WHO AM I ?

You can’t know me nor can vie with me,

O chameleon !

I change my pigment

            faster than you.

Who am I ? Guess.

You scorpion ! Swell not for thy sting,

My stinging pains mind along with body.

            Poets have gone mad

To find an art to know me, but in vain

.

Venomous and violent creatures,

I am the cruelest. The desperate.

I am happy when you aren’t,

I laugh when you suffer.

            I hurt, harm, misguide, mislead,

                        bite, beat, cut or kill

Guess, who am I ?

Not a creature

But an articulate, expert man ???

   

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A Red Red Rose

A Red Red Rose

Features of Burns Poems :

Like Shelley, Robert Burns is a born singer and sings with the ease of a melodious artist. His songs are as natural and as free as that of a bird because they are unlaboured and direct cry of heart. Burn’s another feature is that there is subjectctivity in each of his poems.

Keynote of the Poem :

The present poem ‘My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose’ is a perfect and supreme example of love lyric. Here the poet expresses his ardent and personal experience of his love fore his beloved. When we read this poem, we come to know that there is a touch of Elizabethan song in it. Burns belongs to the romantic age and the doors of romantic age open with his entry in the field of literature.

Summary of the Poem :

The poem is in four simple stanzas. In the very first stanza the poet says that his love for his beloved is just like a red rose. And it is as fresh as is the month of June. Again, he compares his love with music because music has power to bring harmony and unity. See –

“My love is like a red red rose
 ------------------------------
My love is like the melodie.”

In the second stanza the poet calls his beloved both ‘fair’ and ‘bold’. On his side he is also in deep love. See –

“So deep in love am I”

In the last two lines he shows his firmness and strong determination by saying that –

“And I will love thee Till a seas gang dries.”

In the third stanza we read that the poet repeats the same line of the second stanza. It shows his strong passion. He knows path of true love is not smooth. But he is ready to face any obstacle. His love is infinite. This stanza is full of promise as he says –

“The rocks melt wi’ the sunAnd I will love thee still my dear
While the sands of life shall run.”

In the last stanza the poet bids farewell with the hope that –

“And I will come again, my love
Tho’ it were ten thousand miles.”

The Poem Has All Features of Lyric :

Poet’s love is pure and selfless. There seems a sense of sacrifice from poet’s side. Like Surrey’s – “I Find No Peace” the poem is purely subjective. It has all the features of a lyric – it is spontaneous, natural, simple, short, melodious with a beautiful rhyme scheme ( a b b a ). The poet has used ‘rose’ which is the symbol of love, serenity and sacrifice.

The Poem Is a Mirror of Pure Love :

Here we would like to use the words of Compton Rickett – “There is a royal ease about Burns at his best, and he sings as naturally as he breaths. Besides, we can say that here Burns’ soul comes out fullest, freest and brightest. The poem is a mirror of the poet’s pure love foe his beloved where there is a faithful expression of his love.

True Poem From Wordsworth’s Point Of View :

Here Wordsworth’s words also prove true as he says, “The true poem means it comes from the heart and goes together.” Like a true lyric the language of this poem is very simple and full of ease. We feel the effect of the  poem as the poet felt it. The true lyric comes out from the heart of the poet as the leaves come to the tree. In other words the lyric comes out of the poet’s heart as the water comes out from the mountain. The present poem also comes naturally and comes with ease. Thus it is a true poem from Wordsworth’s point of view.

Briefing:
 Burns’ thoghts are as free as that of innocent child.
 He is as free as that of a bird.
 His language is like a natural flow of water.
 Burns’ song is just like that of a bird.
 Burns is a harbinger of true lyric.
 His approach towards lyric is just like that of Shelley, he is more melodious than Shelley.
 Like a child’s cry, Burns’ song is very innocent and pure.

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The Second Coming (by W.B. Yeats)

The Second Coming

                                  - W.B. Yeats

The keynote of the poem:

The Second Coming is one of the most famous poems of W B Yeats. In this poem Yeats, the nationalist poet of Ireland, heralds the advent of a new era. To tell us this simple thing the poet has used a nice imagery. The richness of the poem lies in the presentation of poet’s vision through his use of imagery.

