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Other Cultures Notes

Edward Kamau Brathwaite: Limbo

This poem tells the story of slavery in a rhyming, rhythmic dance. It is ambitious and complex. There are two
narratives running in parallel:

• the actions of the dance, and

• the history of a people which is being enacted.

Going down and under the limbo stick is likened to the slaves' going down into the hold of the ship, which carries
them into slavery. In Roman Catholic tradition, limbo is a place to which the souls of people go, if they are not
good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell. More exactly, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, it is

"...the permanent place or state of those unbaptized children and others who, dying without grievous personal sin,
are excluded from the beatific vision on account of original sin alone."

The Italian poet Dante, imagines Limbo to be in the first circle of Hell, and to contain the souls of both unbaptized
infants and virtuous pagans. It has come to mean any unpleasant place, or a state (of mind or body) from which it
is difficult to escape. The story of slavery told in the poem is very easy to follow, yet full of vivid detail and lively
action.

The poem has a very strong beat, suggesting the dance it describes: where the word limbo appears as a
complete line, it should be spoken slowly, the first syllable extended and both syllables stressed: Lím-bó. While
the italics give the refrain (or chorus) which reminds us of the dance, the rest of the poem tells the story enacted
in the dance: these lines are beautifully rhythmic, and almost every syllable is stressed, until the very last line,
where the rhythm is broken, suggesting the completion of the dance, and the end of the narrative.

This poem is suited to dramatic performance - there is the dancing under the limbo pole (difficult for most
Europeans) and the acting out of the voyage into slavery. The poem can be chanted or sung, with a rhythmic
accompaniment to bring out the drama in it (percussion, generally, is appropriate but drums, specifically, are
ideal: in fact, the text refers to the “drummer” and the “music”).

What do you find interesting in

• the way the poem appears on the page

• sound effects in the poem
• repetition in the poem
• the way the limbo dance tells the story of slavery

Is this a serious or comic poem? Is it optimistic or pessimistic?

Tatamkhulu Afrika: Nothing's Changed

This poem depicts a society where rich and poor are divided. In the apartheid era of racial segregation in South
Africa, where the poem is set, laws, enforced by the police, kept apart black and white people. The poet looks at
attempts to change this system, and shows how they are ineffective, making no real difference. Jackie Fielding
writes:

“I had always assumed that the poem was written post-apartheid and reflected the bitterness that knowing “one's
place” in society is so deeply ingrained that the I-persona can't bring himself to accept his new-found freedom
under Mandela. I also find it interesting that the poet is not South African and not black.”

“District Six” is the name of a poor area of Cape Town (one of South Africa's two capital cities; the other is
Pretoria). This area was bulldozed as a slum in 1966, but never properly rebuilt. Although there is no sign there,
the poet can feel that this is where he is: “...my feet know/and my hands.”

Similarly the “up-market” inn (“brash with glass” and the bright sign ,“flaring like a flag”, which shows its name) is
meant for white customers only. There is no sign to show this (as there would have been under apartheid) but
black and coloured people, being poor, will not be allowed past the “guard at the gatepost”. The “whites only inn”
is elegant, with linen tablecloths and a “single rose” on each table. It is contrasted with the fast-food “working
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man's cafe” which sells the local snack (“bunny chows”). There is no tablecloth, just a plastic top, and there is
nowhere to wash one's hands after eating: “wipe your fingers on your jeans”. In the third stanza the sense of
contrast is most clear: the smart inn “squats” amid “grass and weeds”.

Perhaps the most important image in the poem is that of the “glass” which shuts out the speaker in the poem. It is
a symbol of the divisions of colour, and class - often the same thing in South Africa. As he backs away from it at
the end of the poem, Afrika sees himself as a “boy again”, who has left the imprint of his “small, mean mouth” on
the glass. He wants “a stone, a bomb” to break the glass - he may wish literally to break the window of this inn,
but this is clearly meant in a symbolic sense. He wants to break down the system, which separates white and
black, rich and poor, in South Africa.

The title of the poem suggests not just that things have not changed, but a disappointment that an expected
change has not happened. The poem uses the technique of contrast to explore the theme of inequality. It has a
clear structure of eight-line stanzas. The lines are short, of varying length, but usually with two stressed syllables.
The poet assumes that the reader knows South Africa, referring to places, plants and local food. The poem is
obviously about the unfairness of a country where “Nothing's changed”. But this protest could also apply to other
countries where those in power resist progress and deny justice to the common people.

• What does the poet think about change in his home country?
• How does the poem contrast the rich and the poor in South Africa?
• Why does the poet write about two places where people buy food?
• Comment on the image of the plate-glass window to show how poor people are shut out of things in
South Africa. What does the poet want to do to change this?

Grace Nichols: Island Man

The subtitle really explains this simple poem - it tells of a man from the Caribbean, who lives in London but always
thinks of his home.

The poem opens with daybreak, as the island man seems to hear the sound of surf - and perhaps to imagine he
sees it, since we are told the colour. This is followed by simple images:

• the fishermen pushing their boat out,

• the sun climbing in the sky,
• the island, emerald green.

The island man always returns to the island, in his mind, but in thinking of it he must “always” come “back” literally
to his immediate surroundings - hearing the traffic on London's North Circular Road.

Grace Nichols ends the poem with the image of coming up out of the sea - but the reality is the bed, and the
waves are only the folds of a “crumpled pillow”. The last line of the poem is presented as the harsh reality.

Many Afro-Caribbeans in Britain live a split existence. They may yearn for the warmth and simple pleasures of the
islands they think of as home, yet they find themselves, with friends and family, in a cold northern climate. This
poem neatly captures this division - between a fantasy of the simple life and the working daily reality. But perhaps
it is not really a serious choice - if one were to stay on the island, then one would bring one's problems there, too.
In fact, this man is like most other British people - he does not relish work, but faces up to it.

After reading the whole poem, one sees that it is ambiguous - the island is both in the Caribbean and Great
Britain.

Grace Nichols also challenges us to think about where home really lies. Is it

• the place we dream about,

• the place where we, our friends and family live, or
• the place where we do our work?

The poem is written as free verse - it is a quite loose sequence of vivid images. The poet relies on effects of
sound - contrasting the breaking of the surf with the roar of traffic. There are a few rhymes and repetitions. Grace
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Nichols also refers to colour - blue for surf (surely an error - the surf is the white foam of the blue sea), emerald
(green) for the island and grey for the traffic.

• Is this poem about the Caribbean or London?

• Why does the title have more than one meaning?
• Is this poem about a real wish for sun and surf or just an escapist fantasy?
• What do you find interesting in the images of this poem?

Imtiaz Dharker: Blessing

This poem is about water: in a hot country, where the supply is inadequate, the poet sees water as a gift from a
god. When a pipe bursts, the flood which follows is like a miracle, but the “blessing” is ambiguous - it is such
accidents which at other times cause the supply to be so little.

The opening lines of the poem compare human skin to a seedpod, drying out till it cracks. Why? Because there is
“never enough water”. Ms. Dharker asks the reader to imagine it dripping slowly into a cup. When the “municipal
pipe” (the main pipe supplying a town) bursts, it is seen as unexpected good luck (a “sudden rush of fortune”),
and everyone rushes to help themselves. But the end of the poem reminds us of the sun, which causes skin to
crack “like a pod” - today's blessing is tomorrow's drought. The poet celebrates the joyous sense with which the
people, especially the children, come to life when there is, for once, more than “enough water”.

The poem has a single central metaphor - the giving of water as a “blessing” from a “kindly god”. The religious
metaphor is repeated, as the bursting of the pipe becomes a “rush of fortune”, and the people who come to claim
the water are described as a “congregation” (people gathering for worship).

The water is a source of other metaphors - fortune is seen as a “rush” (like water rushing out of the burst pipe),
and the sound of the flow is matched by that of the people who seek it - their tongues are a “roar”, like the gushing
water. Most tellingly of all, water is likened to “silver” which “crashes to the ground”. In India (where Ms. Dharker
lives), in Pakistan (from where she comes) and in other Asian countries, it is common for wealthy people to throw
silver coins to the ground, for the poor to pick up. The water from the burst pipe is like this - a short-lived “blessing
for a few”. But there is no regular supply of “silver”. And finally, the light from the sun is seen as “liquid” - yet the
sun aggravates the problems of drought.

The poem is written in unrhymed lines, mostly brief, some of which run on, while others are end-stopped, creating
an effect of natural speech. The poet writes lists for the people (“man woman/child”) and the vessels they bring
(“. ..with pots/brass, copper, aluminium,/plastic buckets”). The poem appeals to the reader's senses, with
references to the dripping noise of water (as if the hearer is waiting for there to be enough to drink) and the
flashing sunlight.

We have a clear sense of the writer's world - in her culture water is valued, as life depends upon the supply: in the
west, we take it for granted. This is a culture in which belief in “a kindly god” is seen as natural, but the poet does
not express this in terms of any established religion (note the lower-case “g” on “god”). She suggests a vague and
general religious belief, or superstition. The poem ends with a picture of children - “naked” and “screaming”. The
sense of their beauty (“highlights polished to perfection”) is balanced by the idea of their fragility, as the “blessing
sings/over their small bones”.

• How does this poem present water as the source of life?

• “There is never enough water” - do readers in the west take water too much for granted?
• Why does Imtiaz Dharker call the poem Blessing?
• Why might the poet end by mentioning the “small bones” of the children?

Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes

The poem's title alerts us to the simple contrast that is its subject. “Beautiful people” is perhaps written with a mild
sense of irony - as this phrase was originally coined by the hippie movement in 1967 (maybe earlier) to refer to
the “flower children” who shared the counter-culture ideals of peace and love. The couple in the poem are not
beautiful people in this sense but wealthy and elegant.

The poem is deceptively simple - in places it is written as if in bright primary colours, so we read of the “yellow
garbage truck” and the “red plastic blazers”, we get exact details of time and place, and we see the precise
position of the four people: all waiting at a stoplight and the garbage collectors looking down (literally but not
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metaphorically) into the “elegant open Mercedes” and the matching couple in it. The details of their dress and
hair could be directions for a film-maker.

Ferlinghetti contrasts the people in various ways. The wealthy couple are on their way to the man's place of work,
while the “scavengers” are coming home, having worked through the early hours. The couple in the Mercedes are
clean and cool; the scavengers are dirty. But while one scavenger is old, hunched and with grey hair, the other is
about the same age as the Mercedes driver and, like him, has long hair and sunglasses. The older man is
depicted as the opposite of beautiful - he is compared both to a gargoyle (an ugly grotesque caricature used to
decorate mediaeval churches, and ward off evil spirits) and to Quasimodo (the name means “almost human”) the
main character in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The poem moves to an ambiguous conclusion. The two scavengers see the young couple, not as real people, but
as characters in a “TV ad/in which everything is always possible” - as if, that is, with determination and effort, the
scavengers could change their own lifestyle for the better. But the adjective “odorless” suggests that this is a
fantasy - and their smelly truck is the reality.

The poem also considers the fundamental American belief that “all men are created equal” - and the red light is
democratic, because it stops everyone. It holds them together “as if anything at all were possible/between them”.
They are separated by a “small gulf” and the gulf is “in the high seas of democracy” - which suggests that, with
courage and effort, anyone can cross it. But the poet started this statement with “as if” - and we do not know if this
is an illusion or a real possibility.

The form of the poem is striking on the page - Ferlinghetti begins a new line with a capital letter, but splits most
lines to mark pauses, while he omits punctuation other than hyphens in compound-words, full stops in
abbreviations and occasional ampersands (the & symbol).

The poem challenges the reader - are we like the cool couple or the scavengers? And which is better to be? Of
which couple does the poet seem to approve more? TV ads may be “odorless” but without garbage collectors, we
would be overwhelmed by unpleasant smells - especially in the heat of San Francisco. The garbage truck and the
Mercedes in a way become symbols for public service and for private enterprise.

• How does this poem show the gap between rich and poor?
• Does the poet really think “everything is always possible”, or is this an illusion?
• Why does the poet call the couple in the Mercedes “beautiful people”? How does he use this phrase in a
different sense from what it originally meant? Does the poet approve more of the scavengers or the
beautiful people?
• What do you think of how the poem looks on the page? Does this help you as you read it?
• Perhaps a modern society needs both architects and street-cleaners. But is it right that we should pay
them so unequally? Which would you miss the most if they stopped working?

Nissim Ezekiel: Night of the Scorpion

In this poem Nissim Ezekiel recalls “the night” his “mother was stung by a scorpion”. The poem is not really about
the scorpion or its sting, but contrasts the reactions of family, neighbours and his father, with the mother's dignity
and courage. The scorpion (sympathetically) is shown as sheltering from ten hours of rain, but so fearful of people
that it “risk(s) the rain again” after stinging the poet's mother.

What follows is an account of various superstitious reactions:

• the peasants' efforts to “paralyse the Evil One” (the devil, who is identified with the scorpion);
• the peasants' belief that the creature's movements make the poison move in his victim's blood;
• their hope that this suffering may be a cleansing from some sin in the past (“your previous birth”) or still to
come (“your next birth”).

The poison is even seen as making the poet's mother better through her suffering: “May the poison purify your
flesh/of desire and the spirit of ambition/they said”. The poet's father normally does not share such superstitions
(he is “sceptic, rationalist” - a doubter of superstition and a believer in scientific reason). But he is now worse than
the other peasants, as he tries “every curse and blessing” as well as every possible antidote of which he can
think. The “holy man” performs “rites” (religious ritual actions) but the only effective relief comes with time: “After
twenty hours it lost its sting”.

The conclusion of the poem is its most effective part: where everyone else has been concerned for the mother,
who has been in too much pain to talk (she “twisted...groaning on a mat”) she thinks of her children, and thanks
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God the scorpion has spared them (the sting might be fatal to a smaller person; certainly a child would be less
able to bear the pain).

Ezekiel's poetic technique is quite simple here. The most obvious point to make is the contrast between the very
long first section, detailing the frantic responses of everyone but the mother, and the simple, brief, understated
account of her selfless courage in the second section. The lines are of irregular length and unrhymed but there is
a loose pattern of two stresses in each line; the lines are not end-stopped but run on (this is sometimes known as
enjambement).

Instead of metaphor or simile the images are of what was literally present (the candles and the lanterns and the
shadows on the walls). The poem is in the form of a short narrative. One final interesting feature to note is the
repeated use of reported (indirect) speech - we are told what people said, but not necessarily in their exact words,
and never enclosed in speech marks. The poem may surprise us in the insight it gives into another culture:
compare Ezekiel's account with what would happen if your mother were stung by a scorpion (or, if this seems a bit
unlikely, bitten by an adder, say).

Some comments about Nissim Ezekiel that you might find helpful in relation to Night of the Scorpion are these: he
writes in a free style and colloquial manner (like ordinary speech); he makes direct statements and employs few
images.

• The title of the poem seems more fitting almost to an old horror film - do you think it is a suitable title for
the poem that follows?
• How do the people try to make sense of the scorpion's attack, or even see it as a good thing?
• Are scorpions really evil? Does the poet share the peasants' view of a “diabolic” animal?
• How does the attack bring out different qualities in the father and the mother?
• What does the poem teach us about the beliefs of people in the poet's home culture?
• In what way is this a poem rather than a short story broken into lines?
• How does the poet make use of what people said, to bring the poem to life?

Chinua Achebe: Vultures

This is one of the most challenging poems in the anthology. The vultures of the title are real birds of prey but (like
William Blake's Tyger) more important, perhaps, for what they represent - people of a certain kind. Chinua
Achebe is a Nigerian writer, but has a traditional English-speaking liberal education: the poem is written in a
highly literate manner with a close eye for detail.

The poem introduces us to the vultures and their unpleasant diet; in spite of this, they appear to care for each
other. From this Achebe goes on to note how even the worst of human beings show some touches of humanity -
the concentration camp commandant, having spent the day burning human corpses, buys chocolate for his
“tender offspring” (child or children). This leads to an ambiguous conclusion:

• on the one hand, Achebe tells us to “praise bounteous providence” that even the worst of creatures has a
little goodness, “a tiny glow-worm tenderness”;
• on the other hand, he concludes in despair, it is the little bit of “kindred love” (love of one's own kind or
relations) which permits the “perpetuity of evil” (allows it to survive, because the evil person can think
himself to be not completely depraved).

We are reminded, perhaps, by the words about the “Commandant at Belsen”, that Adolf Hitler was said to love
children and animals.

The poem is in the form of free verse, in short lines which are not end-stopped and have no pattern of stress or
metre. Achebe moves from

• images of things which are actually present,

• to the imagined scene of the commandant picking up chocolate for his children,
• to the final section of the poem in which appears the conventional metaphor of the “glow-worm
tenderness” in the “icy caverns of a cruel heart”.

In studying this poem, you should spend a lot of time in making sure you understand all of the unfamiliar
vocabulary. Look out, also, for familiar words which are used in surprising ways, because of their context. For
example, we read of the commandant “going home...with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy
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nostrils” - it is as if he wants to get rid of the smell (put it out of nose and mind) but the smell refuses to go away,
rebelling against his authority: something he cannot command.

As you think or write about the first part of the poem, you should try to describe in your own words the different
things on which the vultures feed, while looking for the evidence of the birds' love for each other. Like William
Blake's Tyger, the vulture is a creature about which we will have ideas before we read; because it feasts on
corpses, it has come to symbolize anyone or anything that benefits by another's suffering. (The vultures here are
shown far less sympathetically, for example, than the scorpion in Nissim Ezekiel's poem.)

• Is this poem really about vultures at all or does the poet use them only to make comments on some kinds
of people?
• How does the poet try to make the reader feel disgust towards the vultures? Is this fair?
• The ending of this poem is highly ambiguous - the poet recommends both “praise” for “providence” and
then “despair” (because the little bit of goodness in otherwise evil things allows them to keep going, in
“perpetuity”). Which of these conclusions do you think the poet feels more strongly, if either?
• Chinua Achebe refers to Belsen, the Nazi death camp - do you think this is a powerful way of suggesting
evil, or might readers now and in the future not know what Belsen is or what happened there? (Some
younger readers may know of it mainly because Anne Frank died there, at the age of 15.)

Denise Levertov: What Were They Like?

This is a famous poem, written in 1971, as a protest against the Vietnamese War (1954-1975. This was originally
a civil war between communist North and capitalist South Vietnam; the south received support from western
countries, notably the USA. In 1973 President Nixon withdrew the US forces, in 1975 the armies of North Vietnam
were victorious, and the country was reunited the following year. More recently, Vietnam has adopted democratic
government and opened itself up to visitors from the west.) Denise Levertov protested in public against the war,
and spent time in jail. In the poem, inspired by the violence of the US bombing campaign, she imagines a future in
which the people have been destroyed and there is no record or memory of their culture. (In the light of the Nazis'
genocide of European Jews, this was not an unreasonable fear.) In fact, the people and culture of Vietnam are
thriving today but attempted genocide (now we call it “ethnic cleansing”) has devastated Cambodia, Ruanda and
Burundi and the former Yugoslavia.

The poem is in the form of a series of questions, as a future visitor might pose them to a cultural historian. The
questions are mostly straightforward, but the answers are quite subversive. Together they create a sympathetic
portrait of a gentle, simple peasant people, living a dignified if humble life amid the paddy fields. This contrasts
with the violent effects of war, as children are killed, bones are charred and people scream as bombs smash the
paddy fields. The final lines of the poem show how utterly the people have been forgotten - the report of their
singing (of which there is no record) is hopelessly vague - it resembled, supposedly, “the flight of moths in
moonlight” - but no one knows, since it is silent now. Happily the reader today can readily find examples of
Vietnamese song, and we can satisfy ourselves that it is nothing like the flight of moths in moonlight.

The poem shows the Vietnamese as rather childlike, innocent and vulnerable - a way of seeing them that seemed
to be confirmed by some events in the war, lie the destruction of the forests with napalm, and by the notorious
photographic image of a naked burning child running from her devastated village. But the people of Vietnam
eventually proved more resilient than in this well-meaning but rather patronising western view. On the other hand,
it was protests like that in the poem that changed US public opinion, so that President Nixon withdrew their forces
from combat - which helped the Northern Communist forces win the war, and reunite Vietnam by force.

• This poem became very well-known when it was first published - but the poet's fears for Vietnam have not
come true (though things that are perhaps just as bad have happened in Cambodia, Ruanda-Burundi and
the former Yugoslavia). Does it still have anything to say to us or has history made it irrelevant?
• What do you think of the question and answer format in the poem?
• Do you think that Vietnamese people would like to be depicted as gentle peasants who know only “rice
and bamboo”? You may have some Vietnamese friends - so you could ask them. Is it ever a good idea for
people from one culture to try to describe another, or is there a risk of stereotyping and patronizing?
• How might singing be like “the flight of moths in moonlight”? Does this mean anything or is it pretentious
and misleading? You might check this by finding out what traditional Vietnamese music is really like.
• This poem is not about individuals but about big political events. What do you think of the way the poet
presents history and politics here?

Sujata Bhatt: from Search for My Tongue

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This poem (or rather extract from a long poem) explores a familiar ambiguity in English - “tongue” refers both to
the physical organ we use for speech, and the language we speak with it. (Saying “tongue” for “speech” is an
example of metonymy). In the poem Sujata Bhatt writes about the “tongue” in both ways at once. To lose your
tongue normally means not knowing what to say, but Ms. Bhatt suggests that one can lose one's tongue in
another sense. The speaker in this poem is obviously the poet herself, but she speaks for many who fear they
may have lost their ability to speak for themselves and their culture.

She explains this with the image of two tongues - a mother tongue (one's first language) and a second tongue
(the language of the place where you live). She argues that you cannot use both together. She suggests, further,
that if you live in a place where you must “speak a foreign tongue” then the mother tongue will “rot and die in your
mouth”.

As if to demonstrate how this works, Ms. Bhatt rewrites lines 15 and 16 in Gujarati, followed by more Gujarati
lines, which are given in English as the final section of the poem. For readers who do not know the Gujarati script,
there is also a phonetic transcript using approximate English spelling to indicate the sounds.

The final section of the poem is the writer's dream - in which her mother tongue grows back and “pushes the other
tongue aside”. She ends triumphantly asserting that “Everytime I think I've forgotten,/I think I've lost the mother
tongue,/it blossoms out of my mouth.”

Clearly this poem is about personal and cultural identity. The familiar metaphor of the tongue is used in a novel
way to show that losing one's language (and culture) is like losing part of one's body. The poet's dream may be
something she has really dreamt “overnight” but is clearly also a “dream” in the sense of something she wants to
happen - in dreams, if not in reality, it is possible for the body to regenerate. For this reason the poem's ending is
ambiguous - perhaps it is only in her dream that the poet can find her “mother tongue”. On the other hand, she
may be arguing that even when she thinks she has lost it, it can be found again. At the end of the poem there is a
striking extended metaphor in which the regenerating tongue is likened to a plant cut back to a stump, which
grows and eventually buds, to become the flower which “blossoms out of” the poet's mouth. It is as if her mother
tongue is exotic, spectacular or fragrant, as a flower might be.

