Perform the last
Labor that thou and I shall waste
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute, be still, for I have done."
Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, the beginning of "My lute, awake!"
"All is turned, thorough my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go, of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangleness,
But since that I so kindely am served,
I fain would know what she hath deserved."
Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, the last stanza of "They flee from me." A woman has just left him, and he curses her in the subtext. *Newfangleness= fickelness. Kindely=naturally, but also kindly in an ironic sense. This poem is Wyatt's typical subject: fickleness of women and instability of fortune.
Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,
And built his seat within my captive breast,
Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.
But she taught me love and suffer pain,
My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,
Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.
And coward Love, then, to the heart apace
Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain,
His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.
For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain,
Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:
Sweet is the death that taketh end by love
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought," 1557. You can tell because of the abab cdcd efef gg "English Sonnet" rhyme scheme. Remember, he INVENTED it.
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith doth ebb,
Which would not be, if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.
But clouds of toys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rain of late repent, by course of changed windes.
The top of hope supposed, the root of ruth will be,
And fruitless all their graffed guiles, as shortley ye shall see.
The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,
Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.
The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sow
Shall reap no gain where former rule hath taught still peace to grow.
No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;
Our realm it brooks no stranger's force, let them elsewhere resort.
Our rusty sword with rest, shall first his edge employ
To poll their tops that seek such change and gape for future joy.
Queen Elizabeth, "The doubt of future foes." You can tell because of the subject matter. *Doubt=fear, wit=intelligence/knowledge, ruth=sorrow, wights=men, wight=man, still=stable
I grieve and dare not show my discontent
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
Queen Elizabeth, the opening stanza of "On Monsieur's Departure." You can tell it's her because of the subject matter--she was never allowed to be truly herself.
"I come amongst you...in the heat of battle, to live or die amonst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood, even in the dust."
Queen Elizabeth, in her famous "Speech to the Troops at Tilbury."
"We shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdoms, and of my people."
Queen Elizabeth, in her famous "Speech to the Troops at Tilbury."
"I do assure you that there is no prince that loveth his subject better"
Queen Elizabeth. Often spoke of herself in masculine terms.
"I know the title of a king is a glorious title, but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding but that we know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the Great Judge."
Queen Elizabeth. Often spoke of herself in masculine terms. "We," here, is an example of "the royal we" and simply means "I."
"And she her selfe of beautie soveraigne Queene
Faire Venus seede unto his bed to bring
Her, whome he waking evermore did weene
To be the chastest flowre, that ay did spring
On earthly braunch, the daughter of a king
Now a loose Leman to vile service bound:
And eke the Graces seemèd all to sing,
Hymen iô Hymen, dauncing all around,
Whilst freshest Flora her with Yvie girlond crownd"
Edmund Spencer, stanza 48 of "The Faerie Queene." You might be able to tell an except is from this poem (as in this example) on the GRE, but you might not. You can always tell if it is by recognizing the ababbcbcc rhyme scheme (and you can also tell by the intentionally bizarre spelling sometimes).
"His warlike armes, the idle instruments
Of sleeping praise, were hong upon a tree,
And his brave shield, full of old moniments,
Was fowly ra'st, that none the signes might see;
Ne for them, ne for honour carèd hee,
Ne ought, that did to his advauncement tend,
But in led loves, and wastfull luxuree,
His dayes, his goods, his bodie he did spend:
O horrible enchantment, that him so did blend."
Edmund Spencer, random stanza from "The Faerie Queene." Even if you get a passage from this poem on the GRE that doesn't deal with the Queene herself, you can tell it's part of the poem by the iconic ababbcbcc rhyme scheme (and the Middle English and intentionally misspelled words).
"If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love."
Sir Walter Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," a satirical response to Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd." Mocking romance in general and the pastoral genre's way of representing it in particular.
"It is Death alone that can suddenly make a man to know himself."
Sir Walter Ralegh, from The History of the World, Conclusion: On Death
"[Death] holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therin their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it."
Sir Walter Ralegh, from The History of the World, Conclusion: On Death
"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words: Hic jacet."
Sir Walter Ralegh, from The History of the World, Conclusion: On Death. *Hic jacet="here lies."
Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in they heart and write."
Sir Philip Sidney, from "Astrophil and Stella." *Trewand=truant
"Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might cause her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain."
Sir Philip Sidney, the opening of "Astrophil and Stella."
"Tyrant, why swell'st thou thus,
Of mischief vaunting?
Since help from God to wanting.

