BBL 3217
POETRY AND DRAMA
IN ENGLISH
DR. IDA BAIZURA BAHAR
ida@fbmk.upm.edu.my
What is poetry?
Poetry is important... It reaches inside people
and heals their wounds like nothing else can. It
is an escape from reality and a method of
coping with reality. It's a certain feeling
inside."
Anonymous
What does poetry do to you?
"Why, Sir, it is much
easier to say what it is
not. We all know what
light is; but it is not easy
to tell what it is."
Samuel Johnson
"original combination
of words, distinctive
sound, and emotional
impact"
Anonymous
What is poetry really?
According to geocities.com, poetry
is ..
A form of expression
written seeking approval from no one
but read and interpreted
by anyone and everyone
It reveals your most inner thoughts
that may never be spoken
forming a deep communication to
others
and for you, a cherished token
that you will always remember.
What do the poets say?
 Wordsworth defined poetry as "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings"
 Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book
and it makes my body so cold no fire ever
can warm me, I know that is poetry"
 Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way:
"Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or
yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle,
what makes me want to do this or that or
nothing."
In brief, according to Mark Flanagan in About.com…
 Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paintspattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of
paint, and the canvas is you.
 One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic
form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and
unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to
a page.
 Defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you
catch it, it's no longer wind.
What poetry is usually about?
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*
Love – central experience in life
Death – taboo subject
Religion – mortal vs immortal
Nature – appreciate the beauty
People – families, friends
Domestic Matters
Everyday topics = familiar themes
LOVE
Proof – That I did always love thee by Emily
Dickinson
That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.
That I shall love alway,
I offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.
This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.
DEATH
Wake by Langston Hughes
Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red -Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.
RELIGION
A Child’s Thought of God by Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
They say that God lives very high;
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God; and why?
And if you dig down in the mines,
You never see Him in the gold,
Though from Him all that’s glory shines.
God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face,
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place;
As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,
Half waking me at night, and said,
“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”
How to Eat a Poem
Don’t be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth
For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
To throw away.
Eve Merriam
I like a good poem
one with lots of fighting
in it. Blood, and the
clanging of armour. Poems
A Good Poem
against Scotland are good,
and poems that defeat
the French with crossbows.
I don’t like that
aren’t about anything.
Sonnets are wet and
a waste of time,
Also poems that don’t
know how to rhyme.
If I was a poem
I’d play football and
get picked for England.
Roger McGough
AN OVERVIEW OF THE
DIFFERENT GENRES
 WHAT IS POETRY?
 WHAT IS DRAMA?
Historical Development
English Poetry
English Drama
 Anglo-Saxon Period (0450
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1066)
Middle Ages (1066-1500)
The Renaissance (1500-1660)
17th century (1600-1700)
18th century (1700-1800)
Romantics (1785-1830)
19th century (1800-1900)
 Middle Ages to 1642
 (1660-1700)
 (1700-1750)
 (1750-1800)
 (1800-1850)
 (1850-1890)
The Anglo-Saxon Period (0450-1066)
 No printing existed – handed down orally
 Various devices used to facilitate memory, for e.g.
alliteration and rhyme were used to make poetry easy
to remember. Most work written in Latin.
 Contained themes of battles and religion. Epic is the
most famous form = a poem of historic scope.
 Famous work: Beowulf (the longest as well as the
richest of Old English poems). Found in a
manuscript of the early eleventh century but
composed 2 centuries earlier.
The Middle Ages (1066-1500)
 Christian moral poems began to surface
 Not only in English and Latin but French as well.
 Epic and elegy gave way to Romance (tales of
adventure and honorable deeds) and lyric.
 First printed English book appeared in 1476,
language assumed its modern form except for
spelling.
 Popular poet during this period is Geoffrey Chaucer
(narrative poem)
 His masterpieces are Canterbury Tales and Troilus
and Criseyde
The Renaissance (1500-1660)
 Experienced a revival of intellectualism
because of renewed interest in ancient Greek
and Latin language and literature
 Invention of printing press (William Caxton)
 This revolution encouraged the composition
of poetry by great poets such as Sidney (The
Shepheardes Calender), Spencer (Fairie
Queene), Shakespeare, Marlowe, Lyly and
Nashe.