The poem's form is well suited to its subject. The flower is a metaphor for the tongue, which itself has earlier been
used as a (conventional) metaphor, for speech. The poet demonstrates her problem by showing both “mother
tongue” (Gujarati) and “foreign tongue” (English), knowing that for most readers these will be the other way
around, while some, like her, will understand both.

The poem will speak differently to different generations - for parents, Gujarati may also be the “mother tongue”,
while their children, born in the UK, may speak English as their first language. The poem is written both for the
page, where we see the (possibly exotic) effect of the Gujarati text and for reading aloud, as we have a guide for
speaking the Gujarati lines.

• What is the effect of using Gujarati script and an English transliteration in the poem?
• Does the way you read this depend on whether or not you know Gujarati as well as English?
• Many writers of classic English poetry often quote in Latin, French or other languages - is this a modern
equivalent, or is Sujata Bhatt doing something different?
• How does the poem present the argument that our speech and ourselves are intimately connected? Do
people not have to search for their own tongue - or authentic voice - even if they have not had to move
from one language to another?
• What does the last sentence of the poem mean?

Tom Leonard: from Unrelated Incidents

This poem uses non-standard English to explore notions of class, education and nationality. The poem is a
phonetic transcript which shows how a Glaswegian Scot might speak. The poet imagines the BBC newsreader
smugly explaining why he does not talk “lik/wanna you/scruff” - though in this version, of course, he is doing just
this. The writer takes on the persona of a less educated or “ordinary” Glaswegian, with whom he clearly identifies.

The poem is set out in lines of two, three or four syllables, but these are not end-stopped. The effect is almost
certainly meant to be of the Autocue used by newsreaders (the text scrolls down the screen a few words at a
time).

The poem seems puzzling on the page, but when read out aloud makes better sense. A Scot may find it easier to
follow than a reader from London, say.
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The most important idea in the poem is that of truth - a word which appears (as “trooth”) three times, as well as
one “troo”. The speaker in the poem (with whom the poet seems to sympathize) suggests that listeners or viewers
trust a speaker with an RP (Received Pronunciation) or “BBC” accent. He claims that viewers would be mistrustful
of a newsreader with a regional accent, especially one like Glaswegian Scots, which has working-class or even
(unfairly) criminal associations in the minds of some people.

The poem is humorous and challenges our prejudices. Leonard may be a little naïve in his argument, however:
RP gives credibility to people in authority or to newsreaders, because it shows them not to favour one area or
region - it is meant to be neutral. The RP speaker appears educated because he or she is aware of, and has
dropped, distinctive local or regional peculiarities. And though RP is not spoken by everyone, it is widely
understood, much more so than any regional accent in the UK. Tom Leonard's Glasgow accent would confuse
many listeners, as would any marked regional voice. RP has the merit of clarity.

• How does this poem work on the page and when read aloud? Do we need both to see it and hear it to get
a full understanding?
• How does the poem challenge social attitudes and prejudices about language?
• Is this poem serious or funny or both at once? Say why.
• How does the poet explore the relationship between accent, public speaking and truth?
• What is the point of the last two words in the poem?

John Agard: Half-Caste

This poem develops a simple idea which is found in a familiar, if outdated phrase. Half-caste as a term for mixed
race is now rare. The term comes from India, where people are rigidly divided into groups (called castes) which
are not allowed to mix, and where the lowest caste is considered untouchable. In the poem John Agard pokes fun
at the idea. He does this

• with an ironic suggestion of things only being “half” present,

• by puns, and
• by looking at the work of artists who mix things.

It is not clear whether Agard speaks as himself here, or speaks for others.

The poem opens with a joke - as if “half-caste” means only half made (reading the verb as cast rather than caste),
so the speaker stands on one leg as if the other is not there. Agard ridicules the term by showing how the greatest
artists mix things - Picasso mixes the colours, and Tchaikovsky use the black and white keys in his piano
symphonies, yet to call their art “half-caste” seems silly. The image of the black and white keys on the piano was
used in a similar way by Paul McCartney in the song Ebony and Ivory:

“Ebony and ivory

live together in perfect harmony
side by side on my piano keyboard, Oh, Lord
why can't we?”

Agard playfully points out how England's weather is always a mix of light and shadow - leading to a very weak
pun on “half-caste” and “overcast” (clouded over). The joke about one leg is recalled later in the poem, this time
by suggesting that the “half-caste” uses only half of ear and eye, and offers half a hand to shake, leading to the
absurdities of dreaming half a dream and casting half a shadow. The poem, like a joke, has a punchline - the poet
invites his hearer to “come back tomorrow” and use the whole of eye, ear and mind. Then he will tell “de other
half/of my story”.

Though the term “half-caste” is rarely heard today, Agard is perhaps right to attack the idea behind it - that mixed
race people have something missing. Also, they often suffer hostility from the racial or ethnic communities of both
parents. Though the poem is light-hearted in tone, the argument of the last six lines is very serious, and has a
universal application: we need to give people our full attention and respect, if we are to deserve to hear their
whole “story”.

The form of the poem is related to its subject, as Agard uses non-standard English, in the form of Afro-Caribbean
patois. This shows how he stands outside mainstream British culture. There is no formal rhyme-scheme or metre,
but the poem contains rhymes (“wha yu mean...mix red an green”). A formal device which Agard favours is
repetition: “Explain yuself/wha yu mean”, for example. The poem is colloquial, written as if spoken to someone
with imperatives (commands) like “Explain yuself” and questions like “wha yu mean”. The punctuation is non-
standard using the hyphen (-) and slash (/) but no comma nor full stop, not even at the end. The spelling uses
 9
both standard and non-standard forms - the latter to show pronunciation. The patois is most marked in its
grammar, where verbs are missed out (“Ah listening” for “I am listening” or “I half-caste human being” for “I am
half-caste”).

When you write about the poem you should perhaps not use the term “half-caste” except to discuss how Agard
presents it. If you need to, use a term like “mixed race”. For older readers, especially those aware of the (now
scientifically discredited) racial theories of the Nazis, this poem seems powerful and relevant. And in Britain today,
resistance to mixed-race couples (who may have mixed-race children) is as likely to come from an Asian or Afro-
Caribbean parent as from a white Anglo-Saxon family. (In some ethnic groups, there is enormous family pressure
to marry within the community.) Younger readers, especially in cosmopolitan communities, may wonder what the
fuss is about.

• How important is it for the poet to write in non-standard English?

• The poem makes a serious point but uses humour to do so. What kinds of humour do you find here and
how well do they work?
• How does John Agard explore the meanings of “half” and “whole” in this poem?

Derek Walcott: Love after Love

This poem is about self-discovery. Walcott suggests that we spend years assuming an identity, but eventually
discover who we really are - and this is like two different people meeting and making friends and sharing a meal
together. Walcott presents this in terms of the love feast or Eucharist of the Christian church - “Eat...Give wine.
Give bread.” And it is not clear whether this other person is merely human or in some way divine.

The poem begins with the forecast of the time when this recognition will occur - a moment of great happiness
(“elation”) as “you...greet yourself” and “each will smile at the other's welcome”.

The second stanza suggests that one has to fit in with others' ideas or accommodate oneself to the world, and so
become a stranger to oneself - but in time one will see who the stranger really is, and welcome him or her home.
Our everyday life is seen, therefore, as a kind of temporary disloyalty, in which one ignores oneself “for another” -
but all along it is the true self, the stranger “who has loved you” and “who knows you by heart”.

And when this time comes, then one can recall and review one's life - look at the record of love-letters,
photographs and notes, and what one sees in the mirror - and sit and feast on one's life.

The poem is written in the second person - as if the poet addresses the reader directly. It is full of imperative
verbs (commands) “sit”, “give”, “eat”, “take” and “feast”. The poet repeats words or variants of them - “give”, “love”,
“stranger” and “life”. The verse form is irregular but most lines are loosely iambic and some (the 8th and 13th, for
example) are quite regular tetrameters.

This is a very happy poem, especially in its view of the later years of life, not as a time of loss but of fulfilment and
recovery.

• What do you think this poem means? Why does the poet imagine someone as being like two different
people at the same time?
• How important is it for us to recognize what we are really like and accept ourselves for this?
• Why is the poem written to “you” rather than about “me”? Is the poet giving advice to everyone?
• Why does the poem use images of feasting?

Imtiaz Dharker: This Room

This is a quite puzzling poem, if we try to find an explicit and exact interpretation - but its general meaning is clear
enough: Imtiaz Dharker sees rooms and furniture as possibly limiting or imprisoning one, but when change
comes, it as if the room “is breaking out of itself”. She presents this rather literally, with a bizarre or surreal vision
of room, bed and chairs breaking out of the house and rising up - the chairs “crashing through clouds”. The
crockery, meanwhile, crashes together noisily “in celebration”. And why is no one “looking for the door”?
Presumably, because there are now so many different ways of leaving the room, without using the conventional
route.

One's sense of self is also confused - we say sometimes that we are all over the place, and Ms. Dharker depicts
this literally, as well - she cannot find her feet (a common metaphor for gaining a sense of purpose or certainty)
and realizes that her hands are not even in the same room - and have taken on a life of their own, applauding
from somewhere else.
 10
We do not know the cause of this joyful explosion, but it seems to be bound up with personal happiness and
fulfilment - it might be romantic love, but it could be other things: maternity, a new job, artistic achievement, almost
anything that is genuinely and profoundly life-changing.

The central idea in this poem is like that in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar of “a tide...that taken at its flood leads on
to greatness” - that is, that opportunities come our way, and we need to recognize them and react in the right way,
“when the...furniture of our lives/stirs” and “the improbable arrives”.

The poem works very much like an animated film - the excited “pots and pans” suggest the episode in Disney's
Fantasia of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It is a succession of vivid and exuberant images, full of joy and excitement.
(Even if one does not enjoy the poem, the reader might like to know what made the poet feel like this - and
perhaps give it a try.)

In the poem our homes and possessions symbolize our lives and ambitions in a limiting sense, while change and
new opportunities are likened to space, light and “empty air”, where there is an opportunity to move and grow.
Like Walcott's Love After Love it is about change and personal growth - but at an earlier point, or perhaps at
repeated points in one's life.

• What do you think the poet means by imagining a room breaking out of itself?
• How does the poet suggest ideas of change and opportunity?
• This is a very happy poem - how does Imtiaz Dharker suggest her joy in it?
• Does the poem give us any clues as to why this upheaval is going on, or is the cause unimportant? What
do you think might have caused it?
• What is the effect of the images in the poem - of rooms, furniture and crockery bursting into life?

Niyi Osundare: Not My Business

This poem is about shared responsibility and the way that tyranny grows if no one opposes it. It is composed,
simply, of three stories about victims of the oppressors, followed by the experience of the speaker in the poem.
The poet is Nigerian but the situation in the poem could be from many countries. It echoes, in its four parts, a
statement by Pastor Martin Niemöller, who opposed the Nazis. Speaking later to many audiences he would
conclude with these words, more or less:

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the
trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did
not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The oppressors are not specified, only identified by the pronoun “they” - but we suppose them to be the agents of
the state, perhaps soldiers or police officers. The first story is Akanni's - he is seized in the morning, beaten then
taken away in a jeep. We do not know if he ever returned.

The second victim is Danladi - whose family is awoken at night. Danladi is away for a long time (though there is a
hint that this person eventually comes back). Last comes Chinwe, who has been an exemplary worker (she has a
“stainless record”) but finds that she has been given the sack without any warning or reason.

After each of these three accounts, the speaker in the poem asks what business it is of his (or hers) - with the
implication that these people's experiences are not connected to him. The speaker's only concern is for the next
meal (“the yam” in “my savouring mouth”).

The poem ends with a knock on the door, and the oppressors' jeep parked outside. There seems some justice in
the timing of the appearance of the jeep: “As I sat down to eat my yam”.

The poet makes it clear that the oppressors thrive when their victims act only for themselves - if they organize,
then they can be stronger. Niyi Osundare also criticizes the character in the poem for thinking only of food - or
perhaps understands that, in a poor country, hunger is a powerful weapon of the tyrant.

It is easy to take for granted the freedoms some of us enjoy in liberal democracies. But these are not found
everywhere. There are housing estates, places of work and even schools where these basic liberties may be lost
for some reason - anywhere where bullies find that their victims do not stand up for themselves or resist their
power. Osundare makes it clear that it is always our business.

The poem has a very clear structure - we are told the time of each of the episodes and what happened, followed
by the refrain: “What business of mine is it...?” Except for the last occasion - because it is obvious now that it (the
 11
state terror) is everyone's business. And now it is more obviously the speaker's business. We do not yet know
what “they” have in store for this next victim, but we do not suppose it to be pleasant. And it turns out that merely
to keep quiet and try not to be noticed is no guarantee of safety. Why not? Because the oppressors are not
reasonable people who pick only on the troublemakers - they sustain a reign of terror by the randomness of their
persecution of harmless or innocent people.

The names and the reference to the “yam” tell us that the poem has an African setting but apart from these details
the scenes could happen in any place where the people suffer under tyranny.

• How does the poet show that we are always wrong to say that bad things are not our business, so long as
they happen to other people?
• Do you think that the speaker in this poem is meant to be the poet? Give reasons for your answer.
• In the west it may be easy to take our freedom for granted. Does this poem make you think more
seriously about it?
• How does the poet use the chorus in the first three verses to make his point?

Moniza Alvi: Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan

This poem can be compared usefully with the extracts from Search for My Tongue and from Unrelated Incidents,
as well as with Half-Caste - all of which look at ideas of race and identity. Where Sujatta Bhatt, Tom Leonard and
John Agard find this in language, Moniza Alvi associates it with material things. The poem is written in the first
person, and is obviously autobiographical - the speaking voice here is really that of the poet.

Moniza Alvi contrasts the exotic garments and furnishings sent to her by her aunts with what she saw around her
in her school, and with the things they asked for in return. Moniza Alvi also shows a paradox, as she admired the
presents, but felt they were too exquisite for her, and lacked street credibility. Finally, the presents form a link to
an alternative way of life (remote in place and time) which Ms. Alvi does not much approve: her aunts “screened
from male visitors” and the “beggars” and “sweeper-girls” in 1950s Lahore.

The bright colours of the salwar kameez suggest the familiar notion of exotic clothes worn by Asian women, but
the glass bangle which snaps and draws blood is almost a symbol of how her tradition harms the poet - it is not
practical for the active life of a young woman in the west.

In a striking simile the writer suggests that the clothes showed her own lack of beauty: “I could never be as
lovely/as those clothes”. The bright colours suggest the clothes are burning: “I was aflame/I couldn't rise up out of
its fire”, a powerful metaphor for the discomfort felt by the poet, who “longed/for denim and corduroy”, plainer but
comfortable and inconspicuous. Also she notes that where her Pakistani Aunt Jamila can “rise up out of its fire” -
that is, “look lovely” in the bright clothes - she (the poet) felt unable to do so, because she was “half-English”. This
may be meant literally (she has an English grandmother) or metaphorically, because she is educated in England.
This sense of being between two cultures is shown when the “schoolfriend” asks to see Moniza Alvi's “weekend
clothes” and is not impressed. The schoolfriend's reaction also suggests that she has little idea of what Moniza -
as a young Pakistani woman - is, and is not, allowed to do at weekends, despite living in Britain.

The idea of living in two cultures is seen in the voyage, from Pakistan to England, which the poet made as a child
and which she dimly recalls. This is often a symbol of moving from one kind of life to another.

• How well does this poem present the idea of living in (or between) two cultures? Do British Asians suffer
from a loss of identity or get the best of both worlds?
• How does the poet use metaphors of clothes and jewellery to explain differences in culture?
• This poem brings together the salwar kameez and Marks & Spencer cardigans - what is the effect of this
on the reader? In the 21st century can we say that one of these is any more British than the other?
• How does Moniza Alvi make use of colour and light in the poem?
• How far does our identity come from the things we own - presents and possessions? How far does it
come from the way we have to live?
• What does Moniza Alvi think of the way of life she has left behind in Lahore - both that of her relations
(well-off but confined to their house and “screened from male visitors”) and that of the poor beggar and
sweeper girls?
• How does the poem's last line suggest the idea that Moniza Alvi did not belong in Pakistan?

Grace Nichols: Hurricane Hits England

 12
The central image in this poem is not the poet's invention but drawn from her (and other people's) experience.
The hurricanes that sometimes strike England as destructive storms really do bring the Caribbean (or its weather)
to Britain - they retrace the poet's journey from the west, and recall her own origins.

The poem begins in the third person (note the pronouns “her” and “she”) but changes in the second stanza to a
first-person view as the poet speaks of herself, and addresses the tropical winds. The speaker here could be
anyone who has made this journey, but Grace Nichols is probably speaking for herself in the poem. The poem is
written mostly as free verse - there is no rhyme scheme; stanzas vary in length, as do the lines, though the first
line of the poem is a perfect pentameter.

The poem is interesting for its range of vocabulary. Ms. Nichols uses the patois form “Huracan” and names the
gods (“Oya” and “Shango”) of the Yoruba tribe, who were taken as slaves to the Caribbean in times past. She
connects this to the modern world, as she names the notorious Hurricane Hattie (of October 1961). There is
interesting word play in “reaping havoc” - a pun on the familiar phrase “wreaking (making or causing) havoc”. The
poem also brings together the four elements of earth, air (wind), fire (lightning) and water.

But the most striking things in this poem are the images and symbols from the natural world, which explain the
poet's relationship to the Caribbean and to England. The wind is called a “howling ship” - “howling” we expect to
find with “wind”, not “ship”. (Technically, this is a transferred epithet.) But the wind is like a ship in having travelled
across the ocean. This nautical image is echoed later by the comparison of felled trees to “whales”. The reference
to an “ancestral spectre” calls to mind the worship of the spirits of ancestors, a practice the slaves took from Africa
to the West Indies. Here the ghost of the ancestor is perhaps rebuking the poet for leaving the Caribbean.

In the fourth stanza, Ms. Nichols contrasts the massive power of the natural electricity of lightning with the
electricity generated by man. The electrical storm cuts off the mains electricity, plunging us into “further darkness”.
This may be the literal darkness of England in winter, or a metaphor for the poet's dismay at leaving her
homeland.

The fallen trees (which lie around in England after a tropical storm) are seen by the poet as like herself, uprooted
from her home. The wind brings warmth to “break (the ice of) the frozen lake” in her - as if the English weather
has caused her to lose touch with her emotions. (Associating one's mood with the prevailing weather is a well-
established poetic convention, sometimes known as the pathetic fallacy. Here pathetic means to do with feelings
[Greek pathos]. It is a fallacy [mistaken belief] because our moods do not literally control the weather (unless we
have special magical powers), though often the weather does influence our moods!)

Perhaps the most powerful image, from a Caribbean writer, is that which has its own line, where Grace Nichols
asks: “O why is my heart unchained?” In expressing her sense of joy, after the storm has hit England, she recalls
the image of freed slaves being released from the chains in which they have been held. Here she shows
awareness of her historical culture.

Finally, the sense that England and the Caribbean are all part of the same planet is spelled out in the poem's last
line. This reads like a tautology (look it up) but expresses Ms. Nichols' sense that the reader needs to know the
essential nature of the earth. It may be an imitation of a line by the comic writer Gertrude Stein, who wrote, in
Sacred Emily, that “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”.

• How does the poem (and the hurricane) connect England and the Caribbean?
• Comment on the way that Grace Nichols uses the names of the tribal gods and the hurricanes in this
poem.
• How does Grace Nichols use images of weather and nature to explore human emotions?
• What is the effect of the last line of the poem?

HEANEY POETRY

About the poet

Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939, on a farm in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland, the
eldest of eight children. In 1963, he began teaching at St. Joseph's College in Belfast. Here he began to write,
joining a poetry workshop with Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, and others under the guidance of Philip
Hobsbaum. In 1965 he married Marie Devlin, and in 1966 year he published his first book of poetry, Death of a
Naturalist. His other poetry includes Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1979), Selected
Poems 1965-1975 (1980), Station Island (1984), The Haw Lantern (1987), New Selected Poems 1966-1987
 13
(1990) and Seeing Things (1991). In 1999 he published a new translation of the Old English heroic poem
Beowulf.

Seamus Heaney is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was Professor of Poetry
at Oxford from 1989 to 1994. In 1995 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Heaney has lived in Dublin since
1976. Since 1981 he has spent part of each year teaching at Harvard University, where he is a Professor of
Rhetoric and Oratory. Writing about Heaney in 1968, Jim Hunter, said:

“His own involvement does not exclude us: there are few private references, and the descriptive clarity of his
writing makes it easy to follow...Heaney's world is a warm, even optimistic one: his tone is that of traditional sanity
and humanity.”

You can see whether, and how far, this is true of all the poems in the Anthology, some of which were written after
these words.

Storm on the Island

The poem considers the ideas of isolation and living so close to nature. But mainly it depicts the destructive
powers of nature, amplified for the island-dweller. Heaney refers to three of the elements - earth, water and air.
The poem challenges the idea that island life is idyllic - the sea is not “company” but like a cat, seemingly tame,
yet apt to turn “savage” and spit. At the end of the poem comes the irony - we are fearful of “empty air”, or a “huge
nothing”. So the poem appears to question whether our fears are real or imaginary (of course, physicists and
meteorologists know that air is not “a huge nothing”). Heaney uses a series of military metaphors: the wind (like a
fighter-bomber) “dives and strafes” while space is a “salvo” and air bombards (a metaphor from artillery or, more
aptly here, naval gunnery).

The poem is written in iambic pentameter lines - mostly blank verse, but with half-rhyming couplets at the
beginning and end. The poem opens confidently, explaining why the island dwellers trust in their preparations -
but when the storm breaks, they can do nothing but “sit tight”.

The poem begins by showing how the island dwellers adapt their outlook to their situation - so the fact that there
is no hay becomes an advantage (“no stacks/Or stooks that can be lost”). But soon the disadvantages appear -
the absence of trees means both that one cannot hear the sound of wind in “leaves and branches”, nor is there
any “natural shelter”. On the other hand, the violence of nature can exceed what we expect to happen. We might
have a picturesque idea of the sea crashing against the cliffs - spectacular, but not really threatening. But the
wind is so strong that the spray hits “the very windows” of people's houses. Heaney explains this with the simile of
a cat - much of the time one expects it to be “company” and “tame” (safe and predictable). But in the storm it turns
“savage” and “spits”.

• How in this poem does Heaney suggest the power of nature?

• Does the poem suggest that extreme weather is frightening or enjoyable for people (or both, perhaps)?
• What do you think is the meaning of the last line of the poem?