Lewd lies thy tongue contrives,
Loud lies it soundeth;
Sharper than sharpest knives
With lies it woundeth.

Falshood they wit approves,
All truth rejected:
Thy will all vices loves,
Virtue neglected

Think'st thou to bear it, so?
God shall dsplace thee;
God shall thee overthrow,
Crush thee, deface thee."
Mary Herbert, first 4 stanzas of "Psalm 52."
"Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things; grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings."
Sir Philip Sidney, opening stanza of "Leave me, O Love."
"To thee, pure sprite, to thee alone's addressed
This coupled work, by double int'rest thine:
First raised by thy blessed hand, and what is mine
Inspired by thee, they secret power impressed.
So dared my Muse with thine itself combine,
As mortal stuff with that which is divine.
They light'ning beams give lust to the rest."
Mary (Sidney) Herbert, sister of Sir Philip Sidney. Opening stanza of "To the Angel Spirit of Sir Philip Sidney."
"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 cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
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."
Michael Drayton, Elizabethan poet. This excerpt is from his most famous poem "Idea."
"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherd feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand gragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd dswains shall dance and sing
For they delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love."
Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan poet. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," a pastoral, which Sir Walter Ralegh later mocked.
"Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is thtime that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop prosperity?
Thou art they mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this they golden time.
But if thou live remb'red not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 3. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark love and death).
"When I do count the clock that tells the time
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,
When I behold the violet past prime
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white
When lofty treese I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
Then of thy beauty do I question make
THat tho among the wastes of time must go
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow,
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 12. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark love and death).
"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me though seest the twilight of such day.
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his you doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes they love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 73. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark love and death).
"No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
Oh, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compunded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 71. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark love and death).
"When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she is made of lies."
Shakespeare, the beginning of Sonnet 138. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark love and death).
"Why so large cost, having such short lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this they body's end?"
Shakespeare, excerpt of Sonnet 146 You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: death and mortality).
"My love is a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did expect. Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth, vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art black as hell, as dark as night."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 147. You can recognize his work because of the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme and the complex themes (most notably: dark depictions of love and meditative descriptions of death).
"He who follows too close on the heels is likely to have his teeth kicked out."
Sir Walter Ralegh, on why he wrote about the ancient past rather than contemporary affairs. (He was in the Tower of London, at the time, writing The History of the World, on charges of treason.)
"Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. Opening of "Satire 3." An example of his satirical writing.
"Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. Opening of "Holy Sonnets."
"Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me."