The Seventeenth Century (1600-1700)
 Two main groups of poets: lyrical poets and
metaphysical poets
 First group consists of Herrick, Lovelace and
Suckling (wrote according to the conventions of
Elizabethan lyricists)
 Second group consists of Donne, Herbert and
Vaughan who produced works by ‘intense feeling
combined with ingenious thought; elaborate, witty
images; an interest in mathematics, science and
geography; an overriding interest in the soul; and
direct, colloquial expression even sonnets and lyrics’
The Eighteenth Century (1700-1800)
 The rise of the novel and consequently, the
beginning of the end of epic poetry
 Marked the disappearance of the patronage
system
 Poetry writing became a less lucrative
endeavor.
 Poets such as Blake and Pope became
aware of the social problems
 The emergence of sensibility - Gray
The Romantics (1785-1830)
 Can be characterized by:
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A return to nature
A shift of focus to the country side
A return to a life of senses and feeling
Not confined to logic and reason
Its appeal to emotions and imagination
The Romantics (II)
 Also a revival of interest in the Middle Ages,
the medieval, and the supernatural
 A common word associated with the
Romantics is ‘the Sublime’ which refers to
“religious awe, vastness, natural
magnificence, and strong emotion”
 Overwhelmingly a poetic one
 Poets of this era are: Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley and Keats
The Nineteenth Century (1800-1900)
 Known also as the Victorian Age (1880)
 Industrial Age and the modern age of science
 Middle class was brought into power,
reducing the powers of aristocracy
 Poetries often expressive, mournful,
descriptive, of nature and of domestic and
urban life
 Poets emerged during this period: Tennyson,
Browning and Arnold.
NARRATIVE POETRY
GENERAL PROLOGUE TO THE
CANTERYBURY TALES (WRITTEN AT THE
END OF THE 14TH CENTURY)
BY
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (C.1343-1400)
http://www.unc.edu/depts/chaucer/zatta/prol.html
Middle English version of General Prologue
 1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
Middle English version of General Prologue
 15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
19: Bifil that in that seson on a day,
20: In southwerk at the tabard as I lay
21: Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
22: To caunterbury with ful devout corage,
23: At nyght was come into that hostelrye
24: Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,
25: Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
26: In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
27: That toward caunterbury wolden ryde.
28: The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
29: And wel we weren esed atte beste.
 General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
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Bifel that in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
GP I.20-27
General Prologue
 The poem opens with a passage about spring, the season when
people long to get out and about after the rigors of winter.
Chaucer does not only give the essence of the season itself, but a
vivid realization of its effect on human beings.
 The company of pilgrims meeting together at the Tabard Inn in
Southwark for the journey to Canterbury. The journey usually
took three days, though it could be done in less. The shrine of
St. Thomas, who had been murdered in 1170 and canonized
three years later, was a major place of pilgrimage, must have
been a splendid sight in Chaucer’s time, adorned as it was with
great quantities of gold and jewels.
 At the end of the General Prologue, Chaucer says that he has
described the ‘estate’ of all the pilgrims and his prologue is not
merely a collection of portraits, but something that goes much
further.
General Prologue
 In the Middle Ages what is now known as ‘estates satire’ was
popular: literature that described the characteristics qualities
and failings of the members of the various ‘estates’, the trades,
professions and ways of life of fourteenth-century people.
 Thus, in describing the pilgrims, Chaucer was not merely
inventing a group of interesting characters, or portraying actual
people that he knew, but drawing upon a well-established but
rather stereotyped mode of writing and transforming it, to give
us the highly individualized group of people who make up the
company assembled at the Tabard Inn.
 In order to give a more comprehensive view of his society,
Chaucer presents a very large company of pilgrims, and
selected representatives from high up on the social scale (the
Knight and his son, the Squire), and from both religious and
secular life.
 He has women as well men, he has poor as well as rich, learned
and ignorant, and simple countrymen as well as sophisticated,
worldly pilgrims.
The Knight
 Given the first place to represent the highest class.
 Though most of his other pilgrims are satirized, Chaucer’s
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Knight is presented as an entirely admirable member of his
class, a representative of chivalry.
He fights for a religious ideal rather than for personal
aggrandizement and has participated in many campaigns in
foreign countries.
His ‘array’, described at the end of the portrait, suggests an
unworldly disregard of outward appearance combined with
concern for professional competence.
He has participated in no less than fifteen of the great crusades
of his era.
Brave, experienced, and prudent, the narrator greatly admires
him.
As the pilgrimage begins and the tales are told, the Knight’s
social superiority and moral authority are recognized by the rest
of the company including the Host.