Perch

This seemingly simple poem shows how the perch lives up to its name - keeping its place while the river and
everything else moves past or around it. Heaney uses the metaphor of “holding the pass” (like soldiers defending
a strongpoint) to show how the perch remain unmoved. They may seem to sleep, as they are “adoze” (=dozing;
Heaney makes up the word which is like asleep, alive and adrift in its form) but they rely on their “muscle” to
guzzle the current. We see the fish from the human viewpoint, looking down into the clear river, but also from their
own viewpoint - “under the water-roof”. The metaphor here, like a riddle, is of a kind popular in Old English poetry;
it is called a kenning (Old English examples include “helmet-bearer” for “warrior” and “whale-road” for the sea).

Heaney says of this poem:

“...these perch, although they are actually in the river, they are very much in a kind of fifty-five year old memory
lake of my own...I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just as an element it is full of life. It is associated
with origin, it is bright, it reflects you.”

The poem has a simple form - five couplets with half-rhyme (assonance rhyme, which uses a different vowel
sound in each rhyme word). The metre is mostly anapaestic, with some iambic feet, especially at the ends of the
lines - this works because the stress falls on the last syllable, whether of two or three. The pattern is also varied at
 14
the start of some lines, which open with a stressed syllable - “Perch”, “Near” and “Guzzling”. (In terms of the
metre this syllable serves as a poetic foot on its own.)

The poem is striking for the number of monosyllabic words the poet uses, and for groups of words with the same
vowel: “grunts...slubs...runty”.

Heaney also indulges in wordplay - the two senses of “perch” in the first line and the pun on “finland” (not to be
confused with the country of “Finland”) which is echoed by “fenland”.

Note: The Lower Bann river, which drains Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is celebrated for its coarse fishing,
and is probably the river mentioned here.

• What is the poet's view of the perch?

• In what ways are the perch like people?
• How does the poet describe the river here?
• Explain the way the poet contrasts ideas of movement and staying still in Perch.
• How does the poet use sound effects in the poem?

Blackberry-picking

This poem gives a vivid account of picking blackberries. But it is really about hope and disappointment (how
things never quite live up to our expectations) and blackberry picking becomes a metaphor for other experiences.

• In the first half of the poem Heaney describes the picking - from the appearance of the first fruit to the
frenzy of activity as more fruit ripens.
• The second half of the poem concerns the attempt to preserve the berries - always a failure, as the
fungus set in and the fruit fermented. (Now that many people in the west have freezers, this problem is
solved. But do many young people still go to pick blackberries?)

In the first section Heaney presents the tasting of the blackberries as a sensual pleasure - referring to sweet
“flesh”, to “summer's blood” and to “lust”. He uses many adjectives of colour (how many can you find?) and
suggests the enthusiasm of the collectors, using every available container to hold the fruit they have picked.
There is also a hint that this picking is somehow violent - after the “blood” comes the claim that the collectors'
hands were “sticky as Bluebeard's” (whose hands were covered with the blood of his wives).

The lusciousness of the fresh fruit contrasts with what it quickly becomes “fur” and “rat-grey fungus”, as “lovely
canfuls” smell “of rot”.

The poem is set out in iambic pentameter couplets with half rhyme. Like many of Heaney's poems it is full of
monosyllabic nouns: “clot”, “knot”, “cans”, “pots”, “blobs”, “pricks”, “byre”, “fur”, “cache”, “bush”, “flesh” and “rot”
(there are others). The poem has a clear structure - the two sections match the two stages of the poet's thought.

This poem is ambiguous in its viewpoint, too. We see the view of a frustrated child in “I...felt like crying” and “It
wasn't fair”, but a more detached adult view in the antithesis of “Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would
not.” The poem looks at a theme that is as old as poetry itself - the transitoriness of pleasure (how good things do
not last), and relates it to a familiar childhood experience.

Heaney suggests that what is true of blackberries may be true of good things generally. But this is argument by
analogy. Nowadays we can preserve our fruit by freezing it - so does this mean that hopes are not disappointed
after all?

• How far is this poem about something particular or about life in general?
• Explain how the poem contrasts ideas of expected pleasure and disappointment.
• Does this poem give the viewpoint of a child or an adult or both?

Can you explain why Heaney, in the last line, says that he “hoped” for something, even though he “knew” it would
not happen?

Death of a Naturalist

This poem is similar to Blackberry-Picking in its subject and structure - here, too, Heaney explains a change in his
attitude to the natural world, in a poem that falls into two parts, a sort of before and after. But here the experience
 15
is almost like a nightmare, as Heaney witnesses a plague of frogs like something from the Old Testament. You
do not need to know what a flax-dam is to appreciate the poem, as Heaney describes the features that are
relevant to what happened there - but you will find a note below.

The poem's title is amusingly ironic - by a naturalist, we would normally mean someone with expert scientific
knowledge of living things and ecology (what we once called natural history), someone like David Attenborough,
Diane Fossey (of Gorillas in the Mist fame) or Steve Irwin (who handles dangerous snakes). The young Seamus
Heaney certainly was beginning to know nature from direct observation - but this incident cut short the possible
scientific career before it had ever got started. We cannot imagine real naturalists being so disgusted by a horde
of croaking frogs.

The poem has a fairly simple structure. In the first section, Heaney describes how the frogs would spawn in the
lint hole, with a digression into his collecting the spawn, and how his teacher encouraged his childish interest in
the process. In the second section, Heaney records how one day he heard a strange noise and went to
investigate - and found that the frogs, in huge numbers, had taken over the flax-dam, gathering for revenge on
him (to punish his theft of the spawn). He has an overwhelming fear that, if he puts his hand into the spawn again,
it will seize him - and who knows what might happen then?

The poem is set out in two sections of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter lines). Heaney uses
onomatopoeia more lavishly here than in any poem - and many of the sounds are very indelicate: “gargled”, “slap
and plop” and “farting”. The lexicon is full of terms of putrefaction, ordure (excrement or faeces) and generally
unpleasant things - “festered”, “rotted”, “slobber”, “clotted water”, “rank/With cowdung” and slime kings”.

In the first section, the poet notes the festering in the flax-dam, but can cope with this familiar scene of things
rotting and spawn hatching. Perhaps, as an inquisitive child he felt some pride in not being squeamish - he thinks
of the bubbles from the process as gargling “delicately”. He is confident in taking the frogspawn - he does it every
year, and watches the “jellied specks” become “fattening dots” then turn into tadpoles. He has an almost scientific
interest in knowing the proper names (“bullfrog” and “frogspawn”) rather than the teacher's patronizing talk of
“daddy” and “mammy”, and in the idea of forecasting the weather with the spawn. (Not really very helpful, since
you can see if it is raining or sunny by direct observation - no need to look at the frogspawn.)

The second section appears like a punishment from offended nature for the boy's arrogance - when he sees what
nature in the raw is really like, he is terrified. This part of the poem is ambiguous - we see the horror of the plague
of frogs, “obscene” and “gathered...for vengeance”, as it appeared to the young boy. But we can also see the
scene more objectively - as it really was. If we strip away the effect of imagination, we are left with a swarm of
croaking amphibians. This may bring out a difference between a child in the 1940s and a child in the west today.
The 21st century child knows all about the frogs' habitat and behaviour from wildlife documentaries, but has never
seen so many frogs at close range in real life. The young Heaney was used to seeing nature close up, but
perhaps never got beyond the very simple account of “mammy” and “daddy” frogs. The teacher presents the
amphibians as if they were people.

The arrival of the frogs is like a military invasion - they are “angry” and invade the dam; the boy ducks “through
hedges” to hide from the enemy. Like firearms, they are “cocked”, or they are “poised like mud grenades” (a
grenade is a hand-bomb - the frogs, in colour and shape, resemble the Mills Hand Bomb, used by British soldiers
from the Great War to modern times).

The poem has some echoes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - in a shorter and more
comic version: the would-be naturalist is, like the mariner, revolted by “slimy things”; the Ancient Mariner learns to
love them as God's creatures. Heaney indulges in a riotous succession of disgusting descriptions: “gross-bellied”,
“slap and plop”, “obscene threats” (suggesting swear words), “farting” and “slime kings”.

Wordsworth suggests that poets should use everyday language. In this poem, Heaney uses terms we do not
expect to see in poetry, and presents nature as the very opposite of beautiful.

Notes on the poem

• Flax is an annual plant (it grows from seed) some one to two feet high, with blue flowers. A flax dam
(traditionally called a lint hole), in Northern Ireland is not really a dam, but a pool where bundles (called
“beets”) of flax are placed for about three weeks to soften the stems. The process is called “retting”.
Those who used to do this work report that the smell is very strong and unpleasant. Heaney describes the
flax as held down by “sods” (large clumps of earth or turf - a favourite word of the poet: count how often
he uses it here and in other pieces). In some dams large stones would hold down the flax. Fibre from flax
was cleaned and spun into yarn, woven into linen and bleached.
 16
• The townland is the smallest administrative area in Northern Ireland. They range in size from less than
an acre to well over 2,000, while the average is some 300 acres. The boundaries between them are often
streams or old roads.
• Be careful how you write naturalist - keep the “al” in it, and don't mix it up with naturist, which is an old
name for someone who takes off his or her clothes, to live in a “state of nature”!

• How would you react (as a young adult or as a child) to the sight of a horde of frogs invading a familiar
place?
• How far does this poem tell the truth about frogs and how far does it tell the reader about the power of
imagination?
• Is this poem comic, serious or both? How far does the poet invite us to laugh at him?
• Heaney describes the frogs' heads as “farting”. As a boy he might have said this word to friends, but
would not repeat it at home or write it in school work. How does it work in the poem?
• Is it a good idea for teachers of the young to explain how animals live by describing them in human terms,
like “mammy” (mum or mummy) and “daddy”?
• How well does this poem fit in with your ideas of what poetry should normally be like?
• How truthful is the title? Did Heaney really lose his interest in, and love of, nature. Or does the poem
record only a dramatic change of attitude, or something else? (Note, for example, that the poem called
Perch was published in 2001.)
• Does this poem have anything in common with other poems by Heaney? How far does it fit into a pattern
of poems that show him not to be a real country person (like his father and grandfather) - because he
can't dig, he can't plough, he gets upset when the blackberries start rotting and he is frightened by a lot of
frogs?

Digging

This poem is like Follower, as it shows how the young Heaney looked up to his elders - in this case both father
and grandfather.

Seeing his father (now old) “straining” to dig “flowerbeds”, the poet recalls him in his prime, digging “potato drills”.
And even earlier, he remembers his grandfather, digging peat. He cannot match “men like them” with a spade, but
he sees that the pen is (for him) mightier, and with it he will dig into his past and celebrate them.

Heaney challenges the stereotype of Paddy with a spade. The stereotype contains some truth - Irishmen are
justifiably well known for digging, but Heaney shows the skill and dignity in their labour. We see also see their
sense of the work ethic - the father still digs in old age, the grandfather, when he was working, would barely stop
to drink.

Note: the pen is “snug as a gun” because it fits his hand and is powerful. Heaney is from County Derry (Northern
Ireland) but the poem was published in 1966, before the “troubles”, and this is not a reference to them.

This poem has a looser structure than Follower and looks at two memories - the father digging the potato drills,
the grandfather digging turf, for which he was famous as the best digger on the peat bog. The poet celebrates not
so much their strength as their expertise. The digger's technique is exactly explained (“The coarse boot nestled
on the lug...”). Each man dug up what has real value

• food - “new potatoes”, and

• fuel - “the good turf”.

Again there are

• technical terms (“lug”, “shaft”) and

• monosyllabic (“bog”, “sods”, “curt cuts”) or
• colloquial terms: “By God, the old man could handle a spade.”

The onomatopoeia (where the sound resembles or suggests meaning) is obvious in “rasping”, “gravelly”,
“sloppily”, “squelch” and “slap”.

There is a central extended metaphor of digging and roots, which shows how the poet, in his writing, is getting
back to his own roots (his identity, and where his family comes from). The poem begins almost as it ends, but only
at the end is the writer's pen seen as a weapon for digging.
 17
• How does the poem explore ideas of heritage and family tradition?
• What does the poem suggest about physical labour?
• Explain in your own words the image in the last line of the poem.

Mid-Term Break

The poem is about the death of Heaney's infant brother (Christopher) and how people (including himself) reacted
to this. The poem's title suggests a holiday but this “break” does not happen for pleasant reasons. For most of the
poem Heaney writes of people's unnatural reactions, but at the end he is able to grieve honestly.

The boredom of waiting appears in the counting of bells but “knelling” suggests a funeral bell, rather than a bell for
lessons. The modern reader may be struck by the neighbours' driving the young Seamus home - his parents may
not have a car (quite usual then - Heaney was born in 1939, and is here at boarding school, so this is the 1950s)
or, more likely, were too busy at home, and relied on their neighbours to help.

The father, apparently always strong at other funerals, is distraught (very upset) by his child's death, while the
mother is too angry to cry. “Big Jim” (apparently a family friend) makes an unfortunate pun - he means to speak of
a metaphorical “blow”, of course. The young Seamus is made uneasy by the baby's happiness on seeing him, by
hand shaking and euphemisms (evasions, like “Sorry for my trouble”), and by whispers about him. When late at
night the child's body is returned Heaney sees this as “the corpse” (not a person).

This contrasts wonderfully with the final section of the poem, where he is alone with his brother. Note the personal
pronouns “him”, “his”, “he” - as opposed to “the corpse”. The calm mood is beautifully shown in the transferred
epithet (“Snowdrops/And candles soothed the bedside” - literally they soothed the young Heaney). The flowers
are a symbol in the poem, but also in reality for the family (a symbol of new life, after death). The bruise is seen as
not really part of the boy - he is “wearing” it (a metaphor), as if it could come off. Heaney likens the bruise to the
poppy, a flower linked with death and soothing of pain (opiates come from poppies). The child appears as if
sleeping (a simile). We contrast the ugly “corpse, stanched and bandaged”, which becomes a sleeping child with
“no gaudy scars” - dead, but, ironically, not disfigured. The last line of the poem is most poignant and skilful - the
size of the coffin is the measure of the child's life. We barely notice that Heaney has twice referred to a “box”,
almost a jokey name for a coffin.

Overall, we note the contrast between the embarrassing scenes earlier and the final section where, alone with his
brother, Heaney can be natural.

The poem has a clear formal structure, in three line stanzas with a loose iambic metre. There are occasional
rhymes but the poem's last two lines form a rhyming couplet, and emphasise the brevity of the child's life. Many of
the lines run on - they are end stopped only in the last line of a stanza, and in three cases the lines run on from
one stanza to the next. As in much of Heaney's poetry, there is no special vocabulary - mostly this is the common
register of spoken English.

• Contrast the reactions of the two parents - how does the reader react to this? With whom, do you think, is
the mother angry?
• How does the poem contrast the fuss of the homecoming with the calmness of the scene when Seamus
sees his brother's body?
• What do you think is the meaning of the poem's last line?

Follower

The title of this poem is ambiguous - it shows how the young Heaney followed his father literally and
metaphorically.

The child sees farming as simply imitating his father's actions (“close one eye, stiffen my arm”), but later learns
how skilled the work is. He recalls his admiration of his father then; but now his father walks behind (this metaphor
runs through the poem). Effectively their positions are reversed. His father is not literally behind him, but the poet
is troubled by his memory: perhaps he feels guilt at not carrying on the tradition of farming, or feels he cannot live
up to his father's example.

The poem has several developed metaphors, such as the child's following in his father's footsteps and wanting to
be like him. The father is sturdy while the child falls - his feet are not big enough for him to be steady on the
uneven land.

There are many nautical references:

 18
• The father's shoulders are like the billowing sail of a ship.
• The “sod” rolls over “without breaking” (like a wave).
• The child stumbles “in his wake” and dips and rises on his father's back.
• “Mapping the furrow” is like navigating a ship.

In these images the farmer is not shown as simple but highly skilled.

Heaney uses specialized terms (a special lexicon or register) from ploughing - terms such as “wing”, “sock” and
“headrig”. There are many active verbs - “rolled”, “stumbled”, “tripping”, “falling” and “yapping”. There are lots of
monosyllables and colloquial vocabulary, frequently as the rhyme word at the end of line. Some of these terms
sound like their meaning (onomatopoeia), like “clicking”, “pluck” and “yapping”.

The metre of the poems is more or less iambic (in tetrameters - four poetic feet/eight syllables to each line) and
rhymed in quatrains (stanzas of four lines). We see a phrase without a verb written as sentence: “An expert”. The
poet uses contrast - apart from the general contrast of past and present we note how:

• the father's control is effortless (“clicking tongue” or “single pluck/Of reins”) while the powerful horses
(“sweating team”) strain, and how
• the young Seamus “wanted to grow up and plough.” but all he “ever did was follow”.

In thinking about the poem you might like to consider these questions:

• What does the poem show of the relationship of father and son, and how time has changed this?
• What does the last line of the poem mean? Does Heaney really want his father to “go away”?
• Is this a poem about farming specifically or is it relevant to other skills and occupations? How does
Heaney explore the idea of family tradition here?

At a Potato Digging

In this poem Heaney looks at man's relationship with the land - the cultivation of the potato is a way into Ireland's
social history. The first and last of the four sections depict the digging and gathering in of the potato crop today.
The second section looks more closely at the potato, and the third is an account of the great Potato Famine of
1845-1850. We sometimes associate the gathering in of food crops with offering thanks to God (as in the Harvest
Festival) but here Heaney suggests that the Irish labourers have a superstitious or pagan fear of a nature god (the
“famine god”) whom they must appease with their offerings.

Although the farmer uses a mechanical digger to turn up the soil in which the potatoes lie, the job of gathering in
the potatoes still relies on human workers. The machine turns up the roots and the labourers, in a line, bend down
to fill their wicker creels (baskets). As they fill their baskets, they leave the line to drop the potatoes into the pit,
where they will be stored. Though the work is hard, and makes the workers' fingers “go dead in the cold”, they
work almost automatically (“mindlessly”) made tough by their “Centuries of/fear and homage to the famine god”.
The folk memory of the great famine makes them ready for almost any hardship, in pursuit of full stomachs.

The potatoes come in different colours (according to the variety). The second stanza explains how they sprout
and grow in their native soil. Although the great famine, caused by blight, happened more than 150 years ago, still
each year the potato harvest can be an anxious process, as the workers smell the potatoes and feel them for
firmness - making sure they are free of the blight. (A fungus-like organism, called Phytophthora infestans, causes
the disease. This organism harms only the potato and, to a lesser extent, the tomato, a member of the same plant
family.) In this account, they come out, exuding “good smells” and undamaged by the digger - “a clean birth”, to
be “piled in pits”. They resemble skulls, but are alive. They have eyes (sprouting points) but these are blind - they
have not yet sprouted.

In the third stanza, Heaney uses exactly the same phrases - “Live skulls, blind-eyed” - but this time referring to the
people who suffered in the great famine of 1845. Poor people (that is most people) in Ireland at this time relied
almost wholly on the potato as their staple food. This explains why they would even eat “the blighted root” - but
there was no real crop to speak of, and the blighted potatoes could not feed the people. The “new potato”, which
seemed “sound as stone”, would rot within a few days of being stored - and “millions rotted along with it”. The
phrase is ambiguous - it means that millions of potatoes rotted, but makes us think of the people who died. (The
population of Ireland dropped from 8 million before the famine to 5 million afterwards. Perhaps a million died,
while others left for England or the United States of America.)

Those who survived were famished - Heaney likens this to the sharp beaks of birds snipping at people's guts. The
people are shown as desperate and demoralized - “hungering from birth” - and cursing the ground, “the bitch
 19
earth”. As this section moves back in time at the start, so it ends by returning to the present, where the “potato
diggers are” and “you still smell the running sore” - as if the blight opened a wound that has never healed.

In the fourth and final section, the workers take their lunch break - they no longer depend on the potato for their
own food (though they earn their pay by digging it). Instead they have “brown bread and tea”, and their employer
serves it, while there is no shortage, and they “take their fill”. But they are not taking any chances - the earth is not
to be trusted (“faithless ground”). As they throw away the dregs of the tea and their breadcrumbs, they make their
offerings - “libations” - to this god whom they fear and must appease.

The poem has a clear formal structure - the four sections go together rather as the movements in a symphony. In
presenting the main subject, the “Potato Digging” of the title, Heaney makes two excursions - to inspect the
marvellous food plant in close-up, and to recall the terrible history with which it will always be associated in Irish
memory.

The first and last sections have a loose iambic metre (a mix of tetrameters and pentameters) and a clear ABAB
rhyme scheme - which breaks down only in the poem's final line. (Why might Heaney do this?). The second
section has fewer rhymes in an irregular pattern, so the effect is not very obvious to the reader. But the third
section uses rhyme in pairs: AABB and so on. Here the rhyme words are emphatic, an effect made stronger by
the trochaic metre. (The stress usually falls on the first syllable of each pair. This metre works well for bitter
political verse - Shelley uses it in his Mask of Anarchy.)

The poem abounds in images. Heaney uses natural metaphors - of rock (“flint”, “pebbles” and “stone”), of bodies
(“skulls” and “blind-eyed”), or of animals (“bird” and “bitch”) - to describe things. There are many images that
suggest religious belief or ceremony - but no mention of the established Christian faith: “processional”, “god” (note
the small “g”), “homage”, “altar”, “thankfully”, “fasts” and “libations” (liquid offerings, usually poured onto the
ground or an altar, in many ancient religions). Alliterative effects are everywhere - “grubbing” and “grafted” or
“pits” and “pus”. And the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, which is often monosyllabic, makes use of technical or dialect
words, as well as sound effects (like onomatopoeia).

Small details are very telling, for example:

• We note how the workers are able to stand upright for a moment, before stooping again. The image
suggests the way in which people with natural dignity are forced to bow to their toil and humble
themselves. The modern labourers may be free, but they may also still have something of the servile
mentality.
• We see, too, that the starving people live in wicker huts - a suitable material for the strong but light creels,
yet somehow not substantial enough for a comfortable and fireproof home.

As in Digging, the labourers' work is a symbol - but of what?

• Are they digging up their past, a folk memory or a grievance that will never be put right?

Notes on the poem

• “Drill”, in the first line, does not refer to a machine, but the row of potatoes - called a “drill” because the
machine or person that plants the seed-potatoes (not really seeds, but sprouting tubers) drills a series of
holes into which the seed-potatoes go.
• “in 'forty-five” refers to the first year of the Irish Potato Famine - 1845. The significance of the date may
depend on the reader. English readers may think of 1945 (the end of World War Two) and Scots may
think of 1745 (the Jacobite uprising under Bonnie Prince Charlie). The omission of the first two digits also
suggests the viewpoint of the people at the time (as we now talk of the Swinging Sixties, rather than the
1960s) who do not need to identify the century. By using the same form, Heaney suggests the way the
memory has been passed on and kept alive in the oral tradition.

This poem dates from the late 1960s. Perhaps farming methods have changed in Ireland since, but in most of the
world still the work is done by human labour - and, just as in 19th century Ireland, many people's lives depend on
a single crop.