* * *

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. Two excerpts from Stanza 10 of the "Holy Sonnets."
"Mark but this flea, and mark in this
How little that which though deniest me is;
Me it sucked first, and now it sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. First two stanzas of "The Flea." You can recognize his work because he explored uncommon themes and used startling imagery.
"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, twas but a dream of thee."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. First stanza of "The Good-Morrow." You can recognize his work because he explored uncommon themes and used startling imagery.
"Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's tinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. First stanza of "Song."
"I can love both fair and brown,
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,
Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,
Her who believes, and her who tries,
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. Excerpt from "The Indifferent." You can recognize his poetry by the Renaissance style and what seem like "inappropriate" topics for the period. Remember: he wrote his poetry for a close circle of friends, not the public, and he explored a variety of "forbidden" subjects.
"Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. First two lines of "Air and Angels."
"When by thy scorn, O murdress, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to they bed."
John Donne, 17th century English poet. Opening of "The Apparition." You can recognize his poetry by the Renaissance style and what seem like "inappropriate" topics for the period. Remember: he wrote his poetry for a close circle of friends, not the public, and he explored a variety of "forbidden" subjects.
"But surely Adam cannot be excused;
Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame;
What weakness offered, strength might have refused,
Being lord of all, the greater was his shame."
Aemilia Lanyer, 17th century "feminist" poet.
"Yet men will boast of knowledge, which he took
From Eve's fair hand, as from a learned book."
Aemilia Lanyer, 17th century feminist English poet. Random stanza from "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum."
"Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtained
Frace from that grace where perfect grace remained;
And where the muses gave their full consent;
I should have power the virtuous to content."
Aemilia Lanyer, 17th century English poet. Opening of "The Description of Cooke-ham." Attributes her religious conversion and her desire to become a poet to her residence at this house.
"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."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. Opening of "Song: To Celia."
"It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me
Thou should'st be bold, licentious, full of gall,
Wormwood and sulphur, sharp and toothed withal,
Become a petulent thing, hurl ink and wit
As madmen stones, not caring whom they hit."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. Opening of "To My Book," his address his collection of poems called "Epigrams."
"Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months' end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother's tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshy birth
Which cover lightly, gentle earth."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. "On My First Daughter."
"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope for thee, loved boy:
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. Opening of "On My First Son."
"To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. The title of his elegy for his friend, Shakespeare.
"I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much."
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us." Jonson was a personal friend of Shakespeare's.
"Thou art a monument without a tomb"
Ben Jonson, 17th century English poet. "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us." Jonson was a personal friend of Shakespeare's.
"Love what art thou? A vain thought
In our minds by fant'sy wrought.
Idle smiles did thee beget,
While fond wishes made the net
Which so many fools have caught."
Mary Wroth, 17th century English (Jacobean) poet. This is the beginning of one of the "Songs" that marks the end of one of her greatest works, "The Countess of Montgomery's Urania."
"When night's black mantle could most darkness prove,
And sleep, death's image, did my senses hire
From knowledge of myself, then thoughts did move
Swifter than those most swiftness need require.
I saw, where sat bright Venus, Queen of Love,
And at her feet, her son, still adding fire
To burning hearts, which she did hold above."
Mary Wroth, 17th century English (Jacobean) poet. This is from the opening "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus" (meaning all-loving to lover of two) which was influenced by Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil to Stella."
Who advocated abandoning "fiction and false hair" and using God's "art" (i.e. symbolism from the Bible)?
George Herbert, 17th century Renaissance and Jacobean preacher and poet.
"I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which, crawling one and every way,
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought, her long small leg and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced."
Robert Herrick, 17th century Renaissance poet. Sometimes wrote really coarse and vulgar things that seem out of step with the time period. This is the opening of "The Vine."
"A married state affords but little ease
The best of husbands are so hard to please."
Katherine Philips, 17th century English (Renaissance) poet.
"Twice forty months in wedlock I did stay,
Then had my vows croned with a lovely boy.
And yet in forty days he dropped away;
O swift vicissitude of human joy!"
Katherine Philips, 17th century English (Renaissance) poet. Beginning of "On the Death of My First and Dearest Child."
"What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?"

* * *

"Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument."
John Milton, 17th century English (Renaissance) poet. Excerpts from his elegy for William Shakespeare, "On Shakespeare." Milton did not know Shakespeare. The latter died when the former was 8 years old.
"Hence loathèd melancholy,
Of Cerebus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn
'Monst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as they locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne."
John Milton, 17th century English (Renaissance) poet. This is the opening of "L'Allegro."
"So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity."
John Milton, 17th century English (Renaissance) poet. Excerpt from the "L'Allegro." The speaker is asking Euphrosyne (the Greek goddess of mirth) to come to him. *"Buxom," here, means "lively."
"Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred,
How little you bestead,
Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toys
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail though Goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight, and therfore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue."