The background of the poem:

Before we embark on the real appreciation of the poem, a little peep into the political events of the time and their impact on the mind of the poet will certainly be a real help to understand the poem. Wide-spread murder and bloodshed in Ireland in the course of the Ester Rebellion of 1916 had filled poet’s mind with gloom. Not only this, the Irish Civil War that followed the great war of 1914-19 and various other events in Europe added to that gloom. The poem is the outcome of a state of mind of ominous forebodings. The title of the poem suggests the manifestation of a new God to man.

Yeats Philosophy:

Like political background Yeats philosophy will also be useful for the understanding of the poem. Yeats believed that the present cycle of history began two thousand years ago with the birth of Christ. Prior to that there prevailed in the continent the Greco-Roman civilization which began in 2000 B C with the mating of God Zeus with Leda. As a sequel to this union, Helen, Castor, Pollux and Clytemnestra were born. The Greco-Roman civilization attained its climax about 1000 B C when Homer composed his two epics.

The Greco-Roman civilization collapsed after enjoying a life span of 2000 years. Christ came and a new civilization emerged out of the ashes of the earlier civilization. Likewise, the Christian civilization has nearly run its span of two thousand years and hence, Yeats believes a second coming is imminent. History repeats itself albeit with some difference. The present cycle of history has come to its full circle and a new civilization is coming into being. The birth of the new civilization may strike us as the death of the old, its merits may seem horrifying, the very idea may be like a dreadful dream. But a change is positively coming and very likely the future is already being formed in some distant region.

The gist of the poem:

Now in the light of the above background and poet’s philosophy, it will be easy to draw some gist from the poem. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. It has lost control over the falconer. Like the gyre turning and turning to the extent it loses its control. The centre cannot hold anything. And therefore things fall apart. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The ceremony of innocence is drowned and blood dimmed tied is loosed upon everywhere. The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of intensity. This is what the poet has said to in the first eight lines.

In the next stanza the poet talks about the coming of an avatar. Second coming is about to take place. The poet envisages some terrible shaped animal; ion’s body and man’s head. The poet is troubled with such a terrifying figure. This terrible figure moves clumsily towards Bethlehem.

    

In short in these two stanzas the poet talks about two scenes: (1) great anarchy, chaos and bloodshed, disharmony and disintegration in the world and (2) the emergence of something new or second coming or a new avatar.

Use of imagery in the poem:

It is in the use of the images in the poem that the poem becomes intelligible. The philosophy of the poet and his vision become crystal clear to the reader only when he understands the images used by the poet. Confused and disturbed by the Ester Rebellion, Irish Civil War and the Great War of 1914-19, the poet pours his heart, expresses his philosophy and the ideology of chaos and disintegration through the use of images of ‘gyre’ and  ‘falcon’. The world too is perplexed to see the disaster of the Great War. In spite of the development of the science and technology man is helpless and embarrassed. The present civilization has reached to the zenith of its development from where he sees nothing. The gyre is turning and turning wider and wider, the result is that it loses its contact with the centre. The centre cannot hold the things and therefore things fall apart. As the falcon cannot see the falconer, the modern man has lost all his contact with his soul and hence in a state of embarrassment. The falcon’s loss of contact implies man’s separation from every ideal of himself that enables him to control his life whether this comes from religion or philosophy or poetry. It is also, in more general term, his break with every traditional tie. It may also mean that emotion (falcon) has separated itself from intellect (guiding principle that controls falconer). See Even the rhetoric in the poem: Blood-dimmed tides, ceremony of innocence, intensity of the worst, the best lack all convictions etc….. the second part of fourteen lines is but a prophecy of a new Avatar; i. e. the second coming. A shape, a rough beast, a vast image in the form of lion’s body and a head of a man. What will be the effect of this new Avatar; the second coming is somewhat vague and beyond our comprehension. See the phrases: troubles my sight, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, the darkness drops again, vexed to nightmare, rocking cradle…. All these phrases create a terrifying atmosphere. 

Embodiment of poet’s vision: 

In a nutshell the poem is the true embodiment of Yeats vision. History repeats after a cycle of some years; a millennium. The new avatar will emerge to correct the moral, social and political decadence. The striking feature of the poem is poet’s correct choice of the words and phrases. The poem is rich in both the thought and language. Befitting words enrich the poet’s great vision and philosophy. 