• How, in this poem, does Heaney connect past and present?

• What view does the poem give of man's relationship with the earth?
 20
• Does the poet really think (and want the reader to think) of the earth as a “bitch” and “faithless”?
• Modern readers in the west may no longer have a sense of where our food comes from - does this poem
challenge us not to take things for granted?
• How does this poem explore ideas of religion, ritual and ceremony?

CLARKE POETRY

About the poet

Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff in 1937. Her parents were Welsh speakers (and "100% Welsh"). She was
brought up to speak English, but is a Welsh speaker, too. As well as writing poetry she is a playwright and
translator. In 1990 she co-founded Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales. She teaches creative writing to
children and adults, and gives readings and lectures. Gillian Clarke's work has been translated into ten
languages. Her books include: Snow on the Mountain (1971), The Sundial (1978), Letter from a Far Country
(1982), Selected Poems (1985), Letting in the Rumour (1989), The King of Britain's Daughter (1993), Collected
Poems (1997), Five Fields (1998), Nine Green Gardens (2000) and Owain Glyn Dwr (2000). She published The
Animal Wall, a children's book, in 1999.

Gillian Clarke has a daughter (about whom she writes in Catrin) and two sons. She lives with her architect
husband on a smallholding in Talgarreg, in West Wales. Here they raise a small flock of sheep, and look after the
land on organic principles.

Gillian Clarke maintains a Web site at

• www.gillianclarke.co.uk

You can find copies of the Anthology poems here, as well as a selection of other pieces. She welcomes
comments on her poems and answers questions that visitors send in. She says, of those who make suggestions
about the poems:

"I'm grateful to you for reading them and for revealing to me what you find. Poets write instinctively, and don't
always see every possible meaning in the words they choose. If you find something, and prove it with quotations,
then it's there, and you're right, and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise."

I would like to thank Ms. Clarke for giving me help with many points of information about, and interpretation of, the
poems in this guide. But she does not always agree with some parts of my reading (which is by turns over-
attentive to some details and may miss the intended point of others). This is most marked in the poems about
motherhood. And least so in the case of October. In answering questions in a GCSE exam, this may be useful to
think about - your examiners will not give you good marks for absolutely anything you write: it must relate to the
text of the poems. But there is no one single right answer. Many of my comments are expressed here as
statements, for the sake of convenience - but they are all offered tentatively. Very practically, the poet suggested
that some bits of background information about the subjects had no place here, and they have gone. Gillian
Clarke's advice is always to trust the poems - they mean what they say.

In the Anthology poems, Gillian Clarke writes always from her own viewpoint - she does not (in these poems)
invent imaginary characters as mouthpieces in monologues. In this respect, her poems are quite straightforward.
She makes the generous statement that once the poem is published, it is no longer hers - and that readers may
discover meanings or implications in the text, of which she was not aware in the writing, or that are accidental.

Catrin

Gillian Clarke says that this poem answers the question: "Why did my beautiful baby have to become a
teenager?" The poem contrasts the baby's dependency on her mother with the independence and defiance of the
teenager. In a sense, therefore, this poem is for all mothers and all daughters. Gillian Clarke writes that "It is an
absolutely normal relationship of love, anxiety and exasperation."

The general meaning of the poem is clear though some details may be ambiguous. At the start of the poem, the
mother in the labour ward in a city hospital, before (when she looks out of the window) and during labour (the
room is "hot" and "white" and "disinfected"). Perhaps it is hot because of the plate glass, since later it is a "glass
tank" - almost like a fishtank, or the vivarium where one keeps a pet that needs to stay warm. From the first
mother and child seem to have been in a tug of war or a tug of of love, fighting over the "red rope". Did the poet
 21
literally write all over the white hospital walls - or does she mean that she found herself thinking up (and maybe
writing somewhere) words, like those in the poem? Or maybe she is trying to explain her reaction to the
"disinfected" and "clean" or "blank" environment - without "paintings and toys" and colouring in the white spaces.
She sees this now as two individuals struggling to become "separate" and shouting "to be two, to be ourselves".

The second section tells what happened. Neither has "won nor lost the struggle" but it "has changed us both". The
poet is still fighting off her daughter who can tug at her feelings by pulling "that old rope". The mother seems very
much to want to be able to agree to the request to play out, and it hurts her to say no - not only because she
foresees an argument with a strong-willed teenager, but also because she very much likes the idea of her
daughter's skating in the dark. But she cannot give in - both because it would be irresponsible to allow the skating,
and because it would be even more unwise to allow her daughter to think that she was winning the struggle. This
last image, of skating in the dark, may come from a real request but also suggests an episode that William
Wordsworth records in The Prelude, when he did just this - skating, as a boy, in the dark on a frozen lake, at a
time when children were allowed to take far more risks than is common in the UK today, but enjoying as a result a
freedom to explore and learn from the natural world. (In Catrin's case, it was roller-skating. Gillian Clarke says that
"the request is half true, half symbolic".)

The poem has some striking images. The "red rope of love" is the umbilical cord. The image is repeated, as "that
old rope". Gillian Clarke explains this as:

"The invisible umbilical cord that ties parents and children even when children grow up. I was also thinking of the
image of a boat tied to a harbour wall. The rope is hidden. The boat looks as if it's free, but it isn't."

The "glass tank" is the hospital, according to Ms. Clarke. She explains that skating in the dark is meant literally -
as an example of the kind of thing children ask to do but which mothers refuse because it is too dangerous.

• As you read the poem, do you identify with the mother or the daughter or do you see things from both
viewpoints?
• How far do you think this poem depicts the relationship of parents and children like it is? Is it different for
fathers and sons?
• Should the mother have let her daughter go skating in the dark? Are parents too protective? Would you
(will you) allow your children to take more risks?

Baby Sitting

Here Gillian Clarke contrasts the natural and instinctive love of a mother for her own child with the anxiety she
feels for another's child, whom she does not know. Rather ironically this absence of emotion causes her to
express an intelligent sympathy for the other child. Because the baby is too young to understand such things,
being faced with a strange babysitter may seem worse, the poem suggests, than the more serious losses that
adult women may suffer.

The opening of the poem gives a simple statement of the situation - except that the reader at first wonders how a
baby can be "wrong" - not really a fault in this baby, merely its not being the babysitter's own - which is the "right"
baby, by implication. The child is depicted very much as the ideal pretty infant - "roseate" and "bubbling" in her
sleep, and "fair". But this is contradicted by the cold understatement of "a perfectly acceptable child". Worse, the
babysitter is afraid of the child - of her waking and hating her, and of the angry crying that will follow. She thinks of
how the baby's running nose will disgust her. The statement about the "perfume" of breath is really a comment on
her own children, whose breath does "enchant" the mother in an instinctive way. Ms. Clarke explains:

"In her cot at home is the baby-sitter's baby. In the cot in this strange house is someone else's baby. The baby
and the baby-sitter have never met. They are strangers. The baby-sitter is nervous, looks at the baby, sees a
lovely child, but fears the child will wake. There'll be no chemistry or familiarity between them if the baby wakes."

The second stanza dwells on the idea of abandonment. Of course, the child is not abandoned, and we can
suppose that her mother trusts the poet as a responsible carer. But Ms. Clarke suggests that this "abandonment"
is worse than that of the lover "cold in lonely/sheets" or the woman leaving a beloved partner, dead or dying, in
the "terminal ward". It will be worse for the baby, because she has not yet learned how to cope - and there is a
hint that, in time, she will perhaps face these same kinds of suffering, too. The child will expect "milk-familiar
comforting". She will find that, between her and the carer, "it will not come. This ending is ambiguous - it suggests
literally milk that will not come to the breast, but is a metaphor for the comfort this brings, which also cannot come
from her to the child.
 22
The poem moves from the immediate situation to a more general look at life - seeing the parents' absence as
anticipating other hardships that the future will bring.

The poem has short lines - there is no set metrical form, but most lines have four stresses, and many naturally fall
into two halves. There are few metaphors but some interesting effects, like the transferred epithets of
"snuffly/Roseate, bubbling sleep" (the adjectives should really describe the child, not sleep). The poem also
appeals to the reader's senses of hearing (shouting and sobbing) and of smell ("perfume" of breath).

While the poem comes from a specific event, the child is not named and could be anyone - she is identified
throughout by the pronouns and possessives "she" and "her". The poem explores the difference between a
thoughtful concern for others and feeling this in some powerful and instinctive way.

• How does the poem show a contrast between what we think and what we feel?
• Do you share the poet's viewpoint here - how would you (do you) feel towards children who are not your
own?
• How far is this poem about the writer's own children?
• How does the poet relate the baby's experiences to what happens in later life?

Mali

This poem is very like Catrin - except that this time the poet writes of her grandchild. Why Mali? It has nothing to
do with the West African country of this name. It is a common feminine personal name in Wales. Mali is the fifth
poem in a sequence of seven under the general title, Blood. The sequence is published in The King of Britain's
Daughter (1993).

The poem celebrates the child's third birthday, and looks back to the day she was born. The details are not
completely clear, but it seems that mother and daughter, staying at her parental home, had been blackberry
picking on a summer's day, when the premature labour began. Mali is born in the nearest hospital, twenty miles
away, instead of in the city where she usually lives, which explains "too soon, in the wrong place". The poet jumps
to a memory from the following day of "my daughter's daughter/a day old under an umbrella on the beach". As
with her own child, the poet is overwhelmed by her instinctive love for the new baby - "I'm hooked again, life-
sentenced". The poem ends with the birthday party - the grandmother bakes a cake "like our house". It is past the
time for real blossom, but she decorates trees with "balloons and streamers". The poem concludes with a simple
celebration - with seawater, candles and what seems to be blood - but we are not told whose. For an explanation
we can read Ms. Clarke's comment:

"The birth of a baby involves great commitment. It's a 'life sentence'. The 'blood' in the poem is the blood of
belonging, tribal, genetic, as well as the blood of fertility, birth, menstruation. Last blood is the very last drop of
menstrual blood in a woman's life. No woman ever knows at the time when last blood has been shed. One
generation's fertility ends in blood, and the next generation arrives in blood."

The poem is organized in four stanzas, each of seven lines. The lines have no regular metre but all have two or
four stressed syllables. The dominant image is that of the tides - moving the sea, literally, and also as a metaphor
for motherhood. When the child is born the grandmother feels again a tide she had "thought was over". Later we
find that "even the sea cannot draw" her from the day-old child.

One has a sense of the birth as a wholly natural event, outside of the mother's and grandmother's control or
planning. It is both "seasonal and out of season". And "something in the event...towed home a harvest moon".

This idea of things being out of season recurs in the way the trees blossom - admittedly only in a metaphorical
way, with balloons and streamers.

• How does the poet connect images of plucking fruit with the child's birth?
• What do you think is the significance in the poem of blood, tides and the sea? How does Gillian Clarke
connect these motifs (thematic images) in the poem?
• What is happening in the last four lines of the poem? Whose is the blood and what is it doing here?

A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998

This poem comes from Five Fields. The author says:

 23
"The five fields of that book are the five continents of the planet and the oceans. They are a symbol of those
other things and of the way of life lived everywhere."

After three poems in the Anthology about babies - two of them depicting childbirth - the title here might suggest
something similar. But the "difficult birth" is of a lamb, at Easter. Gillian Clarke gives the reader the date (1998), as
a clue to the symbolism of the title - which refers to the historic Good Friday agreement, which has gradually
brought some kind of peace to Northern Ireland. The talks that led to this were also having a "difficult birth" over
that Easter time. Gillian Clarke says (on her Web site) that the Easter setting of this poem also hints at the old
story of Jesus's crucifixion and rising from the dead.

This double meaning appears in the first stanza - where the poet (and presumably her husband) look forward to
good news. That is that something that has gone on for years seems about to change - "eight decades since
Easter 1916". They have planned to celebrate the good news from the peace process, but have to put this off to
look after the "restless" ewe.

The ewe's waters break, releasing the fluid in the amniotic sac that protects the unborn lambs, and she has licked
this up. But her lamb is stuck. Someone (we do not know who, but this person is identified as "you") phones for
the vet. The writer seems to rebel against this - men thinking they know best, even about birth. So she eases her
hands in, grips the lamb's head and front hooves. She pulls hard, and at last the lamb comes out in "a syrupy
flood", which the ewe licks up. The "you" character returns to this scene - "peaceful, at a cradling that might have
been a death". Then the second lamb comes.

The poem presents the poet and the ewe as working with a common purpose - "we strain together". The poem is
set out in stanzas of regular length and a loosely iambic metre. The last line, which shows that the miracle has
occurred, is shorter than the rest.

Gillian Clarke mixes up details of the peace talks and the narrative of the lambing - "While they slog it
out...exhausted, tamed by pain,/she licks my fingers". We realize that "exhausted, tamed by pain" refers to the
sheep, but could almost equally well apply to the peace negotiators. And there may be a contrast between the
violent history of men working against each other and the peaceful cooperation of females that can overcome the
difference in species. We might easily miss the point as a "second lamb slips through" the "opened door" - that
the first step towards peace is the hardest.

The poem is resonant with echoes. The ending suggests the miracle of the first Easter - the stone rolled away
from Christ's empty tomb. "Easter 1916" marks the uprising that would lead to Irish independence and later,
indirectly, to the troubles in Northern Ireland - but it is also memorable as the title of a poem by W.B. Yeats that
records the event as the first part of a heroic struggle. Yeats writes, in the chorus, that "a terrible beauty is born".
And "peaceful, at a cradling" suggests images of human mothers and children, perhaps even the nativity at
Bethlehem.

In this poem, Gillian Clarke relates two of her greatest concerns - a love of the natural world around her and the
political processes that bring war or peace to the world.

• How does the difficult birth of the first lamb parallel events in the Irish peace process?
• Is this an optimistic or pessimistic poem in your view?
• How far does this poem show that events immediately around us and more public events are all joined up
in the "five fields" of our world?
• What do you think of the contrasts the poet makes between people (like her) and experts (men in white
coats)?
• What view of nature do you find in this poem?

This poem could be compared to Seamus Heaney's At a Potato Digging. Both writers depict natural events,
familiar to country people or farm workers, and relate them to history and wider political perspectives - specific to
Ireland in both cases. Seamus Heaney looks at arable farming on a large scale (at one point discussing the whole
Irish potato crop), while Gillian Clarke looks at pastoral farming on a small scale - one ewe among the little flock
she raises with her husband.

Seamus Heaney admires farmers, and recognizes their abilities - which he admits he cannot match. But he also
sees much of country life as cruel, arduous and alarming - something he may exaggerate in his poems, to explain
why he is a writer and observer but not a farmer. Gillian Clarke, on the other hand, evidently enjoys both writing
and animal husbandry. Where Seamus Heaney (admittedly as a boy) runs from the sight and sound of menacing
frogs, Gillian Clarke is quite ready to slip her hands inside a ewe as it gives birth and help pull the lamb out by the
head.
 24
The Field-Mouse

This piece recalls Robert Burns's famous poem To a Mouse, on turning up her nest with the plough. In both
poems the mouse is powerless against man's interference. In each poem the mouse is a symbol of weak or
vulnerable people, threatened by forces beyond their control. This is a long and quite sophisticated poem but the
structure is fairly clear. The poet writes of cutting hay while thinking of events elsewhere in Europe. Her account
of the hay-cutting has three strands or elements - to the straightforward description of the mowing she adds her
observation of aeroplanes with which "the air hums" ("low flying fighter jets, an every day sound in hill country in
Britain") and a short narrative about a mouse, injured by the machinery, which she is unable to save.

The poet sees how the hay-cutting has results which were not intended. Animals which have survived the
destruction now appear as refugees in "the dusk garden". Children, who witness the destruction, seem upset by
the brutality of the action.

In the final section of the poem, Ms. Clarke connects what she has witnessed to the war in Europe - an idea she
suggests at the start of the poem in "the radio's terrible news". She sees children as fragile and vulnerable ("their
bones brittle as mouse-ribs"). The noises of agriculture suggest the sound of "gunfire". The very last image in the
poem refers more explicitly to the civil conflict of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, where the "neighbour" has
become a "stranger".

In the poem's first stanza, Gillian Clarke suggests that the neighbour, without any particular feeling of good will,
nevertheless sends her family "a chance gift of sweetness" in the lime that reduces the acidity of the soil - an
image that suggests the stones that later wound the land. She now sees how easily the neighbour could become
hostile and damage her land. "Land" is to be read to mean both the ground and any nation. The final lines suggest
the territorial nature of the Bosnian war. Making land unfit for farming by spreading stones around (described in
the Old Testament) is similarly a throwback to ancient times. Ms. Clarke comments:

"The poem is asking, 'what if?' What if we, Europeans too, had to suffer civil war? How would it begin? With
stones? Could we quarrel over race or religion as people have done in Yugoslavia?"

In thinking about the poem, you might like to consider these questions:

• How does the poet show her concern in the poem:

o for the animals threatened or harmed by the mowing?
o for her own children?
o for peace in the wider world?
• How well does Gillian Clarke succeed in showing how things around one and things happening in other
places are all parts of a joined-up process in the world?
• Does the poem associate the children's concern for animals with other themes?
• What has this poem, which describes events in the countryside, got to do with the newspapers? Why can
the poet not "face" them?

October

Gillian Clarke's poetry often makes - or finds - connections between things. These may be real connections in the
world outside herself, or the connection may be only in her experience or belief. In her poetry there is a sense of
the world, or life, as a kind of joined-up reality. This poem is very simple in outline - two things cause the poet to
reflect on the shortness and fragility of life:

• one is the coming of autumn, and

• the other is the death and burial of her friend.

The conclusion of the poem gives her remedy - not a solution, but the only thing she knows how to do, which is to
write. She likens this to the running of an animal in the fields - trying to win ground from a predator.

The first stanza shows the effects of autumn - a broken branch in one of five poplar trees whose leaves are
changing colour, ready to fall, or long and straggly lobelias trailing over a stone ornament, "brown" where they
were once "blue-eyed". (Poplars are deciduous trees - they are long-lived, but lose their foliage in the winter;
lobelias are annuals - the plants germinate from seed, grow, flower, set seed and die each year.)

The second stanza is a tender and understated account of a friend's death. She is buried in Orcop (an English
village near the Welsh border, between Hereford and Monmouth) - this detail is a delicate way of letting the
 25
reader know that this is something that has really happened. For the bearers, she is "lighter than hare-bones" -
she may really have weighed very little, but the image suggests rather that they do not feel her to be a burden, for
the "short ride to the hawthorn hedge".

In the last stanza, Gillian Clarke sees her pen as running "faster than the wind's white steps over grass" - she
writes, that is, almost automatically. Her own health "feels like pain", as if she is at fault for being well while her
friend is dead. Then the writing becomes like "panic" and she is "running the fields". We recall the hare, whose
bones are referred to in the previous stanza - she does not think of what is behind, but keeps running, "winning
ground" merely by staying alive and writing. Each year she passes what will be her "death-day" - so every year
gained is more ground won.

The poem has a loosely iambic metre, while the stanza divisions are uneven in length. There are reminders of
mortality in the poet's vocabulary: "dead" (twice), "darkens", "graveyard", "bones", "grave", "fall", "pain", "faded"
and "death-day". There are some striking and memorable images - the amusing "dreadlocks" on the stone lion,
the familiar simile of the well for the friend's grave and the sharply-observed "white steps" made as the wind blows
over grass, and makes it reflect sunlight.

Two similes stand out: "lighter/than hare-bones" suggests poignantly the tenderness we feel to those we have
loved as we carry them for the last time; and the extended simile of the pen's writing faster than the wind, like an
animal "running the fields", shows the poet's love of life and horror of the inactivity that comes with death.

• Is this poem about death or about life in your opinion? Or is it about both together?
• What is the mood of this poem? Is it cheerful, comforting, gloomy, courageous, or something quite
different, in your view?
• Does the poet convince you that the autumn, her friend's death and her own need to write are all
connected? How are they connected?

This poem is worth comparing with Digging. In both cases, the writers consider events or experiences which have
profound or lasting effects - and which explain why they write.

• Seamus Heaney writes as an act of will or choice - he cannot "handle a spade" (not like his father or
grandfather) but he has a pen and can "dig with it". His writing, thus, becomes his way of honouring a
tradition - he writes out of duty.
• Gillian Clarke writes almost instinctively, because she has to, as part of staying alive. For her it is less a
choice than an emotional necessity.

On the Train

This poem appears for the first time in print in the Anthology, though it was not written directly for it. Several things
are happening here. On the surface, we have the poet's thoughts of another person ("you") as she sits on a train,
far from home. Behind this we glimpse another story, of a disaster, a news report to which the poet is listening on
a radio. There is no specific reference in the poem to the particular event which the poet recalls, but she has said
(on her Web site) that it was the Paddington Rail crash, which happened in October of 1999. At the time she was
travelling home from Manchester to Wales, not (as she would often do) from Paddington - she wants to share with
the "you" the feeling one has on hearing bad news in the media (the poem may be autobiographical, and the
second person pronoun appears to refer to her husband - but because this is not specified it has a wider
relevance to the reader). She imagines that this person will wake alone and think of her, perhaps with alarm at the
news of the rail crash - but it is "too soon to phone".

Commenting on the poem's being more than merely topical, the poet adds:

"I've thought about adding Paddington, but there's Hatfield, and so on, and all that matters is that it's a train crash.
It is my 11th of September poem - disasters which unite us emotionally because of the difference the media has
made to our consciousness of what's happening in the world."

The poet imagines the activity of a new day: radios playing, children being dropped off "at school gates", doors
closing "as locks click", footprints on the frost (the first steps on it since it has formed), and trains "in the dawn"
taking people "dreaming" to work - perhaps unaware that they are heading towards the blazing coach. The poet
makes a call but the (mobile) phone she is ringing is turned off. She is advised to call later. She imagines how,
later, other people will make calls to phones that will ring but not be answered - suggesting the disaster that has
struck their owners. She phones again and again there is no answer. The poem ends with a plea "pick up the
phone" and an admission that today the poet is "tolerant of mobiles". She knows it is a cliché, but today it is the
best thing to say, as it will bring reassurance: "Darling, I'm on the train."
 26
The poem is in six-line stanzas. The lines vary in length but are in the iambic metre - we have lines of five
(pentameter), four or three feet (like the final line). The poet drops the metre at one point, as she quotes the
message from the mobile phone company.

The account of the disaster is suggested by a series of images:

• the "black box",

• the "blazing boneship",
• "rubble" and
• "wolves".