Who is the speaker referring to in the first part, when he says "vain deluding Joys"? Who is Morpheus? Who is Melancholy? Why is her face black?
This is the beginning of John Milton's "Il Penseroso" (which can translated as "the contemplative man" and is the counterpiece to "L'Allegro," "The Happy Man"). The speaker refers to Euphrosyne (the goddess of mirth) as providing merely "vain deluding Joys." Morpheus is the god of sleep--his "pensioners" are his followers. The speaker invokes Melancholy, the temperament/humor of thoughtfulness, pensiveness, reflection, seriousness, and often sadness. Her face is described as being "black" in the poem because the bodily fluid associated with the temperament of Melancholia was "black bile," which was thought to be responsible for making a person's face look dark and gloomy.
"These pleasures, Melancholy give,
And I with the will choose to live."
These are the final lines of John Milton's "Il Penseroso" (which can translated as "the contemplative man").
"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occassion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due;
For ________ is dead, dead ere his prime."
John Milton. This is the beginning of his pastoral elegy "Lycidas," written on the death of an acquaintance from college (which made him realize that he himself might die in his youth, his ambition unfulfilled).
"Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn."
John Milton. Excerpt of "Lycidas," written on the death of an acquaintance from college (which made him realize that he himself might die in his youth, his ambition unfulfilled).
"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book."
John Milton, in his defense of intellectual liberty, "Aeropagitica."
"Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
John Milton, in his defense of intellectual liberty, "Aeropagitica."
"I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter confine, imprison, and do sharp justice on them as malefactors: For Book are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progency they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
John Milton, in his defense of intellectual liberty, "Aeropagitica."
"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year!"
John Milton. These are the opening lines of "How Soon Hath Time."
"When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therwith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide:
Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
John Milton. Opening lines of "When I Consider How My Light is Spent."
"Of man's first diobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen see,
In the beginning how the heaven's and eath
Rose out of Chaos: or Sion hill"
John Milton, beginning of from Book 1 of "Paradise Lost."
"Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shown
On man by him seduced, but on himself,
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured."
John Milton, excerpt fromfrom Book 1 of "Paradise Lost." Easy to identify as part of "Paradise Lost." Describes Satan.
"Good Josiah drove them thence to Hell.
With these came they, who from the bord'ring flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from the Syrian ground, had general names of Baalim and Ashtaroth"
John Milton, excerpt from from Book 1 of "Paradise Lost." Not easy to identify with "Paradise Lost." But here's a hint: when you see blank verse with a somber mood, that makes lots references to the legendary and/or Biblical past, think "Paradise Lost." An excerpt on the GRE with these characteristics very well may be from this epic.
"The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemned
For ever now to have their lot in paim,
Millions of Sprirts for his fault amerced
Of Heav'n, and from eternal splendors flung"
John Milton, excerpt from Book 1 of "Paradise Lost." Easy to identify. Describes the casting out of Satan and his followers. *Amerced=deprived
"High on a throne of a royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
_______ exulted sat, by merit raised
To that bed eminence..."
John Milton, beginning of Book 2 of "Paradise Lost." Fill in the blank with "Satan."
"What if the breath that kindled those grim fires awaked should blow them into sevenfold rage
And plunge us in the flames?"
John Milton, random excerpt from "Paradise Lost." The angel-devils fear God's punishment.
"So passed they naked on, nor shunned the light
Of God or angel, for they thought no ill: So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met,
Adam the goodliest of good men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve."
John Milton, excerpt from Book 4 of "Paradise Lost."
"No more talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change these notes to tragic; foul distrust and breach."
John Milton, beginning of Book 9 of "Paradise Lost."
"This may be well: but what if God have seen,
And death ensue? Then I shall be no more,
And Adam wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve,
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life."
John Milton, excerpt from Book 9 of "Paradise Lost." Eve makes up her mind to give Adam the apple, knowing it might be bad for him.
"Remember with what mild and gracious temper he both heard and judged without wrath or reviling; we expected immediate dissolution, which we thought was meant by death that day, when lo, to thee pains only in child-bearing were foretold, and bringing forth, soon recompensed with joy, fruit of thy womb: on me the curse aslope glanced on the ground, with labor I must earn my bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse."
John Milton, excerpt from Book 12 "Paradise Lost." Adam consoles Eve, saying their fate really isn't all that bad.
"They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; the world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."
John Milton, ending of Book 12, the last book of "Paradise Lost." These are the final words of the poem.
"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near"
Andrew Marvell, from "To His Coy Mistress"
"No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere."
Emily Brontë, from "No Coward Soul is Mine."
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"
Henry David Thoreau
"I am tired of words, and literature is an old couch stuffed with fleas."
Derek Walcott
"My vouch against you, and my place i' th' state
Will so your accusation overweigh,
That you shall stifle in your own report
And smell of calumnie."