The Squire (the Knight’s son) - a country gentleman,
especially the chief landowner in a district
 Also a representative of chivalry, but he is above all a
young lover, as is natural for his age (20 years), and
his devotion to his lady inspires him to perform deeds
of courage.
 Unlike his father, does not scorn elegant clothes or
disregard his appearance: he is the embodiment of
the romantic ideal of the young lover, with all the
accomplishments that were considered appropriate.
 He is accompanied by a Yeoman whose admirable
professionalism and practical abilities qualifies him to
be the servant of both Knight and Squire.
The Prioress (Madame Eglantine) – the female superior of
a religious house or order/head of her convent
 Chaucer describes in terms of a worldly beauty, as if
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she were the heroine of a romance rather than a
woman dedicated to a life of religious devotion.
Chaucer makes his Prioress a beautiful and charming
woman whose courtesy is her dominant
characteristics.
Her table manners are dainty, she knows French
(though not French of the court), she dresses well,
and she is charitable and compassionate.
She wears a brooch which is inscribed “Love
Conquers All Things’ but unsure whether the ‘love’
refers to love for God or earthly love.
She is the feminine counterpart of the Squire.
The Monk – a member of a community of men living apart
from the world under the rules of a religious order.
 Monks were often satirized, particularly for
the gluttony and lack of spirituality
traditionally attributed to the monastic orders.
 Chaucer subtly suggests that his Monk his
fond of good food, but does not explicitly state
that he is greedy and he makes the monk
appear physically attractive, rather than as
gross and bloated.
 He is fond of fine clothes and loves hunting.
The Friar – a member of certain Roman Catholic male
religious orders and works among people in the outside world
and not as enclosed orders.
 In Chaucer’s time friars were often criticized
for failing to live up to the ideals to which they
were dedicated. Particularly criticized for
their over-persuasive speech and flattery,
often leading to the seduction of women.
 Like the Monk, Chaucer’s Friar is an
attractive figure, with his pleasant speech,
healthy appearance and musical ability, but
he has disagreeable characteristics too. He
is greedy for money, extorting it from poor
widows by his fair speech.
The Merchant (trades in fur and other cloths) – part of a
powerful and wealthy class in Chaucer’s society
 The Merchant belongs to the secular rather than to
the ecclesiastical world.
 Merchants were traditionally associated with fraud
and dishonesty. Chaucer’s choice of words implies
that his Merchant’s dealings were probably shady
ones.
 The very respectable and dignified appearance that
the Merchant maintains probably both masks
dishonest money-operations and enables him to
conceal any losses that he may make, which might
undermine the confidence of his clients
The Clerk (a scholar)
 To be regarded as an admirable figure.
 Does not seem as attractive as many of the other
pilgrims, with his half-starved appearance, bony old
horse and threadbare clothes.
 He cares nothing for worldly success, and he spends
no time trying to make money.
 He does not waste words, though he finds time to
pray for the souls of any who will enable him to
further his studies.
 His devotion to scholarship and his readiness to pass
his learning conform to the contemporary ideal for the
scholar.
The Wife of Bath (Bath is an English town on River Avon,
not the name of the woman’s husband)
 Misogynistic satire which discussed women’s faults and failings
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and the appropriate attitudes towards them that men should
adopt.
Such writing often denounced women for pride and bad temper
– here we can see that the Wife is infuriated if she is not allowed
to make her offering in church before other women.
Chaucer also drew form earlier tradition which portrayed elderly
woman as knowing all about love, and ready to instruct others,
even when they themselves too old for it.
Chaucer shows his originality by making the Wife a very
experience older woman but one who is still ready for love if
anyone will give her a chance.
Though she is a seamstress by occupation, she seems to be a
professional wife.
She has been married five times and had many other affairs in
her youth, making her well-practiced in the art of love.
Prologue
 After Chaucer has introduce all the pilgrims, he excuses himself
in advance for any displeasure that he may cause by attempting
to report accurately the uncensored words of his companions,
and he also apologizes for not introducing the pilgrims in exactly
the correct order.
 Then he introduces the Host, Harry Bailey, who unlike the other
members of the party, was a real person.
 The Host is both manly and jolly, and a very competent
organizer.
 His character is to emerge in the course of the pilgrimage, as he
arranges the story-telling. At this point in the proceedings, he
puts forward his plan: the teller who tells the most memorable
and interesting stories will be rewarded with a free supper at the
Tabard Inn on his return.