Here the "black box" refers literally to the Walkman but hints indirectly at the device that records the activity of an
airliner, and which investigators use, after a crash, to discover what happened. A rail crash may literally destroy
houses but always breaks up homes in a metaphorical sense, so that the kitchen (often the heart of the modern
home) is like "rubble". The howling of wolves may be a metaphor for some other noise, or hyperbole (an
overstatement) - suggesting a breakdown in normal civilized life. Readers may not at first realize that the
Walkman in the poem is a radio (often on a train we notice that someone has a Walkman playing CDs, mini-discs
or cassettes), but this appears later, as it "speaks in the suburbs", and we understand that the poet is listening to
the news. Gillian Clarke writes on her Web site that she was listening to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The central image in the poem, potentially the most puzzling, but the one that reveals the poet's own imagining of
the disaster, is "the blazing boneship" - the burning rail coach in which an unknown number of passengers died.
Gillian Clarke says that she was thinking of the funeral ships which the Celts once would push out to sea, bearing
the bodies of their heroes. Her wish was, she says, to suggest something "noble, heroic, tragic" because the real
people grieving deserved "the dignity of the noblest image" she could conjure.

Of the mobile phone she notes that it is

"the modern messenger of love and tragedy as well as chat"

At the time of the events in the poem, she adds, the cliché, "I'm on the train", became "the most important
message in the world". This could of course be not only the poet's message but that of other passengers - and
there will be other unanswered phones in the rubble.

In reading the poem, you might think about these things?

• Does the poem relate the particular events of October 1999 to a wider sense of concern for the victims of
disasters, such as the events of September 11 2001?
• How does Gillian Clarke take objects from the modern world (the Walkman, the phone) and make them at
home in her poetry?
• What does the poem tell us (if anything) about the speaker and the person she is trying to phone? What
do you imagine, as you read it? (What does the poet make explicit, what does she hint at, and what do
you add that is not in the poem?)
• Is this poem mainly about a disaster, love, anxiety, the ways in which we use new technology, the limits of
language in conversation or something else?

Cold Knap Lake

This poem is about an incident from the poet's childhood. Cold Knap Lake is an artificial lake in a town park in
Glamorgan, South Wales. A little girl is drowned in the lake, or so it seems, but the poet's mother gives her the
kiss of life, and her (the poet's) father takes the child home. The girl's parents are poor and beat her as a
punishment. At this point, the poet wonders whether she, too, "was...there" and saw this (the beating, rather than
the rescue) or not. The poem is inconclusive - the writer sees the incident as one of many things that are lost
"under closing water".

What begins as a reflection on a vivid memory ends by recognizing some of the diversity and richness of the way
we recall the past. Ms. Clarke expands this:

"It is about the limitless way the mind takes in events and stories, laying down all that the mind encounters,
enriching memory and imagination. It shows the importance of stories, nursery rhymes, poetry, pictures,
alongside real events, in making us richly human. It is the picture of a human mind as made by the child in each
of us. The lake, and the 'closing water', is memory."
 27
In the opening lines, the poet seizes the reader's attention with the seeming seriousness of death. This makes
the mother's action seem yet more miraculous. If we assume that the "wartime frock" is being worn during (not
after) the Second World War, then the poet (born in 1937) would have been at most eight years old - she recalls
that she was far younger. The mother is a "heroine" but her action has nothing to do with the war. The rest of the
crowd either do not know about artificial respiration, or fear to take the initiative. And they are "silent" perhaps
because they do not expect the child to recover. The poet notes how her mother's concern is selfless - she gives
"her breath" to "a stranger's child". The image also suggests the miracle of creation as related in Genesis (the first
book of the Bible), where God gives Adam life, by breathing into his nostrils.

The poet does not condemn the child's beating explicitly. But she seems shocked by the child's being "thrashed
for almost drowning". She now recalls this as a terrifying part of the memory.

In the penultimate stanza, the lake of the title supplies an apt image of memory. Under the shadow of willow trees,
cloudy with "satiny mud", stirred as the swans fly from the lake - the "troubled surface" hides any exact
information. What really happened lies with many other "lost things" under the water that closes over them - in the
lake, where "the poor man's daughter" lay drowning.

The poem has a very clear structure - stanzas of four and six lines, a pattern that repeats itself. There are loose or
half rhymes all the way through to the final double rhyme couplet (almost in the manner of a Shakespearean
sonnet). Cold Knap Lake is where these things really happened, but its association with lost history and things
being buried and rediscovered later may echo the ideas in the poem. And there is an allusion to other literary
accounts of drowning - perhaps that of Ophelia. Apart from the extended analogy of the "troubled surface" (which
was literally present but also works metaphorically) there are very few metaphors in the poem ("long green silk"
and "closing water" - can you find any others?).

• How does Gillian Clarke present memory in this poem?

• What do you think of the motif (thematic image) of water in Cold Knap Lake?
• How does the poet use images of things that were literally present and metaphors (there are very few) in
this poem?
• In your own words, explain what you think the poet is saying in the last six-line stanza and the rhyming
couplet that follows it.

This piece is one of several by Gillian Clarke about personal memories (which also figure in many of Seamus
Heaney's poems). It also presents a happy outcome from a dangerous situation, like Blake's William Blake: The
Little Boy Found and in contrast to Heaney's Mid-Term Break.

PRE – 1914 POETRY

Ben Jonson: On my first Sonne

About the poet

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an actor, playwright and a poet. He wrote his plays around the same time as
Shakespeare, whom he outlived. (According to an eccentric and almost certainly false theory, someone else
wrote Shakespeare's plays - and Jonson is the one of the chief suspects, along with Francis Bacon.) In his own
time, Jonson was more highly regarded than Shakespeare. In 1598 he was convicted of murdering a fellow actor,
Gabriel Spencer, but escaped the hangman by claiming benefit of clergy (he proved he was in holy orders, and so
not liable to trial in the ordinary courts). His work is closer in style to the classical dramatists of the ancient world.
He published two collections of poems and translations.

About the poem

The poem records and laments (expresses sorrow for) the death of the poet's first son. We call such poems
elegies or describe them as elegiac. Jonson contrasts his feelings of sorrow with what he thinks he ought to feel -
happiness that his son is in a better place.

The death of a child still has great power to move us - Seamus Heaney records a similar experience in Mid-Term
Break. It would have been a far more common event in 17th century England, where childhood illnesses were
often fatal. The modern reader should also be aware of Jonson's Christian faith - he has no doubt that his son is
really in a “state" we should envy, in God's keeping. Sometimes poets write in the first person (writing "I") but take
on the identity of an imagined speaker (as Yeats does in The Song of the Old Mother and Browning does in My
Last Duchess). Here we can be sure that Jonson is speaking for and as himself.
 28
The poem in detail

Jonson writes as if talking to his son - and as if he assumes that the boy can hear or read his words. He calls him
the child of his "right hand" both to suggest the boy's great worth and also the fact that he would have been the
writer's heir (the image comes from the Bible - it reflects ancient cultures and the way Jesus is shown as sitting at
God's right hand).

The poet sees the boy's death as caused by his (the father's, not the boy's) sin - in loving the child too much - an
idea that returns at the end of the poem. He sees the boy's life also in terms of a loan, which he has had to repay,
after seven years, on the day set for this ("the just day"). This extended metaphor expresses the idea that all
people really belong to God and are permitted to spend time in this world.

Jonson looks at the contradiction (or paradox) that we "lament" (cry over) something we should really envy -
escaping the hardships of life and the misery of ageing. The writer suggests that "his best piece of poetry" (the
best thing he has ever made, that is) is his son. Remembering his sin (of loving too much) he now expresses the
hope or wish that from now on, whatever he loves, he will not love it "too much".

The poet's method

The poem uses the line that Shakespeare, Jonson and others rely on for most of the dialogue in their plays (the
technical name is the iambic pentameter - as it has five [Latin penta] poetic "feet", each of which has two
syllables, of which the second [usually] is stressed). Jonson arranges the lines in rhyming pairs, which we call
couplets.

The poem is written in the form of an address to the dead child - but really shows us Jonson's own meditations.
The short lyric contains one striking metaphor - that of the boy's being "lent" for "seven years", and paid back "on
the just day". (When the poet develops an image in this way, we may call it an extended metaphor.)

The last two lines are memorable - a quite complex idea is packed neatly into two rhyming lines, an effect we call
an epigram. (The couplet is at the same time both epigram and epitaph!)

A note on the text

Unlike the poems by Blake and Whitman, the text here has not been changed to modern standard UK English
spelling. It also uses some words that are no longer common - such as "tho" ("=thou") for "you". You might find it
helpful to "translate" or update the poem, so that you understand it more easily.

Responding to the poem

What do we say when sad things happen? Compare this poem to other poems or songs written to mark the death
of some loved person - you could use Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break or examples from outside the Anthology
like Elton John's and Bernie Taupin's song Candle in the Wind (this exists in two versions - one written in 1973 for
Marilyn Monroe, and a more famous version re-written in 1997 for Princess Diana).

Where do our loved ones go? Despite supposed falling attendance in some places of worship, most people in the
UK, when asked, say that they believe in some kind of God or spiritual existence. When people die, we often find
that we do believe, or want to believe, that death is not the end. What is your belief about such things? Say how
far you agree with the ideas that Ben Jonson has about what has happened to his son.

Parents and children

This poem is very much written from the viewpoint of the father. Students in schools will all be someone's child,
but most will not have your own children yet.

• Does this affect the way we read the poem?

• Do you see it from the poet's point of view, or identify with the child who has died?

William Butler Yeats: The Song of the Old Mother

About the poet
 29
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, as well as being very active in politics and culture,
and a student of magic and mythology. He founded Dublin's Abbey Theatre and became a senator of the Irish
Free State from 1922 to 1928. In 1923, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His poetry explores Irish
mythology and history, classical civilization and modern culture and politics from both public and personal
viewpoints.

About the poem

The Song of the Old Mother comes from The Wind among the Reeds, published in 1899. The date of its
composition is unknown, but those in the collection for which we have dates all come from the period 1892-95. It
is among the very simplest of all Yeats' poems, and quite easy to understand. Yeats himself (in Autobiographies)
describes it as "an old woman complaining of the idleness of the young".

The poem is a simple monologue in rhyme - an old woman describes her daily routine and contrasts it with the
easy time that young people have. She gets up at dawn to light the fire, wash, prepare food and sweep up.
Meanwhile the young people sleep on and pass their day "in idleness". More than a century later, few old people
in the west will live quite such hard lives - but the poem is still an accurate portrait of the lives of poor old people in
much of the world.

The poem in detail

The poem starts with the old mother's telling how she starts her day at dawn - her first job is to light the fire
(necessary, even in summer, for the rest of her jobs). She kneels down and blows to get it started - in 19th
century Ireland this would probably be a slow-burning peat fire. The next three jobs are scrubbing (using water
heated over the fire, perhaps), baking (making the staple food, bread) and then sweeping up. (Can you see why
the four tasks should be in this order?) By the time the work is done, the stars are coming out again - "beginning
to blink and peep".

The young people meanwhile are able to "lie long", dreaming of "matching" ribbons on their clothes and in their
hair. Not only are they lazy, but they get upset if the wind disturbs their hair slightly. The poem ends with the
image of the fire's going cold. This may be a metaphor for the loss of energy that comes with old age. It is
certainly a reminder of how the next day will start - and every other day.

The poet's method

Like many of the poems in this collection, The Song of the Old Mother is in rhyming pairs of lines. The metre here
is of the kind called anapaestic (two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed one) - you will find this metre in
Browning's The Laboratory and Hopkins' Inversnaid. Yeats does not end every line with a full anapaest, but
sometimes uses an iambic foot - this give one less unstressed syllable but the last syllable is still stressed.

The Old Mother uses a simple and familiar vocabulary, naming common household chores.

Like the speaker in Hardy's The Man He Killed (and unlike the speaker in My Last Duchess) this is not a specific
and named or unique individual. Rather she may represent, in some way, all old women in all times and places.

The last but one (penultimate) line contains what is almost a proverb - at the least it is presented as a general or
universal truth:

"I must work because I am old"

You might like to think about whether this is, or ever has been, generally true.

Responding to the poem

Ask an expert

Show the poem to a person who is a lot older than you - perhaps a grandparent or neighbour - and ask him or her
to tell you more about any of the chores that they also had to do.

Is it still true?
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Perhaps the nature of the tasks has changed - but is it still true (was it ever true) that old people have a harder
life than the young?

Rewriting the song

You might like to try writing different versions of, or responses to, the song - perhaps in the same style or as prose
accounts. Some possibilities would be:

• the song of the lazy teenager

• The Song of the Old Mother (21st century style)
• the song of the single parent
• the song of the yuppie commuter (the song of the gridlocked driver?)

Perhaps you could choose your own - either a typical representative person (as in Yeats' poem) or perhaps a
comic stereotype.

William Wordsworth: The Affliction of Margaret

About the poet

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is arguably the most popular and famous of all English poets. As a young man,
he had quite radical ideas about political change - and he travelled to see the effects of the revolution in France -
of which he wrote

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive".

With his good friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he published, in 1798, a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads
(in 1800, they published a second volume). In some ways, these poems mark the beginning in England of what
we now call the Romantic Movement. The Preface, written by Wordsworth, has come to be seen as one of the
most important explanations of poetry in English literature. In 1805 Wordsworth published his masterpiece, the
long autobiographical poem, The Prelude, subtitled Growth of a Poet's Mind. Wordsworth is strongly linked to the
Lake District, where he grew up, and later settled. He helped introduce to Britain a love of the outdoors and of wild
places. Wordsworth writes about man in relation to the natural world, and about simple or rustic people. He
suffers from being strongly linked to gift shops and the heritage industry - so that his poems appear on tea towels,
biscuit tins and postcards - and from the reputation of one poem (Daffodils) that begins "I wandered lonely as a
cloud..."

About the poem

The Affliction of Margaret was composed some time between 1801 and 1804 (which Wordsworth gives as the
date on the manuscript). It was published in 1807. In his own arrangement of his poems, Wordsworth includes it
among "Poems founded on the affections". The poem is similar to a longer piece in Volume Two of the Lyrical
Ballads, called Michael, and also to the first half of Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15.11-32). In a way,
the poem's subject is one that is still very relevant to parents - it is about a boy who has left home, but lost contact
with his mother. She has not heard from him for seven years, and worries about what has happened to him - her
only child. She does not say that she is a single parent in so many words, but she never mentions the boy's father
and says finally that she has "no other earthly friend" - suggesting either that she does not see the father now, or
that he is dead.

The poem in detail

This is a very long poem and there is not space here to look at everything. The title and the fact that she is a
mother make it clear that the speaker in this poem is not the poet, but an imagined character. She begins by
speaking to the missing son, asking him what he is doing and where he is. Having mentioned the length of his
absence (seven years), she describes what a model child he was and thinks about how, in the past, she used to
worry that he was neglecting her. Now she thinks either that he has been unsuccessful and is ashamed to come
home or is lost in a prison or far-off desert or drowned in the "Deep". If the boy is dead, then thinks Margaret, it
cannot be true that ghosts bring back messages to the living, for she would have had "sight" of him. She ends the
poem, as she began it, with a request to the boy to return - or send some news to set her mind at rest.

Margaret has a first name - but we know no more details of her, nor do we know the son's name. Neither has any
very clear individual qualities - except that the mother says her son was worthy, good looking, noble and innocent.
 31
(We are not sure if she exaggerates out of pride, but she seems sincere.) She seems to stand for all mothers
everywhere who have lost touch with their children.

The poet's method

This is quite a long poem with its eleven stanzas - though not by Wordsworth's standards. Like most of the Lyrical
Ballads, it is written in a regular, but simple metre with a basic rhyme scheme (ABABCCC). Wordsworth writes in
the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that he has tried to avoid using a special language of poetry (usually called
"poetic diction" - for an example, you could look at Oliver Goldmsith's portrait of The Village Schoolmaster) and
tried to use "the very language of men" - that is, the vocabulary and style of everyday speech. The modern reader
may find that the style is still quite literary - Wordsworth does not use dialect words or abbreviations (as Thomas
Hardy does in The Man He Killed). But mostly The Affliction of Margaret is clear and direct. The effect of the basic
vocabulary and the simple rhyme can be almost like a nursery-rhyme - especially in the last three lines of each
verse, where the rhyme sounds are unavoidable.

Wordsworth is not a very economical writer here - in the way that Ben Jonson is in On My First Sonne. Instead of
packing an idea tightly into an epigrammatic couplet, he tends to spell things out - so rather than just write
"humbled", Wordsworth explains what this means "poor/Hopeless of honour and of gain".

In some other poems Wordsworth likes to let the lines run on, but when he uses simple rhyme schemes, as here,
he is more likely to end stop the lines. Some lines here run on (see if you can find which ones) but most have a
punctuation mark that requires the reader to pause or stop.

Responding to the poem

Another earthly friend

If Margaret did have an "earthly friend", what might this person say to her to give her comfort or reassurance
about her son and her concern for him? Should she hold out hope after seven years, or accept that the boy is
gone for good?

Sorting out Margaret's hopes and fears

Working through the poem, try to find all the different things that Margaret says may have happened to her son -
you may find that she repeats some. As you go, note them down. When you have finished, organize them into a
list. In each case,

• write down her hope or fear, as far as possible in your own words;
• state what are her reasons (if she has any), or note that she has no reason for what she thinks, and
finally,
• say how far you think this idea of hers is likely to be true.

The very language of men

Wordsworth has tried to write poetry that resembles the language of everyday speech - or "the very language of
men". Do you think, in The Affliction of Margaret, that he succeeds? Pick out lines or phrases or even single
words and punctuation marks that make the poem more or less representative of how people speak today, or how
you think they may have spoken some two hundred years ago, when the poem was written.

William Blake: The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found
About the poet

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757, and died on 12 August 1827. He spent his life largely in London,
save for the years 1800 to 1803, when he lived in a cottage at Felpham, near the seaside town of Bognor, in
Sussex. In 1767 he began to attend Henry Pars's drawing school in the Strand. At the age of fifteen, Blake was
apprenticed to an engraver, making plates from which pictures for books were printed. He later went to the Royal
Academy, and at 22, he was employed as an engraver to a bookseller and publisher. When he was nearly 25,
Blake married Catherine Bouchier. They had no children but were happily married for almost 45 years. In 1784, a
year after he published his first volume of poems, Blake set up his own engraving business.
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Many of Blake's best poems are found in two collections: Songs of Innocence (1789) to which was added, in
1794, the Songs of Experience (unlike the earlier work, never published on its own). The complete 1794 collection
was called Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Broadly
speaking the collections look at human nature and society in optimistic and pessimistic terms, respectively - and
Blake thinks that you need both sides to see the whole truth.

Blake had very firm ideas about how his poems should appear. Although spelling was not as standardised in print
as it is today, Blake was writing some time after the publication of Dr. Johnson's authoritative Dictionary of the
English Language (1755). Many of Blake's spellings which seem odd or old-fashioned to us, must have struck his
readers, too, as quaint. Blake similarly used non-standard forms of punctuation, especially using the ampersand
(&) in place of the word "and" (today this is only normal in business names). In keeping with his profession, Blake
did not print his poems in type, but engraved them (like handwriting) on an illustrated background. The printed
copies were then coloured by hand: Blake was an artist in words and pictures. In the AQA Anthology, the spelling
and punctuation have been modernised in standard forms; type replaces handwriting and no pictures appear -
you should look at copies of the poems as Blake produced them, in order to decide whether this is a good or bad
thing.

About the poems

Both of these poems appear (together) in Songs of Innocence. The titles more or less tell the reader what the
poems are about. In the first, a father leaves behind his tearful child in the dark. In the second, as the child cries,
God appears, kisses the child and restores him to his mother who has been crying and looking for the boy. In The
Songs of Experience are two poems called A Little BOY Lost and A Little GIRL Lost. These are both horrible,
especially the former, in which a priest accuses a boy of blasphemy (for not showing God enough love), binds him
in an "iron chain" and burns him to death "in a holy place" where "many had been burned before", while his
parents look on and weep.

The poems in detail

The three human characters are not at all specific people but clearly representative or universal types - like
people in the parables of Jesus. (This is true of all the people we meet in The Songs of Innocence and
Experience, though sometimes there are distinguishing features as with the children in The Little Black Boy or
The Chimney Sweeper, where the sweep is called Tom Dacre.) In this poem, God appears, too but not as an
abstract idea (a view of God that Blake hated). He is like the God of the Book of Genesis (who walks in the
Garden of Eden and shuts up Noah in the Ark).

The first half of The Little Boy Lost is a cry of alarm from the child - he asks where his father is going, tells him to
slow down and asks the father to speak, or else his "little boy" will be lost. Instead of the father's expected reply
comes the shocking discovery - where the reader shares the child's horror - that the father is gone, and it is dark
night. The dew is forming and the boy is in a deep mire (muddy or marshy ground). As the boy cries, the mist
goes away - perhaps a hint that something good will happen.

The reader is not very alarmed - for two reasons.

• First, all the Songs of Innocence have happy endings of sorts, and
• second, the reader can see the title of the next poem.

In The Little Boy Found we see another hopeful sign - the boy is being guided by some kind of "wandering light". It
may belong to the father who has left him, or may suggest (in the word "led") a guardian angel or spirit. As the boy
cries, God comes to his aid - in white, which suggests his goodness. God is also "like his father", which may mean
he looks like the father who earlier deserted the boy, or may suggest the idea that God is the boy's (and
everyone's) real father - more so than any earthly parent.

The father, who leaves the boy, is contrasted with the anxious mother who goes in search of him, "pale" with
sorrow and weeping (though Blake may mean "weeping" to refer to the "little boy"). God brings the child back to
his mother. Attentive readers will see that she has no hope of finding the boy without God's help. Why? Because
she has been looking in the wrong place - the "lonely dale" (a valley), while the boy has been in a marsh ("mire")
or "fen". (Unless Blake means us to understand that the fen is in the valley - which is possible.)

The poems also appeal to one of our most basic fears - or rather two:
 33
• our fear, if we are children, of being lost or left behind by our parents and
• our fear (perhaps even greater), if we are parents, of losing a child.

(This is amplified by real-life reports of abductions and violence to children - and is one of the most profound and
terrifying fears we ever face. For many readers, The Little Boy Lost will be far scarier than any conventional horror
story or film.)

The poet's method

Blake's narratives, simply as stories, are very naïve and childlike. But they tell of profound and universal
experiences or ideas. We worry about children who really get lost - and any young child has fears (perhaps made
stronger by parents' warnings) of being lost or separated from mother or father.

The two poems thus form a narrative in two parts - being lost and being found. It also contrasts the way that
human parents fail with God's power and love in caring for children. There is a very similar but much more
detailed story in Chapter 7 of The Wind in the Willows ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn") where little Portly the
otter is lost but restored to his worried parents with the help of the animals' god, Pan.

Blake does not use metaphors - where something in the poem represents some other thing, usually an
abstraction, in a one-to-one way. Rather he uses symbols - and leaves it to the reader to decide what they mean.
So we may understand God in the poem as being more or less the same as in Genesis, or, very differently, as the
divine element in good people who look after children. And we may see the poem as being about a real child
getting lost in a fen, or about the way in which generally, we are unsure about the world and our place in it.

