Buffl

Lecture 6 and 7- Poetry

JG
by Janina G.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN by John Keats (1819)


Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?


Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!


Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.


Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.


O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

  • 5 stanzas with 10 lines each

  • different rhyme scheme per stanza

    • ABABCDEDCE

    • ABABCDECED

    • ABABCDECDE

  • Alliteration

  • Anaphora

  • British Romanticism

    • celebration of the devine

  • Iambic Pentameter - unstressed - stressed

  • engages with the beauty of art and nature

    • music

    • nature

  • Urn and art exist outside of the traditional sense of time

  • talking about the engraved people on the urn

    • not bound to the current time

    • addresses Industrialization (critic through nature)

    • free

    • tries to figure out the representation of the people while looking at the different scenes —> Humanist approach as the individual matters

  • Art is everlasting


Annabel Lee by Edgar Poe (1849)


It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.


I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.


And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.


The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.


But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;


For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  • 6 Stanzas

  • Alliteration

  • repetition

  • refrain

  • Hyperbole

  • No strict form of stancas

    • Inconsistent number of lines

    • Sestet (six lines)

    • Septet (seven lines)

    • Octave (eight lines)

    • Anapast + Iambus including catalexis (first line)

    • Anapast + Iambus (second line)

    • No consistent rhyme scheme ABABCB DBEBFB


    American Romanticism (Dark Romanticism)

    • Talks about love and about man’s desire and obsession

    • structure gets loose in the end – content also as it gets weird

    • sexual aspect in the end because there is a change from child to bride

    • child and bride as signal words to talk about sexuality without actually talking about it

    • children imply innocent beauty

     

    1.       Stanza

    • Introduces Anabel

    • Annabel Lee is from a village by the sea

    • her only purpose was to be loved and give love

    • she is there for nothing else

    • possessive point of view

    • airy tail structure

     

    2.       Stanza

    • Pure and innocent love

    • Even the angels were jealous of this love

     

    3.       Stanza

    • She was taken away from him

     

    4.       Stanza

    • She was killed because the angels were jealous

     

    5.       Stanza

    • Never-ending love

    • holding on to this love

    6.       Stanza

    • Lays next to her grave

    • wrote her to eternity

     


The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (1916)


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

  • Modernism

  • 4 quintains (4 stanzas with 5 lines )

  • Iambic tetrameter - Da DUM (four stressed syllables within a line)

  • rhyme scheme ABAAB CDCCD EFEEF GHGGH

  • metaphor throughout the whole poem (conceit) - road = choices

  • Main topic of the poem is the individual and his choices

    • Individuals telling stories to explain a life decision

    • Just a simple choice

    • Creating a narrative by writing in a way that the speaker decides the meaning

    • Poem is about the self-reflection not about the decision itself

    • The way I tell the story makes a difference

  • Content through the poem

    • He must make a decision and has two options

    • Makes a decision to go the other way which looks easier (just take the easy way)

    • Doesn’t make a difference which road to take they are both the same

    • Chooses the other way for another day (leaving the options open)

    • There is no way back once its chosen it leads you somewhere (the decision is made)

    • There is no difference between the roads but in the end he took the road less traveled by

  • Anaphora

  • Enjambement

  • Metonomy for autumn

  • symbol for the undiscovered and unknown future

  • first person


Author

Janina G.

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