INTRODUCTION TO SONNET
 SHAKESPEAREAN SONNETS
What is a sonnet?
 Lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme
scheme, expressing different aspects of a
single thought, mood, or feeling, resolved
or summed up in the last lines of the poem.
 Originally short poems accompanied by
mandolin or lute music, sonnets are
generally composed in the standard metre
of the language in which they were
written—iambic pentameter in English, the
Alexandrine in French, for example.
The term
 The term sonnet is derived from the
provencal word sonet and the Italian word
sonetto, both meaning little song. By the
thirteenth century, it had come to signify a
poem of fourteen lines following a strict
rhyme scheme and logical structure. The
conventions associated with the sonnet
have changed during its history.
Form
 The two main forms of the sonnet are the
Petrarchan (Italian), and the English
(Shakespearean).
 The former probably developed from the
stanza form of the canzone or from
Italian folk song.
 The form reached its peak with the
Italian poet Petrarch, whose Canzoniere
(c. 1327) includes 317 sonnets
addressed to his beloved Laura.
The convention of a sonnet
 The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (8 line
stanza), and a sestet(6 line stanza).
 The octave has two quatrains, rhyming a b b a, a b
b a; the first quatrain presents the theme, the
second develops it.
 The sestet is built on two or three different rhymes,
arranged either c d e c d e, or c d c d c d, or c d e d
c e; the first three lines exemplify or reflect on the
theme, and the last three lines bring the whole
poem to a unified close.
 Among great examples of the Petrarchan sonnet in
the English language are Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet
sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591), which
established the form in England. There, in the
Elizabethan age, it reached the peak of its
popularity.
Petrarchan style
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, (a)
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! (b)
My hasting days fly on with full career, (b)
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. (a)
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, (a)
That I to manhood am arrived so near, (b)
And inward ripeness doth much less appear, (b)
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. (a)
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, (c)
It shall be still in strictest measure even (d)
To that same lot, however mean or high, (e)
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. (d)
All is, if I have grace to use it so, (c)
As ever in my great Task-master's eye. (e)
English Sonnets
 Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl
of Surrey, are credited with introducing the
sonnet into England with translations of
Italian sonnets as well as with sonnets of
their own.
 Though English sonnet is always identified
as Shakespeare sonnet, he is not the first
to introduce this from. Nonetheless the
poet is the famous practitioner.
Shakespeare Sonnets
 The English sonnet, exemplified by the
work of Shakespeare, developed as an
adaptation to a language less rich in
rhymes than Italian.
 This form differs from the Petrarchan in
being divided into three quatrains, each
rhymed differently, with a final,
independently rhymed couplet that makes
an effective, unifying climax to the whole.
The rhyme scheme is a b a b, c d c d, e f
e f, g g.
Life and Times of William Shakespeare

Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and
certainly the most important playwright of the English
Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town
of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son of a
successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended
grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further.
In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had
three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind
and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright.
Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare
eventually became the most popular playwright in England and
part owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns
of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603) and James I (ruled 16031625); he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James
granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible
compliment by endowing them with the status of king’s players.
Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, and
died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of
Shakespeare’s death, such luminaries as Ben Jonson hailed him
as the apogee of Renaissance theatre.
The Sonnets
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Shakespeare’s sonnets are very different from Shakespeare’s
plays, but they do contain dramatic elements and an overall
sense of story. Each of the poems deals with a highly personal
theme, and each can be taken on its own or in relation to the
poems around it. The sonnets have the feel of autobiographical
poems, but we don’t know whether they deal with real events or
not, because no one knows enough about Shakespeare’s life to
say whether or not they deal with real events and feelings, so
we tend to refer to the voice of the sonnets as “the speaker”—
as though he were a dramatic creation like Hamlet or King Lear.
The Sonnets
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There are certainly a number of intriguing continuities
throughout the poems. The first 126 of the sonnets seem to be
addressed to an unnamed young nobleman, whom the speaker
loves very much; the rest of the poems (except for the last two,
which seem generally unconnected to the rest of the sequence)
seem to be addressed to a mysterious woman, whom the
speaker loves, hates, and lusts for simultaneously. The two
addressees of the sonnets are usually referred to as the “young
man” and the “dark lady”; in summaries of individual poems, I
have also called the young man the “beloved” and the dark lady
the “lover,” especially in cases where their identity can only be
surmised. Within the two mini-sequences, there are a number
of other discernible elements of “plot”: the speaker urges the
young man to have children; he is forced to endure a separation
from him; he competes with a rival poet for the young man’s
patronage and affection. At two points in the sequence, it
seems that the young man and the dark lady are actually lovers
themselves—a state of affairs with which the speaker is none
too happy. But while these continuities give the poems a
narrative flow and a helpful frame of reference, they have been
frustratingly hard for scholars and biographers to pin down. In
Shakespeare’s life, who were the young man and the dark lady?
