Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

"The Raven"
Summary:
The unnamed narrator is wearily perusing an old book one bleak December night when he hears a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is merely a visitor, and he awaits tomorrow because he cannot find release in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The rustling curtains frighten him, but he decides that it must be some late visitor and, going to the door, he asks for forgiveness from the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opens the door, he sees and hears nothing except the word "Lenore," an echo of his own words.
Returning to his room, he again hears a tapping and reasons that it was probably the wind outside his window. When he opens the window, however, a raven enters and promptly perches "upon a bust of Pallas" above his door. Its grave appearance amuses the narrator, who asks it for its names. The raven responds, "Nevermore." He does not understand the reply, but the raven says nothing else until the narrator predicts aloud that it will leave him tomorrow like the rest of his friends. Then the bird again says, "Nevermore."
Startled, the narrator says that the raven must have learned this word from some unfortunate owner whose ill luck caused him to repeat the word frequently. Smiling, the narrator sits in front of the ominous raven to ponder about the meaning of its
word. The raven continues to stare at him, as the narrator sits in the chair that Lenore will never again occupy. He then feels that angels have approached, and angrily calls the raven an evil prophet. He asks if there is respite in Gilead and if he will again see Lenore in Heaven, but the raven only responds, "Nevermore." In a fury, the narrator demands that the raven go back into the night and leave him alone again, but the raven says, "Nevermore," and it does not leave the bust of Pallas. The narrator feels that his soul will "nevermore" leave the raven's shadow.
Analysis:
"The Raven" is the most famous of Poe's poems, notable for its melodic and dramatic qualities. The meter of the poem is mostly trochaic octameter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syllable feet per lines. Combined with the predominating ABCBBB end rhyme scheme and the frequent use of internal rhyme, the trochaic octameter and the refrain of "nothing more" and "nevermore" give the poem a musical lilt when read aloud. Poe also emphasizes the "O" sound in words such as "Lenore" and "nevermore" in order to underline the melancholy and lonely sound of the poem and to establish the overall atmosphere. Finally, the repetition of "nevermore" gives a circular sense to the poem and contributes to what Poe termed the unity of effect, where each word and line adds to the larger meaning of the poem.
The unnamed narrator appears in a typically Gothic setting with a lonely apartment, a dying fire, and a "bleak December" night while wearily studying his books in an attempt to distract himself from his troubles. He thinks occasionally of Lenore but is generally able to control his emotions, although the effort required to do so tires him and makes his words equally slow and outwardly pacified. However, over the course of the narrative, the protagonist becomes more and more agitated both in mind and in action, a progression that he demonstrates through his rationalizations and eventually through his increasingly exclamation-ridden monologue. In every stanza near the end, however, his exclamations are punctuated by the calm desolation of the sentence "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore,'" reflecting the despair of his soul.
Like a number of Poe's poems such as "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee," "The Raven" refers to an agonized protagonist's memories of a deceased woman. Through poetry, Lenore's premature death is implicitly made aesthetic, and the narrator is unable to free himself of his reliance upon her memory. He asks the raven if there is "balm in Gilead" and therefore spiritual salvation, or if Lenore truly exists in the afterlife, but the raven confirms his worst suspicions by rejecting his supplications. The fear of death or of oblivion informs much of Poe's writing, and "The Raven" is one of his bleakest publications because it provides such a definitively negative answer. By contrast, when Poe uses the name Lenore in a similar situation in the poem "Lenore," the protagonist Guy de Vere concludes that he need not cry in his mourning because he is confident that he will meet Lenore in heaven.
Poe's choice of a raven as the bearer of ill news is appropriate for a number of reasons. Originally, Poe sought only a dumb beast that was capable of producing human-like sounds without understanding the words' meaning, and he claimed that earlier conceptions of "The Raven" included the use of a parrot. In this sense, the raven is important because it allows the narrator to be both the deliverer and interpreter of the sinister message, without the existence of a blatantly supernatural intervention. At the same time, the raven's black feather have traditionally been considered a magical sign of ill omen, and Poe may also be referring to Norse mythology, where the god Odin had two ravens named Hugin and Munin, which respectively meant "thought" and "memory." The narrator is a student and thus follows Hugin, but Munin continually interrupts his thoughts and in this case takes a physical form by landing on the bust of Pallas, which alludes to Athena, the Greek goddess of learning.
Due to the late hour of the poem's setting and to the narrator's mental turmoil, the poem calls the narrator's reliability into question. At first the narrator attempts to give his experiences a rational explanation, but by the end of the poem, he has ceased to give the raven any interpretation beyond that which he invents in his own head. The raven thus serves as a fragment of his soul and as the animal equivalent of Psyche in the poem "Ulalume." Each figure represents its respective character's subconscious that instinctively understands his need to obsess and to mourn. As in "Ulalume," the protagonist is unable to avoid the recollection of his beloved, but whereas Psyche of "Ulalume" sought to prevent the unearthing of painful memories, the raven actively stimulates his thoughts of Lenore, and he effectively causes his own fate through the medium of a non-sentient animal.
A lonely man tries to ease his "sorrow for the lost Lenore," by distracting his mind with old books of "forgotten lore." He is interrupted while he is "nearly napping," by a "tapping on [his] chamber door." As he opens up the door, he finds "darkness there and nothing more." Into the darkness he whispers, "Lenore," hoping his lost love had come back, but all that could be heard was "an echo [that] murmured back the word 'Lenore!'"

With a burning soul, the man returns to his chamber, and this time he can hear a tapping at the window lattice. As he "flung [open] the shutter," "in [there] stepped a stately Raven," the bird of ill-omen (Poe, 1850). The raven perched on the bust of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology, above his chamber door.