What's the controlling verb?
This was written by Shakespeare, and appears in "Measure for Measure." The controlling verb is "overweigh." Rephrase the sentence and you can see this easily.
"Thou art my father, thou art my author, thou my being gav'st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?"
Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book 2, lines 864-865
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."
Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet," Act 2, Scene 2.
"Good friend for Jesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dust encloased heare.
Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones.
And curst be he yt moves my bones."

Whose epitaph is this?
William Shakespeare's
"This is the story of an angry man..."
This is the beginning of The Illiad, by Homer. The angry man referred to is Achilles.
"Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove"

What does "prove" mean in this context?
Christopher Marlowe. Renaissance poet. This is the opening line of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." The word "prove" means "test" or "experience" in this context.
Come with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls,
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Christopher Marlowe. Renaissance poet. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."
"To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame,
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much.
Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malic might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.
These are as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause! Delight! The wonder of our sage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further to make thee room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
and art alive still while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honor thee I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to heart hy buskin tread
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on, leave thee alone for the caprison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain; thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime
When like Apollo he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit:
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy part.
For though the poet's matter Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashionl and that he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame,
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn;
For a poet's made as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-filèd lines,
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay; I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
Ben Jonson. Renaissance poet. "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us!" also known as "To the Memory of My Beloved Master, William Shakespeare" and simply "To the Memory of William Shakespeare." You should be able to recognize this poem easily.
"I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie/a little further to make room."
Ben Jonson. Renaissance poet. "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us!"
"He was not of an age, but for all time!"