The Shakespearean Sonnet:
Overview
 William Shakespeare wrote one hundred
fifty-four sonnets. A sonnet is a form of
lyric poetry with fourteen lines and a
specific rhyme scheme. (Lyric poetry
presents the deep feelings and emotions of
the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a
story or presents a witty observation.) .The
topic of most sonnets written in
Shakespeare's time is love–or a theme
related to love.
The Shakespearean Sonnet:
Overview
 Shakespeare addresses Sonnets 1 through
126 to an unidentified young man with
outstanding physical and intellectual
attributes. The first seventeen of these urge
the young man to marry so that he can pass
on his superior qualities to a child, thereby
allowing future generations to enjoy and
appreciate these qualities when the child
becomes a man. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare
alters his viewpoint, saying his own poetry
may be all that is necessary to immortalize
the young man and his qualities.
The Shakespearean Sonnet:
Overview
 In Sonnets 127 through 154, Shakespeare devotes
most of his attention to addressing a mysterious "dark
lady"–a sensuous, irresistible woman of questionable
morals who captivates the poet. References to the
dark lady also appear in previous sonnets (35, 40, 41,
42), in which Shakespeare reproaches the young man
for an apparent liaison with the dark lady. The first
two lines of Sonnet 41 chide the young man for "those
petty wrongs that liberty commits / when I am
sometime absent from thy heart," a reference to the
young man's wrongful wooing of the dark lady. The
last two lines, the rhyming couplet, further impugn
the young man for using his good looks to attract the
dark lady. In Sonnet 42, the poet charges, "thou dost
love her, because thou knowst I love her."
The Shakespearean Sonnet:
Overview
 Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in
London in the 1590's during an
outbreak of plague that closed
theaters and prevented playwrights
from staging their dramas.
The Shakespearean Sonnet:
Overview
 The Shakespearean sonnet (also called the
English sonnet) has three four-line stanzas
(quatrains) and a two-line unit called a
couplet. A couplet is always indented; both
lines rhyme at the end. The meter of
Shakespeare's sonnets is iambic
pentameter (except in Sonnet 145). The
rhyming lines in each stanza are the first
and third and the second and fourth. In the
couplet ending the poem, both lines rhyme.
All of Shakespeare's sonnets follow the
same rhyming pattern.
Sonnet 1 (Addressed to the Unidentified Young
Man)
 From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
Sonnet 1 Meaning
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......We want beautiful people and things to reproduce themselves
so that their good qualities will be passed on to their offspring
(children, plants, etc.) It's true that an aging person or thing will
eventually die, but the memory of that person or thing will
continue to live if offspring are produced. But you, who are in love
with yourself, seem to devote all of your attention to yourself.
You're like the flame of a candle that burns only for itself instead of
providing light for others.You are your own enemy. Right now, you
are young and new to the world. But instead of procreating and
sharing yourself by marrying, you keep your procreative seed
inside yourself, unused (thine own bud buriest thy content).
......Thus, young miser, you waste your good qualities by refusing
to spend them on others In the end, by thinking only of yourself
and not mingling with others, you will consume your ability to
procreate and go to your grave without any children or memories
to immortalize you.
Sonnet 18
 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18 Meaning

The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to
the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In
line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the
young man from the summer’s day: he is “more lovely and
more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes:
they are shaken by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the
eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And
summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the
withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime
declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the
beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty
will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and
never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the
beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish
because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever;
it will live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.”
Sonnet 60 (Addressed to the Young Man)
 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
Sonnet 60 Meaning

.......This sonnet says time passes swiftly, just as
swiftly as ocean waves rushing toward a shore. The
word minutes in Line 2 and the number of the sonnet,
60, suggest that life passes like the 60 minutes in an
hour. Although a young man stands for a while in the
bright sunlight of youth, advancing age will all-toosoon appear as a cloud that hides the sun. Wrinkles
will appear and infirmities will develop. Eventually,
death–with its scythe–will come to reap its harvest.