The man asks the Raven for his name, and surprisingly it answers, and croaks "Nevermore." The man knows that the bird does not speak from wisdom, but has been taught by "some unhappy master," and that the word "nevermore" is its only "stock and store."
The man welcomes the raven, and is afraid that the raven will be gone in the morning, "as [his] Hopes have flown before"; however, the raven answers, "Nevermore." The man smiled, and pulled up a chair, interested in what the raven "meant in croaking, ‘Nevermore.’" The chair, where Lenore once sat, brought back painful memories. The man, who knows the irrational nature in the raven’s speech, still cannot help but ask the raven questions. Since the narrator is aware that the raven only knows one word, he can anticipate the bird's responses. "Is there balm in Gilead?" - "Nevermore." Can Lenore be found in paradise? - "Nevermore." "Take thy form from off my door!" - "Nevermore." Finally the man concedes, realizing that to continue this dialogue would be pointless. And his "soul from out that shadow" that the raven throws on the floor, "Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!"
[pic][pic]Symbols
In this poem, one of the most famous American poems ever, Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a higher level. The most obvious symbol is, of course, the raven itself. When Poe had decided to use a refrain that repeated the word "nevermore," he found that it would be most effective if he used a non-reasoning creature to utter the word. It would make little sense to use a human, since the human could reason to answer the questions (Poe, 1850). In "The Raven" it is important that the answers to the questions are already known, to illustrate the self-torture to which the narrator exposes himself. This way of interpreting signs that do not bear a real meaning, is "one of the most profound impulses of human nature" (Quinn, 1998:441).
Poe also considered a parrot as the bird instead of the raven; however, because of the melancholy tone, and the symbolism of ravens as birds of ill-omen, he found the raven more suitable for the mood in the poem (Poe, 1850). Quoth the Parrot, "Nevermore?"
Another obvious symbol is the bust of Pallas. Why did the raven decide to perch on the goddess of wisdom? One reason could be, because it would lead the narrator to believe that the raven spoke from wisdom, and was not just repeating its only "stock and store," and to signify the scholarship of the narrator. Another reason for using "Pallas" in the poem was, according to Poe himself, simply because of the "sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself" (Poe, 1850).
A less obvious symbol, might be the use of "midnight" in the first verse, and "December" in the second verse. Both midnight and December, symbolize an end of something, and also the anticipation of something new, a change, to happen. The midnight in December, might very well be New Year’s eve, a date most of us connect with change. This also seems to be what Viktor Rydberg believes when he is translating "The Raven" to Swedish, since he uses the phrase "årets sista natt var inne, " ("The last night of the year had arrived"). Kenneth Silverman connected the use of December with the death of Edgar’s mother (Silverman, 1992:241), who died in that month; whether this is true or not is, however, not significant to its meaning in the poem.
The chamber in which the narrator is positioned, is used to signify the loneliness of the man, and the sorrow he feels for the loss of Lenore. The room is richly furnished, and reminds the narrator of his lost love, which helps to create an effect of beauty in the poem. The tempest outside, is used to even more signify the isolation of this man, to show a sharp contrast between the calmness in the chamber and the tempestuous night.
The phrase "from out my heart," Poe claims, is used, in combination with the answer "Nevermore," to let the narrator realize that he should not try to seek a moral in what has been previously narrated (Poe, 1850). Words
Poe had an extensive vocabulary, which is obvious to the readers of both his poetry as well as his fiction. Sometimes this meant introducing words that were not commonly used. In "The Raven," the use of ancient and poetic language seems appropriate, since the poem is about a man spending most of his time with books of "forgotten lore."
# "Seraphim," in the fourteenth verse, "perfumed by an unseen censer / Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled..." is used to illustrate the swift, invisible way a scent spreads in a room. A seraphim is one of the six-winged angels standing in the presence of God.
# "Nepenthe," from the same verse, is a potion, used by ancients to induce forgetfullnes of pain or sorrow.
# "Balm in Gilead," from the following verse, is a soothing ointment made in Gilead, a mountainous region of Palestine east of the Jordan river.
# "Aidenn," from the sixteenth verse, is an Arabic word for Eden or paradise.
# "Plutonian," characteristic of Pluto, the god of the underworld in Roman mythology.
The Philosphy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay on the creation of "The Raven," entitled "The Philosophy of Composition." In that essay Poe describes the work of composing the poem as if it were a mathematical problem, and derides the poets that claim that they compose "by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes." Whether Poe was as calculating as he claims when he wrote "The Raven" or not is a question that cannot be answered; it is, however, unlikely that he created it exactly like he described in his essay. The thoughts occurring in the essay might well have occurred to Poe while he was composing it.
In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe stresses the need to express a single effect when the literary work is to be read in one sitting. A poem should always be written short enough to be read in one sitting, and should, therefore, strive to achieve this single, unique effect. Consequently, Poe figured that the length of a poem should stay around one hundred lines, and "The Raven" is 108 lines.
The most important thing to consider in "Philosophy" is the fact that "The Raven," as well as many of Poe's tales, is written backwards. The effect is determined first, and the whole plot is set; then the web grows backwards from that single effect. Poe's "tales of ratiocination," e.g. the Dupin tales, are written in the same manner. "Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen" (Poe, 1850).
It was important to Poe to make "The Raven" "universally appreciable." It should be appreciated by the public, as well as the critics. Poe chose Beauty to be the theme of the poem, since "Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem" (Poe, 1850). After choosing Beauty as the province, Poe considered sadness to be the highest manifestation of beauty. "Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones" (Poe, 1850).
Of all melancholy topics, Poe wanted to use the one that was universally understood, and therefore, he chose Death as his topic. Poe (along with other writers) believed that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical use of death, because it closely allies itself with Beauty.
After establishing subjects and tones of the poem, Poe started by writing the stanza that brought the narrator's "interrogation" of the raven to a climax, the third verse from the end, and he made sure that no preceeding stanza would "surpass this in rythmical effect." Poe then worked backwards from this stanza and used the word "Nevermore" in many different ways, so that even with the repetition of this word, it would not prove to be monotonous.
Poe builds the tension in this poem up, stanza by stanza, but after the climaxing stanza he tears the whole thing down, and lets the narrator know that there is no meaning in searching for a moral in the raven's "nevermore". The Raven is established as a symbol for the narrator's "Mournful and never-ending remembrance." "And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted - nevermore!"

A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER

This poem is a beautiful representation of a father`s feelings towards her daughter who is infant but her father is still feeling fear for her future because of the time which was going on in the poet`s land.Here reader can see the possessiveness of the father as well for his daughter.The whole poem is about the wish of a father for his daughter that he wanted her to be like a Pearl who remains beautiful but always live inside its shell and when the shell opens its light embraces the world and give it the brightness like the shining sun on the sky who spread its warmth and serve the world with its light and shine.He wished to make her the complete person beautiful from inside and outside both.

| Posted on 2011-11-23 | by a guest

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Yeats prays that his infant daughter will be protected from life's storms. His mind pictures his daughter in the future as a young woman embodying the values that he cherishes. She rises as a civilized creature from an uncivilized environment. He wants her to have beauty, but not so much as to make others obsessed with her or create vanity within herself. He doesn't want her to have a marriage that provides materially, but leaves her with a peculiar,foolish mate or dull life. He wants her to learn that love can be earned with kindness by those less beautiful. He wants her to be stable and private developing normally according to her age, sex, and season in life. (A linnet is a common finch having plummage that varies according to age, sex, and season.) He wants her to not tease or quarrel for entertainment. He wants her to be rooted in the same social class of her family. He reviews his past loves determining that love can turn to hate, and he wants his daughter to be free of hate which will tear her down. He thinks that an intellectual hate is the worst having seen his lovely woman turn into an opinionated angry blowing wind. He does not want this to happen to his daughter. He wants her to have no opinions unless they coincide with his opinions. He wants her to have a quiet nature, no hatred, and positive self-esteem. He believes that she can withstand all the scowls and storms in life and obtain happiness with these traits. He wants her husband to be of the same social class following the same ceremonies and customs as his daughter.
HEMRAJ VERMA

| Posted on 2011-10-14 | by a guest

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In the beginning, Yeats talks about the storm having commenced brewing in the seas. Between his newly born daughter and the sea, there stand a bare hill and Gregory's woods which might not thwart the storm from reaching the helpless infant. The father is naturally worried as he senses the gale striking the tower and the undersides of the bridges. To his mind, the storm presages the future of her daughter having arrived with a rage, mounting from the seeming innocence of the sea. As a father, the poet wishes beauty for her daughter but not such voluptuousness that would engross others to distraction or make her vain.
He does not want her daughter to be bereft of kindness nor does he want her to fail in choosing the persons with whom she will be friendly. The father shudders at the thought of her daughter's turning to be another Helen of Troy, who couldn't help being unfaithful as she was so beautiful. Some lovely women like the queen who had not had her father imposing useful restraints upon her, chose an ordinary smith with warped legs, instead of marrying a handsome yet virtuous man matching her handsome looks and social standing. It is strange how exquisitely beautiful women often choose 'a crazy salad' (an undeserving husband) to go 'with their meat' (rich food or their great beauty).
His daughter should realize that she should be deserving of winning human hearts. She should not be like those crafty women who employ their charms to use people to their advantage. It is true that men fall head over heels for stunning females but it is really the compassion of the women which they get enamored by in the end. The father in the poet is keen that her daughter should be like a tree giving succour and shade to people when she grows up and her feelings should be like the sweet song of the linnet that spreads joy for the sake of doing so. It is very likely that she will sometime desire something intensely in a wrong spirit or engage in some strife at times but let them be transient and not very serious. Let her be like an evergreen tree; let her send her roots into the depth of her good convictions standing at the same place.
The poet is rueful that his running after the people he liked or the kind of gorgeousness that he was infatuated with, could not satiate him as he wanted and that he is weary of all the barrenness that has enveloped him now. He seems to get momentarily confused as to what could be the right sort of beauty. He has however no hatred toward anyone as he is absolutely sure that it is the worst kind of malevolence that could poison his life. He wants her daughter also to learn this truth before she allows her to be ruled by the negative force of hatred because such a mindset will save her from inviting harsh criticism or abuses being showered upon her. The poet would not like her daughter to be self-opinionated as that could lead her to practising intellectual loathing which the poet considers to be the worst kind of malady in a human being.
He recollects coming in close contact with a beautiful and accomplished woman who had to give away everything by being strongly biased. The truth rings clearly in the poet's mind that by removing all hatred from one's mind, the soul not only regains its innocence but also embarks on the journey of delighting in itself. Since the spirit of the soul is the will of God, he fervently prays that his daughter should be able to discover her soul and be happy in the face of any storm or disapproval. And finally, as a father, he hopes that she will be betrothed to a man who has for ever steered away from detestation and arrogance which is so common everywhere. Let the house of her husband be comfortable and secure but not at the expense of anyone.
Article Source: x

| Posted on 2011-08-15 | by a guest

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Poem has been well described...it is in easy language & well understood...!!