Who wrote this, and to whom does this refer? What do the following words mean in the context of the poem? Ample, suffrage, as, disproportioned, seek, buskin, socks, scenes, matter, fashion, casts. Why does the author allude to Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont, Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pacuvis, Accius, "him of Cordova," Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus, Eliza, and James? Who are these people?
Ben Jonson. Renaissance poet. "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us!" "He" refers to Shakespeare. Ample=copious, suffrage=consent, as=as though, disproprortioned=not comparable, seek=lack, buskin=symbol of tragedy, socks=symbol of comedy, scenes=stages, matter=subject matter, fashion=form, style, casts=undertakes. Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, and Francis Beaumont were the "greats" who preceded Shakespeare and were all buried at a different site: Shakespeare doesn't belong with them because he is new, modern, different, and because he is physically buried somewhere else. John Lily, Thomas Kyd, and Christopher Marlowe were Shakespeare's contemporaries: Jonson is saying Shakespeare's writing is better. Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles are the three "fathers" of Greek tragedy: Jonson is saying Shakespeare was as good as them. Marcus Pacuvius, Lucius Accius of the 2nd century BCE, and "him of Cordova" (Seneca the Younger) of the 1st century BCE are the Latin tragedians--Seneca's work had an especially significant influence on Elizabethan revenge tragedy: Jonson is saying Shakespeare brought them back in his writing. Aristophanes was an ancient Greek satirist and writer of comedy and Terence and Plautus Roman writers of comedy: Jonson is saying Shakespeare's comedy is better than theirs. "Eliza" is Queen Elizabeth and "James" is King James: they left the world of the living and Jonson is telling Shakespeare not to go. At the end of the poem, Jonson says he sees Shakespeare in the stars: it was typical for heroes and demigods to be exalted after death and be given a constellation. "Rage" and "influence" describe the supposed effects if the planets on earthly affairs. "Rage" also implies poetic inspiration.
"Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on they forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest:
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonger all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
They beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run."
Andrew Marvell, 17th century renaissance poet. "To His Coy Mistress," 1681. Marvell is saying "c'mon, let's have sex. Life is short." THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST LIKELY TEXTS TO SHOW UP ON THE TEST.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.
Robert Herrick, 17th century renaissance poet. "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." You can recognize his writing because he was almost always writing about something raunchy in flowery terms.
"Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry (double graced)
Within a lily? Centre placed?
Or ever marked the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half drowned in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl, and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast."
Robert Herrick, 17th century renaissance poet. "Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breasts." You can recognize his writing because he was almost always writing about something raunchy in flowery terms.
"Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then, (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!"
Robert Herrick, 17th century renaissance poet. "Upon Julia's Clothes." You can recognize his writing because he was almost always writing about something raunchy in flowery terms.
"HER eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like sparks of fire befriend thee.

No will-o'th'-wisp mislight thee;
No snake or slow-worm bite thee;
But on, on thy way,
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there's none to affright thee.

Let not the dark thee cumber;
What through the moon does slumber;
The stars of the night
Will lend thee their light,
Like tapers clear without number.

Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me:
And when I shall meet
Thy silv'ry feet,
My soul I'll pour into thee."
Robert Herrick, 17th century renaissance poet. "Night Piece, to Julia." You can recognize his writing because he was almost always writing about something raunchy in flowery terms.
"You are a dainty Violet,
Yet withered, ere you can be set
Within the Virgin's Coronet.

You are the Queen all flowers among,
But die you must (fair Maid) ere long,
As He, the maker of this song."
Robert Herrick, 17th century renaissance poet. "Meditation for his Mistress." You can recognize his writing because he was almost always writing about something raunchy in flowery terms.
"Some mute, inglorious Milton may here rest
Some Cromwell guitless of his country's blood."
Thomas Gray. 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," which was written in 1751.
"Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God."
Thomas Gray. 18th century English poet. This is the epitaph at the end of "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard." Gray probably wrote it for his friend Richard West, who was never recognized for his poetry.
"'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

'The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.' "
Thomas Gray. 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," which was written in 1751.
"'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love."
Thomas Gray. 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," which was written in 1751.
"For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, --

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die."
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh."
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul."
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. Excerpt from "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds"
Thomas Gray, 18th century English poet. First two stanzas of "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," written in 1751.
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy tone
Half hidden from the eye!
-- Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!"
William Wordsworth, 19th century English poet. "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways." About a girl named Lucy, like the other "Lucy poems." All 12 lines are famous and often alluded to, so make sure you know them. The theme is similar to that of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": the death of a dearly lovely person, unknown to society.
"Nature, red in tooth and claw"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. This comes from his famous poem "In Memoriam A.H.H."
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. This comes from his famous poem "In Memoriam A.H.H."
"Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die"
Alfred Lord Tennyson, from "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. 19th century English poet.
"Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Alfred Lord Tennyson. 19th century English poet.
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Alfred Lord Tennyson. 19th century English poet.
"Old age hath yet his honor and his toil
Death closes all; but something ere the end
Some work of noble note, may yet be done
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Famous passage from "Ulysses." Describes the theme.
"It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Opening of from "Ulysses."
"Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"This is my son, my own _________,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine."