The poems are very short - each has only two stanzas, and the pair together have a mere 16 lines (whereas, say,
Wordsworth's The Affliction of Margaret runs to 77). Although the narrative seems to be stripped down to its
essentials, there is room for some suggestive details - so we read

• that God is "in white",

• that the "vapour" (mist, presumably) flies away,
• that a "wandering light" leads the child and
• that he is lost in a fen, while his mother seeks him in a dale.

With this poet, we can never quite be sure how far these things are intentional and how far they are simply
suggested by the need for a rhyme - but it is wiser to suppose that Blake means exactly what he says (or writes)
in the Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Chidiock Tichborne: Tichborne's Elegy

About the poet

Chidiock Tichborne (1558-86) was a Roman Catholic conspirator. In 1586 he became one of six who formed a
plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I. The plot was discovered and Tichborne arrested on August 14th. At his trial a month
later he pleaded guilty, and on September 20th he was executed. He was disembowelled, while still alive - but
when the queen learned of this, she forbade the continuing of this practice. On the eve of his execution, the 28-
year-old Tichborne wrote a letter to his wife Agnes, containing the poem that became his own elegy.

About the poem

The poem is a reflection on the writer's life and a lament for his misfortune. In three stanzas, Tichborne depicts his
situation as a series of contrasts - each time leading to the same refrain or chorus. The modern poet Simon
Armitage said, in a Channel 4 broadcast in 1998:

"It is a strange circumstance to know the date of your own death in advance. Hardly any of us know that...It's a
very formal poem. It's very neat. It's very tidy. It's very well crafted...It begs the question, if you're going to die in
the morning how can you sit down and be so calm and collected and make a poem that takes up so much craft
and thought? Because I'm sure most of us would be gibbering wrecks, we'd hardly be able to hold the pen! "

The poem could present the situation of any condemned man or anyone dying while still young - but it is clear that
the poet speaks for himself, in his own person. Indeed, the poem is not written for publication, but is part of a
private message from Tichborne to his wife.

The poem in detail

 34
The poem has a very strict form - perhaps Tichborne, who was not known as a writer, does not want to take
any risks. It proceeds by a series of statements in which the first half somehow contradicts or contrasts with the
second half - we call this antithesis, or antithetic parallelism. In each case something that began as, or should be,
good becomes bad - leading to the paradox of the last line in which Tichborne notes that he is still alive but his life
is really over.

Among many images - one for each line - a few stand out or deserve more comment.

• In the first stanza, the crop of corn that becomes a "field of tares" suggests Jesus' parable of the weeds
and the wheat - a farmer sows good seed, but his enemy sows tares (weeds) on the same ground.
• In the second stanza, the thread that is cut but not yet spun, suggests the idea of the Fates - three sisters
(in Greek myth) who determined the length of man's life. Clotho spun the thread, Lachesis measured it,
and Atropos cut it with her shears.
• In the final stanza the "shade" is an old word for a ghost or something dead (not, as today, a place out of
the sunlight). And in the penultimate line the "glass" is an hour glass (as in the picture in the AQA
Anthology). The glass is both full, yet has run through (from the top to the bottom half).

The poet's method

The poem is written in the iambic pentameter line, with a simple ABABCC rhyme scheme. Each stanza (verse)
ends with the same refrain. The lines all begin similarly - with "My", "I" or "And". They all contain the phrase "is
but" or "and yet" or a verb phrase introduced by "and". And almost every line contains a metaphor with a
paradoxical meaning, but there are no similes in the poem.

Responding to the poem

Explaining the images

Choose ten or more of the poet's paradoxical images and explain, for each one,

• what the image is

• what it means
• how you think it works in the poem

You could illustrate the images as a way of remembering them.

Write your own elegy

Imagine that you knew that you had only one more day to live - either as you are now, or at some future point.
Write a short message to your partner, or a close relative or friend, summing up what you think of your life and
imminent death. You could do this as a poem or prose statement.

Thomas Hardy: The Man He Killed

About the poet

Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. He was the son of a mason, from Dorset, in the south west of England. He studied
to be an architect, and worked in this profession for many years. He also began to write prose fiction. Hardy
eventually published many novels - these vary in merit but include many which are established as masterpieces
of English fiction.

Hardy enjoyed commercial success, but his work proved controversial, and his publishers continually tried to tone
it down. Critics savagely condemned his last two novels, Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Hardy
no longer needed to write prose fiction for a living - the royalties from his existing work gave him more than
enough security. He had always preferred poetry - and believed that he was better as a writer in this form. He
wrote verse throughout his life, but did not publish a volume until Wessex Poems and Other Verses (for which he
did his own illustrations) appeared in 1898. Hardy certainly made up for lost time, eventually publishing six
collections of verse as well as the huge poetic drama, The Dynasts, of which the first part appeared in 1904.

Thomas Hardy was married twice - his first marriage, long and mostly unhappy, was to Emma Gifford. They
married in 1874. Emma died in 1912, and in 1914 Hardy married his secretary, Florence Dugdale, who later
became his biographer. Hardy died in 1928, aged 87. He had asked to be laid beside Emma, but his body was
 35
buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Only his heart was placed in Emma's grave - or was it? There is
a curious story that his housekeeper placed the heart on the kitchen table, where his sister's cat seized it, and ran
off into the nearby woods. In this version of events, a pig's heart was duly buried beside Emma.

About the poem

This poem was written at the time of the Boer War, but there is nothing in it that refers to any particular conflict - it
could refer to almost any war. The poem appears as one half of a conversation. The speaker tells about how he
killed another man in battle, and reflects on how much he and his victim had in common, and how little reason
they had to fight each other.

Superficially a simple, uncomplicated piece, this is, in fact, a very skilful poem heavily laden with irony and making
interesting use of colloquialism. The title is slightly odd, as Hardy uses the third-person pronoun "He", though the
poem is narrated in the first person. The "He" of the title (the "I" of the poem) is the soldier who tries to explain
(and perhaps justify) his killing of another man in battle.

The poem in detail

In the first stanza the narrator establishes the common ground between himself and his victim: in more favourable
circumstances they could have shared hospitality together. This idea is in striking contrast to that in the second
stanza: the circumstances in which the men did meet. "Ranged as infantry" suggests that the men are not natural
foes but have been "ranged", that is set against each other. The phrase "as he at me" indicates the similarity of
their situations.

In the third stanza the narrator gives his reason for shooting the supposed enemy. The conversational style of the
poem enables Hardy to repeat the word "because", implying hesitation, and therefore doubt, on the part of the
narrator. He cannot at first easily think of a reason. When he does so, the assertion ("because he was my foe") is
utterly unconvincing. The speaker has already made clear the sense in which the men were foes: an artificial
enmity created by others. "Of course" and "That's clear enough" are blatantly ironic: the enmity is not a matter of
course, the claim is far from "clear" to the reader, and the pretence of assurance on the narrator's part is
destroyed by his admission beginning "although..."

The real reason for the victim's enlistment in the army, like the narrator's, is far from being connected with patriotic
idealism and belief in his country's cause. The soldier's joining was partly whimsical ("Off-hand like") and partly
the result of economic necessity: he was unemployed and had already sold off his possessions. He did not enlist
for any other reason.

The narrator concludes with a repetition of the contrast between his treatment of the man he killed and how he
might have shared hospitality with him in other circumstances, or even been ready to extend charity to him. He
prefaces this with the statement that war is "quaint and curious", as if to say, a funny old thing. This tends to show
war as innocuous and acceptable, but the events narrated in the poem, as well as the reader's general knowledge
of war, make it clear that conflict is far from "quaint and curious". Hardy uses the words with heavy irony, knowing
full well how inaccurate such a description really is.

This is a rather bitter poem showing the stupidity of war, and demolishing belief in the patriotic motives of those
who confront one another in battle. The narrator finds no good reason for his action; Hardy implies that there is no
good reason. The short lines, simple rhyme scheme, and everyday language make the piece almost nursery
rhyme like in simplicity, again in ironic contrast to its less than pleasant subject.

The poet's method

The first thing to note about the poem is that it is written as is spoken - like Browning's My Last Duchess, it is a
monologue. It is not just colloquial (like speech) in style and vocabulary. It even has inverted commas (speech
marks) to show that it is meant to be spoken.

The vocabulary is very simple - most of the words are familiar or everyday terms (from the common lexicon), apart
from a few dialect expressions, like "sat us down", "nipperkin" (a small measure of drink) or "traps" (possessions),
and the abbreviation "'list" for "enlist" (join up, become a soldier in the army).

The poem is written in a simple metre and a tight ABAB rhyme scheme. Most of the lines are end stopped - but
Hardy suggests the soldier's doubt at one point by using "although" to run on to the next line.
 36
The structure of the poem is clever - the speaker ends up with the same comment he makes at the start: that
war makes people fight when their natural behaviour would be to share a drink together or for one to help the
other out with a small loan.

Responding to the poem

• Does Hardy share the views of the speaker in the poem?

• How different and how similar are the two men in the poem? What do they have in common?
• Comment on Hardy's use of colloquial writing (writing like speech) in this poem.
• Why does the soldier say that war is "quaint and curious"? Does Hardy want the reader to agree with this
view?

Walt Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat

About the poet

Walt Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892. He was one of ten children and was born on New York's Long Island. He
worked as a printer, teacher and property speculator. In 1855 he published 13 poems in a collection entitled
Leaves of Grass. Over the years, Whitman published fresh editions of this collection, the last one in 1892, each
time adding many more poems - eventually it would contain hundreds of poems and some 10,500 lines, making
Leaves of Grass the length of a good sized novel.

Whitman set out in Leaves of Grass to write about himself, giving his purpose as:

"a feeling or ambition to articulate and faithfully express in literary or poetic form and uncompromisingly, my own
physical, emotional, moral, intellectual and aesthetic Personality, in the midst of, and tallying, the momentous
spirit and facts of its immediate days, and of current America"

During the American Civil War (1861-1865) Whitman served as a nurse in a military hospital, where he caught an
infection that weakened him. In 1873, Whitman moved to Camden in New Jersey (inland from Barnegat), where
he stayed until his death. Whitman published other books, but his reputation rests almost wholly on Leaves of
Grass.

About the poem

The date in the AQA Anthology is mistaken - this poem (according to the Cambridge History of English and
American Literature, Volume 16: Early National Literature) was first published in The American in 1880 and
reprinted in Harper's Monthly in 1881. By this time, Whitman was settled in New Jersey, where Barnegat lies on
the coast in what is today called Ocean County. The title is also "corrected" to the standard UK form - Whitman
writes "Patroling" with one "l".

This poem comes from a section of Leaves of Grass called Sea Drift - containing poems, inspired by the sea,
which explore the mysteries of life and death. It contains two of the most famous of all Whitman's lyrics - Out of
the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life. Barnegat is on the Atlantic Coast of south
New Jersey (between Atlantic City and Jersey City). The wild sea that Whitman describes now draws sailing
enthusiasts to Ocean County. Barnegat is on the coast - some way inland lies Camden, where Whitman lived
from 1873 until his death. By a curious coincidence, since 1996, Barnegat Bay has been protected as one of the
USA's estuaries of national importance - having been nominated for this by a state governor called Whitman.

The poem in detail

We are not told who is "patroling" but assume that it is the poet, late at night. The poem is almost a list of details,
each line ending with a verb. Mostly these suggest strong physical action or vivid details. It is not clear whether
the "dim, weird forms" are natural features, ships or people - but there is a clear sense of nature as massively
powerful, threatening man's precarious existence.

Whitman suggests the idea of evil spirits by describing the wind as "shouts of demoniac laughter" and seeing
"waves, air, midnight" as a savage "trinity" (three-in-one) - an image that appears twice. His readers would
compare this to the Holy Trinity of Father (God), Son (Jesus) and Holy Ghost (Spirit).

He shows the reader how the person "patroling" cannot be sure what is happening out at sea - by the final
reference to "dim, weird forms" and earlier in the questions about "that in the distance". Is it "a wreck" and "is the
red signal flaring"?
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The poet's method

Nearly all of the poems in Leaves of Grass are written in free verse - that is, without formal patterns of rhyme or
metre. Sometimes this gives us little more than chopped prose - prose broken into lines. This poem has a more
clear structure - like Old English (Anglo-Saxon) verse, and the later poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the lines
fall into two halves, each containing two stressed syllables.

The other formal feature is more obvious - each line finishes with a verb ending in "-ing". This is the form called
the present participle. This means that the whole poem, set out as a single sentence, does not at any point have a
main finite verb.

(Silly people might say this makes it "ungrammatical" or that Whitman uses "bad" grammar. And you would not
want to risk writing like this in an exam, unless you could convince the examiners that you had a good reason for
doing it. The first chapter of Dickens' Great Expectations also contains a "sentence" with no main verb. These are
examples of artistic licence - if people think you know what you are doing, you can break the rules in some kinds
of writing activity.)

Whitman uses effects of sound - particularly

• alliteration (repeating the same initial consonant), and

• onomatopoeia (using words that sound like what they mean).

He combines both of these effects with repeated use of the sibilant "s" sound - which may resemble the sound of
the surf breaking and falling back. (You don't need to know these technical names but you should be able to find
examples of them in use and explain how they work in the poem - you should do this before writing or speaking
about the poems for assessed work or an exam.)

Among the other technical effects Whitman uses are:

• Anthropomorphism or animism - Whitman writes about natural things as if they are features of a person or
intelligent creature - such as "muttering" and "laughter". He also writes as if the natural world has attitudes
or feelings, with qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) like "wild", "fitfully", "fierce", "watchful", "tireless" and
"never remitting". (It is not clear whether the "struggling" and "watching" at the end of the poem are also
being done by natural things or by real people.)
• Images - all of the images are of things that are really (or "literally") there to be seen. But they may also
represent other things. Can you find any vivid or memorable images?
• Repetition - Whitman writes many things twice, sometimes a whole phrase ("milk-white combs careering",
"slush and sand"), sometimes a single word ("midnight"), and sometimes a different form of the same root
word ("beachy" and "beach").

Ideas for studying the poem

Performing the poem

This is a very suitable text for dramatic performance. It is easy to learn by heart or to learn for reading from a
script. A pair or small group could share the lines and provide suitable sound FX - using voices only or musical
instruments. In a teaching group, the listeners could provide storm noises. If your school is near the sea or a river
estuary, it might be possible to do this outdoors - though probably it would not be sensible to do this at midnight in
a real storm. More sensibly, pupils could make an audiotape, CD or digital recording for a computer to record the
performance, or use presentation graphics software (such as PowerPoint™) to accompany a performance of the
poem.

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 130 -

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
About the poet

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is widely regarded as among the greatest of all writers - and certainly the most
celebrated figure in English literature. He was brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, where, in 1582,
he married Anne Hathaway, by whom he had three children. Shortly after this, he left for London, where he joined
a theatre company, as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare wrote well over thirty plays - the number is
sometimes disputed, and he had collaborators for some of his work - which include histories, tragedies, comedies
and pastoral romances. Shakespeare also wrote poetry in narrative and lyric forms. His Sonnets appeared in print
 38
in 1609 but much of the work was completed in the 1590s. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the theatre
company, and owned property in London. He became wealthy, and retired to Stratford in 1613.

About the poem

This is one of the 154 Sonnets that Shakespeare published in 1609. The first 126 sonnets present a young man,
whom the writer evidently admires, who may well be the person named in a dedication at the start of the collection
as "Mr. W.H.". Sonnets 127 to 152 concern a woman known to scholars as the Dark Lady. The last two sonnets
have more conventional themes. Sonnet 130 praises the Dark Lady unconventionally by rejecting the usual
exaggerations of love poetry (which Shakespeare calls "false compare") in favour of a more truthful and modest
description.

The poem in detail

Shakespeare opens with a bold statement that the eyes of his beloved lady are not like the sun (where another
poet might say they are as bright as, or brighter than, the sun) - and continues in this way to understate her
attractions or present them honestly. Her lips are red, but not as much as coral. Her skin is not white as snow but
brown and her hair black. Shakespeare describes the contrast of red and white on a rose that is "damasked" (the
term comes from Damascus, in Syria, which was known for decorative arts). But, he says, he has not seen this
damask rose effect in his mistress's cheeks. Her breath, he says, is not as delightful as perfume (a line that may
cause us to think about the lack of oral hygiene in Elizabethan England. "Reeks" does not have the modern
suggestion of an unpleasant smell, but means more or less to give off an odour - which may or may not be
pleasant. We might use the verb "smells" nowadays, but until quite recent times, this verb referred only to what
we do with our noses). And her voice is less "pleasing" in its sound than music. Although he has never seen a
goddess moving, Shakespeare suggests that goddesses do not need to tread on the ground - whereas he knows
that his beloved does "tread on the ground", when she moves.

Having acknowledged all of her imperfections or limitations, the poet swears that his beloved is, nonetheless, as
special as any woman "belied" (misrepresented) by "false compare" (untrue or lying comparisons).

The poet's method

This poem is a sonnet of the kind we call Shakespearean - it has a twelve line section (organized as three
quatrains - groups of four lines - with an ABAB rhyme), leading to a concluding rhymed couplet. The first twelve
lines make out the case for the ordinariness of the beloved. The concluding couplet changes the way we read
this, however, by claiming that the beloved is just as special as any other woman who is the subject of more
extravagant descriptions - because these are false.

The lines almost suggest alternative versions in which the "false compare" might appear - for example, the first
line could easily be changed to "My mistress' eyes are very like the sun" or "brighter than the sun", while the
second line could begin "coral is no more red..."

Shakespeare names many of the things, especially those from the natural world, that might appear in a
conventional love poem - the sun, coral, snow, roses, perfume, music and a goddess. Perhaps the most important
image is the familiar one in the eleventh and twelfth lines - the poet has not seen a goddess (he does not claim
his mistress is a goddess, as some might do) but knows that his beloved is down to earth or has her feet on the
ground. To the reader who wants to see women as dainty and idealized creatures, this may seem shocking; but to
the reader who is attracted by real and tangible flesh and blood, the image will be more persuasive.

Responding to the poem

The portrait of the lady

What evidence does the poem give about the poet's beloved? Using all the available details, write a prose
description (you may illustrate it, if you have any talent for drawing).

Is the poet sexist?

In this sonnet Shakespeare lists physical qualities but says nothing of character. What is your view of presenting a
woman in this way? Although he originally wrote the sonnets for his patron (a wealthy nobleman, the Earl of
Southampton), Shakespeare did eventually publish the poems - so he is letting the world know what he thinks of
the physical features of the Dark Lady.
 39
A perfect partner

Shakespeare praises the Dark Lady, but shows that she does not fit conventional or stereotyped ideals. What
would your perfect partner be like? Write a description (it could be done as a list) of the qualities (physical,
psychological, emotional) that your preferred partner would have. You can do this seriously or treat it comically.

Alternatively, you could (as Shakespeare does in a way) write an explanation of why it is silly even to try to invent
an ideal or perfect partner - because we do not know what we really want until life surprises us with particular
unique people and experiences.

Robert Browning: My Last Duchess

About the poet

Robert Browning (1812-89) was, with Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the two most celebrated of Victorian poets.
His father was a bank clerk, and Browning educated himself by reading in the family library. He published many
verse dramas and dramatic monologues (poems, like My Last Duchess, in which a single character speaks to the
reader), notably the collections Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864). His greatest success
came in 1868 with The Ring and the Book - a verse narrative in twelve books, spoken by a range of different
characters. In her lifetime his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was more famous. She was a semi-
invalid, following an accident in her teens. In 1846 she and Robert ran away from her father (who tried to control
her) and eloped to Italy.

About the poem

The date in the AQA Anthology is wrong. This poem was published in Dramatic Lyrics in 1842. (the same year as
Tennyson's Ulysses). The poem reflects Browning's interest in Italian politics of the late Middle Ages (the time
known as the Renaissance). The poem appears as one half of a conversation. The speaker is the unnamed Duke
of Ferrara, a city-state in Lombardy (now the north of Italy - but Italy as a unified state was created only in the 19th
century - long after Browning wrote this poem; in the Middle Ages each city, with the surrounding country, was an
independent realm with its own ruler). The listener is an envoy (a kind of diplomat and messenger). His master, a
count, has sent him to negotiate the dowry for the marriage of his (the count's) daughter to the duke, whose "last
duchess" is the subject of his speech - and of the poem. While having her portrait painted, the duchess revealed
innocent qualities that irritated the duke so far, that he chose to have her killed. His power is absolute, and she is
easily replaced. But the portrait, by a master painter, is of far more value to the duke, and he is pleased to show
this off to his distinguished visitor. The critic Isobel Armstrong sums up the poem like this:

"The mad duke...cannot love without so possessing and destroying the identity of his wife that he literally kills her
and lives with her dead substitute, a work of art."

Her reading may be right - but are we sure the duke is mad? Perhaps he is sane but very cruel and ruthless. The
duke names two artists - both imaginary. They are the painter Frà (Brother) Pandolf and the sculptor Claus of
Innsbruck. The poem may draw on a literary tradition of despotic Italians (as we find in John Webster's play, The
Duchess of Malfi or John Keats' poem, Isabella). But it is not so improbable - Dante, in the Inferno (Hell) recalls
various true stories about Italian nobles which match or surpass (outdo) this for cruelty.

The poem in detail

Browning opens with the Duke's words to his guest. He explains why he has named the painter, and that the
portrait is kept behind a curtain which he alone is permitted to draw back. And when he does this, he notes how
the viewer is curious but perhaps frightened to ask about the thing that puzzles him. We see that this visitor is not
the first to "ask" in this way.

So what is it that the viewer sees? It is a "spot of joy" in the cheek of the duchess. The duke tries to imagine what
the painter said that would cause this slight reaction. The duke does not object to the artist's showing such
courtesy. But he thinks his wife should be more dignified - and not so easily "impressed". Specifically he faults her
for finding equal pleasure in four things - as if they are not at all of equal value.

These are:

• his "favour at her breast" - either a reference to their love-making or merely to the duke's approval of her
appearance
• the sun setting
 40
• a gift of fruit from an unnamed courtier
• the white mule she rode

The duke accepts that it was good for her to show gratitude, but bad that she ranked "anybody's gift" with his
giving her his family name (nine hundred years old).

The duke considers the possibility of explaining to her why she was wrong. He notes that he lacks the "skill in
speech" to make his will "quite clear to such an one". But anyway, he would not try even if he had the skill,
because this would be a loss of dignity - "some stooping". And he chooses "never to stoop". Instead he let her
carry on for a while - "this grew" - then "gave commands". We are not told what the commands were but can work
them out from the result. This appears in three things:

• the statement that all smiles stopped - this may at first seem ambiguous, and we think it is because she
had reason to be serious or unhappy. Then we realize that the duke means that all smiles and everything
else stopped for the duchess
• the repeated statement that the duchess, in the painting "stands/As if alive" - but she isn't
• the sequel - the duke needs or wants a wife, and is arranging his next marriage. He praises the Count's
known generosity while stressing that it is the wife, rather than the dowry, that he really wants.