| Posted on 2011-02-10 | by a guest

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yeats has very deliberataly described his worries for his daughter through natural elements such as storm.This also describes the present condition of Ireland as to which time she will grow up in.he is very particular while talking about beauty.he wants his daughter to be beautiful and she should also have all types of social manners and courtsies found in a female.he wants her to be happy throughout life .

| Posted on 2010-09-14 | by a guest

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The poem is basically centered around his thoughts on what his daughter will be like as she grows up. He builds on the hope that she is beautiful but not so beatiful that men only like her for her beauty ("May she be granted beauty and yet not Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught"). He also doesn't want her to be so beautiful that she becomes conceited and obsessed with herself ("Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch,Consider beauty a sufficient end). He also doesn't want her to be so beautiful that she has no friends because all girls envy her and dislike her aforementioned conceit ("Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.")
Hope that helps. We didn't even read it in brit lit this year (10th grade) but I love Yeats and read it on my own. :D

| Posted on 2010-05-09 | by a guest

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CONCLUSION the poet-Keats describes the horn of plenty not as treasure but as nuturing and enforcing force which is providing the innocent with value and virtues. He also talks about the laurel tree-a symbol of strength and majesty .daffne who was being chased by apollo became a laurel tree to escape from him. These two images deal with the question of how to save the innocent from the storm raging outside. Keats balances his apocalyptic vision with survival. Thus i feel this is more of a prayer tha a poem as it is not meant only for his daughter but also for all peace loving people hoping for a better world were tradition,custom and ceremony is promoted instead of war hatred and destruction.

| Posted on 2010-03-21 | by a guest

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I get an impression that Yeats is expressing his hope that his daugter lives her life in virtue. Her beauty will be a pure beauty from the inside out and as life challenges he hopes she maintains such purity. He is firm and experienced when he says "hearts are earned" and yet soft and nurturing when he says "may all her thoughts like the linnet be". His most profound (historically) experience is that of his relation to Maud Gonne. Gonne was a radical and opinionated woman and was the romantic muse for Yeats. What his relationship with Gonne was he never hopes for his daughter. And I do agree with the young students who compared his prayers for his daughter to prayers for Ireland. Ireland .... pure and rooted and to be preserved devoid of any foreign ceremony.

| Posted on 2009-11-06 | by a guest

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Willima Butler Yeats' internal struggles about his daughter's life is represented by the storm. He wants his daughter to be beautiful, yet he is afraid of all the down falls that beauty may bring to his daughter.

| Posted on 2009-03-04 | by a guest

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My 6th grade class saw this as a representation of the times of Ireland trying to gain its independence from England. We see the storm as being England and the queen. We see his daugther as being the country of Ireland. I thought this was an interesting aspect from the mind of a 12 year old.

| Posted on 2007-03-07 | by a guest

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In this poem we see yeats in the role of an anxious father brooding over his young daughter's future. the storm that howls outside is symbolic of the turbulent times in which Yeats lived. The future to Yeats is an apocalyptic vision. Yeats wants his daughter to inherit the traits and and a character that would allow her to lead a complete and fulfilling life in the world. he wants her to be beautiful but not overly so. An excess of beauty is rather a curse than a blessing because not only does it deceive those who look upon it but also its possesor. Yeats cites the example of Helen of Troy and of Aphrodite(Venus) to drive in this point.

| Posted on 2006-03-27 | by Approved Guest

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Yeats prays that his infant daughter will be protected from life's storms. His mind pictures his daughter in the future as a young woman embodying the values that he cherishes. She rises as a civilized creature from an uncivilized environment. He wants her to have beauty, but not so much as to make others obsessed with her or create vanity within herself. He doesn't want her to have a marriage that provides materially, but leaves her with a peculiar,foolish mate or dull life. He wants her to learn that love can be earned with kindness by those less beautiful. He wants her to be stable and private developing normally according to her age, sex, and season in life. (A linnet is a common finch having plummage that varies according to age, sex, and season.) He wants her to not tease or quarrel for entertainment. He wants her to be rooted in the same social class of her family. He reviews his past loves determining that love can turn to hate, and he wants his daughter to be free of hate which will tear her down. He thinks that an intellectual hate is the worst having seen his lovely woman turn into an opinionated angry blowing wind. He does not want this to happen to his daughter. He wants her to have no opinions unless they coincide with his opinions. He wants her to have a quiet nature, no hatred, and positive self-esteem. He believes that she can withstand all the scowls and storms in life and obtain happiness with these traits. He wants her husband to be of the same social class following the same ceremonies and customs as his daughter.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the celebrated Irish poet, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, needs no introduction. The Irish identity was very strong in him and as an active member of the Irish National Revival, he tried his best to add Celtic legends to evoke the glorious past of his land. In a time when the world was much fragmented, he endeavored to create a unified perspective of things that is cohesive and all encompassing. The poem is an intense expression of how Yeats felt after his daughter Anne was born although the ideas conveyed go far beyond the personal.
Theme of the Poem
The poem portrays how a father, who has been blessed with a daughter, prays for the future happiness and welfare of her. The poet hopes that instead of growing up to be a very beautiful woman, his daughter should be blessed with the attributes of a virtuous and great soul. She should be well-mannered and full of humility rather than being strongly opinionated, to avoid intellectual detestation because that can drown her in misery.
Summary
In the beginning, Yeats talks about the storm having commenced brewing in the seas. Between his newly born daughter and the sea, there stand a bare hill and Gregory's woods which might not thwart the storm from reaching the helpless infant. The father is naturally worried as he senses the gale striking the tower and the undersides of the bridges. To his mind, the storm presages the future of her daughter having arrived with a rage, mounting from the seeming innocence of the sea. As a father, the poet wishes beauty for her daughter but not such voluptuousness that would engross others to distraction or make her vain.
He does not want her daughter to be bereft of kindness nor does he want her to fail in choosing the persons with whom she will be friendly.
The father shudders at the thought of her daughter's turning to be another Helen of Troy, who couldn't help being unfaithful as she was so beautiful. Some lovely women like the queen who had not had her father imposing useful restraints upon her, chose an ordinary smith with warped legs, instead of marrying a handsome yet virtuous man matching her handsome looks and social standing. It is strange how exquisitely beautiful women often choose 'a crazy salad' (an undeserving husband) to go 'with their
meat' (rich food or their great beauty).
His daughter should realize that she should be deserving of winning human hearts. She should not be like those crafty women who employ their charms to use people to their advantage. It is true that men fall head over heels for stunning females but it is really the compassion of the women which they get enamored by in the end. The father in the poet is keen that her daughter should be like a tree giving succour and shade to people when she grows up and her feelings should be like the sweet song of the linnet that spreads joy for the sake of doing so. It is very likely that she will sometime desire something intensely in a wrong spirit or engage in some strife at times but let them be transient and not very serious. Let her be like an evergreen tree; let her send her roots into the depth of her good convictions standing at the same place.
The poet is rueful that his running after the people he liked or the kind of gorgeousness that he was infatuated with, could not satiate him as he wanted and that he is weary of all the barrenness that has enveloped him now. He seems to get momentarily confused as to what could be the right sort of beauty. He has however no hatred toward anyone as he is absolutely sure that it is the worst kind of malevolence that could poison his life. He wants her daughter also to learn this truth before she allows her to be ruled by the negative force of hatred because such a mindset will save her from inviting harsh criticism or abuses being showered upon her. The poet would not like her daughter to be self-opinionated as that could lead her to practising intellectual loathing which the poet considers to be the worst kind of malady in a human being.
He recollects coming in close contact with a beautiful and accomplished woman who had to give away everything by being strongly biased. The truth rings clearly in the poet's mind that by removing all hatred from one's mind, the soul not only regains its innocence but also embarks on the journey of delighting in itself. Since the spirit of the soul is the will of God, he fervently prays that his daughter should be able to discover her soul and be happy in the face of any storm or disapproval. And finally, as a father, he hopes that she will be betrothed to a man who has for ever steered away from detestation and arrogance which is so common everywhere. Let the house of her husband be comfortable and secure but not at the expense of anyone.