Who is speaking and who is he talking about.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses." This is Odysseus talking about his son, Telemachus, who will replace him when he leaves.
"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine"
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses."
"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great ________, whom we knew."

What are the Happy Isles? Who fills in the blank?
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "Ulysses." The Happy Isles are death/heaven/happiness in the afterlife. Achilles fills in the blank.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. This is how "Ulysses" ends.
" I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all. "
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
So runs my dream, but what am I?
An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light
And with no language but a cry.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
"Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.

O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:

And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should'st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
"What is it makes me beat so low?"

Something it is which thou hast lost,
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken'd eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
"Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
One writes, that `Other friends remain,'
That `Loss is common to the race' --
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor, -- while thy head is bow'd,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;

Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, "here to-day,"
Or "here to-morrow will he come."

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking "this will please him best,"
She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turn'd, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,
Or kill'd in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;

So seems it in my deep regret,
O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.

But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or, dying, there at least may die.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro' early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,

And saying; `Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?'
And circle moaning in the air:
`Is this the end? Is this the end?'

And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;

Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come, Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
'Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro' his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;

That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;

Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
"It will be hard," they say, "to find
Another service such as this."

My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;

For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit;

But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
"How good! how kind! and he is gone."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.

The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
"This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men."

Another answers, `Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.'

A third is wroth: "Is this an hour
For private sorrow's barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?

"A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?"

Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:

And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:

But where the path we walk'd began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;

Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,

And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;

And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:

When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;

And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;

And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
Is dash'd with wandering isles of night.

If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look'd to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.

And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?

Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
I know that this was Life, -- the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.

But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.

And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder'd tree,
And towers fall'n as soon as built --

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,

Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, excerpt from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds."
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"what rough beast, its hour come round at last"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
"twenty centuries of stony sleep"
William Butler Yeats, 20th century Irish poet
Who wrote Dr. Faustus and who wrote Faust?
Christopher Marlowe wrote Dr. Faustus and Goethe wrote Faust.
You have been given a stanza you recognize as being from “The Faerie Queene.” The questions about the passage are: “Who wrote it?” “When was it written?” “What is the stanza’s form called?” and “What is the term used for the last line of this stanza form?”
Edmund Spenser. 1590-1596, the late 16th century, the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare’s time. Spenserian Sonnet. An alexandrine, iambic hexameter.
“Batter my heart, three-person God; for you

As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,

Labout to admit you, but O, no end.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
John Donne (1572-1631). Renaissance poet. Playboy turned religious.
“The Muses’ garden, with it pendantic weeds/O’erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds/Of servile imitation thrown away/And fresh invention planted” Who wrote these words and who are they about?
Thomas Carew, in “An elegy Upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul’s,” celebrating John Donne and mourning his loss.
"Lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge."
Samuel Johnson, 18th century author who wrote the first Modern English dictionary
"Sweetness and light"
Phrase was actually coined by Swift, but you should know it's usually associated with Matthew Arnold.
"children of the night" should make you think off...
Dracula, Jonathan Harker (the narrator), and Bram Stoker (the author)
"tilting at windmills"
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. Describes an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
"Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in the hollow murmur through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed."
Motto to Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho"
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813
"Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organisation which has heled us to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this."
Matthew Arnold, in "Culture and Anarchy"
"For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind."
Thomas Carlyle, in "Sartor Resartus," 1831
"Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spaced groves of ceaseless verdue. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town."
Herman Melville, Chapter 119 ("The Cnadles") of Moby-Dick, 1851
'I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.'
John Berryman, 20th century American "confessional" poet
"He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."

Who said this, and to whom was he referring?
J. M. Coetzee said this of Jorge Luis Borges
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns, who often wrote in the Scotts language or a "light" Scots dialect. This is "My Love Is Like a Red, Red, Rose."