However, the poet’s verse will live on to extol the
qualities of the man as he was in his youth.
Sonnet 97
 How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Sonnet 97 Meaning

The speaker has been forced to endure a separation from the
beloved, and in this poem he compares that absence to the
desolation of winter. In the first quatrain, the speaker simply
exclaims the comparison, painting a picture of the winter: “How
like a winter hath my absence been / From thee, the pleasure of
the fleeting year! / What freezings have I felt, what dark days
seen! / What old December’s bareness everywhere!” In the second
quatrain, however, he says that, in reality, the season was that of
late summer or early autumn, when all of nature was bearing the
fruits of summer’s blooming. In the third quatrain, he dismisses
the “wanton burthen of the prime”—that is, the bounty of the
summer—as unreal, as the “hope of orphans.” It could not have
been fathered by summer, because “summer and his pleasures”
wait on the beloved, and when he is gone, even the birds are
silent. In the couplet, the speaker says that the birds may sing
when the beloved is gone, but it is with “so dull a cheer” that the
leaves, listening, become fearful that winter is upon them.
Sonnet 146
 Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[...] these rebel powers that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
Sonnet 146 Meaning

The speaker addresses this poem to his soul, asking it in the
first stanza why it, the center of his “sinful earth” (that is, his
body), endures misery within his body while he is so concerned
with maintaining its “paint[ed]” outward appearance—that is,
why his soul allows his exterior vanity to wound its interior life.
He asks his soul why, since it will not spend long in the body
(“having so short a lease” in the “fading mansion”), it spends
“so large cost” to decorate it, and he asks whether worms shall
be allowed to eat the soul’s “charge” after the body is dead. In
the third quatrain, the speaker exhorts his soul to concentrate
on its own inward well-being at the expense of the body’s
outward walls (“Let that [i.e., the body] pine to aggravate [i.e.,
increase] thy store”). He says that the body’s hours of “dross”
will buy the soul “terms divine”; and admonishes the soul to be
fed within, and not to be rich without. In the couplet, the
speaker tells the soul that by following his advice, it will feed on
death, which feeds on men and their bodies; and once it has fed
on death, it will enjoy eternal life: “And death once dead,
there’s no more dying then.”
INTRODUCTION TO ELEGY
“ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD”
BY
THOMAS GRAY
THE ELEGY :
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Elegy means “a lament” in Greek .
In classical Literature an Elegy was any poem composed of couplets
of dactylic hexameters and pentameters.
The subjects were various death, war, love and similar things.
The elegy was also used for epitaphs.
Many touching poems of personal loss have been written in English
though the formal elegy demands a dignity and solemnity without a
sense of strained effort or artificiality.
Of such personal elegies of note are Shelley’s “Adonais” mourning
the death of Keats.
THE PASTRORAL ELEGY:

The major elegies belong to a sub – species known as Pastoral
elegy , the origin of which are traceable to the pastoral laments of
Theocritus of Sicily and his successors Moschus and Bion.
 It was Theocritus who set an example for Milton’s Lycidas, Shelley’s
Adoais and Arnold’s Thyrsis.
 Features:
1. The scene is pastoral.
2. The poem begins with an invocation.
3. Diverse mythological characters are referred to.
4. Nature is involved in mourning – Nature feels the wound.
5. There is a procession of mourners.
6. There is a flower passage.
7. The elegy ends on a note of hope and joy.
Biographical Information
 .......Thomas Gray was born in London on December 26, 1716.
 He was the only one of twelve children who survived into adulthood.
 His father, Philip, a scrivener (a person who copies text) was a
cruel, violent man, but his mother, Dorothy, believed in her son and
operated a millinery business to educate him at Eton school in his
childhood and Peterhouse College, Cambridge, as a young man.
.......He left the college in 1738 without a degree to tour Europe with
his friend, Horace Walpole, the son of the first prime minister of
England, Robert Walpole (1676-1745).
 However, Gray did earn a degree in law although he never practised
in that profession.
 After achieving recognition as a poet, he refused to give public
lectures because he was extremely shy.
 Nevertheless, he gained such widespread acclaim and respect that
England offered him the post of poet laureate, which would make
him official poet of the realm.
 However, he rejected the honor.
 Gray was that rare kind of person who cared little for fame and
adulation.