“Ode to the West Wind”

Summary

The speaker invokes the “wild West Wind” of autumn, which scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring, and asks that the wind, a “destroyer and preserver,” hear him. The speaker calls the wind the “dirge / Of the dying year,” and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind stirs the Mediterranean from “his summer dreams,” and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the “sapless foliage” of the ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him.
The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, “the comrade” of the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”—for though he is like the wind at heart, untamable and proud—he is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.
The speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, “like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.” Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard to the effect upon mankind that he hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Form

Each of the seven parts of “Ode to the West Wind” contains five stanzas—four three-line stanzas and a two-line couplet, all metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each part follows a pattern known as terza rima, the three-line rhyme scheme employed by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In the three-line terza rima stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, and the middle line does not; then the end sound of that middle line is employed as the rhyme for the first and third lines in the next stanza. The final couplet rhymes with the middle line of the last three-line stanza. Thus each of the seven parts of “Ode to the West Wind” follows this scheme: ABA BCB CDC DED EE.

Commentary

The wispy, fluid terza rima of “Ode to the West Wind” finds Shelley taking a long thematic leap beyond the scope of “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” and incorporating his own art into his meditation on beauty and the natural world. Shelley invokes the wind magically, describing its power and its role as both “destroyer and preserver,” and asks the wind to sweep him out of his torpor “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” In the fifth section, the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a metaphor for his own art, the expressive capacity that drives “dead thoughts” like “withered leaves” over the universe, to “quicken a new birth”—that is, to quicken the coming of the spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a “spring” of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality—all the things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human mind. Shelley asks the wind to be his spirit, and in the same movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his poetic faculty, which will play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind strums the leaves of the trees. The thematic implication is significant: whereas the older generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a source of truth and authentic experience, the younger generation largely viewed nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience. In this poem, Shelley explicitly links nature with art by finding powerful natural metaphors with which to express his ideas about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic expression.

NOTES: The Ode to The West Wind

The ‘Ode…’ is one of Shelley’s best known lyrics. The poet describes vividly the activities of the West Wind on the earth, in the sky and on the sea, and then expresses his envy for the boundless freedom of the West Wind, and his desire to be free like the West Wind. Shelley calls upon the mighty wind to inspire him to write and also to carry his hopeful message of regeneration to the decaying world.
STANZA I
Shelly personifies the West Wind and thinks it to be the very breath of autumn. He refers to the West Wind as ‘wild’ and further goes on to explain its powerful nature. When the West Wind blows, it seems as if the dead leaves are being (scattered) driven by its unseen presence just as spirits take flight on the approach of a magician. The west wind destroys these yellow, black, pale, hectic red, disease afflicted and withered leaves by carrying/bearing them to their resting places. The west wind also carries along with it the wind borne winged seeds which would then be buried under the soil and would lie like corpses in their graves till the approach of spring. These seeds would lie dormant under the cold earth until the gentle East Wind blows in spring. Shelley personifies the East Wind as it blows its trumpet in order to awaken the sleeping Earth. Nature is aroused and wakes to a new life just as a trumpet is blown to call soldiers to their duty.
Shelley paints a bright and cheerful scene after the drabness and death of winter. The dormant seeds sprout to life under the influence of the East Wind, the hill sides and plains are then covered with a myriad of beautiful colours and fragrances. The wind borne seeds springing into buds remind Shelley of the pastoral image of a Shepherd taking its flocks of sheep to graze. Shelley says that it moving everywhere- it is all pervasive and is not confined to this Mediterranean location. The West Wind plays a dual role- that of a destroyer and a preserver too. Shelley considers it to be a destroyer for driving the last signs of life from trees and simultaneously scattering healthy seeds for future growth in the spring season. Shelley appeals to this wind to lend him a ear.
STANZA II
In this stanza Shelley goes on to describe the activities of the West Wind in the sky and the violence and terror or air storms The West Wind wreaks/causes a turmoil high up in the sky and scatters loose clouds like dead leaves from an imaginary tree of cloud masses. These clouds are the messengers of rain and lightning and are dispersed on the blue surface of the sky like the streaming hair of a frenzied woman who is a follower of Bacchus, the Roman God of wine and fertility. These clouds form a canopy as ‘far as the eye can see’-from the dim brink of the horizon to the highest point in the sky. These clouds are referred to as the locks of the approaching storm. The West wind is like a funeral song being sung at the death of the passing year. The poet further adds that a huge tomb would be erected over the dead body of the year and the darkness of the closing night would be its dome. The collective strength of the clouds would form the arched roof of this tomb. The solid seeming vapours of the clouds will give birth to the terror striking forces of nature like rain, fire and hail. The downpour would appear black due to the darkness of the night. The poet requests such a mighty wind to hear his appeal.
STANZA III
This section (3rd) describes images of peace and serenity (‘blue Mediterranean’, ‘summer dreams’, ‘sleep’, ‘old palaces and towers’, ‘oozy woods’) which are disturbed by the coming of the west wind, The fury of the West wind disturbs the blue Mediterranean from its sleep.
The Mediterranean had fallen asleep near an island formed by lava in Baiae’s Bay. The streams flowing into the Baiae’s Bay produce a sleep inducing music. The Mediterranean sees in its sleep the quivering reflections of the ruins of old palaces and towers overgrown with non flowering plants like mosses of such overpowering sweetness that the very though of them intoxicates the senses.
Even the Atlantic Ocean does not remain unaffected under the onslaught of the West Wind. The calm Atlantic is thrown into a state of agitation/turmoil when the West Wind blows and the waves rise so high that they seem to be breaking apart to make way for the West Wind. The West Wind strikes terror in the marine vegetation growing at the bottom of the sea. The sea blossoms and the saplese plants hear the sound of the West Wind. Recognising the voice of the West Wind they quiver with fear and tend to lose their leaves. The poet seeks the help of such a mighty wind to come to his aid.
STANZA IV
In this stanza the poet strikes a personal note. He feels that if he had been a dead leaf, a swift cloud or a wave then he could have been helped by the West Wind.
He wants the wind to carry him away like a leaf, drive him away like a cloud and lift him like a sea wave. But all this is not possible for him for he is not as free as the West Wind. He feels that if he had the same poetic vigour which he possessed in his youth he could have accompanied the wind in the sky. In such a state, to surprise her speed was hardly a dream. At that time he would never have felt the necessity of seeking the help of the West Wind. But he seems to have fallen on difficult times. He has got weighed/bogged down by the bitter experiences and hardships of life. He wants to escape from it. To be rescued by the West Wind. He, who was as wild, swift and proud as the West Wind seems to have been enchained by the burdens of life.
STANZA V
In this stanza the poet beseeches the West Wind to blow on him as its lyre just as it treats the forest. He feels as if both the forest and he seem to be passing through the autumn of their lives. His own leaves are also falling like the leaves of the forest. He means that he has lost his creative vigour while the forest has shed its own leaves. If the wind were to blow through him and inspire him to write it would produce some sweet yet sombre music which would be melancholic (as both the forest and the poet being in the autumn of their lives would respond gloomily).
Shelley then appeals to the West Wind to unite with his spirit. He seeks a union with the impulsive West Wind. He pleads with the West Wind to scatter his dead thoughts over the universe as it scatters the withered leaves. He is hopeful that just as these dead leaves have the capability to enrich the soul which then hastens the birth of a new plant, similarly his worn out thoughts would give birth to a new era. Shelley hopes that the chanting of this verse would have a magical effect. The West wind would spread his message among the sleeping mankind in the same way as it scatters ashes and sparks from an unextinguished fireplace. The poet’s words will also work as living sparks to quicken the birth of a new and better place.
The poet ends the poem on an optimistic note for he wants the West Wind to broadcast his message of hope to humanity. He rhetorically asks whether the cyclical inevitability of changes within Nature apply to social and political change. Just as seasons succeed each other in a cyclical pattern and winter is always followed by spring. Similarly, he wants to rekindle hope in the peoples’ hearts that the days of decadence, darkness and hardships would be followed by a new age of joy, revival and rebirth.
CHURCH GOING