The poem's ending recalls its beginning - as the duke points out another treasure. A bronze sculpture of Neptune
(the Roman god of the sea, called Poseidon by the Greeks) taming a sea-horse. This is like the start of the poem.
But it is also quite unlike it - Frà Pandolf's masterpiece is a portrait of a real person, to whom the duke was
married - yet she is never named, only identified by her relation to the duke. Claus's bronze is of a fantastic,
remote and mythical subject. Yet to the duke they may seem of equal value, since he mentions them in the same
breath.

The poet's method

This is an amazingly skilful poem - there is one speaker, yet we learn about four characters:

• the duke
• the duchess
• the visitor (the count's envoy)
• the painter, Frà Pandolf

One of the reasons why Browning likes the monologue so much, is that he is able to exploit the gap between what
the speaker (within the poem) wants us to know, and what the poet (standing outside the poem) allows us to read
between the lines. What things do we (as readers) learn here, that the duke does not mean to tell his visitor?

In one way the piece is very unlike most lyric poetry - there are no notable metaphors or similes. All the images
are of things that are literally present, or that the duke recalls from his memory of the past. Check this for yourself.

The poem is very conventional in form - it uses the line that Shakespeare relies on for most of the dialogue in his
plays (the technical name is the iambic pentameter - as it has five [Latin penta] poetic "feet", each of which has
two syllables, of which the second [usually] is stressed). In this poem Browning arranges the lines in rhyming
pairs, which we call "couplets". Like Shakespeare (and later writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth),
Browning makes the lines run on - or if you prefer he does not end stop them. The technical name for this is
enjambement ("using the legs" in French). What does this mean, and why should Browning do it?

• What it means mainly is that most punctuation marks appear within the lines (not at the end) and most
lines end without a punctuation mark.
• What it also means is that, when you read the poem (aloud or in your head) you should not stop at the
end of a line, but should pause or stop at any punctuation mark.
• Browning does it because rhyming couplets that stopped at the end of each line would seem mechanical
and not at all like real speech - and he wants the poem to sound natural. Of course, this is only a matter
of feeling - if we look closely we will realize that even the cleverest speakers would not really be able to
speak fluently in couplets.

Ambiguity and irony

This poem is one in which the relationship between appearance and reality is important - if you prefer, between
what things seem and what they really are.
 41
• On the surface it is an account of a polite negotiation between two noblemen, enlivened by the host's
decision to show his privileged guest a masterpiece by a great portrait painter (something few visitors
would be allowed to see: notice that the portrait is not in a public area but upstairs - at the end of the
poem the duke speaks of going "down"), and to recount something of its subject, his previous wife.
• Beneath the surface is a terrible story of ruthless and despotic power - of the duke's disapproval of the
natural and innocent behaviour of his naïve wife, who does not know the value of his great name. We are
less sure about the artist - does Frà Pandolf know, or care about, these things? And equally we are
unsure how the listener, the duke's honoured guest, feels about what he hears.

Sometimes we find that the lines have more to say than at first appears - we call this ellipsis, when something is
missed out. Look at the following examples from the poem, and say what you think they mean in full - if you like,
fill in any blanks that Browning has left for the reader:

• "Her looks went everywhere"

• "I choose/Never to stoop"
• "This grew"
• "I gave commands"
• "All smiles stopped together"

Pronouns, possessives and other forms of address

The only named characters in the poem are the two artists. The duchess and count are known only by their titles
while the rest of the time, like the duke and his guest, they are identified by pronouns - look for the first person
pronouns (I and me) for the duke, the second person (you) for the envoy, and the third-person (she and her) for
the duchess. We also find the possessive "my" occurring quite frequently.

Browning finds other ways to avoiding using names - to show the duchess's lack of dignity he calls her "such an
one", while his bride-to-be, mentioned well after her father, the count, is "his fair daughter's self". The envoy is
"sir" repeatedly and (polite) "you", not intimate or familiar "thou" and "thee". This is courteous but marks the
listener as the duke's social inferior - to a more eminent man or an equal he would use some such form as "your
grace", "your highness" or "my lord".

Ideas for studying the poem

Reading the poem

This poem is quite long and not very easy for reading when you first meet it. But you need to see it whole in order
to get a sense of the narrative. Perhaps the best way is for a teacher (or any other good actor or reader) to
present the poem in a complete reading - while students listen initially. (If you can't do this live, get a good
recording on audiotape.) This could be repeated, perhaps allowing students to see the text. But they will need
something to help them sort out what happens - either to make their own bullet points, or to arrange a series of
statements about the poem into a sequence. You could take the same statements and organize them, for
instance, in these differing ways:

• the order in which they appear in the poem

• the order in which they really happened
• their importance to the reader of the poem or the duke in the poem

This is not a poem for students to approach for the first time in an exam - and it will be hard for some to keep a
sense of what is going on in it. Many readers will have problems with the cultural setting, though readers from
some ethnic groups will be familiar with the idea of arranged marriages and dowries.

Possessions and girl power

Remember that this poem is not a real historical record. Some Italian Renaissance rulers did have great power -
but we also know of scheming and powerful women (such as the poisoner Lucrezia Borgia). Do you think the
poem depicts a common or very unusual situation? Even today we talk of "trophy wives", and we know of some
men who want to show off portraits of their wives or girlfriends.

In the modern western world the law protects wives from such treatment, but both men and women have a way of
getting rid of their partners through divorce.
 42
The case against the duke

The duke never says openly or unambiguously that he killed his wife or ordered anyone else to kill her. Go
through the poem and note down any clues to her fate. You may wish to put them under these different headings:

• what the duke and his servants did

• how he or they did it
• when and where this happened
• why it happened

Alternatively one could write a psychological profile of the duke - perhaps trying to establish whether he is mad or
bad, or both at once.

Robert Browning: The Laboratory

About the poem

This piece, like My Last Duchess, comes from the 1842 collection, Dramatic Lyrics. It has a similar subject - a
person who kills (or is about to kill) her rival, in the presence of her lover - who appears to be connected to the
speaker in some way - perhaps her husband or an ex-lover who has spurned her for the rival who is soon to die. It
is in the form of a monologue, and once more the silent listener is important, too. He is an expert in poisons (like
the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet) who sells his services to a wealthy woman. The subtitle (ANCIEN RÉGIME)
refers to an older form of rule or government - suggesting that the speaker comes from a past age. We do not
know for certain that the speaker is female - but this is suggested by the things, listed in the fifth stanza, in which
she will carry her poison ("...an earring, a casket/A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket..."), and by her offering a
kiss to the poisoner, when he has finished his work. The poem recalls the saying that "Hell has no fury like a
woman scorned". Browning explores the jealousy and vengefulness of someone disappointed in love.

The poem in detail

The poem opens with the speaker's putting on a mask, so she can see, with safety, the old man at work. She is
curious, wondering which is "the poison" - either which is the best one for the job, or which is the one the old man
has chosen. She speaks of "her" - we assume that this is a rival, but it is not yet clear. The second stanza
suggests this more strongly, as we learn that "he" (an unspecified man) "is with her" and that "they know that I
[the speaker] know", where they are and what they are doing. They think she is miserable because of their scorn
and has gone to pray in a church - whereas she is angry and vengeful. The jealous speaker finds more pleasure,
she says, in watching the old poisoner at work, than in being at the royal court where men wait on her. And she
expresses her curiosity by asking about the poisonous substances - like the gum in the "mortar" (the pot in which
the poisoner will grind things to powder, using a pestle). She asks about the small glass container (phial) and
notes the beautiful colour of the deadly liquid in it.

The speaker has begun with a specific purpose - of poisoning one person - but now she indulges in a fantasy of
carrying many different poisons, and giving them out liberally - perhaps at the court, where she imagines killing
two women (named as Pauline and Elise). We assume that neither of these is her real intended victim, since this
woman is never named elsewhere but always identified by the pronouns "she" and "her". (Maybe the man whose
attentions now fall on the rival has also favoured Pauline and Elise at some time.)

When the poison is ready, the speaker seems disappointed

• first, that it is not as bright as the blue liquid in the phial, and
• second, that the dose is too little for such a powerful character, who ensnares men and has a
"magnificent" control over the sex.

The speaker reveals that she has tried to face up to her rival conventionally, but without effect. And now she
thinks, too, that she wants her victim to suffer and the lover to "remember her dying face". She wants also to
remove the mask, once there is no danger to her, so that she can see closely the "delicate droplet" the poisoner
has prepared. The poem ends with an invitation to the old poisoner to kiss the jealous client - though with a
sudden afterthought, that first she should brush off the dust that has settled on her, in case this inadvertently kills
her.

As with My Last Duchess, we form a vivid sense of the speaker, but it is not always clear and we have less clear
ideas about anyone else here. We see something of the old man at work, and sense his greed for gain, as he
helps himself to the client's jewels and gold. We also the speaker's view of "her" - the rival, a scornful and
 43
manipulative woman, who seems not to care for, or worry about, whatever the rejected "minion" might do to
retaliate. And there are even fewer details about "him" - the man who prefers the rival. But we do not trust that
these people are exactly as the speaker presents them.

She shows something of herself - she appears to be wealthy and mixes in the highest society. But she is very
different from the Duke of Ferrara, who merely speaks a word, and silences his wife forever. This character is
personally weak - unable to use her position or forceful speech to change her situation. She does not use open
enmity - yet resorts to stealth. She cannot keep a man's love, but almost flirts with the old man who mixes the
poison - she offers him a kiss, as if she were voluptuous and desirable, but we know that she cannot compete
with her rival.

When she calls herself "little" and a "minion", she perhaps tries to show what others think of her.

The poet's method

The poem is written in twelve stanzas, all of four lines, rhymed AABB. The metre is anapaestic (two unstressed
syllables, followed by a stressed one) - and this creates a rather jaunty effect, which seems unsuited to the
poem's subject, if we take it too seriously. But Browning intends the poem to be perhaps almost comic, over the
top and melodramatic - it has some of the qualities of a popular horror film, where the characters and situations
are grotesque and outrageous.

This rollicking, lively effect is reinforced by the frequent alliteration - "moisten and mash...pound at thy powder".

Browning repeatedly points up the contrast between the luxury and opulence of the court and the grimness of the
laboratory. At the same time, the speaker makes a comparison between conventional jewels that adorn the
person, and the idea of special jewellery to hold deadly poisons - "an earring, a casket...a filigree basket".
Perhaps Browning expects the reader to make the connection between the evil of the poison in the jewels and the
idea that ordinary wealth (gold) is the root of all evils.

He revels in an exotic vocabulary (a special lexicon) both of the poison laboratory and of precious jewels -
"mortar", "gum", "gold oozings", "phial", "lozenge" and "pastile".

There is also some incongruity between the formal politeness of the speaker, saying "prithee", and the grim
nature of her request.

The poem will appeal to contemporary readers with its gothic qualities - we find these, before Browning, in prose
fiction like the English gothic novel and the American gothic of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, which depict sick
or unbalanced characters, often without passing a judgement. Nowadays we are used to novels and films that
show us these abnormal mental states. The speaker in the poem would be more disturbing if we took her more
seriously. And Browning also contrives the situation so that we care little for her intended victim - the revenge may
be excessive, but "she" seems to invite some such violent punishment.

Responding to the poem

What happens next?

We know more or less what the speaker is planning. But we may not be too convinced that she will succeed in
getting her revenge. And even if she does, will she escape detection or punishment? Will she be content to see
"her" die in pain? Write an account of the sequel, using any form you think best suited for this. You could do it for
example, as

• the script for a film, TV, radio or stage drama (you may use the conventions of the horror genre)
• a report by the chief of police, after the killing has happened
• a series of entries in diaries kept by the speaker or the old man from the laboratory

The hated rival

Browning does not show directly, though he hints at, what the woman is like for whom the poison is intended. Her
own view of her situation might be very different.

• Maybe she thinks the man is trapped in an unhappy relationship with a spiteful or weak woman.
• Maybe she is not so scornful, and has taken a lover because she is looking for support or rescue.
 44
On the other hand, perhaps she is every bit as nasty and self-indulgent as the speaker thinks she is. Write as a
prose or verse monologue her view of things - how she sees her lover and her weak rival. Maybe she, too, is
planning something unpleasant for the speaker about which she knows nothing.

An immoral poem?

The Laboratory does not fit modern ideas about Victorian values - which are usually depicted as virtuous, and
concerned with happy family relationships. Browning, whose home life with his wife was mostly very happy, is
careful to set his more extreme poems in past times and civilizations (he does so, for instance, in My Last
Duchess and other pieces like Porphyria's Lover and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came). We are used,
perhaps, to poetry that presents good or healthy emotions, such as romantic love or the grief of a parent. But we
may be less comfortable with a poem like this one, that seems sick and tasteless in its choice of subject and the
way Browning develops it. What is your view of this? Are there limits to how bad a character can be? Should a
poet try to explore, say, the mind of Adolf Hitler? (Both the Italian poet Dante and the English poet John Milton
test these limits: Dante describes various damned spirits in Hell, while Milton presents the thoughts of Satan. In
practice, Dante's wicked men and women are far more horrible, in thought and deed, than Milton's Devil.)

Alfred Tennyson: Ulysses

About the poet

Tennyson (1809-1892) is usually known by his title Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was born in Somersby,
Lincolnshire, where his father was the rector (a clergyman). Alfred was one of twelve children, of whom two
became insane and one an alcoholic. He studied at Louth Grammar School, before going up to Trinity College,
Cambridge. Here he met Arthur Hallam, who was to be his closest friend. Tennyson published his first collection,
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830, and a second, Poems, in 1832 - a collection that includes the celebrated The
Lady of Shalott. The poems did not at first achieve popular success, though many other writers admired
Tennyson and encouraged him. Despite opposition from his father (who looked down on the Tennysons), Arthur
Hallam became engaged to Alfred's sister, Emily. In September of 1833, while travelling in Vienna, Hallam died of
a sudden haemorrhage. Tennyson was devastated, but began to write the series of elegies that would eventually
be published as In Memoriam A.H.H. ("AHH" are the initials of Arthur Hugh Hallam). In 1836, Alfred became
engaged to Emily Sellwood, but after four years, her parents made her break off the engagement.

In 1842, Tennyson published another collection, again called simply Poems, in two volumes. From this point on
his reputation, and sales of his work, grew steadily. In 1850, Tennyson published his long collection of elegies, In
Memoriam. At first it came out anonymously, but readers soon found out who the author was, and the poem sold
60,000 copies within the year. Tennyson had remained faithful to Emily, who had encouraged him with In
Memoriam, and had suggested the title. He proposed to her again, that same year, and two weeks after In
Memoriam appeared, they married.

Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, admired Tennyson's work, and, almost certainly through his
influence, the queen offered Alfred the post of Poet Laureate that had fallen vacant when Wordsworth died in
1850. In 1852, Alfred and Emily had a son, whom they named Hallam. Another, Lionel, was born in 1853. In this
year, the Tennysons moved to Farringford on the Isle of Wight, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Tennyson was now established and secure. He published many more lyrics and some longer works. He had
earlier written poems based on the Arthurian legends, and he now began a series of long poems on this subject.
The first volume of Idylls of the King, as he named the work, came out in 1859, but Tennyson added more poems
throughout his life. Tennyson was a generous man, and all who met him came to like him. When Prince Albert
died in 1861, Tennyson wrote a new preface for Idylls of the King, dedicated to the prince's memory. The queen
invited Tennyson to visit her, and told him how she drew comfort, after Albert's death, from In Memoriam. In 1883
she conferred on him an honour no poet had ever received, by making him a peer. When Tennyson lay dying in
1892, the last thing he asked to see was a volume of Shakespeare's works. In the mid 20th century, Tennyson's
reputation suffered as he was unfairly linked to Victorian "establishment" values. But he is certainly among the
finest of all English poets.

About the poem

Ulysses was written about 1840 and published in the Poems of 1842 - the same year as Browning's Dramatic
Lyrics. It depicts the character usually known as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and hero of Homer's Odyssey.
Tennyson uses the Latin form of his name - perhaps in imitation of other writers. One is Dante, the great
mediaeval Italian poet, whose Inferno (Hell) contains an account (in Canto 26) of the last voyage of Ulysses, on
which Tennyson draws for his poem. Another is Shakespeare, who presents Ulysses in his play Troilus and
Cressida. The Odyssey ends with Odysseus's return to claim his home and rescue his wife from many suitors,
 45
who believe Odysseus to be dead. In this poem, many more years have passed. Bored with his life, Ulysses
seeks adventure again by making a last voyage, from which he does not expect to return.

The poem in detail

This poem is another dramatic monologue. The speaker is a well-known mythical character - yet there is
something of the real Tennyson here. In the first section of the poem, Ulysses sums up his situation and reasons
for wanting to travel - he has little to do, his wife is old, his people unresponsive and brutal. Either they are
ignorant of who he is, or, more probably, "they know not me" means that they do not recognize his authority.
(Tennyson does not mention her name, but he would expect his readers to know that Ulysses' wife is Penelope.)

The second section is quite puzzling - you should know that many scholars have different ideas about what it
means. But we know that Ulysses praises experience while deciding that he cannot simply to "store and hoard"
this - especially when he stills wants to find things out which are (till now) "beyond the utmost bound of human
thought". He has seen a lot and he is "a part of all" that he has "met" - yet it is stupid (the old meaning of "dull") to
come to "an end" when he can still be active.

The third section is much more clear. The ruler has a duty to his people - but he has passed this on to his son,
Telemachus. Ulysses loves him, and thinks he will be a far better ruler - he is thoughtful and prudent, and has the
patience (which Ulysses lacks) to change the people gradually. Telemachus has a strong sense of duty and will
not neglect to worship the gods of his household. But in any case, says Ulysses, this is now Telemachus's "work",
while he, Ulysses, has his own work to do.

The fourth section sees Ulysses make ready to set sail. He speaks affectionately to inspire the loyal sailors who
have travelled with him before, and who have chosen, as "free hearts", to join in the last adventure. This will be
"some work of noble note", something appropriate to "men that strove with Gods". His purpose is to sail
westwards - "beyond the sunset", looking for a "newer world". He sees that he is risking death ("the gulfs will wash
us down") but he may also reach the place where the dead go, and "see the great Achilles whom we knew".

The poem ends with a statement of brave acceptance of whatever fate has to offer - sometimes called stoical,
after an ancient school of philosophy. (This is an idea that Tennyson develops in In Memoriam - which, in a way
modern readers will understand, hesitates between the hope of heaven and the sense that the dead are gone
forever, and that we must endure this hard truth. From this Tennyson moves to a sense of determination to live
with purpose, and an inclusive love for all mankind.) Finally, we should be "strong in will", the will, that is, to
"strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The poet's method

The form of the poem

The poem is written in the iambic pentameter line familiar from the plays of Shakespeare. The lines are not
rhymed at the end, and we call this blank verse. Tennyson is the most fluent of writers and he is comfortable with
end-stopped and run-on lines.

Rhetoric

The poem uses several tricks of rhetoric - to make speaking memorable and persuasive. We find antithesis
(contrasting phrases) in:

• "I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/Life to the lees" or in

• "to rust unburnished, not to shine in use".

The poem is also decorated with lines one can take out of their context, and use almost as proverbs:

• "I am a part of all that I have met..."

• "...all experience is an arch..."
• "How dull it is to pause, to make an end..."
• "Death closes all..."
• "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world..."
• "...that which we are, we are."

Ulysses' manner of speaking here often recalls the rhetoric of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.
 46
Imagery

Metaphor and simile abound in the poem: experience is an arch, inactivity is like rusting while action is like
burnishing (polishing; a very apt image as it suggests the warriors' armour that is burnished for use, or left to rust)
and Ulysses' spirit is "gray" and yearns with desire to "follow knowledge like a sinking star/Beyond the utmost
bound of human thought" (a very complex series of images - try to visualise them, and you will realise this). How
many more images can you find, what do they mean, and how do they work?

Ambiguity and double meanings

Ulysses would not know of the open ocean beyond the great sea (which we call the Mediterranean) - nor that
there is land to the west. And no Greek ship, had it passed into the Atlantic, could safely have reached America.
But Tennyson (like his readers), of course, does know there is land here, and that the voyage is possible, if
dangerous.

Ulysses wonders if he may find again the great hero, Achilles, whom he has not seen, since his death when Troy
fell. Many readers think that Tennyson identifies "the great Achilles" with his own lost friend, Arthur Hallam.

Notes on the poem

• The Hyades were the daughters of the giant Atlas, changed into the cluster of stars (in the constellation of
Taurus) that bears their name. According to legend, when these stars rise with the sun, then rain will
follow - so for the sailor king Ulysses they are a sign of wet weather.
• Troy was a city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Paris, a prince of Troy, abducted Helen, wife of the Greek
king Menelaus. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, led an army of rulers and warriors from all the cities
and islands of Greece, which sailed to Troy to bring Helen back by force. The long struggle that followed,
recorded in Homer's Iliad, we call the Trojan War.
• Achilles was the greatest of all the Greek warriors. He quarrelled with Agamemnon, and refused to fight.
Agamemnon persuaded Achilles' best friend, Patroclus, to fight against Hector, the Trojan champion.
When Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles decided to fight again, and killed Hector. Achilles mother, the
nymph Thetis, had dipped her baby son in the river Styx, to make him invulnerable. But she held him by
his heel. And when the Greeks finally stormed Troy, Paris fired an arrow that struck Achilles in the heel,
wounding him fatally.
• The illustration in the AQA Anthology is a vague outline of a sailing ship that Tennyson might have seen
in the mid 19th century - a barque or windjammer perhaps. It might be appropriate to Whitman's Patroling
Barnegat, but is certainly nothing like any vessel that Odysseus might have sailed in, almost three
thousand years ago.

Oliver Goldsmith: The Village Schoolmaster

About the poet

Oliver Goldsmith (?1728-74) was born in Ireland. (We are not sure of the year, as it is missing from the record, in
the family bible, of his birth - but it must have been before 1730.) He began to attend Trinity College, Dublin,
where he was unhappy. In 1752 an uncle paid for him to study medicine at Edinburgh. In 1756 he became an
apothecary's assistant in London. For most of his life, he was very poor - a condition not helped by his compulsive
gambling. He became a friend of the great Dr. Johnson (poet, philosopher, critic and author of the first
authoritative English dictionary) who helped him in his career, and of the artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Goldsmith
eventually achieved success in prose fiction (with his 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield), in drama (with his 1773
play She Stoops to Conquer) and in poetry. The Deserted Village (1770) is the most successful of his many
poems.

About the poem

This is not really a whole poem but an extract from Goldsmith's long poem The Deserted Village, which runs to
430 lines. In the opening line of the complete poem, Goldsmith names the village as "sweet Auburn" - but the
original on which it is modelled was, according to the poet's sister, Lissoy, in County Westmeath, Ireland.