NOTES on “Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard”
 First published, anonymously, 1751, under the title "An Elegy wrote
in a Country Churchyard."
 The date of composition of the Elegy, apart from the concluding
stanzas, cannot be exactly determined.
 The sole authority for the frequently repeated statement that Gray
began the poem in 1742 is Mason's conjecture in the memoir
prefixed to his edition of The Poems of Mr. Gray, 1775.
 The Elegy was concluded at Stoke Poges in June, 1750. (See letter
to Walpole, June 12, 1750.)
 The churchyard as described by Gray is typical rather than
particular; of the five disputed "originals" Stoke Poges bears the
least resemblance to the graveyard in the Elegy. Five candidate
churchyards for Gray's setting include Stoke Poges (unlikely), Upton
(near Slough), Grantchester and Madingley (near Cambridge), and
Thanington (near Canterbury), but the features might as readily be
non-specific.
curfew: originally rung at eight o'clock as a signal for extinguishing
fires; after this practice had ceased, the word was applied to an
evening bell.
Type of Work
 ......."Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is—as the
title indicates—an elegy.
 Such a poem centers on the death of a person or
persons and is, therefore, somber in tone.
 An elegy is lyrical rather than narrative—that is, its
primary purpose is to express feelings and insights about
its subject rather than to tell a story.
 Typically, an elegy expresses feelings of loss and sorrow
while also praising the deceased and commenting on the
meaning of the deceased's time on earth.
 Gray's poem reflects on the lives of humble and
unheralded people buried in the cemetery of a church.
Setting
 .......The time is the mid 1700s, about a decade
before the Industrial Revolution began in
England.
 The place is the cemetery of a church.
 Evidence indicates that the church is St. Giles, in
the small town of Stoke Poges,
Buckinghamshire, in southern England.
 Gray himself is buried in that cemetery. William
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, once
maintained a manor house at Stoge Poges.
Years of Composition and Publication
 .......Gray began writing the elegy in 1742, put it
aside for a while, and finished it in 1750.
 Robert Dodsley published the poem in London
in 1751.
 Revised or altered versions of the poem
appeared in 1753, 1758, 1768, and 1775.
 Copies of the various versions are on file in the
Thomas Gray Archive at Oxford University.
Meter and Rhyme Scheme
 .......Gray wrote the poem in four-line stanzas (quatrains). Each line
is in iambic pentameter, meaning the following:
 1..Each line has five pairs of syllables for a total of ten syllables.
2..In each pair, the first syllable is unstressed (or unaccented), and
the second is stressed (or accented), as in the two lines that open
the poem: .......The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART ing DAY
.......The LOW ing HERD wind SLOW ly O'ER the LEA
 .......In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the
second line rhymes with the fourth (abab), as follows:
 a.....The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
b.....The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
a.....The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
b.....And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Stanza Form: Heroic Quatrain
 .......A stanza with the above-mentioned
characteristics—four lines, iambic pentameter,
and an abab rhyme scheme—is often referred to
as a heroic quatrain.
 (Quatrain is derived from the Latin word
quattuor, meaning four.)
 William Shakespeare and John Dryden had
earlier used this stanza form.
 After Gray's poem became famous, writers and
critics also began referring to the heroic quatrain
as an elegiac stanza.
Themes
 Death: the Great Equalizer
 .......Even the proud and the mighty must one day lie
beneath the earth, like the humble men and women now
buried in the churchyard, as line 36 notes:
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
 Lines 41-44 further point out that no grandiose
memorials and no flattering words about the deceased
can bring him or her back from death.
 Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Themes
 Missed Opportunities
 .......Because of poverty or other handicaps, many talented people
never receive the opportunities they deserve.
 The following lines elucidate this theme through metaphors:
 Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Here, the gem at the
bottom of the ocean may represent an undiscovered musician, poet,
scientist or philosopher. The flower may likewise stand for a person
of great and noble qualities that are "wasted on the desert air." Of
course, on another level, the gem and the flower can stand for
anything in life that goes unappreciated.
Themes
 Virtue
 .......In their rural setting, far from the temptations
of the cities and the courts of kings, the villagers
led virtuous lives, as lines 73-76 point out:
 Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Assessment of the Poem
.......Scholars regard "Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard" as one of the
greatest poems in the English language.
It weaves structure, rhyme scheme,
imagery and message into a brilliant
tapestry that confers on Gray everlasting
fame.
The quality of its poetry and insights reach
Shakespearean and Miltonian heights.