Philip Larkin’s Church Going describes the idle curiosity of the poet/speaker for a church he comes across while out for a bike ride. It consists of 7 stanzas, each 9 lines in length.The meter is a relaxed iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ababcbdgb with numerous slant rhymes appearing in lines 5 – 9. The language is typical of Larkin - ordinary, conversational, almost slangy.
[pic] The speaker wants to be sure there is nothing in the way of a church service going on. He appears more interested in the building than in the movement that brought it about. He demonstrates awkward reverence removing his hat and cuff clips. Apparently he has stopped at a number of churches. He describes this one as “Another church” and makes note of “matting, seats, and stone,/ And little books, sprawlings of flowers cut/ For Sunday, brownish now.” He seems uninterested in the denomination of the church. In stanza 2 he moves forward, rubbing a hand over the baptismal font, speculating on the condition of the roof, climbs the lectern and says, “Here endeth” more loudly than he had intended to. Returning to the entrance, he signs the guest book and contributes a foreign coin to the collection box, thinking the place was not worth stopping for. In stanza 3 he questions his curious habit of stopping at churches. Once they have become totally useless, will officials keep open some cathedrals and leave the smaller churches to rain and sheep? Will cathedrals become tourist traps and these smaller churches become attractions for ruin seekers, antique hounds, and mothers perpetuating superstitions and seeking simples (medicinal plants) to cure cancer? It becomes clear that the title has more than one meaning. Churches were built for the once large numbers of believers who attended every Sunday, but those numbers are rapidly reducing themselves. Marriages are gradually shifting to legal events performed by lay people if indeed people don’t merely choose to live together without ceremony. The same situation is replacing the elaborate requiems and funerals of earlier ages. As time goes on, the Church is playing a role of less importance in society, politics, and world events. Finally there are people like the poet/speaker - curious but not trained in history or architecture – who are church goers but are unencumbered by religion. The Church may be said to be going fast. Still Larkin’s speaker (who speaks for Larkin) cannot totally reject the human religious movement that dominated history until the twentieth century. ‘A serious house on serious earth it is.” And think of all the many dead who lie round.
………………………………………………………………………………………………A poetry analysis of "Church Going" by Phillip Larkin can first look at the title, meaning, message and themes of the poem. The free "thinking aloud" tone of the poem is also worth a mention in an essay, as it contributes to the reader experience of the poem.
Firstly, the title is worthy of examination. Deceptively simple, the title "Church Going" is very clever as it has two interpretations. The first refers to the act of weekly worship, usually on a Sunday, and Phillip Larkin will go on to consider the traditions and future potential of this practice. The second interpretation in the word "going" refers to the action of the buildings and institutions themselves and which way they will be going in the future. Larkin lays out his thoughts about this as the poem develops, and his prognosis is not good. He views the churches as falling into disrepair as society moves on from blind adherence to religion, and wonders where it will all lead. He imagines in his mind's eye, the churches as ruins with weeds and grass growing up between the floor slabs and wonders whether anyone will want to buy them and what use they might put the buildings to.
[pic]The tone of the poem engages the reader in a sort of conversation with the poet as he thinks aloud in the inhibiting silence of the musty old building. We are deliberately told that, even for Larkin himself, his visit to the church is just an add-on, a convenient stop-off on a cycling trip. With the first words of the poem being:"Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. "Larkin puts readers in a particular spot in time, as if they too, had come along with the poet for the ride, and are breaking their journey with him. He uses a curiously detached and objective tone, however, as if he is an outsider in the church looking in at the practice of religious observation as if he has no role in it. He emphasizes this with the word "hatless" as he disregards this mark of respect. Language such as "brownish" and "musty" illustrate his view that the church is past its best, and may one day be totally obsolete, and contribute to the themes of Time, Religion, Function and Society.
Overall, Phillip Larkin's message seems to be that in the future churches will either decay into ruins or be put to other more materialistic uses such as homes or retail outlets. Even in the present time, he wonders whether their only authority and atmosphere of awe comes from the fact that there are so many dead in the vicinity.

The lady of shallot
"The Lady of Shalott," a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1839, entails the unfulfilled life of the Lady of Shalott and her eventual death because of her restricted existence. This poem represents a female breaking out against the restrictions placed upon her in conventional Victorian society, although it is set in the Arthurian Era.
In Part I of this poem we learn of the Lady as she appears in comparison to the outside world. Only the reapers "hear her song that echoes cheerly" (line 30). No one ever sees her at the window or down upon the land. The lady is secluded from her world, physically because of the water and the height of her tower, and because of her womanly "duties"-her weaving, which is how she spends all of her time.
[pic]The reader is also never told what she is thinking, much like in Victorian society, where the woman's voice is often not heard, or where women just refuse to speak because they know it is futile. In Part II the Lady "knows not what the curse may be/And so she weavesth steadily/And little other care hath she (lines 42-44). The Lady does not ever seem to think twice about why this curse has been put upon her or how she can be freed of it. She just accepts her fate, which is the main problem with Victorian society as Florence Nightingale mentions in Cassandra when she says, "Awake, ye women, all ye that sleep awake" (1625). The Lady is asleep to her dull reality.
Because the Lady can only look through her mirror, she never learns much of the world. The mirror "hangs before her all the year" (line 47) and all she sees are "shadows" (line 48). She is deprived of direct contact with humanity and all that make her human-love, purposeful work, and freedom. Her own life is only a shadow in the vast reality of the world below. In Part II, the Lady says, "I am half sick of shadows" (line 71) because she hears the two lovers. In Part III, Lancelot is introduced in the poem, and when the Lady hears his voice singing, she is compelled to leave her idle work and turn to the window. It is then that "the mirror crack'd from side to side (line 115) and the curse seized her with death. Although the life she has is lost, her greatest curse is that she dies unfulfilled and unrecognized much like Cassandra and other women of the Victorian era. She went "silent into Camelot" (line 158)

The Lady of Shalott Summary

This is a pretty long poem, and a lot goes on, but Tennyson makes it easier to follow along by breaking the action up into four parts. We'll take you through them quickly, to give you an overview:

Part 1: The poem opens with a description of a field by a river. There's a road running through the field that apparently leads to Camelot, the legendary castle of King Arthur. From the road you can see an island in the middle of the river called the Island of Shalott. On that island there is a little castle, which is the home of the mysterious Lady of Shalott. People pass by the island all the time, on boats and barges and on foot, but they never see the Lady. Occasionally, people working in the fields around the island will hear her singing an eerie song.

Part 2: Now we actually move inside the castle on the island, and Tennyson describes the Lady herself. First we learn that she spends her days weaving a magic web, and that she has been cursed, forbidden to look outside. So instead she watches the world go by in a magic mirror. She sees shadows of the men and women who pass on the road, and she weaves the things she sees into her web. We also learn that she is "half sick" of this life of watching and weaving.

Part 3: Now the big event: One day the studly Sir Lancelot rides by the island, covered in jewels and shining armor. Most of this chunk of the poem is spent describing Lancelot. When his image appears in the mirror, the Lady is so completely captivated that she breaks the rule and looks out her window on the real world. When she does this and catches a glimpse of Lancelot and Camelot, the magic mirror cracks, and she knows she's in trouble.

Part 4: Knowing that it's game over, the Lady finds a boat by the side of the river and writes her name on it. After looking at Camelot for a while she lies down in the boat and lets it slip downstream. She drifts down the river, singing her final song, and dies before she gets to Camelot. The people of Camelot come out to see the body of the Lady and her boat, and are afraid. Lancelot also trots out, decides that she's pretty, and says a little prayer for her.