This passage is a portrait of a teacher at the village school. The poet is looking back on a time when the village
was lively and active whereas now no one lives there. (Goldsmith's readers knew this as a reality - changes in
land ownership, coupled with new job opportunities in machine production, had caused people to move from the
country to the cities, leaving many villages without people.) In doing so, Goldsmith represents the past as a kind
of golden age - a better, kinder and happier time, certainly. Here he expresses admiration for the village teacher.
 47
He lists his personal qualities and gives details of the master's learning. But above all he shows how the
schoolmaster belonged in his place - having the affection and respect of the whole community.

The poem in detail

Goldsmith identifies the site of the school, in the way he might point it out to a visitor, as beside a fence
("straggling" perhaps, because no-one maintains it now). "Noisy mansion" is partly ironic - the school building
would be modest, not really a "mansion" (a luxurious house) except to the teacher and scholars, who would be
used to tiny cottages or hovels. The teacher is outwardly strict, and the scholars learn to respond to his moods
(some things do not change much). But he is really kind. Among his accomplishments are literacy ("he could
write") and numeracy ("and cipher"). He could measure distances on charts, calculate dates and forecast tides.
People believe that he can "gauge" (survey land or estimate its area) - but we do not know if the belief is justified.
Most impressive, the village parson recognized his ability to argue. The less educated country people were full of
wonder that "one small head could carry" so much. To the reader, his learning will seem quite limited, but also not
especially academic, as we would now call it. Much of what the teacher knows or is rumoured to know is of
immediate practical usefulness - like working out dates, tides and land areas.

The poet's method

The form of this poem is very distinctive. It uses the iambic pentameter line, arranged in rhyming couplets, in a
long sequence of the kind that we call discursive - it moves from one mini-subject to another, in a carefully-
organized whole. This is a popular form for most of the 18th century, though Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Middle
Ages, used it most effectively. But with it goes something else - a style that is formed out of a very specialised
vocabulary, as well as distinctive kinds of word order. Goldsmith and his contemporaries mostly shared the view
that poetry - being a special kind of writing - needed its own distinctive style or diction, as they called it. This
meant avoiding certain words that were considered common or vulgar, and using instead more suitable words,
ideally from the classical languages of Greek and Latin, such as "rustics" for country people. It also meant putting
adverbs or adverb phrases before the verbs they describe - as Goldsmith does when he writes of the pupils "Full
well they laughed". And it meant sometimes putting the object before the verb, as in "Lands he could measure".

The other feature is a very delicate irony. Goldsmith is sincere in his admiration, and he does think that the
teacher is a good and worthy man. But he reveals that this object of the villagers' wonder was really quite limited
in his achievements. The villagers think it marvellous that he can write and count, for example - but this tells us
more about them than about him. The great importance of the parson as a judge of ability appears, too. (If the
parson says it, then it must be true.) Most revealing is the way that the schoolmaster impressed people in
argument - by using "words of learned length and thundering sound". (This could almost be a criticism of poetic
diction, too.) That is, he did not win by logic or reason, but through using words that baffled the hearer. There are
still people who find this impressive, but nowadays we are often unconvinced by those who hide a weak argument
behind impressive-sounding words. Moreover, the fact that most of the village people seem to remain ignorant
rustics may mean that the schoolmaster has never succeeded in passing on much of his learning to the scholars.

We also note the formal use of contrast - one pair of lines beginning "Full well" shows how the scholars would
know when to laugh (even pretending to find his jokes funny), while the next pair shows how they knew when he
was in a more severe mood.

You will find many lines in which the word order differs from that in natural speech or non-literary prose:
Goldsmith has "a man severe he was", where we would naturally say "he was a severe man". We find the
specialized diction in "yon" ("yon...fence" is "that fence yonder or over there"), "boding tremblers" (pupils shaking
with foreboding), "dismal" (an overstatement), "aught" (for anything) and "cipher" (for doing arithmetic).

The portrait of the village idealizes life in the country. As people moved into cities to take up work in factories, we
can suppose that they had reasons for doing so. Given that this life was quite harsh, too, it is hard to believe that
they were leaving behind a very happy existence - in truth they would, in the country, have worked long hours, for
poor pay amid the most basic of circumstances. But so long as ordinary country people remained illiterate, or if
literate, had no way to publish their own stories, then well-meaning people like Goldsmith could speak for them
and make things seem better than they really were. (Some of these educated middle class writers are more ready
to tell the truth, like Jonathan Swift and William Blake, both of whom in different ways, revealed the misery and
harshness of the lives of common people. Later in the next (19th) century, as literacy spread, many writers would
find ways to describe the plight of ordinary working people.

Ideas for studying the poem

Inspecting the schoolmaster

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In Britain today, teachers (like many workers) find their performance being measured by other people (like
school managers and governors or inspectors). It seems clear that Goldsmith thinks highly of the village
schoolmaster. But how well would he do in an inspection?

Using evidence in the poem, write an evaluation of his work - looking at things like

• his subject knowledge,

• his classroom management,
• his teaching styles,
• his relations with the pupils, and
• his ability to help them achieve their own success.

Role models

Goldsmith presents a picture of an ordered society in which everyone knows his or her place, and most people
live up to the expectations of those around them. (There probably never was such a society anywhere, but the
idea has haunted mankind for thousands of years at least.) And in this happy village, the schoolmaster occupies
an honoured position.

Who are people that you most admire in the society in which you live? Why is this? Are your role models those
people who look after themselves and pursue things like wealth and fame or do you prefer those who put things
back into society rather than take from it?

Talk or write about this, either by referring to real named individuals, or to groups and categories of people - like
police officers, fire officers, teachers, nurses, van drivers, shop assistants and so on. You might like to give a
score out of ten, or place them in some kind of order to show how much or little you respect what they do or stand
for.

Change and continuity

In some ways this portrait from the 18th century would still ring true to school pupils in the 21st century - while
other things have changed massively. Look closely at the poem and make a list of similarities and differences
between Goldsmith's Village Schoolmaster and any teachers that you have known.

Alfred Tennyson: The Eagle

About the poem

The Eagle was published in 1851. Tennyson subtitles it as a Fragment - at a mere six lines, it is certainly a very
short poem. In it the poet depicts the eagle in extreme terms as a powerful force of nature. Modern readers, used
to air travel or to seeing images and films recorded at altitude, may find the viewpoint almost familiar - but
Tennyson, who lived before the age of the aeroplane, imagines this vividly, without ever having seen it. He must
surely, however, have visited some area with very high mountains, in order to know things like the way the sea
appears to move slowly when seen from a great height.

The poem in detail

The poem tells us of a series of things the eagle does. We see him clinging to the mountain crag, high up near the
sun and surrounded by the blue sky. He looks down on the sea, moving slowly below him, still watches, then -
which is perhaps the point of the poem - falls like lightning on his unspecified prey.

The poet's method

The poem, though short, is on a grand scale in its vocabulary - in six lines, Tennyson mentions the sun, the azure
world (presumably the eagle's blue domain of the sky), the sea, a crag and a mountain - finally likening the eagle
to the lightning (the thunderbolt - the bolt, that is, that comes with the thunder).

The bird of prey is presented anthropomorphically (in human terms) - never "it" or "the eagle" (outside the title) but
always "he", and the talons are "crooked hands", rather than claws.

The poem is made up of a series of verbs or verb phrases that depict the eagle's action - "he clasps the crag...he
stands...he watches...he falls".
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The poem is written in iambic metre but with four feet in each line (tetrameter) - and there are only two rhymes,
one for all three line-endings in each of the two stanzas. In a longer poem, this might be irritating, but in such a
short piece it is not too obvious to the reader.

Ideas for studying the poem

More fragments

Choose some other subjects from the natural world (animals, plants, weather features) and write short verse or
pose descriptions, perhaps adapting Tennyson's style.

Why is the eagle "he"?

Does Tennyson simply use "he" for convenience? Or does the poem only work if we suppose that the eagle is a
male? Change the pronoun to "she" and read it several times. Does this make a difference to how we read the
poem? If so, what is this? This is a good subject for discussion in a small group - to see if our ideas of power and
majesty are in any way connected to our ideas of make and female, and how far this applies not just to human
society, but to animals.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Inversnaid

About the poet

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was the eldest of eight children of a marine insurer. Gerard was educated at
Highgate School, then at Oxford, where he was converted to Roman Catholicism, and became a Jesuit priest. He
studied theology in Wales, and then served as a parish priest in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow and
Chesterfield. Hopkins taught at Stonyhurst School from 1882 to 84, when he was appointed Professor of Greek at
University College, Dublin. He kept this post till his early death of typhoid fever. In his lifetime he published very
little of his poetry, and was not well known until later. In 1918, his friend and literary executor, the Poet Laureate,
Robert Bridges, brought out an edition of Hopkins's poems, which met with immediate success. He is regarded as
a great technical innovator, chiefly for his use of metre - though the form associated with him (he calls it "sprung
rhythm") is found in Old and Middle English poetry.

Hopkins writes with a sense of total faith in God. Unlike Wordsworth, who seeks to explore his own mind, Hopkins
seeks ways in his poetry to praise God, and to celebrate God's glory in the creation of the natural world. He only
introduces himself into the poems in order to address God or consider the divine purpose.

Hopkins explained his views by the idea of inscape (a word of his invention), which means something like the
divine pattern and underlying form and oneness of natural things. When one sees into this underlying order and
unity, then one experiences what Hopkins calls instress. This may seem a strange idea to modern man, but some
of Wordsworth's poetry reveals a similar thought, while the Biblical Psalms repeatedly tell us how God's glory is
found in nature.

About the poem

Hopkins gives the date of this poem as September 1881. It celebrates the wild beauty of Inversnaid in the Scottish
Highlands, which overlooks Loch Lomond. In three stanzas, Hopkins describes the features of the place, then in
the final stanza he makes a plea for keeping the wild places. He has asked the question of what the world would
be without them - a question he does not answer, though he suggests that the world would be less wonderful than
it is, without these wilderness places - an idea which (perhaps for slightly different reasons) has a strong appeal in
our own times.

The poem in detail

The first stanza describes a burn or stream which is brown - perhaps because it is shaded ("darksome") and
perhaps because it is so turbulent that there is silt in it - till it goes over a waterfall ("roaring down" the "rollrock
highroad") and falling "home" to the lake below.

In the second stanza, Hopkins notes the contrast of the delicate froth over the seething water ("broth") of a dark
whirlpool - as if light and airy things can survive in a place that would be fatal to man. And the third stanza
describes the dew sprinkled on the hillsides through which the burn passes, where one can see tufts of heather
and fern and the berries on the ash tree.
 50
In the final stanza Hopkins asks the question, What would the world be without the wild places? (We
sometimes call such questions that are asked for effect, but without an expectation of an answer, "rhetorical" -
because they are common in rhetoric or public speaking). In place of an answer he makes a repeated plea for
them to be left, leading to the triumphant wish for them to live long - a statement we are used to hearing made
about a person, but perhaps not about "weeds" and "wilderness".

The poem is consistent in that the poet refers only to natural things or features of the Highland landscape, and he
does not introduce himself into the scene, other than in the direct appeal to the reader in the questions of the last
stanza.

The final line of the second stanza is puzzling. Perhaps he sees the "pitchblack" pool as an image of absolute
"Despair" (almost like Hell). But it may be quite the reverse, that the pool, paradoxically, is so dark, in the frown
(shadow) of the fells, that it drowns "Despair" itself. Certainly most of the poem shows nature as a source of
inspiration and optimism.

Hopkins explains some of the vocabulary in a notebook, saying that "coop" means "enclosed space" or "water
cooped up", while "comb" means "water combing freely over stones". Of the words he does not explain, a "burn"
(a Scots noun) is a brook. "Twindles" is a portmanteau word (it mixes several existing words) from "twists",
"twitches" and "dwindles". "Degged" is a dialect term for sprinkled, while a "brae" (another Scots word) is a hillside
or bank. "Heathpacks" are packs or patches of heather. And "flitches" are clumps or tufts (here of fern), though
the noun usually means a slice or sheet of something, and is most familiar as a cut of bacon (the side of a pig).
"Beadbonny" is one of Hopkins' inventions - presumably meaning that the ash tree is "bonny" (pretty) with beads
(the red berries on the mountain ash).

Perhaps more difficult is the "windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth". This is something light enough for the wind to blow it
- either literal froth on the pool, or perhaps a wind-borne seed. But why “fawn”? Is this a reference to the animal
(the young of the deer), that one might see in this Highland location? Does the fawn produce froth of some kind?

Hilary Read, a teacher, suggests a more straightforward explanation, which seems plausible:

“Isn't 'fawn' simply referring to the colour? The frothing water is brownish. Hopkins uses a hyphen because it isn't
just froth which is fawn: the colour is integral to the froth, part of its uniqueness and inscape.”

Whatever the source of the term, "fawn-froth" suggests the lightness and delicacy of this foam, teetering on the
brink of the fearsome waterfall.

The poet's method

Hopkins is well known for his use of sprung rhythm. (This has a regular number of stressed syllables in any line,
but allows for more variation in the unstressed syllables.) But Inversnaid uses a more conventional anapaestic
metre. The four-line stanzas (quatrains) each have a basic AABB rhyme scheme. One line has internal rhyme:

"In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam..."

(Where the first rhyme word comes at a break in the middle of the line, it is called Leonine rhyme, after a 12th
century Latin poet called Leo, who used this device.)

The poem uses interesting sound effects, and Hopkins surely intends it to be read aloud or "heard" with the
mind's ear. It is quite difficult to read aloud as it has many tongue-twisting passages to challenge the reader. We
find this mostly in assonance and alliteration - repeating of both vowel and consonant sounds.

The argument of the poem is simply shown in its structure - three stanzas of description, followed by one in which
the poet reflects on the value of natural beauty.

But the most obvious technical feature that marks Hopkins' verse is his vocabulary. This is not the special lexicon
of poetic diction, but a readiness to play with words and invent new ones - relying on the sound to suggest the
meaning. For example, we do not need to know what "twindles" means (in a dictionary sense) to imagine the froth
on the pool that Hopkins describes in the second stanza. This is just as well, because we will not find "twindles" in
most dictionaries. Other inventions include "rollrock", "fawn-froth", "heathpacks" and "beadbonny".

Hopkins does not only invent words, but also uses dialect terms, particularly those spoken by people living near
Inversnaid, like "burn" and "brae" or includes them in his own made-up words, as he does with "heath" and
"bonny".
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The poem contains many striking images, most of which we can read literally. But Hopkins is a devout Catholic,
who finds heaven (and maybe hell) all around him, so the image of the fawn-froth falling over the waterfall's edge
and into the pitchblack pool may well be intended as a metaphor for the human soul. The froth is almost nothing,
yet it can survive the destructive torrent and the pool of Despair.

At the end of the poem Hopkins praises "wildness and wet". The whole poem celebrates the life-giving properties
of water, which is often a symbol of life in the poetry of the Bible. It may seem a dangerous and destructive force
as it plunges over the waterfall, but in reality all natural life depends on the rivers and streams and pools.

Ideas for studying the poem

Performing the poem

This is a very suitable text for dramatic performance. It is easy to learn by heart or to learn for reading from a
script. A pair or small group could share the lines and provide suitable sound FX - using voices only or musical
instruments. If your school is near a fast-flowing stream or waterfall, it might be possible to do this outdoors -
though this could be dangerous. More sensibly, pupils could make an audiotape, CD or digital recording for a
computer to record the performance, or use presentation graphics software (such as PowerPoint™) to
accompany a performance of the poem.

Making a glossary

This poem is full of strange words and phrases - things Hopkins makes up, or familiar words used in unfamiliar
senses. Working with one or more friends (in this way you share the work), make a simple guide or glossary to
explain what these terms mean.

Using visual input

• Use a highlighter (on printed text or electronic text) to show things like alliteration, assonance, and other
sound FX.
• Add captions to explain unusual vocabulary.
• Prepare a storyboard for a short film to illustrate the poem or for which the spoken text of poem would
provide the soundtrack.
• Make a poster to show the important images and scenes presented in the poem.

John Clare: Sonnet - "I love to see the summer..."

About the poet

John Clare (1793-1864) was a farm labourer from Northamptonshire. He had only the most basic formal
education, but taught himself by reading everything he could find. He spent two years (1812-14) in the
Northamptonshire Militia, and worked as a gardener at Burghley House near Stamford, while writing poems for his
first collection. This appeared in 1820, under the title Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. To promote
sales, the title page gave the author as "John Clare a Northampton Peasant". Like the great Scots poet, Robert
Burns, and unlike almost every other published poet of the time, Clare really knew from experience what it was
like to live and work in the country. Clare published further collections but these did not sell as well, as the novelty
of the author's background was no longer helpful. In 1823, Clare began to suffer from mental illness. He spent
four fairly happy years at Dr. Allen's asylum in High Beech, Essex, after which he spent half a year at liberty. In
1841 he was placed in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton. He received kind treatment, and continued
his writing. Clare is not regarded as a great poet, but he knows far more about the natural world than more
celebrated writers. He has a positive view of nature, but does not idealize it, because he knows the reality of the
labourer's toil.

About the poem

The poem is delightfully naïve - John Clare writes "I love..." as any primary school child might say, and lists the
things that he loves to see. The poem is more or less a list of images - things that a country person would see.
You can still see most of them today - but you need to get out of your car. The view is very much a close-up look
at nature. We may not find this in poetry so much as we once did - but it has a lot in common with natural history
broadcasts for TV, especially those where hidden cameras can record the things which the countryman used to
have to look for patiently.
 52
Clare describes the scene in a pond or small lake, where reeds grow and waterfowl nest. Where Gerard
Manley Hopkins' Inversnaid shows water in a violent and energetic form, this poem shows still water, teeming with
life. It is wild, in the sense that all sorts of animals and plants live there, but this means that it can support human
life, too - Clare would see the waterfowl as food, the rushes as building material and the hay grass as food to
support animal husbandry. Hopkins goes to the country, both in Wales and Scotland, as a very observant tourist -
full of wonder at what he sees. Clare lives in the country and knows it in the way a gardener or natural historian
does - and he knows where to look to see the things he loves.

The poem in detail

The first line of the poem is very simple and unremarkable - almost a general introduction, before the details
appear. The first of these is the likening of the cloud to the wool sack - when we read this phrase we may at once
think of the very famous Woolsack on which the Lord Chancellor sits, but Clare is thinking of the untreated wool
that fills the sacks in a wool market - a sight you can still see in his part of the world. The third line is also rather
vague, but then we get examples. These are the golden marsh marigolds, the white water lilies and the clumps of
reed. Clare notes that they "rustle like a wind shook wood" - this reminds us that the reeds are large and sturdy
plants, growing as high as some trees. ("Wind shook" may also reveal Clare's lack of education - he uses the non-
standard grammar of "shook", as Elvis Presley does in the rock song All Shook Up, where we would expect the
past participle "shaken". )

Clare may disregard standard verb forms but he does know that moorhens make floating nests out of flag irises (a
floating nest gives less opportunity to predators, like rats or foxes, that might eat the eggs or the chicks). He
enjoys the sight of the willow that overhangs the lake - perhaps the species we call weeping willow. And, looking
at the long grass that will be cut for hay, he notices the insects that fly around it - imagining that they are happy.
This leads him to think of the insects that "play" in the lake.

The poem shows a childlike sense of innocent pleasure in very simple natural things. Perhaps in the modern
world they are too simple for us - after a few minutes we find them boring. But we may envy those who can find
this simple delight. If you don't know the country, you may find these explanations helpful (ignore them if you
know this stuff already):

• Mare blobs are flowers. The common name is marsh marigold (caltha palustris is the Latin botanical
name) - and older dialect names are mare blobs, mare blebs and water blobs. (Mare here is presumably
the Latin word for water as in marine or Weston-super-Mare).
• The drain is not a hole in the ground covered with an iron grating. It is a large drainage ditch or dyke,
which would carry water away from the fields for most of the year, perhaps drying out in late summer, but
suitable for marsh plants like the marigolds.
• The moorhen's flag nest is a floating nest, built out of the stems of the yellow flag iris - a plant that
commonly grows around the edges of ponds.
• Hay grass is allowed to grow to its full height, before it is cut, dried and stored to provide food for animals
in winter when they cannot graze. (Do not confuse it with straw, the thicker stems of cereal plants. Straw
is not suitable for food, and is used to provide bedding for animals - and for people in past times and
some societies today.)

The poet's method

John Clare is a technically unsophisticated writer. He is able to use the iambic pentameter line but in a
mechanical and repetitive way - so we find the simple opening used again and again: "I love to see" (twice), "I
like", "I love", "And" (three times) and "Where" (twice). If you read down the opening words, you can see how he
does this. As set out in the AQA Anthology, the poem appears as one continuous sentence. Dr. John Goodridge
has calculated that 192 of Clare's poems begin with "I", 52 with "I love" and 6 with "I loved".

This is not a conventional sonnet of either the type called Petrarchan (after the Italian writer Francesco Petrarca,
1304-74) which is divided into groups of eight and six lines (the octave and sestet) or the Shakespearean sonnet,
with its twelve lines, followed by a concluding couplet. Instead the whole poem is a series of seven couplets.
Many critics would insist that there is more to a sonnet than simply having fourteen lines.

Clare does not imagine animals and plants, but records them as he sees them. He uses the common country
dialect names - sometimes these are still in use ("water lilies") and sometimes the name has passed out of use
("Mare blobs" or "flag", on its own, where we now say "flag-iris").

There are occasional metaphors, but the images come from Clare's own experience, as when he compares
clouds to sacks of wool. And the one simile likens the rushes to a wood, shaken by wind - so Clare compares like
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with like. Some of the images are anthropomorphic (attributing human qualities or behaviour to non-human
things), so the willow leans and stands, the insects have happy wings and the beetles play in the lake.

Ideas for studying the poem

Natural history in the poem

Using the information in the poem, write a simple description of the natural environment, the plants and flowers,
which Clare depicts in it. Or write your own poem about the things you "love to see" in summer in an environment
that you know well. Alternatively, write a sequel to Clare's poem, describing what you would see in the same
place at some other time of year.

Nature is boring

Is this poem suitable for young readers? Or is it the case that a close interest in nature comes, for most of us, only
when we are older? How do you feel about the things that Clare describes?

Respecting nature

Do we value the natural environment properly or do we not care about it? Look at the following list of statements
and decide which ones you most agree or disagree with:

• the countryside is boring - I much prefer clubs, discos, burger bars and cinemas;
• the country is a good place to build more houses, shops and car parks;
• it's OK to leave rubbish after a picnic - other people or nature can clean up after you;
• the best thing to do with wild birds and animals is shoot them and eat them;
• it makes sense to farm with agro-chemicals - you get rid of weeds and have a bigger crop;
• I don't need to go looking at wild birds and plants when I can watch them on wildlife broadcasts on TV.