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Browning’s Grammarian : An Epitome of Renaissance

A Grammarian’s Funeral is not only a much admired piece of verse, a quarry of quotations, but also a very typical of its author in its subject, thought and technique. It is one of the best of Browning’s studies of ‘The Revival of Learning’. During the period the pursuit of knowledge to be procured from Greece and Rome was carried on with a hungry passion. And by choosing as his hero, as his example of the sacred thirst for learning, a Grammarian, and a dry as dust Grammarian, who has laboured after explaining the 'function of ancient Greek adverbs and participles’, Browning has endeavoured in a right manner to present the spirit of the 15th century Renaissance in the poem.

The poem has three paragraphs of unequal length.The first describes how the Grammarian’s disciples,”singing together, carry his body in triumph up the mountain. This is metaphorically said to be “citied to the top, crowded with culture.” It is symbolic of the higher reaches of thought, and towers above “the unlettered plain” representative of the ignorance of the common multitude. On the other hand, the citadel ‘circling its summit is a real citadel a fortified little town through whose market place the procession eventually marches.

The second paragraph, with its rapid changes of metaphor, requires careful reading. The Grammarian was born with the beauty of feature represented i n the statues of Apollo, the Greek god of lyric poetry. He gained no fame in youth, but when this passed he did not complain mournfully that “my dance is finished”, that the worthwhileness of life was over. On the contrary he devoted himself to learning, to interpreting the works, so far partly a sealed book, of the great classical poets and philosophers. Scholars now gathered round him, to find him an old man, bald stammering, leaden-eyed. Another might have said – “Now that I am famous, it is time to enjoy life.” But the Grammarian would not rest content; he had mastered the crabbed text of learning – but there was still the commentary. He was eager to know all that he could know; he had grasped the meaning of the whole, but had still to study the parts, like an architect who plans the whole fabrick before any portation of it is executed.

The third paragraph, which contained the main ideas of the poem, has fewer difficulties. Back to his books, the Grammarian was attacked by disease, a stone in the kidney (calculus) and bronchitis(tussis). But he still aimed at the whole of the knowledge, and would not be satisfied with mere instalments. Even with death approaching “ground he at grammar”, and discovered the functions of Greek conjuctions ‘hoti’ (that), the Greek adverb ‘oun’ (therefore) and the enclitic ‘de’. The poem ends with the arrival of the procession at the top of the mountain, where the scholars bury their master, leaving him-

Still loftier than the world suspects,
Leaving and dying.

Some of Browning’s favourite ideas are expressed in the poem. One is that to devote oneself to high ideas unattainable in this life is better than to succeed in a lower aim. See :

That low man goes on adding one to one ,
His hundred’s soon hit:
The high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.

It is in the life to come that a noble failure here will be crowned with success. Further he says:

What is time? Leave now for dogs and apes;
Man has for ever.

The metre of the poem is skillfully employed to suit the changing pace of the funeral party. It is in perfect accord with the steps of the men ascending a mount. There are, however, some grotesque rhymes: cock-crow and rock-row, fabric and dabbrick, loosened and dew send. These grotesque rhymes have been employed to serve the purpose of grandeur. These violent grotesque rhymes echo the broken steps of the marching men. It also can be interpreted as suggestive of the Grammarian’s rugged journey through life.

Althoough the poem is not all obscure at places it is difficult to comprehend. The difficulty arises out of its intellectual bent and content. There is more of ideas than of emotion. This difficulty is further aggravated by (1) involved syntax, (2) the omission of a word here and there, (3) hibit of saying things in parentheses, that is within brackets and between dashes. See:

(Here’s the town-gate reached ; there is
The market place
Gaping before us)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
(Hearten our chorus)
That before living he’d learn how to live-

I would like to conclude the discussion by quoting the lines from a short poem by H D Lowry which provide both a parrallel and a contrast to the poem:

He gave his days to learning and high content was his;
Great stove had he of learning in all the mysteries;
He thought, when he was wakened, ‘twas how his hour to live,
But time, the kind old Father, had only death to give.