“Tintern Abbey”

Summary

The full title of this poem is “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.” It opens with the speaker’s declaration that five years have passed since he last visited this location, encountered its tranquil, rustic scenery, and heard the murmuring waters of the river. He recites the objects he sees again, and describes their effect upon him: the “steep and lofty cliffs” impress upon him “thoughts of more deep seclusion”; he leans against the dark sycamore tree and looks at the cottage-grounds and the orchard trees, whose fruit is still unripe. He sees the “wreaths of smoke” rising up from cottage chimneys between the trees, and imagines that they might rise from “vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,” or from the cave of a hermit in the deep forest.
[pic][pic]The speaker then describes how his memory of these “beauteous forms” has worked upon him in his absence from them: when he was alone, or in crowded towns and cities, they provided him with “sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.” The memory of the woods and cottages offered “tranquil restoration” to his mind, and even affected him when he was not aware of the memory, influencing his deeds of kindness and love. He further credits the memory of the scene with offering him access to that mental and spiritual state in which the burden of the world is lightened, in which he becomes a “living soul” with a view into “the life of things.” The speaker then says that his belief that the memory of the woods has affected him so strongly may be “vain”—but if it is, he has still turned to the memory often in times of “fretful stir.”
Even in the present moment, the memory of his past experiences in these surroundings floats over his present view of them, and he feels bittersweet joy in reviving them. He thinks happily, too, that his present experience will provide many happy memories for future years. The speaker acknowledges that he is different now from how he was in those long-ago times, when, as a boy, he “bounded o’er the mountains” and through the streams. In those days, he says, nature made up his whole world: waterfalls, mountains, and woods gave shape to his passions, his appetites, and his love. That time is now past, he says, but he does not mourn it, for though he cannot resume his old relationship with nature, he has been amply compensated by a new set of more mature gifts; for instance, he can now “look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity.” And he can now sense the presence of something far more subtle, powerful, and fundamental in the light of the setting suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man; this energy seems to him “a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts.... / And rolls through all things.” For that reason, he says, he still loves nature, still loves mountains and pastures and woods, for they anchor his purest thoughts and guard the heart and soul of his “moral being.”
The speaker says that even if he did not feel this way or understand these things, he would still be in good spirits on this day, for he is in the company of his “dear, dear (d) Sister,” who is also his “dear, dear Friend,” and in whose voice and manner he observes his former self, and beholds “what I was once.” He offers a prayer to nature that he might continue to do so for a little while, knowing, as he says, that “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her,” but leads rather “from joy to joy.” Nature’s power over the mind that seeks her out is such that it renders that mind impervious to “evil tongues,” “rash judgments,” and “the sneers of selfish men,” instilling instead a “cheerful faith” that the world is full of blessings. The speaker then encourages the moon to shine upon his sister, and the wind to blow against her, and he says to her that in later years, when she is sad or fearful, the memory of this experience will help to heal her. And if he himself is dead, she can remember the love with which he worshipped nature. In that case, too, she will remember what the woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so many years of absence, they became more dear to him—both for themselves and for the fact that she is in them.

Form

“Tintern Abbey” is composed in blank verse, which is a name used to describe unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Its style is therefore very fluid and natural; it reads as easily as if it were a prose piece. But of course the poetic structure is tightly constructed; Wordsworth’s slight variations on the stresses of iambic rhythms is remarkable. Lines such as “Here, under this dark sycamore, and view” do not quite conform to the stress-patterns of the meter, but fit into it loosely, helping Wordsworth approximate the sounds of natural speech without grossly breaking his meter. Occasionally, divided lines are used to indicate a kind of paragraph break, when the poet changes subjects or shifts the focus of his discourse.

Commentary

The subject of “Tintern Abbey” is memory—specifically, childhood memories of communion with natural beauty. Both generally and specifically, this subject is hugely important in Wordsworth’s work, reappearing in poems as late as the “Intimations of Immortality” ode. “Tintern Abbey” is the young Wordsworth’s first great statement of his principle (great) theme: that the memory of pure communion with nature in childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been lost, and that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that communion—specifically, the ability to “look on nature” and hear “human music”; that is, to see nature with an eye toward its relationship to human life. In his youth, the poet says, he was thoughtless in his unity with the woods and the river; now, five years since his last viewing of the scene, he is no longer thoughtless, but acutely aware of everything the scene has to offer him. Additionally, the presence of his sister gives him a view of himself as he imagines himself to have been as a youth. Happily, he knows that this current experience will provide both of them with future memories, just as his past experience has provided him with the memories that flicker across his present sight as he travels in the woods.
[pic][pic]“Tintern Abbey” is a monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing the specific objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing others—once the spirit of nature, occasionally the speaker’s sister. The language of the poem is striking for its simplicity and forthrightness; the young poet is in no way concerned with ostentation. He is instead concerned with speaking from the heart in a plainspoken manner. The poem’s imagery is largely confined to the natural world in which he moves, though there are some castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical (the memory is “the anchor” of the poet’s “purest thought”) to the architectural (the mind is a “mansion” of memory).
The poem also has a subtle strain of religious sentiment; though the actual form of the Abbey does not appear in the poem, the idea of the abbey—of a place consecrated to the spirit—suffuses the scene, as though the forest and the fields were themselves the speaker’s abbey. This idea is reinforced by the speaker’s description of the power he feels in the setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously links the ideas of God, nature, and the human mind—as they will be linked in Wordsworth’s poetry for the rest of his life, from “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” to the great summation of the Immortality Ode.

TINTERN ABBEY

William Wordsworth
Tintern Abbey
This poem is written out of the experiences of a walking tour that Wordsworth shared with his sister Dorothy, in June of 1798. The background circumstances are that the two had gone to Bristol to look after the details of publishing the Lyrical Ballads. But they did not stay in the city long; they did not finds its buzz and hum at all compatible with their predispositions, so that after about a week they escaped into that country that
Wordsworth had enjoyed seeing about five years before with his college friend, Robert
Jones. He and Jones had passed this way after Wordsworth returned from his stay in
France. The tour lasted about five days. Wordsworth left the following account of the excursion out of which Tintern Abbey came: We crossed the Severn ferry and walked ten miles further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye. The next morning we walked along the river through Monmouth to Goodrich Castle, there slept, and returned the next day to Tintern, thence to Chepstow, and from Chepstow back again in a boat to
Tintern, where we slept, and thence back in a small vessel to Bristol.
The ruin of Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire had long been celebrated both for its interest to historians and for its physical beauty. Humphrey Davy, a person famous in science during the days we have made the property of the English Romantics, once commented on how much he was moved by the sight of the Abbey by moonlight. But however important the place was to Wordsworth during the tour, the poem itself is not that much concerned with
Tintern Abbey - that is, not concerned in the direct sense of being a celebration of a beautiful place in nature. There is in the background of the poem, of course, that whole tradition of the magnificence of the ruins of past times that had characterized the thought and life of the age of sensibility. But whatever there may be of pathos in the poem for the ruined monuments of past times, the heart of feeling in the poem is centered on something else. Tintern Abbey is little more than a pin to locate that terrain along the Wye River that is the setting of the poem. If one says that the poem is about landscape, it is more about the River itself, and the terrain around it. Wordsworth's nature description in its customary particularity is at work in lines 4-22, but the natural scenery is important for what he gets out of it, not for itself. And that is a very important distinction for the student to make when he reads this poem and many others poems by Wordsworth that talk about nature. One may pause for a moment and consider seriously just what Wordsworth means by Nature. For most of the time in Tintern
Abbey, Wordsworth seems to be discussing this natural scene around Tintern Abbey and telling what it has meant to him and what it can in the future be expected to give.
Meaning Of Nature
But when Wordsworth uses the word Nature, he means more than just rivers, trees, rocks, mountains, crags, lakes, and so on. He means all these things certainly, but more importantly he means a power, a force, a dynamic principle that animates, that molds with plastic might the physical furnishings of the universe. The point then about a man's placing himself closely in touch with rural places and things is that there man comes most intimately in touch with this power, this force, this vivifying and, too, regulating principle of life; the reason is that rural places and things have been the least interfered with by the corrupting ambitions of man. In this connection, it may be well to repeat the emphasis that one finds throughout Wordsworth's poetry (the poetry of other
Romantics also): Nature is good, the city is evil. Any reading of Tintern Abbey should seek to encompass these greater meanings of Nature. Further, any reading should consider seriously also the human side of the matter: if Nature is to mean anything to man, he must be within himself predisposed in some way to the intercourse. Wordsworth says he is.
There is in countless places in Wordsworth's poems an affirmation that Nature and man are exquisitely fitted one to the other. The presence that disturbs Wordsworth (in Tintern
Abbey) not only has its dwelling in the light of setting suns, but it dwells also in the mind of man.
The discussions of Tintern Abbey have in great measure been concerned with what the poem says about Wordsworth's growth from childhood to manhood. In this regard, Tintern Abbey has been considered often as a compressed version of The Prelude and, too, a very valuable introduction to the Intimations Ode. Arthur Beatty, author of several studies on
Wordsworth, saw in the background of the three stages of growth in Tintern Abbey the work of David Hartley, entitled Observations on Man, which was published for the first time in
1749. But in a sense, it might produce the more fruitful reading of Tintern Abbey to get away from the influence of The Prelude on the subject of growth, and think, rather, of three different kinds of encounters that the mind of man may have with nature. By avoiding the idea of growth, one can get beyond looking for connections between the stages, that is, how the poet gets from one stage to the other, and be better able, therefore, to realize the particular characteristics of the encounter in its three different dimensions.
Origins
In view of the fact that Tintern Abbey is about what nature can do for man, what nature can give him in way of inspiration and instruction, not only in the midst of the encounter but later as well when man remembers it, the reader may find it interesting to give more than a passing glance to Wordsworth's note on the origins of the poem. He gives this account: I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my Sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol.
Is this fulfillment of the processes of poetic creation as Wordsworth had talked about them in the 1800 Preface? It this the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings . . .
[that] takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity? Does the explanation of how Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey show the contemplation of the emotion till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind? In one sense, yes, in one sense no. From what the poet says about the composition of the poem, it may seem one of the few works that he wrote on the spur of the moment; he said he started composing it when he arrived in Bristol. But, then, the process of poetic creation can be said to have taken place according to
Wordsworth's design as he explained it in the Preface in the sense that five years had past since he had been at Tintern Abbey.
Form
The overall form of address in the poem may not seem to identify it as a poem spoken to
Dorothy; but, the final verse paragraph gives the impression that the poet had all the time been speaking to Dorothy, his companion on this second tour of the Wye. On this question, a useful distinction may be made between the subject matter of the poem and the tone of the language that carries the subject matter. It might very well be the case that if Wordsworth had used a form of conversational address throughout, he would not have been able to achieve the high level of seriousness and the dignity that characterize the whole. But in what the poem says-its content-Dorothy is the poet's audience; the subject matter is meant first of all for her. Wordsworth also avoids the perils of informality in a work of such seriousness through using the words to Dorothy as insuppressible exclamations of joy and gratitude.
Summary
Lines 1-22
The poet has returned to the banks of the Wye River after an absence of five years. The period has been longer in emotional terms than it has been as actual calendar time. He views the scene again with all the beauteous forms that he has found in his absence to be sources of restoration and inspiration. But, of course, with characteristic discrimination, he chooses only those sounds and sights that serve to put into the reader's mind not just scenery but what one might call the spirit of scenery, or the essence of scenery. The waters that roll With a soft inland murmur match the poet's imagination that also rolls from internal mountain-springs. The cliffs connect earth with sky, but the connection is more internal than the connections of an impressive sight; the poet has Thoughts of more deep seclusion than the thought that around him stretches a wild secluded scene. The smoke that rises from the cottages on the farms around (the sportive wood serves as a boundary between fields in this country) stirs in the poet's imagination the vision of wandering people or of a hermit sitting alone in his cave. In the area that his eye gathers in, there is both the wild and the tamed. There are unsubdued cliffs, but there are plots of cultivated ground, measured off by hedges. There is sound, but there is movement in silence. Wordsworth is trying through modifying the nouns with this and these to achieve the sense of immediate meeting between mind and nature. The poet's placement of himself under a dark sycamore is not unusual, given the number of sheltered places that Wordsworth uses in his poems for repose and imaginative action. Lines 23-49
After locating and giving some description of the external physical scene that provides the natural setting for his meditation, Wordsworth at line twenty-three begins to account of what The beauteous forms have meant to him during the five years of absence from the
Wye and its environs. He has with his internal eye, that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude often seen these forms that surround him at Tintern Abbey; he has in his absence not been blind to them (Line 25). In the clattering and clamoring of the city, he has received from them (1) sensations sweet, (2) tranquil restoration, (3) unidentifiable feelings of pleasure, and (4) a blessed mood in which the depressing mystery of life was lightened. The feelings that Wordsworth recalls having had in the five intervening years are emphasized as feelings, not mere thoughts, by his locating them in his blood and heart. The beauteous forms of this natural scene around Tintern Abbey were when he saw them five years before actually taken into his being: they were impressed into layers of the poet's being far below the cognitive level-he definitely wants us to know that!
Notice the words that are used in these lines to give expression to the remarkable effect that these natural forms have had in the poet's recollection in tranquillity during his hours in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din / Of towns and cities: sensations, blood, heart, feelings. The profound reaches of the influence of the beauteous forms are evident in the fact that when the poet recalled them in his absence, there were emotional associations that he could not identify. They were involved, inseparably tied in, with acts / Of kindness and of love that he had performed in his life. That is, the beauteous forms had become so deeply impressed into his being when he saw them before that during his absence he did not so much think about them as feel them. And they had become impressed in his being in such a way that they had merged with associations already there, the best associations from the best former experiences in life-kindness and love. It is like saying that objects and sounds in nature were kindness and love concretized; this kindness and love would blend with the feelings of kindness and love already present within the deep folds of the poet's inner being. There is a startling statement in these lines that the reader should not miss; the poet is saying that the sights and sounds around Tintern Abbey have been enough during his absence to show him meaning in life when it otherwise would have been absent. They have provided a blessed mood in which all the senseless suffering in life, in which all the absurdity of human striving and disappointment has been made endurable. By the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world Wordsworth means all the unanswered questions about human life that leave one with blackness. But there is still more to the blessing they have brought. It is not only a matter of relief from suffering; it is also that the imagination has found in them the necessary materials with which to achieve a penetrating vision into the life of things. The poet has found in the beauteous forms the resources for discovering meaning at the heart of things. Wordsworth is speaking of an active, not a passive experience: - that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, - Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
This passage should not be read as a version of the mystic's passive absorption, a state in which all the hindrances of the flesh are left behind through a reduction of human flesh to the most absolute minimum possible. The poet has found a vision into the life of things precisely because of the active power of the imagination. The words harmony and joy that Wordsworth uses in line forty-eight are virtually synonyms for imagination. And
Wordsworth's concept of imagination is that it is a power from within that exerts itself on the surrounding world. When Wordsworth in these lines speaks of the suspension of the motion of our human blood, and of the body being laid asleep, it is only as a means to the end of becoming a living soul. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, close friend and frequent companion of Wordsworth during the time that Tintern Abbey was written, often speaks of the imagination in the terms of harmony and joy. Coleridge also thinks of the imagination as an active, shaping power. The beauteous forms of the area around Tintern Abbey have provided Wordsworth with the resources for making his life meaningful in times and places when it would have been otherwise meaningless and unbearable.
Lines 50-57
Wordsworth reaffirms the faith expressed in the foregoing lines, with more exact reference to the River Wye. The belief in the power of nature to nourish and sustain through the molding and shaping spirit of the imagination is so remarkable that it may seem but a vain belief. But he knows on re-examination of his experiences that the belief is a true one. He has in the midst of darkness and ... the many shapes / Of joyless delight, in the midst of the fretful stir / Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, turned his inward eye to the sylvan Wye! ... wanderer thro' the woods....
Lines 58-65a
But, the poet's return and present experiences at Tintern Abbey are not only the occasion for remembrance; he realizes as he renews his intercourse with the beauteous forms and reflects on their ministry to him in years of absence that he is also finding life and food / For future years. This brings him to consider the levels of his experience with nature throughout his life.
Lines 65b-102a
Some readers of Wordsworth discuss this part of Tintern Abbey as a record of the three principal stages of Wordsworth's growth as a poet. As suggested earlier, it may be more productive to read them not in the terms of growth, but, rather, in the terms of three different kinds of experience that Wordsworth has discovered in his encounter with nature, remembering nature not to be just scenery, but the things in nature plus the power and spirit that rolls through them. (1) Childhood: (lines 73 & 74) This was the dimension of experience in which the poet was blended with nature; his movements, glad animal movements, were the same as nature's movements - there was a unison of life, perhaps resembling most closely the relationship of the fetus to its mother. This is the dimension of experience when there is no differentiation made between the creature and the external natural order than surrounds him. The relationship with nature in this dimension is very nearly osmotic. (2) Adolescence: (lines 66-72; 75-83) The older child begins to be aware of the natural phenomena with which he has been formerly blended. This is the level of experience with nature at which there begins to be a differentiation between sights and sounds. This would have been the kind of experience that Wordsworth would have had during his visit to the Wye in 1793. There is a reveling in nature:
Wordsworth uses such telling description as aching joys and dizzy raptures. At this time when nature was all in all, he bounded o'er the mountains like a roe. The emotional pitch of this level of experience is very high. Wordsworth speaks of it in the terms of a man fleeing from something feared, of being haunted by a passion, of appetite and feeling, of aching joys and dizzy raptures. (3) Early Maturity (lines 84-102a) The adult finds nature to provide other gifts, which serve as Abundant recompense for the level of thoughtless youth. He comes to find a Divine Presence behind the perishable phenomena of nature. The adult comes to hear The still, sad music of humanity . . ., but perhaps it is only for this reason that he can find A presence that disturbs ... with the joy / Of elevated thoughts. . . . Only after one has been chastened and subdued with the disappointment and pain of responsibility for oneself and for others is one sensitive to
. . .something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, the 19th-century English poet, thought these lines among the finest ever written in the English language, particularly for the way they establish the permanent in the transitory. The passage has been often discussed for what it reveals of
Wordsworth's theology.
Lines 102b-111a
The connective therefore indicates a causal relationship between the affirmation that the poet has just made about A presence that disturbs . . . wi h the joy / Of elevated thoughts . . . and the profession that he comes now to make - that he still loves nature, however much his experience in the present time differs from his former experience. In a different way, at a different level but with no less profundity, Wordsworth's love for nature continues; he confirms that he is still
A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear....
Furthermore, the experience with nature is still an interchange. For whatever diminishing of emotional intensity there has been in the encounter, the poet's relationship with meadows and . . . woods, / And mountains is still one of active intercourse, is still one of power and inspiration received and power and inspiration given. The imagination is no less active in this new experience than it was before. The world that the poet loves is the world after the imagination has given it a measure of life and meaning that it would not have if left alone unto itself. The poet is not now, as he has not been in any experience with nature, a passive receptacle into which is poured sense data from the outside. He receives the beauteous forms as life and food / For future years, but the world of nature that he knows is all the mighty world / Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create, / And what perceive.... It is very important to recognize that Wordsworth speaks of a receiving and a giving. The imagination is being forcefully imposed on all these natural materials. It is in the poet's intercourse with nature, in his active imaginative interchange, that he finds The anchor of [his] purest thoughts, the nurse, /
The guide, the guardian of [his] heart, and soul / Of all [his] moral being. Unless the power / Of harmony, the deep power of joy were coming from within the poet and meeting the active spirit that rolls through the nature that is external to him, he would not discover the anchor, nurse, guide, guardian. These gifts come in the active interpersonal relationship, not in a mere passive reception.
Lines 111b-119a
There is through the whole of Tintern Abbey, and through these particular lines and the ones that follow in this final verse paragraph, the feeling that Wordsworth is discovering truth as he goes, that the poem itself is an exploration of past and present experience rather than any attempt at stating conclusions already drawn from experiences.
The exploratory tone can be felt in this final verse paragraph of the poem. Wordsworth turns now to address his dearest Friend, his sister Dorothy. He hears in her voice echoes of what he was in times past: in thy voice, he says, I catch / The language of my former heart. . . . In her eyes he reads pleasures that were his in years gone by. He asks that he may for a while listen to and see these former times, now renewed for him in his companionship with his sister.
Lines 119b-134a
But Dorothy is not only in the poet's attention (and therefore in the reader's attention) for what she reveals of the experiences of the poet's past life; she is also involved in the poet's future experience, what he prophesies to be the certain blessings of continued intercourse with Nature through coming years. For the heart that loves Nature, for the person who through the strength of imagination creates the necessary conditions for active interchange with the spirit that moves through all things, there will be joy, quietness and beauty, and cheerful faith in the midst of all the dreary intercourse of daily life. . . Remembering that Nature is infinitely more to Wordsworth than rural scenery, remembering that Nature is the external forms of things but the Divine Spirit that moves within them as well, one finds the poet verifying here the marriage between the Spirit and the imagination as an unbreakable relationship. Wordsworth attests that
Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her in language that is very close in tone to certain Biblical affirmations about the faithfulness of God in His relationship with
His creation.
The content, of course, in Tintern Abbey and in the Bible is radically different, for
Wordsworth is not basing the faithfulness of Nature to man on any kind of historical revelation, at least not historical revelation that has the particularity of the ministry of Jesus Christ. The relationship between Nature and man that continued through Tintern
Abbey has not the definition of a supreme act of revelation once-and-for-all done. The spirit in Nature continues to meet the imagination of man in equally dynamic encounters.
What Wordsworth anticipates finding in relationship with Nature in the future is a continuation of what he has found in the past.
Lines 134b-159
One may discover in the closing lines of the poem a fourth level of experience with
Nature, a strengthening of relationship with Nature through a strengthening of personal love between Wordsworth and his sister. Wordsworth is through these lines continuing to address Dorothy, but he also, of course, is addressing the reader. He advises, let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee....
With regard to the furnishing of the memory with beauteous forms, given greater life and meaning through the enlivening, modifying power of imagination, the process that is at the heart of the poet's advice is the same that has informed the poem to this point. The only difference is, as suggested above, that the present interchange between the poet and his sister will make future recollection in tranquillity stronger and richer. In whatever future solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief there might be, there will be healing thoughts / Of tender joy not only for what the beauteous forms of the River Wye are with the force that moves through them, but also for the compounding of these forms and their internal spirit with the present love expressed between two human beings. It is a storing up of the mind with the beauty without and the beauty within and the beauty of the meeting and merging of the two. This is the basis of the poet's trust expressed in the closing lines:
Nor wilt thou then forget That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
Comment
The form of a work of literature cannot in an absolute way be separated from the content of the work. But for the sake of clearer explication and evaluation, critics try to work within this distinction. It may be useful here to attempt this distinction. Although
Wordsworth was a rebel against the conventions of the poetry of the 18th century, Tintern
Abbey is written in the tradition of a long meditative poem, a form that had been frequently used by 18th-century writers. The language of Tintern Abbey is far from being the language of ordinary conversation, is far from being a selection of language really used by men. Wordsworth's poetic diction in Tintern Abbey is skillfully, painstakingly achieved. The words are well-chosen, and he thoughtfully calculates their effect. There is an obvious absence of metaphors and personifications in Tintern Abbey, for Wordsworth is in this poem following the demands of the unmediated vision, that is, the poet's confrontation of nature without the intermediate agencies of poetic techniques and language. But this is not to say that Tintern Abbey is without easily identified rhetorical techniques.
The poem is written in blank verse, which is a verse form that uses unrhymed iambic pentameter. Wordsworth's use of this kind of verse form may also be seen to be a part of his reaction against the poetic practices of the 18th-century. A great deal of
18th-century verse was regimented, even stultified, by the heroic couplet, that is iambic pentameter rhyming in pairs. The great emphasis then was on form, and design, and details were subordinated to these ends. Coleridge had made extensive use of blank verse in his
Conversation Poems, and he found in it a workable means of expression for the more mysterious, more expansive forms of experience that was the subject matter of his poetry.
In this regard it might be worthwhile to recall the fact that 18th-century poetry had also reduced the obscure and the mysterious to a minimum. The more irregular forms of natural scenes were avoided, and the overwhelming preference was for the more manageable forms, forms that could be regulated and confined within the framework of the formal garden. Wordsworth had read Coleridge's poetry, with its highly individualist, highly subjective expression of the mysterious through the medium of blank verse. Wordsworth admired the great flexibility that characterized Coleridge's Conversation Poems; he admired the freedom the form gave for the expression of private meditation on the mysterious encounter that goes on between the spirit in nature and the imagination of the poet. Wordsworth was greatly under the influence of the poetic idiom and verse form of
Coleridge's Conversation Poems in the writing of Tintern Abbey. The language of Tintern
Abbey has a prose-like quality. The lines that begin the second verse paragraph,
These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man's eye... are too poetic to be truly representative of the whole poem. In fact, apart from the word beauteous, it is difficult to find a poetic word in the whole poem, at least poetic in the sense that the word was used in Wordsworth's day. One recalls, of course, that
Wordsworth wrote in the Preface of 1800 that he wished to avoid using the conventional language of poetry. Whatever poetry there is in Tintern Abbey comes from some other source than Wordsworth's use of the standardized poetic diction of his time.
Rhetorical Techniques
One of the rhetorical techniques that Wordsworth employs in Tintern Abbey is repetition; the technique has additional force because it is employed in a simple framework. The following lines may serve the purpose of illustration (italics mine):
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! (lines 1 & 2)
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses.
Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows.... (lines 11-15)
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee! (lines 55-57) thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My